My Back Pages: Question the Answers

Zombie Pikmin

2012-01-30T15:20:00.001-08:00

Don't have time for full post, just gonna show you this: http://globalgamejam.org/2012/zombie-pikmin . Have fun.

LIMBO Review

2012-01-26T08:32:00.001-08:00

nota bene: starting with this review, I will cease giving games numerical scores in reviews. Games are too subjective and complex to summarize your feelings about them in a simple number

Playing LIMBO is like being seated next to a pungent vagrant growling profanities to himself on a bus. It’s a weird game, not the charming and amusing kind of weird, but a starkly homicidal and disturbing kind of weird that is nonetheless entrancing, beautiful and utterly terrifying. This game is a freaky kind of genius unlike anything seen before in gaming.

Gameplay

Much like Portal and Braid, LIMBO is a puzzle platformer that derives its greatest appeal from its challenging, but non-frustrating puzzles ultimately giving the player an immense sense of satisfaction upon completion. Much like the prior games, LIMBO tries to make the player feel smart and accomplished upon overcoming its many puzzles.

Where LIMBO differs from its predecessors is how it conducts its puzzles. While Portal and Braid encouraged the player to fully explore and exploit all the possible ramifications of a central game mechanic (respectively three-dimensional movement and four-dimensional gameplay), LIMBO’s puzzles are of the environmental family. Much like those found in Zelda, LIMBO asks the player to use naturally occurring laws of physics to explore and experiment all possible approaches to a given problem. This gives the game a “positive trial-and-error” aesthetic, prompting players to use their creativity to think of potential solutions to puzzles.

If the above paragraph sounds vague, its because it is. LIMBO does not rely upon one central mechanic to carry the player through its brief six hours. Each puzzle is unique and introduces a new gameplay mechanic and is never seen again. This effectively prevents the game from ever growing stale and keeps the game interesting beyond the initial few hours. All I can say is that the puzzles often involve the use of jumping and a “USE” key, which lets the player interact with the world in interesting ways like pressing switches, reversing gravity, moving boxes and grabbing onto objects.

That said, LIMBO’s gameplay isn’t perfect. Some weak jumping controls mar what is otherwise unique and unparalleled gameplay.

Story/Aesthetics

As a ludic art-game, LIMBO intentionally leaves its story ambiguous and vague. Not one word is uttered throughout the entirety of the game’s campaign and the story is told without cutscenes or loading screens or even sound: the entirety of LIMBO takes place in a single, vast level. Thus, the game fully embraces the perks of its unique medium and tells its story through its gameplay and interactivity.

And what a strange story that is. Without traditional narrative tubes like words or sounds, LIMBO manages to speak more about death, causality and the fabric of existence than most traditional media. In search of his missing sister, a boy enters Limbo and wakes up in a mysterious forest, the air soaked with hostility. Throughout the player’s journey through LIMBO, the player journeys through saddening environments wherein everything exists to kill the player. It’s a terrifying game to play through, but an utterly absorbing one. Despite the world’s overwhelming hostility, LIMBO’s vision of a monochromatic hell is cold, stark and lonely.

Conclusion

LIMBO will by no means be the best game you ever played in your life, but it will certainly be one of the most memorable. Unique and indescribable gameplay stays fresh and interesting through an absorbing six hours and the game’s unique method of storytelling is ambiguous as its gameplay. Despite its horrific and disturbing weirdness, LIMBO transcends these strange design choices to become dynamic, fresh, energetic and unlike anything ever attempted before in gaming. Recommended.

The Internet has Allowed us to Rediscover Fire

2012-01-19T13:53:00.001-08:00

Reading of “The Internet has Allowed us to Rediscover Fire”

Khan Academy’s analysis of SOPA and PIPA.

2012-01-17T21:33:00.000-08:00

Reddit’s Technical Examination of SOPA/PIPA

2012-01-17T18:16:00.001-08:00

Granted that Reddit will be going down tomorrow in protest of SOPA and PIPA, I felt morally obligated to mirror this post from their blog on this site so that interesting and edifying information can be properly disseminated, which, quite appropriately, the bills will infringe on greatly.

As you have probably heard, there are two pieces of legislation currently pending that we, and others like us, believe seriously threaten the internet. I wanted to take some time to delve into the text of both of these bills, and outline their potential consequences as I am able to understand them. As you can imagine, this is a complex issue, and as a result this is going to be a complex post. I highly encourage you to set some time aside to read this thoroughly. Grab some caffeine, we are going to be here for a while.
As a disclaimer, I am not a lawyer, I'm a sysadmin. The following is not legal advice, but rather an outline and personal interpretation of critical portions of the legislation. If you own or operate a site that may be affected by this legislation, I suggest having your legal counsel look at these bills. If you're a brand new startup with little to no money for legal counsel, well, best of luck to you. The internet may no longer be a friendly place.
Note: In recent news, several legislators have suggested that they will be removing the DNS provisions from both SOPA and PROTECT IP. However, those provisions still exist in the bills today, and they are likely to still be debated. For these reasons, I'm going to include the DNS provisions in this discussion.

The Sacred Texts

Much of this post will be focusing on Title 1, Sections 101, 102, and 103 of SOPA; and Sections 2, 3, and 4 of PROTECT IP. I hope to make the impact of these bills clear, however you shouldn't just blindly trust me. Here are links to the current versions of the bills provided by Library of Congress and the Government Printing Office.

PROTECT IP (Senate) AKA Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011
Stop Online Piracy Act (House)

The Battlefields

One of the most important distinctions in these bills is the difference between a 'foreign site' and a 'domestic site'. The definitions try to break websites into two groups using some fairly simple language; however the results may be unexpected in several cases.

