Wii Todd Ed

Gizmodo has a link to this video of a woman playing the boxing game of Wii Play. The blogger warns that the audio is not safe for work, because it sounds like the woman is in the throes of passion.

Two questions:

  1. What the hell kind of bizarre psychosexual shadow realm are these gadget bloggers living in that would cause them to hear the anguished shrieks and yelps from this video and mistake it for getting off?
  2. People are always asking why more women don’t play videogames. I think we have our answer. And a new question: are we really missing out that they don’t?

Spaz of War

If I were playing, this would be a red screen with the option to start over.I’m really not good at videogames. This seems hard for people to process, sometimes — considering how long I’ve worked in games and how much I go on about them, I guess it’s easy to assume that I’ve got some acceptable level of skill at actually playing them.

More than a few times, people have asked to play a videogame with me. For my part, I always point out that I’m not good at them. I guess they assume that I’m being modest, or underestimating how bad I am, or even trying to hustle them. Even after we’ve started playing, their expression changes not to one of understanding, but of disbelief. I can understand not being great at games, but how can anyone be this inept? For that matter, how can he walk without constantly running into walls, or operate fine motor control such as required by writing without stabbing himself in the eye?

Which is another point towards saying that Gears of War is a pretty cool game. I’m astoundingly awful at it, and I still manage to like it.

The fact that I die every two minutes and have to restart is just one of the many reasons I should hate it. It seems like they took a list of things I hate about games and tried to fulfill every entry.

  • It’s by Epic.
  • In particular, by Cliff “Hey look at me I’m a videogame rock star and what? Videogame rock stars aren’t cool anymore? Guys? Guys, come back!” Bleszinski.
  • It’s been hyped to all hell, for what seems like a year now.
  • Including commercials that for no discernible reason use a cover of the song “Mad World.”
  • It’s a shooter.
  • In particular, a console shooter, requiring you to aim with a joystick.
  • You play as a tough-as-nails thick-necked military veteran who’s been wrongfully imprisoned.
  • You’re joined by a squad of other thick-necked army guys, some of whom don’t appreciate your lone wolf attitude.
  • The back story and world-building for the entire game, as near as I can make out, is simply that there’s a war against a bunch of ugly aliens.
  • The world has gear-themed art throughout, which doesn’t make sense, and they didn’t even attempt to provide context for it like Valve did with the lambda symbol in Half-Life.
  • The name doesn’t make sense (at least yet), as a game called Gears of War that doesn’t involve battle mechs is just wrong.
  • It’s by Epic. I really hate them.

But still, it’s just a solid game. If you’re following the “are videogames art?” debate, this is a point in favor of the “good gameplay is an art in itself, and games don’t need to be judged by the same criteria as movies” camp.

The whole game is based on the idea of finding cover during firefights, and everything works towards that. Pretty much all of your movement controls are designed to make your stupid character duck-and-run, press against walls or under bunkers, and jump or tumble to the next barrier. When executed well, it works perfectly. When executed like I play, it ends up with a lot of tripping over couches, running directly into the line of fire, or crouching right next to an enemy soldier and getting a chainsaw to the head.

It looks great, too. All the reviews talk about the visuals as being “stunning” and “better than a videogame has a right to look,” and you’d take it as hyperbole until you actually see it in action. They did a really outstanding job, and even better, it’s all in service of the game, instead of grandstanding visuals for their own sake. The character design is pretty stupid — impossibly thick barrel-shaped guys with soul patches and do-rags and earrings just like a bunch of suburban videogame makers imagining what “cool tough guys” would look like — but it’s consistent throughout and works well for what they’re trying to do.

It’s taken my attention away from Final Fantasy XII for the moment, which is impressive considering that that’s not only a more epic game, but it’s more my type of game in just about every way. And since I’m so bad at these things, it takes me at least twice as long as it would take a competent person to finish one. That’s gameplay value.

