Silent Hill: Shattered Memories

It seems to me that people in person as well as those reading this blog are generally dismissive of discussion of video games. No matter what strides the medium makes, people cannot help but to connect it to adolescent power fantasies – an immature notion of control in an otherwise uncontrollable world. By and large, it is true. Walk by any Game$top and find images of larger than life men holding larger than possible weapons, not to mention promises of quests that can only be completed by saviors. Despite these things, I urge people to give the medium another chance. Only with additional consumer input can it reach its potential.

I know that I am not the only one that sees what the potential of the medium is, but it feels like even those involved in the industry are still trying to figure out what toys they are playing with – along with being unnecessarily focused on a narrow audience. Games can be more than fantasies for asocial, weak-willed males. Games at their best are simulators conducive for problem-solving, not to mention an untapped source for interactive fiction. I long for the day when video games are integrated into classrooms for more than just game studies. I long for the day when the latest story craze is found on a console or computer first.

Silent Hill: Shattered Memories is an example of the latter. The problem-solving is a moot matter. The game merely expects the player to think intuitively about interacting with common objects to find keys or open doors. (One of the last keys in the game is found by unvelcroing (not a word) the neck flap on a jacket, pulling a chain out of a shirt pocket, and then grabbing the dangling key.) The storytelling in the game, however, is above and beyond most other games. It does not take much, but I put this up there with Eternal Darkness and Metal Gear Solid 3.

The game begins with a psychological advisory explaining that the game will be mining the player for data which then gets integrated into game play. After a short video, the game begins with a psychiatry session, the framing device of the story, and the player has to fill out a true-false questionnaire. Then traditional game play occurs after the psychiatrist asks you to start from the beginning. Your player avatar, Harry Mason, loses control of his car on an extraordinarily snowy day, crashes, and then starts searching for his missing daughter who was sleeping in the backseat. The adventure begins, and the only actions you have are shining your flashlight on objects and calling your daughter’s name.

To be honest, I was not a fan of the objective and projective tests employed by the psychiatrist, nor was I a fan of the choice of a psychiatrist over a more traditional therapist. After completing the game, having a psychiatrist makes sense. As for the tests, they could have been made to better resemble actual tests rather than exist to communicate bland binary data that can be deciphered pretty easily once the player knows what it affects.

But the effects of the data is pretty amazing overall. Decisions made at the very beginning of the game affect the atmosphere as well as Harry’s personality. The answer to “Does alcohol make you feel more relaxed?” will litter the world with soft drink or beer cans. Providing different opinions on sex will make Harry either an extremely nice guy or a pervert who comments on every picture (or mannequin) he stumbles across. That’s just the tip of the iceberg, as even thematic elements of the story change, resulting in completely different endings.

Maybe I my background is too heavily littered with Choose Your Own Adventure books, but I have been waiting for a game that changes based on user actions. Sure, many games have multiple endings. Sure, many games have branching dialogue trees. Few games, however, broaden both elements out and then make the multiplicity make some sort of sense in the end. (Eternal Darkness, I must say, brilliantly interwove its three endings together. That game still needs a sequel…) I just cannot get enough of Shattered Memories.

I hate to put up a subtle spoiler warning, since people might complain otherwise, but the greatest strength the game has is how the ending weaves the framing device and traditional game play together. Harry Mason makes his way to the lighthouse clinic where he finds his daughter in session – except Harry is not there. He died 18 years ago, but his daughter has not been able to let him go. Harry and the world are a reflection of how she wants to see and remember things. When she sees him, he tells her to let go. She is not cured, though, as the psychiatrist notes that further sessions will be necessary. As will starting back at the beginning.

Proudly, this is one of the few games out there that actually deserves a mature rating from the ESRB. Unlike most games that wear the M proudly as a badge for its juvenile approach to violence and sexuality, this game gets there by actually being mature. Well, that and some of the darker subject matter that gets explored, but what else do you expect to find in the psyche of a girl who is discussing the loss of her father figure?

Assassin’s DRM

I guess I missed the initial hubbub about Assassin’s Creed 2’s interested take on DRM. Slashdot has fortunately filled me in on what I missed. Just to summarize: The PC version of this single-player game requires a network connection in order to play it, or else it will simply stop. Seems like a pretty effective anti-piracy measure to me.

Except it is pretty stupid. That means that Ubisoft is punishing its players for not always being connected to the internet, as I am sure a few people who actually purchase the game may sneak some plays on their laptops away from home. Not to mention many of the users out there who suffer intermittent connectivity issues. It also means that Ubisoft is wasting money on running servers that essentially just check and re-check for authenticity. Sure they say it will be saving back-ups, but the point is quite clear.