SOPA Domestic Internet Site - A domestic site is defined as a site that corresponds to a 'domestic domain name', or if there is no domain name, a domestic IP address.¹ A domestic domain name is defined as a domain registered or assigned by a registrar or other authority that is located within the United States.² Some common examples of domestic top-level domain names are '.com', '.org', and '.us'.
SOPA Foreign Internet Site or PROTECT IP Non-domestic domain name - A foreign site is very simply defined as a site that is not a domestic site.³ ⁴ Under this definition, any site not using a domestic domain name is a foreign site.

Under these broad definitions, domestically hosted sites such as 'redd.it' and 'bit.ly' can be defined as foreign internet sites. On the other side of the coin, foreign hosted sites such as wikileaks.org and thepiratebay.org can be defined as 'domestic', since their domain names are registered through authorities located in the U.S.

The Players

Service Provider - A service provider is defined as a service that hosts a non-authoritative DNS server.⁵ This includes ISPs, sites like OpenDNS, Google's public nameservers, and any other service providing a public DNS resolution server.
Internet Advertising Services - A service that will serve, display, or "otherwise facilitate" an ad in return for compensation.⁶ ⁷ This includes both services which display ads linking to sites (e.g. Google AdWords and reddit's self-serve advertising), and services which host ads on other sites (e.g. Google AdSense).
SOPA Payment Network Provider or PROTECT IP Financial transaction provider - A service that handles payment transactions (e.g. PayPal).⁸ ⁹
SOPA Internet Search Engine - The definition of a search engine in the legislation is very wordy. What it basically comes down to is a service that provides links to other sites based on a user query or selection.¹⁰ Sites like reddit certainly fall within this definition. Other sites likely to fall within this definition are live blogs, link shorteners, wikis, and blog networks.
PROTECT IP Information Location Tool - The definition of this is not included in PROTECT IP itself, but rather referenced to language in existing copyright law.¹¹ The existing law doesn't explicitly define an 'information location tool', but instead gives some extremely broad examples.¹² It boils down to any service that displays links or 'pointers'.
SOPA U.S. Directed Sites - A site, or portion thereof, that is used to conduct business or provide services to U.S. residents.¹³ "Service" is not explicitly defined.
Qualifying Plaintiff - A holder of intellectual property who is harmed by the activity of a foreign infringing site.¹⁴ ¹⁵

The Powers

Most of the power in these bills is granted to the office of the Attorney General. The Attorney General can obtain a court order to take action¹⁶ ¹⁷ against a foreign infringing site, or portions thereof, as defined by the following.
SOPA¹⁸

The site is U.S. directed.
The owner or operator of the site is "committing or facilitating the commission [my emphasis] of criminal violations punishable under section 2318, 2319, 2319A, 2319B, or 2320, or chapter 90, of title 18, United States Code." Those sections primarily deal with copyright infringement and counterfeit products.
The site would be subject to seizure if it were instead a domestic site.

PROTECT IP¹⁹

The site is used "primarily as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities" of copyright infringement or counterfeit products; or
The site is designed by its operator "as a means for engaging in, enabling, or facilitating the activities" of copyright infringement or counterfeit products.

If this criteria is met, the office of the Attorney General can then serve this court order to entities in the U.S., requiring them to take specific actions against the site. The following are the actions which must be taken upon receiving the order from the Attorney General's office:

Require U.S. sites and search engines to remove all links to the foreign site.²⁰ ²¹
Require U.S. advertising services to no longer serve ads linking to the site, or display ads (e.g. AdSense) on the foreign site.²² ²³
Require U.S. payment networks to cease any transactions between the foreign site and U.S. customers.²⁴ ²⁵
Require U.S. service providers to block customer access to the foreign site (DNS blacklisting).²⁶ ²⁷

"No Duty to Monitor"

SOPA
The requirements of ad networks²² and payment networks²⁴ include a 'no duty to monitor' paragraph. This paragraph indicates that the networks are in compliance with the requirements if they take the actions described on the date that the order is served. It should be noted that 'search engines' have no such paragraph. This would mean that search engines can be required to continually monitor and prevent new instances of links to foreign sites. Coming from the point-of-view of the drafter of the legislation, this makes perfect sense. Requiring a site to scrub all the links to a foreign site is a useless effort if the links will simply pop up again the next day.

Actions which can be taken by qualified plaintiffs

The Attorney General doesn't get all of the fun. Qualifying plaintiffs can also send notice²⁸ ³⁰ to advertising services and payment networks requiring them to cease interaction with a foreign infringing site.²⁹ ³¹

The Devil in the Details

Domestic vs Foreign

The concept of 'domestic' versus 'foreign' on the internet is complex. For example, reddit's primary servers are located in Virginia, however we have domain names through foreign registrars (redd.it, reddit.co.uk). The site is hosted via a third-party content-delivery network (Akamai). This means that if you connect to reddit from a foreign country, you are likely connecting to an Akamai server not located in the U.S. This legislation naively ignores this complexity, and simply labels a site 'foreign' or 'domestic' based solely on the domain name.
The legislators sponsoring these bills have indicated that they are only targeted at truly foreign sites. However, the language is so loose and ignorant of what is truly a foreign site that there is a huge amount of room to argue what is actually "foreign".

Facilitation of criminal violations

The potential for abuse in this language is painfully obvious. "Facilitation" can often be argued as simply teaching or demonstrating how to do something. Under this definition, a site could be targeted for something as simple as describing how to rip a Blu-Ray. This language also makes it clear that the legislation is not solely targeting sites "dedicated to theft".