Live with Regis & Vaan

Character design by Yoshitaka Amano and Mark FoleyFinal Fantasy XII is a great game. It took me about eight hours to come to that conclusion, because I didn’t like it much at first, and it takes a long time to get going.

I wasn’t jumping up and down to get into another long RPG, but I ran into my friend Frank on the flight down to Burbank, and he recommended it. I had some time to kill before my flight left, so I went by and picked up a copy. And sitting inside with a videogame seemed to be the best way to guard myself against party-goers and trick-or-treaters on Halloween night.

There’s a lot going against it to start. It’s got the beautiful but interminable cut-scenes that are a Final Fantasy standard by this point, and you begin with just about the driest exposition possible of countries at war. After at least an hour of cut-scenes and training, you’re given your main character, Kelly Ripa (pictured). For some reason, they’ve given her a male voice. The battle system is different, and most of the familiar elements like scene transitions and end-battle victory music are missing, so you can’t get nostalgic. And the biggest insult of all: you start out fighting rats.

Gradually they trickle out additional characters, and familiar things like crystals and the power of the earth and giant dark conspiracies with androgynous leaders and it starts to feel like a Final Fantasy game is about to happen. But with it they introduce the new “gambit” battle system, which means they’ve finally removed that last pesky bit of interactivity from FFX and have finally released a game that can play itself.

But gradually, over the next few hours, it all starts to pull together. When it finally coalesces into sky pirates on hover bikes being shot at by giant airships during a daring escape from a palace culminating in a boss fight against a giant horse made of flame and you win just at the last minute and you finally see the camera pan across your party and get the familiar victory music, that’s when you sit back and think, “Okay, this is pretty bad-ass.”

It’s a really impressive production. Even more than the usual standard for the series; these things take years to produce and have budgets on the scale of small countries. But usually the result is visually stunning but overwhelmingly Japanese — technically unparalleled but completely foreign and indecipherable, with hundreds of neat things that get drowned in all the visual overload. This one, once you get past the overly complicated political intrigue, is an accessible and compelling story.

There’s a definite Star Wars influence. Other games in the series have made reference to the movies, but this is more direct, what with its story about a sky pirate and an orphan going onto a giant ship to rescue a princess who’s leader of a rebellion against an evil empire. But even though it’s the most blatant, it’s so well told — the art is phenomenal, the world-building is perfectly done, the voice performances are solid, and the characters are genuinely interesting — that it never feels like a rip-off. And the familiar Final Fantasy elements, when they appear, are so well-done that they don’t get overwhelmed by all the other stuff going on (the bombs just look cool).

What surprised and impressed me most is that “gambit” system, where you don’t control all of your characters directly but instead set up their AI to perform actions during combat. It was pretty ballsy of them to include it, because it sounds like a horrible idea; it takes away the last bit of control from the player and plays itself. In practice, though, it’s just what these games need. There’s nothing compelling about choosing “Attack” over and over again from a menu. The only interesting part of most console RPG combat is when you could figure out a great tactical combination and pull it off.

The system in FF XII automates all the tedium while still giving you the level of control that’s interesting. And even more surprising is that both the boss fights and all the easy level-grinding fights up to that point are made more exciting as a result. The only thing that would’ve made the gambits system better is if they’d included pre-generated versions for different character classes, like healers and black mages.

Overall, I get the feeling that this is finally the successor to Final Fantasy Tactics (which, I remind everybody, is the best videogame ever made). Even though it uses a different battle system, and it’s set in the same world only in name, it feels even more like the original game than FF Tactics Advance did. It borrows the best elements from Advance (the hunt side-quests, the new character races, the judges), ditches the stuff that sucked (the cards and rule system, the lack of focus, the cheesy child-sucked-from-the-real-world storyline), and keeps the best from the original (the general setting and European feel, the epic scope, the variety of character creation, and the odd-ball combinations like Lancer-ninjas and Calculator-green-mages).