I will avoid making an anti-DRM argument here. Net culture seems to loathe it. I just loathe it when it is poor. This is poor. The best way to encourage people to buy real copies of a game is not to create artificial barriers. Instead companies should be giving the consumers something worthwhile for actually buying the game. Failing to do that, take advantage of the internet – reduce the price of the game and create worthwhile downloadable content that must be purchased. “Worthwhile” is a greatly subjective word, but that is where market research comes in and actually learning who the composition of the audience.

Let me make this easy for the publishers. Step One: Make sure NOT TO PUNISH the consumer for buying your product. You can figure out the rest from there.

The market and educational possibilities of Scribblenauts

One of the most anticipated handheld games of the current gaming season was Scribblenauts, an open-ended adventure-puzzler which allows you to type in whatever you want to see on the screen. When I first saw the title, I thought that I would scribbling in object and then the game would make them real. No, it’s too soon for that interface to exist. Instead we get the standard touch screen keyboard and 22K+ words with which to work in odd combinations. What sounds swank is actually disappointing, but there are so many reviews out there saying the same thing. I’m not reviewing the game because I don’t intend to complete it. Scribblenauts is ultimately a very neat toy but the lack of diversity in the puzzle stages and poor control overall for a touch screen game makes it somewhat a failure as a game.

What intrigued me most about the game was what I found at startup – the Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment logo. The utilization of the Objectnaut engine is merely being tested in the game, but the applications within the WB library of copyrights and trademarks could be worth millions. Seriously, who cares about some kid wearing a rooster hat and making objects to appease four individuals of differing professions? I want to do more.

Duck Amuck

There’s already a Duck Amuck game out there, and it’s bad. It’s a lame Nintendo DS puzzle game with many mini-games within it. It’s neat in that the menu screen is simply Daffy standing thing and occasionally quipping, but aside from the nigh interactive duck it’s unremarkable. Instead, imagine a game/toy fully taking on the premise of the original Chuck Jones cartoon wherein you are the dastardly animator abusing Daffy. I can’t imagine this being a full-fledged game, but as a DSi download with a fully voiced Daffy who quips almost appropriately to objects it would be quite the amazing program.

Green Lantern

You were aware that a Green Lantern movie was on its way with the  ever amusing Ryan Reynolds as the star, right? Now is the time to hit hard with a game starring the Green Lantern and fully showing off the power of his ring. Anything he imagines can be created by the ring, so the same should be done in the game – with obvious limitations. You probably don’t need more than 1,000 words with a superhero who fights supervillains and can fly. Still, the idea of creating your own objects to be your own unique Lantern Corps. member would be enticing enough for many DC fans to jump for a purchase. It does help that there has never been a real Green Lantern game, given the complexity of properly translating his power to games (same for the Flash). This would be a good start, so long as WBIE realizes that controls need to be fixed and the game needs to be more action than writing.

Children’s games

And ultimately my heart is set on using the Objectnauts engine to create a game to help facilitate children’s spelling ability. The game, as it stands, doesn’t provide enough reward for figuring out one of hundreds of objects that would work in a given situation. It works well enough as a toy, but some kids might not care to try much else out after they realize they can give their character a sword and then attack any creature they desire. It makes for a good family puzzler, but who wants to be huddled around a DS?

I’ve tried Scribblenauts with the higher functioning of the two autistic kids with whom I work. I left it on the pre-loading screen – essentially the demo area created for horsing around and trying new combinations. I asked the kid to give me an object he wanted to see, and then I asked him to spell it. With such broad instructions, the kid came up with objects he wanted to see but ultimately got frustrated that he couldn’t spell them. I asked him to spell more simple objects, but he refused. The game by itself would not help promote better spelling ability, which is a shame. I could never leave the DS with him as a learning tool, lest I want to find it impaled in the wall across the room.

I do know how to implement the game as a learning device, although I have not yet tried it. Encouraging him to write down words as he reads and then transposing them into the game would probably be a brilliant strategy. I don’t like it, though, because it requires constant supervision and turning a game like this into work would likely diminish the entertainment value (and therefore the subversive learning mechanism). I have come to understand the purpose of edutainment games, and it’s not so that parents can leave their children with virtual teachers and essentially be hands-off with them – babysitters we can trust. It’s because we want to instill children with some sort of agency in regard to their own education. Entertainment plus proper usage is bound to help in development.