The Fallout

Why this is going to harm user-driven sites like reddit

Up to this point, reddit and sites like it have been required to remove specific copyrighted content if presented with a properly filled out DMCA takedown request. The notices are required to indicate exactly what pages the content is on, and to prove that they are indeed the owners of the content. Even then, this process is often abused.
SOPA and PROTECT IP contain no provisions to actually remove copyrighted content, but rather focus on the censorship of links to entire domains.
If the Attorney General served reddit with an order to remove links to a domain, we would be required to scrub every post and comment on the site containing the domain and censor the links out, even if the specific link contained no infringing content. We would also need to implement a system to automatically censor the domain from any future posts or comments. This places a measurable burden upon the site's technical infrastructure. It also damages one of the most important tenets of reddit, and the internet as a whole – free and open discussion about whatever the fuck you want.

Why this doesn't actually stop piracy

This legislation is aimed at requiring private U.S. entities to enforce restrictions against foreign sites but does nothing against the infringement itself. All of the enforcement actions can and will be worked around by sites focused on copyright infringement. U.S. citizens will still be able to use foreign DNS servers, new advertising and payment networks will pop up overseas, and "infringing sites" will still be linked to by other foreign sites and search engines. In fact, tools used to circumvent these form of internet restrictions are being funded by the U.S. State department to offer citizens under "repressive regimes" uncensored access to the internet. When the dust settles, piracy will still exist, and the internet in the U.S. will have entered the realm of federal regulation and censorship.

Why this is ripe for abuse

The vague and technology-ignorant language in this pending legislation opens a huge number of doors for different interpretations. When you take this broad language and use it to grant powers to both the Attorney General and plaintiffs like the MPAA and RIAA, you create a system that is begging to be abused. Given the history of abuse of laws like the DMCA, it has become obvious that institutions like the RIAA can and will stretch laws to the breaking point, often while suffering no repercussions.
To prevent a repeat in history of the abuse of internet copyright law, any new legislation must be drafted with the following:
1. Airtight, technically sound definitions.
2. Heavy input from the technology sector. Complex technology legislation should not be drafted by someone who barely has a working knowledge of the internet.
3. Checks and balances ensuring that due-process can be invoked before, during, and after any action is taken.
4. Clear repercussions for entities utilizing the legislation in an abusive manner.

Why this is going to hurt startups and tech innovation

One of the big reasons why a company is able to go from a few computers in a garage to a multi-billion dollar company is due to the open nature of the internet. The barrier to entry on creating a new site or product is very low. Adding legislation that regulates this open platform will seriously hamper future business.
Entrepreneurs will need to invest in legal counsel to ensure they can properly respond to a PROTECT IP or SOPA order. New sites and products will need to invest precious development time to build-in censorship utilities so that they can remove links to foreign sites. New advertising networks will need to calculate the new risk of displaying ads for or on foreign websites. Sites will also be heavily discouraged from using non-US domain names due to the broad language in the bills on how they may be defined.
Adding regulation to one of the few growing sectors in the U.S. will result in a "chilling effect" and will push individuals and business to start ventures elsewhere. Threatening this existing ecosystem for the purpose of making it slightly harder to pirate movies is a very dangerous tradeoff.

In Conclusion

It is my strong belief that both PROTECT IP and SOPA:

Will not stop the piracy they are targeting
Contain language that is highly ambiguous and extremely broad making them ripe for abuse, and
Introduce regulation and enforce censorship on what should be a free and open internet.

Peace

A Press Release from the Wikimedia Foundation on SOPA

2012-01-16T17:52:00.001-08:00

Yes, I can do this. It’s CC-Licensed.

San Francisco -- January 16, 2012 -- On January 18, 2012, in an unprecedented decision, the Wikipedia community has chosen to blackout the English version of Wikipedia for 24 hours, in protest against proposed legislation in the United States — the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) in the U.S. House of Representatives, and PROTECTIP (PIPA) in the U.S. Senate. If passed, this legislation will harm the free and open Internet and bring about new tools for censorship of international websites inside the United States.

Wikipedia administrators confirmed this decision Monday afternoon (PST) in a public statement (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:SOPA_initiative/Action#Summary_and_conclusion):

Over the course of the past 72 hours, over 1800 Wikipedians have joined together to discuss proposed actions that the community might wish to take against SOPA and PIPA. This is by far the largest level of participation in a community discussion ever seen on Wikipedia, which illustrates the level of concern that Wikipedians feel about this proposed legislation. The overwhelming majority of participants support community action to encourage greater public action in response to these two bills. Of the proposals considered by Wikipedians, those that would result in a "blackout" of the English Wikipedia, in concert with similar blackouts on other websites opposed to SOPA and PIPA, received the strongest support.

“Today Wikipedians from around the world have spoken about their opposition to this destructive legislation," said Jimmy Wales, founder of Wikipedia. "This is an extraordinary action for our community to take - and while we regret having to prevent the world from having access to Wikipedia for even a second, we simply cannot ignore the fact that SOPA and PIPA endanger free speech both in the United States and abroad, and set a frightening precedent of Internet censorship for the world."

We urge Wikipedia readers to make your voices heard. If you live in the United States, find your elected representative in Washington (https://www.eff.org/sopacall). If you live outside the United States, contact your State Department, Ministry of Foreign Affairs or similar branch of government. Tell them you oppose SOPA and PIPA, and want the internet to remain open and free.

Sunday Sites 101

2012-01-15T20:59:00.001-08:00

We are in grave danger from SOPA, our freedom, our very way of life, is at risk.

http://www.geeksaresexy.net/2012/01/04/geek-vs-nerd-the-infographic/ (thanks Emmanuel!)

http://playstationlifestyle.net/2012/01/04/stopping-sopa-anonymous-talks-motives-aims-and-hurting-sony/ An Anon on SOPA

http://geodsoft.com/opinion/oslimits/schools.htm Why Schools should use Open Source now

SOPA and The Great Internet Blackouts

2012-01-12T17:19:00.001-08:00

When it was brought to the attention of the Reddit community in mid-November, SOPA, the Stop Online Piracy Act, drew immense criticism from all sectors of the internet, which might be the understatement of the year. A mass online movement to protest the bill was born, and legions of people contacted their Senators and Representatives to urge them to vote down the bill. SOPA will be discussed before Congress when it returns from its Winter Recess come the end of January.