And of course, the writing and translation are the best yet for the series, and there’s a level of polish in everything from the transportation system to the bestiary (which is, for the first time ever in one of these games, interesting on its own). I do wish there were more variety in the main characters — so far I miss the black mages, and the weird specialized characters like moogles and Red XIII, but you can’t have everything.

So far, I’m loving it. Now I just need five or six extra hours each day to get everything done and have time to play a videogame.

Damn Wii Smokes Too Much

And it procrastinates.I’m way too old and disinterested to be getting into a “which console rocks hardest” battle, but I still read the videogame blogs and am bemused by the wackiness surrounding the Nintendo Wii.

Specifically, it has the power to turn people into hypocrites. First was this quote from one of Sony Australia’s managers saying that the Wii was “a bit pricey.” If you’re not laughing, it means that you haven’t been following the next gen console battles and aren’t aware that the Sony Playstation 3 is going to cost six hundred dollars in the US, and, according to the blog post, an even thousand of those funny Australian “dollars”. I heard something about the PS3’s price being reduced, where now in the US it will only cost you 500 bucks and a kidney.

Now, there’s this couple of quotes about the system. Somebody from San Rafael game developer Factor 5 called it the “GameCube 1.5” and criticized it for not distinguishing itself enough from the previous generation console. Factor 5, you may remember, is the company that built its reputation with Rogue Squadron VIII, also known as Shadows of the Empire 10.5.1, also known as What the Hell, Let’s Do the Death Star Trench Run and Hoth Battle One More Time Because God Knows You Lapped it Up Like Starving Dogs The First Dozen Times We Sold It To You.

It seems pretty clear to me that Nintendo is taking the same tack with the Wii that it did with the Nintendo DS. That is, release an incremental update to the hardware with a fundamental change in the way the games are played.

I was as big a nay-sayer as anybody else when the DS and Sony PSP were first released; the PSP clearly had better hardware (and it still does), a better screen, and was just a better machine overall. And I’ve seen how wrong I was about that. My PSP is now collecting dust, while I still pull out the DS at least once a month. Because Nintendo knows how to make games; there’s always at least one or two classic, must-have titles exclusive to the system. People remember how they played a game, not whether it had a higher resolution than its predecessor.

I’ve got a couple of friends who work for Sony, so I feel kind of bad for saying it, but: there’s no way in hell I’m getting a PS3 anytime soon. This isn’t like when I swore I’d never get an Xbox 360, either; that was just a case of my trying to talk myself out of buying it. My opinion of the PS3 started with my assumption that of course I’d have to buy one, then changed to lack of interest once I saw how capable the Xbox 360 is, then complete lack of interest once I found out how expensive the thing is going to be, and now active contempt.

The contempt comes from the arrogance Sony’s taken in releasing the thing, and their refusal to learn from past mistakes, like with the PSP. The PS3 just seems completely inessential. It’s just prettier versions of the exact same types of games that are already available on the 360 and the PS2. It’s got a DVD player in a format that no one needs yet, because there’s not enough content available for it. And charging that much for an inessential machine just strikes me as arrogant.

Combine that with all the other little criticisms: the batteries in the wireless controller can’t be replaced; the PS3 only works with its own remote and is incompatible with universal remotes because there’s no IR sensor; the online service sounds as if it’s going to be a big, decentralized mess similar to the one that failed on the PS2. I keep getting reminded of the Memory Stick and the UMD — the company’s shoving formats down our throats, trying to sell us what they want us to have, instead of what we actually want.

The whole videogame console business is seeming increasingly irrelevant to me, the less I become an employee and the more I become just a fan. The 360 does everything I want: it’s got a lot of fun games, it’s got an online system that’s so well-designed I still can’t believe it’s from Microsoft, and its DVD player is streamlined enough that I can finally get rid of my old standalone player. The Wii just looks like it’ll be a lot of fun. The PS3 has so little appeal to me that I figure I’m just not their target market. But with as much Sony crap as I’ve already bought and my tendency to spend all my discretionary income on overpriced gadgets, if I’m not the target market, then who the hell is?