For Scribblenauts to be an effective tool in learning, the solutions need to be less open-ended, the dictionary needs voice, and the weapons need to be removed (except where appropriate, like when asking what a police officer holds in his hands). The graphics and interface don’t require a change at all, but the purpose needs to be tweaked. Insert a WB-owned character for maximum sales value if necessary. Buster and Babs Bunny Present: Scribblenauts Kids! I honestly don’t see how this could fail.

Pirate Bay retrial a no-go

The Pirate Bay’s party asked for a retrial in light of the fact that the judge presiding over their previous case was discovered to be both a member of the Swedish Association for the Protection of Industrial Property and the Swedish Copyright Association. Somehow, Swedish courts have deemed this not enough to determine the judge’s personal bias a factor in his court ruling, so there will be no retrial. Pretty absurd, when you get right down to it. If I were a member of the NRA, I’d expect that people wouldn’t necessarily want my involvement in a case about gun control. Given logic as simple as that, the Pirate Bay are now filing charges against Sweden for violating their human rights. Considering how much they’ve already been shit on, one can only wish them luck at this point.

NIN iPhone application update rejected

Nine Inch Nails’ iPhone application was released to rave reviews about its features, notably that it took advantage of almost all that the iPhone had to offer.  It is software that literally connects you to other Nine Inch Nails fans.  It takes advantage of the phone’s GPS abilities to literally locate the other fans closest to you.  How cool is that?

The recent update was rejected, presumably, for the fact that it streamed content from the album The Downward Spiral.  Trent Reznor is not happy about this, as you can read here.  I have to agree, though, that this level of censorship is crap.  Especially bothersome is the vagueness used by Apple in discussing why they rejected the update.  Simply saying The Downward Spiral does not actually state what to fix, and it’s even worse if it’s about content that’s streamed to the application and not content on the application itself.  I am none too keen on the iPhone as it is, and this just makes Apple look all the worse in my eyes.

Pirate Bay retrial?

As was suspected since the decision was made, the judge of the Pirate Bay’s trial may have a certain political bias in favor of copyrights.  This explains the speedy decision and what appears to be a verdict based entirely NOT on the technical facts provided.  It is really difficult to find complete fairness anywhere in this country.

Blackbird’s counterpart – Whitebird

http://www.whitebirdbrowser.com/

Yeah, so I know the site is a joke and it connects to Apple’s Safari client, but I think the fact that someone put this together is pretty funny in itself. Actually, linking to Safari is a funny little in-joke, since I would guarantee that Apple’s target consumer and most of its buyers are white. Anyway, well done.

40A, Inc. creates unintentionally racist web browser in Blackbird

http://www.blackbirdhome.com/index.html

OK, this is horrible. This is absolutely horrible. Blackbird is a new web browser and social networking client specifically for African Americans. I appreciate the idea of cluing people in on African American-specific websites and connecting them via social networks, but I hate the idea of a computer program made for it. A couple of websites could easily take care of it. Hell, Blackbird should just be a website.

I suppose one of the reasons this is so aggravating for me is because it feels like a step backward. I’m all for racial and cultural pride, but a separate computer program made for a race? A separate web browser? Firefox can easily do the same things with a couple of add-ons. We’ve come so far as a country in that we have a multiracial president and continually developing equality – and then people want a separate web browser?

The features it boasts on its homepage are “Black Search”, “Black Bookmarks”, “Black News Ticker”, and “Blackbird TV”. After all this time, is it really hard for African Americans to have found the many sources for these things that already exist? Did they need to create their own separate but equal web browser?

This isn’t the only thing that pops up in black culture that irks me. There’s all this shit out there that boasts that African Americans are separate. BET is the worst of them all. These are only horrid to me because there will never be a White Entertainment Television station or something like the Whitebird web browser. You can’t even have a white search engine without it being racist. Can’t I hold the same sort of standards for my black brothers and sisters?

The argument will naturally be that all of the major broadcast networks are the whites-only channels, and the necessity for a black browser is because it’s just that much easier to find white content and white-oriented social networking on the internet. I understand that. White people, as diverse as they are in being merely “white”, are the majority culture and therefore most likely to create a majority of the content. A black browser is necessary to make it easier for black content. I just think it would be more favorable to drop this separatist crap and work toward integration – otherwise we’re all doing ourselves a disservice. I hope to never find a “Blackjournal” to sub for LiveJournal, “Facebook Black” for Facebook, or even a “Blackspace” instead of MySpace. I also think I haven’t searched hard enough, and they probably do exist in some form or another.