In essence, the bill attempts to address the problem of media piracy by giving corporations more power to seek legal action against web sites they accuse of copyright infringement. Such legal actions might include blacklisting sites that link to shared copyrighted content, starving sites off the necessary advertising money they need to survive, imprisoning content-sharers for up to five years, barring search engines from displaying certain links and erecting a DNS firewall around the United States preventing access to copyrighted content in servers located in other countries.

Reflecting the “smart-mob” nature of the web, internet users revolted against the multitude of corporations that supported the bill. Domain name company GoDaddy, which voiced its support of the bill in December, faced a mass exodus of users as people boycotted the service. The company lost 37,000 users as a result of the boycott and saw its web ranking plunge when megasites Reddit and Wikipedia migrated off their namespaces.

On December 13^th, Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales proposed a Wikipedia “blackout” in protest of the bill, temporarily taking the site offline to send a penetrating message to legislators and the internet community. He addressed editors, “Do not underestimate our power - in my opinion, they are terrified of a public uprising about this, and we are uniquely positioned to start that”. As of January, Google, Facebook, Reddit and Twitter have put consideration into joining Wikipedia in its symbolic strike. Reddit confirmed a blackout on January 18^th and other sites have started discussion in coordinating blackouts.

SOPA puts the United States in peril as President Obama will likely alienate the media industry if he signs the bill into law, and conversely, alienate tech and internet startups. The mainstream media has skirted the issue notably while the tech industry has loudly and radically protested the measure. Time will tell whether this controversial measure will be the boon to innovation its creators espouse it to be.

SOPA and Six Ways the Internet can Save Civilization

2012-01-07T18:05:00.000-08:00

Just a reading of an essay concerning what we lose if SOPA passes: everything.

Selling Out Education and Neumont University

2012-01-02T20:44:00.001-08:00

I am a high school senior, which means that over the past year, I’ve received hundreds of pounds of mail from colleges requesting the honor of my application. For the most part, this business has kept the recycling collector notably busy and my heart heavy in the thought of the myriad trees that wasted their lives. I got a letter today from a place called “Neumont University” (where’s Neumont?), a for-profit technological school, and was immediately disturbed by what I saw. I’ll quote the letter in verbatim and I kid not when I say disturbed. Don your gloves, since its time to do some professional adbusting.

Adbusting The Letter

Dear Kevin,

When you think about what most colleges are like, you probably imagine:

Boring lectures in giant lecture halls on giant campuses.

Old, irrelevant knowledge (courses like 18th-century French poetry).

Theory, theory, theory – with an internship tucked in at the end.

Four years… maybe five.

A “well founded, liberal arts education” (aka, you’re still waiting tables a year after graduation).

How lovely, bashing 2169 reputable institutions generating creative and innovative research scattered throughout the United States. Dismissing cultural history as irrelevant and the fundamental aspects of knowledge as useless. It purposefully eschews “knowledge for knowledge’s sake” and the wording implies that the only tangible goal of education is money. The school doesn’t stop there, this is where it gets really egregious.

Neumont University isn’t like most colleges. It’s designed for students like you who have a passion for technology, want a challenge, and hate wasting time. Here’s how a Neumont education is different.

…

Hands on learning, not dumbed-down learning: You’ll work on real projects (with real deadlines) for companies like Nike, IBM and eBay.

Always relevant: study the latest languages, apps, and platforms taught by faculty who’ve actually done what they’re teaching.

Just 2.5 years: Think of it as a 4-year degree in a 2.5 year .ZIP file.

Remarkable results: over 95% of our graduates are employed within six months of graduation. And they accept positions with starting salaries averaging $63000 a year.

“Hands on learning, not dumbed-down learning” espouses the advertisement. The school evidently outsources its students to megacorporations, disguising commercial work as education and placing the students into work with its “industry partners”. While I do admire the idea of co-op work (Drexel ftw), Neumont pushes the idea to its logical extreme and attempts to sell itself on it. No mention is made at all about students being instilled with the creativity and drive to form their own companies and realize their original ideas. The school’s website is written in a hip and cool manner devoid of much meaningful content.

Take the traditional, dated, stodgy concept of college and Ctrl+Shift+Esc. Neumont University was built from the ground-up, with the help of industry leaders, to create the ideal learning environment for tech-obsessed students.

I mean, wow, seriously? I’d much rather CTRL+ALT+DEL after seeing the kind of market Neumont is attempting to sell itself to: rebellious, pissed-off types hellbent on resisting any type of authority, in short, dweebier Holden Caulfields. The fact that the school simplifies the theoretical, historical, intellectual, philosophical and artistic aspects of computer science and game design to “the latest languages, apps, and platforms” relegates the school to a niche market of money-obsessed teens. I have no doubt that the teachers at Neumont are indeed fine and honorable and aren’t in it for the money, but the wording of the letter makes it seem directly converse.

Further embodying the Holden Caulfield comparison, the college writes on its website: “Toga parties are for the saps who will be stuck in their senior year while you're already working toward that first promotion, raking in the cash.”. What Neumont has done here is dismiss the social and moral importance of education. The most moving thing about the experience of learning is what people discover within themselves throughout those four years. This extends even to high-school, the timid and friendless freshman that I once was evolved into a stronger, more loving and more hopeful iteration. This change will definitely continue through the relationships I build and the experiences I share with my treasured peers. To condense the full college experience into a “2.5 year .ZIP file” would simplify the beauty of growing up into an antisocial cash-grab.