The Week in Videogames

Chuck is losingVideogames are cool, because they’re fun to play, and they’re fun to write about on the internet! Everybody knows that the best kind of videogames is the kind where you learn things, and that’s awesome because that’s the best kind of internet weblog post, too!

For instance, I learned from Cory that Suikoden V is coming out this week, like tomorrow. According to the previews and the only review out there (which is mostly negative), they’re trying to make it old-school. It’s aimed directly at the people who loved Suikoden II so much that they’re willing to keep buying up any sequel, even though the last two and the spin-offs haven’t been all that spectacular, just on the off chance that it might be as good as a game that came out years ago and even at the time was an off-brand version of Final Fantasy. In other words: me.

No sign of kobold puppies or duck generals in the screenshots I’ve seen so far; closest is a conversation some goofy-looking badger guy. The best thing about the series is its goofy characters, like the kobold pair, the Sanjuro knock-off and Tai Yo, the Iron Chef who fights with a ladle. I’ll be checking out the game, no doubt, but it’s not anything I’m going to stand in line at the store to buy. I may even wait a couple of weeks!

Speaking of waiting a couple of weeks, I finally broke down and ordered an Xbox 360. I couldn’t help it; Oblivion is coming out. I could’ve saved a lot of hassle by just getting the PC version, but with my brain disease and all, it made a lot more sense to spend a lot of money on a videogame machine I’m not going to get for at least two weeks at the earliest and is going to be delivered when I’m out of town, for a game that I’m not going to have any time to play anytime soon.

But I’m a slave to the hype machines, and the game’s getting loads of hype. The best, for the definition of “best” that means “most depressing and awful,” is GameSpot’s live marathon promotion, where paying subscribers can log in to sit and watch somebody else play the game for twelve hours straight. For everybody who’s wanted to get a peek inside the exciting world of a videogame journalist, now’s your chance! They’re going to have a live chat service up during the video where you can talk to other fans watching a GameSpot editor play a videogame, as well as suicide hotline representatives.

I also learned about the new CivCity series that supposedly is going to combine Civilization-type strategy with SimCity or Caesar type city-building. When I was talking about how I don’t like RTS games, but always wish that I did, this is exactly the game I had in mind. Something that’s not as open-ended as SimCity, but still gives you time to check everything out and just build something. There’s no telling how it’ll turn out, of course, but they get my vote just based on the concept.

And there’s an expansion pack for Civilization IV on the way, and another Railroad tycoon type game by the end of the year.

But wait! There’s also a platformer called “Daxter” for the PSP that’s getting all kinds of good reviews, and a new version of Katamari Damacy, perfect for anybody who’s going to be going on two four-hour transcontinental plane flights next week. I’d be stupid not to buy them!

With all this stuff coming out, the only thing that could be better would be if I actually had time to play videogames anymore.

Spore

Here’s a thirty-five minute long video of Will Wright’s presentation of Spore at the Computer Game Developers’ Conference. Whoever wrote the description is right; it does look like it’s going to be the best videogame ever made. (If you don’t want to or can’t watch the video, GameSpy did a write-up of it). And here’s another longer video of the entire presentation.

Pretty much every time I’ve seen a demo of the game, I’ve been hugely impressed. But what impresses me the most about this demo, even more than how amazing the game looks, is the philosophy behind it. Not just the stated premise — you can have a game that allows infinite content without an infinite budget — but the philosophy of pushing the limits of what games can do and what games are about. From what I’ve seen, the game delivers on what it promises, and each component of it (for example, making an arbitrarily-designed creature learn how to walk) is impressive on its own. And that could end up as either a shallow tech demo with a slick front end, or a traditional RTS or Sims type game with some new features tacked on.