Maybe by being mixed I don’t get it. It could be that I’m selfish, having been in a position where people have often implored me to pick a side, and I no longer want there to be sides dividing me. This is just the latest irk in the silent cultural battle that surrounds me. I’ll take flack for saying this, but a web browser like this has good intentions but comes across as racist. Promoting community is one thing, but it’s something completely different when you create products specifically catering to certain people. There’d be quite the public display of protest if Google released Whitebird…

"If dysfunction is our function, then I must be some kind of genius!"

In early September, Apple released iTunes 8, the latest version of the program most people know to be “that program that updates my iPod”, to an unsuspecting populace. If any of you are like I am, then you simply download these updates without questioning what’s new, what’s changed, and what’s improved. I had an idea of what to look for this time around thanks to my having seen my brother’s install. I was interested in seeing my albums arranged in a grid format.

When setting up everything, it asked me if I’d like to enable the Genius feature. Not having a clue about that, I was inclined to say “NO”. It seems natural, especially when it says it needs to share information with some database. At this point in time, almost everyone has illegally obtained music on at least one computer. Why risk putting yourself out there? The possibilities opened by Genius were too much to turn down. This feature recommends music I don’t already have (comparing one song at a time to their database) and also creates playlists for me based on a single chosen track. I’m not sure if people have figured out exactly how it determines song associations other than the attachment to the iTunes Store. Being lazy about creating my own playlists and continually curious about what associations may be within music I have, I jumped at the chance to use Genius.

There’s an initial time sink in letting the program scan your library, but that’s only painful if you have a ton of music on your computer. It did not take long to scan my laptop, but I basically had to walk away when I let it scan my desktop. I currently have just over 40GB of music on my desktop. It used to be more, but I’m constantly clearing out the crap I no longer want. Some people are turned off by the fact that they have to wait to use the program, but it’s not so bad.

However, using the feature sometimes yields odd results. For playlists that make a bit more sense, you might want to have a large library for it to sort through. When I initially tried the program out, I decided a playlist based on one of my favorite Matthew Sweet tracks, “Looking at the Sun”, would be a good start. I refreshed the playlist three times in disbelief because it repeatedly included “Wish” by Nine Inch Nails. Very different music styles that don’t belong in any sanely plotted playlist. I love both songs, but they don’t fit together nicely. With the greater depth provided by my desktop, I haven’t seen this combination again.

Right now I’m playing around with the fact that I have quite a bit of Japanese music on my computer. I enjoy a bit of Japanese rock, or J-rock. Very few of these tracks have any sort of association through Genius and the iTunes store. I didn’t notice this at first because my current favorite J-rock song is L’Arc~en~Ciel’s “Daybreak’s Bell”. I don’t think this track has been released in America yet, and in fact the associated television series, Gundam 00, is still getting prepped for its airing on the SciFi Channel this November. I didn’t pay attention to the recommended buys for it but instead jumped right into making a playlist. The original one has been edited, so I made a new one recently to share.

There are a few things I find odd about that playlist, but particularly I have to focus on the inclusion of t.A.T.u., not once but twice. Granted, one song is called “Gomenasai”, which is obviously a Japanese word, but why “30 Minutes”? What happens if I refresh?

“Gomenasai” again? “Malchik Gay”? Is iTunes just grouping together everything that’s foreign? I think someone on a random blog suggested that this is iTunes sharing associations created by other users of iTunes. Somewhere out there may be people purposely putting together J-rock with faux lesbian pop music. I shouldn’t be surprised considering the fact that there are many anime fans who are too ashamed to announce they “lolicon”, or have a Lolita complex.

Don’t look at me that way. I have t.A.T.u. on my computer because they song “All the Things She Said” got stuck in my head years ago, and I sometimes enjoy music that is so simplistic that it requires very little mental power to comprehend. Can you fault me for that?

OK, fault me for the crush on the girl with long hair. We all have our weaknesses.

But this isn’t about me…

I enjoy exploring the playlists produced by Genius. If your taste in music is especially eclectic, I wouldn’t recommend making a playlist and running with it. Always look into it. Some of them make sense. In using Matthew Sweet’s “Sick of Myself”, I was given a playlist of alternative music from the 90’s, a single track from 2000, and Talk Talk’s “It’s My Life”, which found a popular re-release in the 90’s. I was only disappointed by the inclusion of Sponge’s “Plowed” because I was hoping for something more obscure. I love “Plowed”, but I like these playlists to help me re-experience the lesser known and played songs by these artists. Can’t win them all.

And for those thinking that maybe it was only L’Arc~en~Ciel that brought the Russian chicks into play, even The Pillows’ “March of Gods” was not spared.

[Note: While the half images of my iTunes were not intentional, I think they work out quite nicely. You might have noticed that you could click on them to get the full, blurry image.]