Furthermore, the school was founded in 2003 and has graduated a little over 380 students (according to Wikipedia), which kinda puts its claim of over “95 percent of graduates are employed within six months of graduation” on shaky ground. The price of tuition is a pretty impressive $21,800, but student loans are a continuous problem for for-profit schools and protecting oneself from crippling student-debt will undoubtedly be a problem for those who choose to take out loans.

Finally, a picture from their Student Life page, which reads:

We solemnly vow the zombie apocalypse will not begin on our campus.

I mean, seriously?!

Schools are supposed to be intellectual havens and should be free of such ridiculous marketing. The course description page for their game design degree features a picture of a guy playing Minecraft, which reads: "A passion for gaming isn’t enough to succeed in this exciting field. Even getting a long-range headshot off while falling through the air won’t cut it (although we admire your talent).” For aspiring game developers seeking to bring hope to the dying medium, isn’t it clear that we’re looking for something more? What Neumont needs to do is dump the flashy marketing and attempt to convince us with the intellectual energy of its students and faculty. Think beyond the money for a moment: isn’t it clear that there are more important things to the fields of computer science and game design? Fixate your applicant’s interests on money rather than brains and you’re practically welcoming the zombie apocalypse to begin on your campus.

The Bigger Picture

Let’s look beyond Neumont University’s attempt at marketing and consider for-profit schools as a whole. I’m all for the conservative spending that these schools adhere to, with fewer attendees, funds are more limited and more money goes towards good teaching rather than frivolities like restaurants and shops on campus. That said, compromising the integrity of education to reach for those precious funds goes against the purpose of the school. While its a safe bet to say that Neumont is one of the better for-profit schools out there, academia and intellectualism are lost from the school’s vital community as students begin to take interest in maximizing their personal profits in the future.

That said, the Huffington Post did an interesting series of posts on practices at these schools. A finding by the Obama Administration stated that 45% of defaulted student-loans came from students who attended such institutions. Promises of full-tuition loans ultimately put their recipients in crippling debt. The fact that these institutions typically cost much more than public community colleges and universities would make them unappealing to the vast majority of students.

Ultimately, I shy away from for-profit schools with many qualms. While it is good that these schools are providing opportunities for fields such as mechanics and culinary arts that might not be available at other schools, seeking out profit from educating students is cause to question the intellectual vigor and integrity of such institutions.

Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Review

2011-12-30T12:45:00.001-08:00

Uncharted 2 is a game I was initially skeptical of. The emulation of film prevents games from reaching their full potential as an unique art form and no series embodies this philosophy of design more than Uncharted. I picked up the game for Christmas to see what the hype was about and I was pleasantly surprised to find that its cinematic nature wasn’t a bad thing.

Story and Presentation
Uncharted 2’s story is derivative, predictable and a retread of ideas found in practically any of the films that it is so inspired by (Angels and Demons, Indiana Jones, National Treasure). That said, the impressively developed cutscenes, beautiful animation and incredible voice acting make the narrative more entertaining than it has any right to be. While I would easily predict every betrayal, plot twist and character arc, having watched the many films Uncharted aspires to emulate, I still found myself entertained by Drake’s quest and was interested throughout.

So what exactly is Uncharted 2 about? Well, Nathan Drake, a “treasure hunter” (READ: thief) wakes up with a bloody abdomen in a collapsing train as it perilously hangs off a Siberian cliff. Cue a series of flashbacks explaining how he came to be in such a hellhole and we learn of Drake’s quest to prevent the mythical Cintimani Stone from falling into the hands of Zoran Lazaravic. Its nothing we haven’t seen before in film, but this type of plot is new to gaming, and while Uncharted might be generic when compared to movies, its unique when compared to other games. The characters fall into classic action-movie archetypes but retain their charm, and while Nathan Drake might look visually similar to any number of video-game protagonists, his personality makes him stand out when compared to others in his medium.

Typically, I hate cutscenes in my games. Historically, they have interrupted the flow of gameplay too abruptly and dragged on narratives in non-interactive sequences, removing the uniqueness of the interactive medium. Surprisingly enough, while Uncharted 2 has a lot of cutscenes (about a full movie’s worth), the pacing of the game never makes the interruption of gameplay an abrupt experience. Cinematic moments typically reserved for cutscenes cede full control to the player. As a result, we are in control of Drake through set-piece moments such as the memorable collapse of a building, seeing the furniture thrown to-and-fro the room as it grows perilously close to the ground. Throughout this moment, we are fighting enemies also affected by the crumbling floor. When gameplay is actually interrupted when Drake jumps through an adjacent window to escape the falling tower, the transition to non-interactivity is so smooth that the frequent cutscenes are not a problem. Action appropriately crescendos and crashes in ways that make a break in action warmly welcome.

Gameplay
While Uncharted does a multitude of things right in its storytelling, originality clearly isn’t one of them. This extends to the gameplay, which is an amalgam of systems we’ve seen done better in other games. The third-person, cover-based shooting is a dead ringer for Gears of War, the stiff platforming harkens to the days of a certain fresh Prince of Persia, stealth is a simplified Splinter Cell and puzzles are designed in a way reminiscent of classic adventure games. On their own, none of these elements stand out, but it is the marriage of these disparate elements that makes Uncharted 2 much more than the sum of its parts. The perfect pacing of which these mechanics phase in and out of the stage is totally believable and prevents each section of gameplay from overstaying its welcome. The amount of tactical freedom afforded to the player embodies a unique “wide linear” approach to play.