Instead, you get the impression that the philosophy is to do whatever it takes to make the core idea (a simulation of life from the cellular level to the galactic level) work, instead of cutting corners and doing traditional stuff and taking the easy way out.

And even more impressive, doing all that without being so damn arrogant. Wright acknowledges influences wherever they come from, and every time I’ve seen him talk, I never get the impression that he sets his games off as superior to other games. They just end up, more often than not, being that way. It’s really nice to see a guy and his team and his project getting attention based on merit instead of hype.

Now I just really, really want to play the thing. I’m not so arrogant to assume that I could’ve gotten a spot on the project if I’d tried — at Maxis, especially after the move to Redwood Shores, people talked about Spore like the people in Logan’s Run talked about Sanctuary. But I did have a few people ask if I were interested, and my take was that I didn’t have anything useful to contribute to the project, so I shouldn’t even attempt to get on it. After seeing the video, I have to say I’m glad I’m not working on it, so I can just enjoy it when it comes out.

But maybe, after this Disney job ends, I can try to weasel my way onto the expansion packs or the sequel… Anybody got any contacts for me?

Checklist

One of the consequences of having a spastic attention span is that I’ve got a huge mental to-do list that grows faster than is possible for a mortal human — even one with my considerable gifts as granted me by your yellow Earth sun — to check them off.

And because it’s all in me head, it’s completely unsorted and un-prioritized, so stuff like “do laundry” is right there mixed in with “write a Flash prototype for that card game you want to do” and “make quarterly tax payment” is right below “watch the season premiere of ’24′” and “learn Japanese” and “get medical insurance” are somehow getting exactly the same level of procrastination. Which really doesn’t make sense, and is making me into more of a flake than I ever intended: “Sorry, I would’ve shown up for surgery to give you my kidney, but I’ve been meaning to finish reading this issue of Batman for months now.”

I keep seeing links to online and offline organizers and to-do lists, but have yet to find one that even closely approximates how my brain works. Err, “works.” I need to be able to add entries quickly, the second I think of them, attach notes or whatever other information I need to get it done, reorganize it and assign/change priorities so easily that “organize the To-Do list” doesn’t become another item, and give a real sense of accomplishment once I’ve checked one off. And maybe give me a cookie.

I could write my own, but I hope I don’t have to point out the problem there.

Still, even though technology hasn’t yet caught up with my brainspasm method of neural functioning, I have managed to make some minor headway. I’m assuming nobody reading this cares all that much about Java reflection and persistent object databases, so I’ll leave that stuff out. Even though it’s kind of cool, and isn’t so over-engineered as to be useless.

Finished Shadow of the Colossus
And I’m going to have to recant my earlier reviews of it — interesting concept and presentation and great visuals, but it’s not a good videogame. It feels too gamey, and it’s not a good game; it’s a frustrating game that you only keep playing because the concept is interesting. Sure, the conclusion is satisfying as an interactive movie, but I decided halfway through the last level that there was nothing they could show or do that’d be worth the frustration of beating the final boss.

Watched The Aristocrats
I’d expected it to be more interesting than funny, but it turned out more funny than interesting. The whole “joke as jazz performance” idea isn’t strong enough to carry a feature-length movie, and I’m not really buying it since very few people actually tell the joke. But pretty much all the people they interview came out of it seeming pretty cool and funny, even the ones I don’t usually like. The only ones who still seem irredemably creepy and annoying are Taylor Negron and Andy Dick. And that sleazy guy in the jacuzzi. And the bad ventriloquist.

Updated the website
Not really, but I did finally clue in and add a link to Fingerbutter.com. And that’s interesting either as a comment on the anonymity of the internet or on how dense I am. A while ago I saw via technorati that some new site was linking to mine, and so I checked it out to make sure they didn’t have any of my tasteful but misguided erotic photos on there. It wasn’t until last night that I actually made the connection that it was my friend Joe’s website. Even though his name is on the posts, he links to our mutual work friends, and he mentions stuff I should’ve recognized, I’d just been thinking, “hey, that’s nice and a little odd that some stranger is linking to my website.” I went back through and re-read it all hearing Joe tell it, and it makes sense now. So the lesson is either that Joe needs to add an “about” page, or I need to rethink my life dream of becoming a private investigator, or some combination of the two.