Uncharted 2’s third person shooting is challenging and fun. While Drake’s health regenerates, he cannot survive a hail of gunfire. Thus, in order to survive and win encounters, he must adopt a “stop and pop” approach to fighting. Popping in and out of cover to return fire and whittling down the game’s strong enemies. Brilliant enemy AI makes the battles constantly exhilarating, enemies will use suppressive fire to pin Drake down while armor-clad shotgunners flank him and grenadiers force him to abandon his cover to run straight into the shotgunner’s line of fire. Strategy is needed in the game’s multilayered environments and sneaking into a tactically advantageous position before opening fire is key to victory. Should an enemy come too close, Drake can engage him in a hand-to-hand minigame, which gives the player only two basic moves: attack and counter. Its a fun and wonderfully animated system on its own, but given that enemies come in waves, it is nearly impossible to fight an enemy in this way lest several others shoot you to shreds. Some set pieces, such as a cliffside chase through a convoy of trucks, forcing Drake to jump to and fro the rooftops of flatbeds, push the limits of what is possible in gaming. Nonetheless, there are quite a few annoying enemy types, such as charging brutes that force the player to abandon the strategic cover mechanic.

Platforming is Uncharted’s weakest aspect and plays like a more realistic Prince of Persia. Drake must search environments for usable handholds to get him across environments. Typically, this comes down to trial and error as the player attempts to distinguish usable platforms from the background, typically dying when he falls into the abyss for making a jump outside of exactly what the game wants him to take. Its not much fun and sometimes frustrating.

Stealth comes devoid of silenced weapons and the high-tech gadgets that have defined other franchises in the genre. As a result, the only way to accomplish this approach to combat is to strategically count out the enemies in an encounter and eliminate them methodically through Drake’s awesome stealth-takedowns. There is a good amount of variety to these context-sensitive animations, allowing him to pull enemies off ledges, pull them out of cover, push them off cliffs or simply snap their necks. While taking a stealthy approach to combat is challenging, the feeling of accomplishment when entire sections are completed with finesse and skill is unparalleled.

Puzzles are infrequent and simple, typically married with platforming. They often forcing Drake to use his jo urnal to interact with ancient defense mechanisms questionable in their historical veracity by pressing triangle in certain positions to make a certain statue match the clues in his journal. They are infrequent enough and provide a stimulating intellectual challenge and a welcome break from the combat.

Multiplayer, while fun, is dead. After a lengthy setup process, it is a shame to see that very few of the playlists were active. It took over ten minutes to find a full game, which was unfortunate, since the interesting gametypes made the experience rather fresh. Excellent objective-based co-op was reminiscent of the single-player campaign and the classic “horde mode” was in full force here. What I saw of the game’s multiplayer suite was impressive, it is too bad that such modes are mostly inaccessible nearly three years after launch.

Graphics and Audio
Uncharted 2 is unparalleled from an audiovisual perspective. Naughty Dog has created a spectacular engine capable of some amazing scripted sequences and beautiful vistas. While the first Uncharted game was renowned for realistically behaving water, Uncharted 2’s main claim to fame is incredibly realistic snow. Snow crunches below Nathan’s feet and moves about, piles up, and is scratched away in a believable manner. However, to get lost in the details is a disservice to Naughty Dog’s also amazing art team. Each environment is a memorable, grounded and believable place filled with more colors in a single screen than most other games have through their entire campaign. Particularly memorable is a mid-game walk through a remote Tibetan village, in which the player is left to do nothing but walk through the town and soak up the atmospheric detail: prayer flags dance about in the wind, village children kick about soccer balls and sunlight peers over the Himalayas. While I believe that graphics don’t matter in games, Uncharted 2’s visuals are a legitimate part of the game’s appeal.

Uncharted 2 benefits from perfect sound design and animation. Unique sound effects are tied to every aspect of the game’s physics and world and music frames the emotional goal of each scene. Excellent writing and voice acting lies leagues beyond other such games, and the tangible relationship between characters makes them relatable, sympathetic and lifelike. The denizens of Uncharted’s worlds aren’t simply animated mannequins, but rather realized and complete people who existed before the events of the game, and will continue to exist long after it. Nolan North leads the cast as Drake, whose mocap performance outdoes much of contemporary film.

Conclusion
Perhaps the reason why I hated the idea of the “cinematic action game” in the first place is because every predecessor of Uncharted 2 unanimously sucked with awful writing, unbelievable worlds and stupid voice acting. Uncharted 2, in spite of its derivative story and borrowed gameplay mechanics, succeeds where its predecessors failed: it unites game and film in a seamless, uninterrupted way. While the presentation and pacing is indeed immaculate, some frustrating platforming controls and the fact that none of the individual gameplay elements stand out alone, drag down one of the better single-player games to be released this console generation. 4.25/5

Proof that Gaming is Headed in the Wrong Direction

2011-12-29T19:39:00.001-08:00

I like Machinima.com and believe much of their criticism is well done and entertaining. A favorite series of mine is “All Your History Are Belong To Us”, which recently published a “2011 in Review” feature completely embodying what’s wrong about this industry. The multitude of studio shutdowns, ridiculous lawsuits (Mojang and GeoHotz) and failure of daringly creative games like Bulletstorm are saddening to see, especially in a year that was otherwise very good for gaming with Portal 2 and the acquisition of First Amendment protection for gaming. Watch the videos, they’re well done and entertaining.

Indie Game: The Movie Trailer

2011-12-26T22:18:00.001-08:00

Indie Game: The Movie Official Trailer from IndieGame: The Movie on Vimeo.

I found this cool, maybe you will too.

Dark Deception Video Developer's Diary #2: Text Prototype

2011-12-25T19:10:00.000-08:00

2011 Year in Review: Game of the Year

2011-12-24T21:08:00.001-08:00

This year… has been interesting… at least from a personal perspective. But I digress, let’s talk about the games that I have played.