So that’s four down (I also finally saw Conan the Barbarian over the weekend), about a billion to go. Now I’ve got to go buy replacement ink cartridges for my printer, which had been hovering on the list between “write a novel” and “reconnect with friends I’ve been neglecting for way too long,” but just shot up in importance because of “do taxes.”

180 on the 360

Blurry KlingonAnother inconsequential post on SFist, this time about the rumored video iPod with a bigger screen that, like me, is touch sensitive.

And still I can’t work up much of a reaction other than “meh.” Either I’m getting more mature (plastic guitars notwithstanding) or I’ve just reached consumer electronics saturation what with all the handheld videogame players and MP3 players and phones and such. They don’t seem all that impressive anymore. Now, when they come out with one that plays video and more MP3s than will fit on a memory stick and gives directions and keeps notes and works as a phone, then get back to me. That’s what I’m missing from the Treo — it was kind of a lousy phone, but I liked always having access to maps and a notepad.

In other news, the Microsoft guy is saying that the Xbox 360 shortage is coming to an end within the next “four to six weeks,” and they’ll be readily available. Much to the dismay of ebay price-gougers. And me, since the news (along with the speculation that the PS3 won’t be out until September) re-sparked my interest in the damn thing. I still don’t play console games that often anymore (plastic guitars notwithstanding) and nothing’s really changed to make me want one. I can only guess it’s a subconscious reaction to a story I read a couple of days ago about this group of rabid recyclers who were pledging to buy nothing new in 2006 except for food and medical necessities. The thought of going a whole year without buying things I don’t need fills me with horror and dread.

Which reminds me: what I do need is a new camera. I’ve been to four conventions and other indoor-type events now, and half the pictures I get are worthless because they’re too dark and/or blurry. Either this camera sucks, or I’m developing Parkinsons Disease. Even the ones I take in daylight come out either too grainy or the colors are a lot more muted than I’d like to see. I realize that there are ISO and shutter-speed settings I could use to account for it, but my last camera (same Sony Cybershot line, just lower resolution) worked perfectly as a point-and-click. It was hard to take a bad picture with that one, and it was smaller and a lot more convenient.

If anybody has digital camera recommendations, I’d like to hear them.

Guitar Background Character

You, sir, are my nemesisI finally broke down and spent my gift certificate on a copy of Guitar Hero. What got me was Matt’s reminding me on here that it contains “More Than a Feeling” (as made famous by Boston), and this video of a guy playing on expert.

It really does deserve the hype it’s been getting; it’s awesome. Best things about the game, in order of awesomeness:

  1. They didn’t make it as much a guitar simulator as an air guitar simulator. It’s not about really learning to play guitar, it’s about the rock.
  2. It’s got a tilt sensor, so to enter star power mode you turn the guitar up on end. Rock.
  3. The difficulty progression is really well thought out. I went through the tutorial, played a few of the songs on easy level, and I was getting over 90% on each one. So I figured I could advance up to medium difficulty and all of a sudden it was throwing weird colors and solos and chords at me. I went back to easy and worked my way back up, and it’s a lot more rewarding than failing repeatedly.
  4. They didn’t have to put in a whammy bar, but they did anyway. Rock.
  5. All the covers are really well done; many of them I can’t distinguish from the originals.
  6. Supposedly, they really have hammer-down and pull-off moves, although I have yet to be able to pull one off. Rock?

So far the best I’ve done is 99% accuracy and a 332-note streak on “More Than a Feeling” at medium difficulty. And the thing is: just playing a cover version of it, pressing colored versions on a little plastic guitar, standing in front of a TV in my living room, naked, with little pixelated people clapping along, is so freakin’ awesome, that I can’t imagine how the real guy from Boston, playing the real song on stage in front of hundreds of real people, didn’t just explode from the sheer 70s Rock Majesty of it all.