Catching Up on Classics: Partem Deum <—(I likely butchered that)
Last year, I picked up a Playstation 3 and set to work playing and reviewing a multitude of modern classics. I’ve continued that trend, albeit on a much larger scale, extending it to the current generation of games. In this year alone, I have played both Mass Effects, Red Dead Redemption, Oblivion, Minecraft, LIMBO, Splinter Cell, half of the Call of Duties, Dragon Age: Origins, Super Meat Boy, Jamestown, Portal 2, Resistance 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Vanquish, Terraria, Torchlight, inFamous, fl0wer, Bioshock 2 and Heavenly Sword. That barely scratches the surface.

I borrowed Red Dead Redemption from my friend Devan, and I had limited time to spend with the game and barely scratched the surface. I completed the campaign up to the <SPOILER> death of John Marston, but never played the postgame missions with Jack </SPOILER>. Nonetheless, the 20 hours that I did enjoy with the game were memorable and satisfying. Going into the game doubting that a New Mexican desert could make for an interesting environment, I was shocked to discover that Red Dead Redemption had one of the richest and liveliest game worlds to be seen in a game. Its a game that I regret not owning myself and an easy recommendation to anyone.

I bought Super Meat Boy at a Steam Sale approximately one year ago, and I have not yet beat the second world. Nonetheless, the intense difficulty and low punishment-factor not only makes SMB one of the most challenging games of the year, but one of the most consistently playable. Your reflexes will be challenged, but not your patience. This is a fine casual game that anyone should have on their hard-drive for the time between classes.

I liked inFamous. While I felt that Empire City was a bland and uninteresting place, the game redeemed itself with excellent action, buttery-smooth controls and fun powers. I wasn’t that pleased with the jarring storytelling, but was entertained through the entire duration of this flawed classic.

I hated Modern Warfare 2, the scattershot plot, rage-inducing multiplayer, cliffhanger-story and agency-robbing set-pieces failed to carry over what made the first Modern Warfare one of the best shooters ever made. That said, I did have fun with Black Ops. The conspiracy-laden story was entertaining, clear and understandable. While still linear and filled with hand-holding,the game was not as egregiously unreplayable as the previous game. For all the bashing I put on this series for spawning an unsustainable trend of copycat shooters, Zombies makes this game a guilty pleasure of mine.

My Personal Game of the Year

I have not yet played Skyrim, Battlefield 3, Arkham City or Skyward Sword, so I cannot include them in this part of the post. But for the sake of thought, here are my three top games of 2011.

Minecraft was the second 5/5 I awarded on this blog, and for good reason. It holds shocking emotional impact and touches the player’s soul in an unexpected way. The lonely freedom the player experiences is liberating in its childlike gleefulness. It is a brilliant game filled with brilliant ideas played by brilliant people. Don’t let the allegations of an unintuitive tutorial dissuade you, running the game in windowed mode with the Wiki available in the background completely alleviates this problem. The possibilities, like in life, are endless.

I love the Mass Effect games, while a mixed bag from a moral perspective, the endearing characters, epic narrative and lovable world work together to make a remarkable impact on the player. Mass Effect 2’s release on the PS3 early this year brought this brilliant series and its varied denizens to a new audience. I grew attached to a certain Scientist Salarian named Mordin, his caffeinated manner of speaking, affable dialect and homicidal humor ingrained his character into my heart. The same can’t be said about a certain Miranda Lawson, I didn’t shed a tear when that pretentious and unsympathetic douchebag was left for dead in the center of the galaxy.

Portal 2 is the best puzzle-game ever made. The apotheosis of a movement initiated by the first Portal and expanded in Braid and LIMBO, the game exemplifies the positive trial-and-error aesthetic. The game is unspeakably difficult, but the intelligent construction of the puzzles promote rigorous experimentation and never fails to be fresh. The game is reinforced by genius writing, hilarious characters and a unique cooperative mode requiring the use of two brains. Portal 2 is great, and that does not even touch on the deep and involving feminist subtext that got even my Ethics teacher interested.

And the Winner is…

And this is what makes any Game of the Year decision so difficult. Portal 2, Minecraft and Mass Effect 2 are all great fun, intellectually and emotionally gratifying and vastly different. One is a the apotheosis of intelligent play, another is a immaculately detailed fantasy world and another is, like life, what you make of it. All I enthusiastically recommend to all and consider to be immaculate examples of brilliant game design and if I could, I would give trophies to all the studios responsible for the games and knit sweaters for their respective producers, but I can’t. So, with a smidge of regret, I declare that:

Portal 2 is my personal game of the year. The choice was difficult, and while Minecraft kept me awake through the wee hours of the morning and I will never stop loving Garrus, only Portal 2 transcended its ludic constraints to become something indescribably moving and impactful. Portal 2 was, unlike the other games, perfectly paced and never repetitive. This was an important year in gaming, and while the medium does suffer from the repetitious annual releases of gratuitously and self-indulgently violent multiplayer shooters, Portal 2 shines among these games as a beacon of hope for the medium. Play it, and look to the wide-open future with optimism.

Thank you and Merry Christmas to all!

~Kevin

Code Jamming for Dark Deception

2011-12-11T21:32:00.001-08:00

Here’s one way to do a dev diary, recording an internal conversation between developers. Leaking this kind of stuff at any other studio is grounds for expulsion, not here, not at Team Corsehead.

Sunday Sites 100

2011-12-04T21:28:00.001-08:00

Achievement Unlocked! We’ve hit a century of Sunday Sites with one for each year. We will celebrate with… a pretty normal selection of links.