Speaking of exploding, I saw on iTunes that N Sync did a mostly a cappella Boyz II Men style cover of “More Than a Feeling” on their first “album.” It’s almost Lovecraftian — you know in your rational mind that it’s horrible, but you can’t really understand how horrible it truly is until you experience it for yourself.

At the moment, my most hated song is “Crossroads” by Cream. It’s not just that I can’t play it; it’s that I can’t understand how anyone can play it. And this is on easy difficulty. I’m guessing Clapton had a little bit more practice than I have, or else the big colored buttons make it more difficult. Or the makers of the game have a cruel streak, which is why they didn’t use “Sunshine of Your Love” or “White Room” instead. Also, including “Killer Queen” is a little sadistic, because it’s such a goofy and cheesy song and that just adds to the humiliation as you’re reminded you’re no Brian May.

The Gamespot review was right in that the game needs some Van Halen. Some Led Zeppelin would’ve been cool as well. I’m hoping there’s going to be a sequel that uses the same controller.

Also, I don’t really play the game naked, I’m just wondering if people really read these things when I start talking about videogames.

Pathetic.

Another mark in the “Blizzard is evil” column: their “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” handling of a guild in World of Warcraft that advertised itself as “GLBT-friendly.” In brief, when a player sent a message over general chat recruiting people into her “GLBT-friendly but not GLBT-only” guild, she was given a citation for violating the game’s policy on sexual harassment.

The policy, at least its online version, is on this page and only disallows language that “insultingly refers to any aspect of sexual orientation.” But apparently (in case there is another policy/agreement document somewhere less accessible), the policy is that you can’t mention it at all.

The responses from Blizzard game managers in that article are worded about as poorly as they possibly could’ve been — if they’d been outright offensive, then at least it would’ve been taking a stand one way or the other. What they did instead was try to make it sound as if they were looking out for the members of the guild and pre-emptively preventing harassment. Which is self-serving, chicken-shit behavior that in a lot of ways is even more offensive.

Advertising a guild as gay-friendly would invite its members to harassment? I hate to break it to you, Blizzard, but it’s an online role-playing game. Heavily populated by adolescents and shut-ins who never developed past adolescence. You’ve already got harassment. It’s built-in. Some of these people must have “omg ur so GAY!” and “Alliance fags!” on macro.

Now, you’d have to pathetically thin-skinned to get upset by that, but that’s not the point. The point is that for Blizzard to claim that the real world and game world are completely separate, and that it’s not mentioned at all, isn’t even disingenuous — it’s outright denial.

And it’s perfectly reasonable for somebody to want to reinforce an environment where you can just be comfortable knowing that if you mention your gayness or lack thereof, you won’t get dogpiled for it. The examples usually brought up are just saying stuff like, “I have to go AFK to pick up my boyfriend” when you have to leave in the middle of something. Hell, I’ve run into that when I’ve been playing and there’s downtime, and other people mention their relation to each other. I’ve seen female players say, “so-and-so is my husband” and a conversation starts about how it’s nice to see couples playing together.

I’ve been in situations where I started to type that I was playing with my boyfriend, but just didn’t bother because it would be too much of a hassle to explain. That’s not flaunting your deviant lifestyle to anyone, it’s just being able to talk without having to be constantly paranoid about saying The Wrong Thing.

So it would seem a pretty clear-cut case to me, but then the article goes on to mention two guilds called “Stonewall Champions” and “The Spreading Taint.” Great job, guys. Nothing like playing a MMORPG to make you feel that you’re constantly surrounded by morons, the shallowest dregs of humanity.

Blizzard and its supporters can back-pedal as much as they like, claiming that it’s for the player’s own good and it’s part of the stated policy and that whether a player’s gay or straight doesn’t make any difference at all. It’s just a game, right? Yeah, of course it’s just a game, but their response is nothing more than doing what people have been doing for way too long about this stupid issue — shutting their eyes, putting their fingers in their ears, and just hoping it would go away. And now, no matter how it plays out, it’s going to be portrayed as a bunch of whiners asking for special treatment so they can “flaunt their sexuality” in front of everyone.

It’s enough to make me want to quit the game entirely, except I just got these boots that give +10 to my agility and they’re simply fabulous.

A pox on your Xbox!

I will not buy it, for 800 bucks!According to USA Today, the scarcity of Xbox 360s will likely continue through Spring, just in time for the release of the Playstation 3.

Fine, then, Microsoft! I don’t want your damn computer box anyhow! I’d pretty much resigned myself to getting one, since I’ve got more discretionary income than common sense or time. I end up buying videogames I never actually play and feel a void in my soul if I don’t have The Latest Thing. It’s not so much I wanted an Xbox, I just didn’t want to not have one.

So I’d been saying that it’s inevitable I’d get one, and as soon as it’s possible to just walk into a Best Buy and pick one up without pre-ordering or tackling some overprivileged child to the ground, I’d do it. But every week of super-exclusivity is another week for me to ask myself whether I really want to get one.

The only game I’m interested in is Oblivion, and that’s coming out for the PC as well. The only other reason to get one would’ve been to replace the 10-year-old DVD player I’m using now, but it still works like a champ, and the PS3 is going to be better anyway.

So it seems to me that the analysis in that article is actually correct — having an Xbox 360 shortage was good for the initial launch, because it drummed up demand. But how many of us are going to be patient enough to keep up the demand once they get the supply in place? I’m thinking I’m better off not having another time-waster in the house.

Strategery

The Rebel Transport and AT-AT were my favorite toys.I don’t like real-time strategy games. You’d think I could just accept that and move on, but they keep putting in stuff that makes me think I’m going to like them. This one lets you build things! You like that SimCity game, don’t you, Chuck? This one has samurai; who doesn’t like samurai? This one has “an RPG-like campaign mode.” You like RPGs! Buy it now!

Sometimes when I’m weak all they’ve got to do is advertise elves and dwarves and shit. I don’t even like elves or dwarves as a rule. Who would?

The most insidious way to trick me into liking an RTS, though, is to put a bunch of AT-ATs and AT-STs and speeder bikes and rebel transports into it. Star Wars: Empire at War does that, which is why it’s evil. The game demoes very, very well. After watching the tutorial, I was already hooked. Hooked and disturbed, because I don’t like the thought of living in a world where LucasArts is making good games again.

Once I got past the tutorial and into the game part of the demo, the universe settled back into its recognizable form. Bad-ass spaceships aside (and none of that Naboo shit, either — this is a real Star Wars game), it’s still an RTS and I still don’t get the appeal.

It could be just because I suck at them; I’m not exactly Sun Tzu when it comes to strategy. Hell, I’m not even Sonny Bono when it comes to strategy. I’m not even Chastity Bono when it comes to strategy. I don’t even know what I’m talking about anymore. What’s happening? Since when did I start writing a weblog? Are you there, internets? It’s me, Margaret.

So yeah, anyway. I get easily distracted and don’t do good with the strategy games. Put a whole bunch of soldiers and tanks and a selection rectangle in front of me and all of a sudden I’m like the eople who say, “You work in videogames? I played Tetris!”

So Empire at War looks bad-ass and is tempting and all, but seeing as how I can’t win the demo, it’s probably not the game for me. I just hope I can keep that in mind the next time I’m in the game-buying place and I see the spaceships on the box and my eyes glaze over and my hand goes to my wallet. Every time I think of the unused copies of Warcraft 3 and Starcraft and Warcraft 2 and Rise of Nations it just bears out my secret shame. I don’t like real-time strategy games.