A differing interpretation of the UC Davis Incident which has garnered infamy around the world. The full story and the ensuing debate on whether or not civil disobedience can be protected speech.

http://news.yahoo.com/asians-college-strategy-dont-check-asian-174442977.html Affirmative Action at its most ineffective.

http://kotaku.com/5864783/herman-cain-quotes-pokemon-as-he-suspends-his-campaign He wanted to be the very best, ‘cause nobody ever was. Well, evidently, he couldn’t catch them all.

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/12/02/eff-working-to-make-console-modding-legal/?a_dgi=aolshare_facebook Woot, too bad the announcement of an American version of Xenoblade Chronicles negated the entire purpose of hacking my Wii. Still Homebrew channel is sick, especially with WiiMC.

Dark Deception Developer’s Diary #4

2011-12-03T10:49:00.001-08:00

We have video now! Albeit, with crappy narration, but at least you get to see “gameplay”!

Sunday Sites 99

2011-11-27T21:23:00.001-08:00

Survived a week full of college apps. No rest for the wicked.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreenberg/2011/11/23/wary-of-sopa-reddit-users-aim-to-build-a-new-censorship-free-internet/ Resist!

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fn%2Fa%2F2011%2F11%2F24%2Fnational%2Fa233955S49.DTL&tsp=1 Food for Thought: If Occupy Protesters get pepper sprayed and beaten for camping in public space, why don't Black Friday Shoppers?

And… that’s it for this 99th Sunday Sites. It’s been one hell of a week for me and I’ll have more next time.

A Sincere and Honest Demand for Copyright Reform

2011-11-23T19:02:00.001-08:00

Dear Representatives Speier, Pelosi and Senators Feinstein and Boxer

Who do you stand with? The ludicrous idea of the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) and PROTECT IP reaching actual discussion within Washington has given citizens rationale to question the authenticity of our elected officials. Do you serve to protect the rights of American citizens or the sanctity of the profits of corporations? SOPA is treasonous, evil and the single greatest affront to American freedom since the institution of slavery.

In discussion of the Communications Decency Act of 1996, which would have criminalized displaying “indecent” material to minors, Judge Steward Dalzell wrote “As the most participatory form of mass speech yet developed, the Internet deserves the highest protection from governmental intrusion”. The Supreme Court affirmed the decision in Reno v. ACLU, acknowledging that government-based filtering of content was contradictory to the First Amendment.

We have entered the twilight weeks of 2011, and SOPA and its cousin PROTECT-IP have garnered massive outcry from 95% of Internet users. Under the terms of the bill, “rouge sites”, web sites located on servers in other nations with more hospitable copyright laws, will be blocked from access in the United States. This will be accomplished through a method called DNS filtering; the very same censorship tool utilized by authoritarian states such as China, Syria and Iran. SOPA effectively erects the Western equivalent of China’s Great Firewall.

Since the advent of mass use of the Internet, public discussion has been sorely needed to reform archaic copyright laws that restrict the intellectual freedom of content producers everywhere. The rise of user-generated content hosted on media-sharing sites like YouTube, Flickr and Bandcamp has created a new form of art based on modifying existing work. Derivative works, such as covers, remixes, image macros and mods are the pieces of this amateur movement. An example of such memetic art that has received widespread media attention is the infamous “Pepper Spray Cop”, in which Lt. Pike’s nonchalant visage is Photoshopped into famous works of art. In the spirit of the hackers of the 1980s; media like “Pepper Spray Cop” is released for free online under open licenses like Creative Commons. Blocking such media on the grounds of copyright infringement is proof positive that traditional copyright is incompatible with the freedom of the Internet age.

Furthermore, the Internet has revolutionized content sharing and communication through startups like Facebook and Twitter. Private entities will be forced to censor and redact copyright infringing links and content at the brutish command of both bill’s parameters. The practice of downloading an amusing picture to one’s hard drive to share on one’s Facebook page would cease to exist. As a result, private communication between individuals becomes heavily monitored. Our privacy is invaded not out a tenuous concern for national security, but out of concern for the profits of media companies like VEVO, Sony and Warner Media Group. For these corporations, it becomes clear which half of “Intellectual Property” takes greater precedence.

My sincere and honest demands are threefold and are listed below.

1. Kill PROTECT-IP and SOPA in their respective branches when the time to vote on their passage comes around.

2. Reaffirm the government’s role to protect the interests of individual citizens rather than the corporations that have destroyed democracy and freedom through their insatiable greed.

3. Enact active discussion to reform the restrictive copyright law that has restricted the freedom of derivative artists everywhere.

I am certain that PROTECT-IP and SOPA will die in Congress, however, the mere fact that such an act was even brought into consideration necessitates a critique of our current copyright laws and the extent the government should be involving itself with corporations. The Internet has been a boon to free-speech everywhere, I thus implore you to side with the citizenry of the United States and protect the integrity of online communications and the hope that the web’s decentralization will pave way for a more participatory culture.

Thank you

Kevin Wong

A Sincere and Honest Demand for Copyright Reform by Kevin Wong is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License. You are free to remix, redistribute and modify this work as you see fit under the conditions that the license remains the same.

Sunday Sites 97

2011-11-20T19:58:00.001-08:00

After a few weeks of special features, here we return with regular Sunday Sites blogging.

http://thinkprogress.org/special/2011/11/18/372361/rep-deutch-introduces-occupied-constitutional-amendment-to-ban-corporate-money-in-politics/ Rep. Deutch is listening to the Occupy movement, actual change might be happening.

Sign the petition at: https://wwws.whitehouse.gov/petitions/!/petition/support-rep-ted-deutchs-occupied-amendment-order-end-corporate-personhood-and-restore-civil-rights/5xFXKzL4#thank-you=p to support the potential constitutional amendment to redefine corporate personhood. (Thanks Roger!)

Also, frickin’ awesome stuff: http://www.aagneyam.com/blog/?p=551 How to use Google for Hacking (Thanks Demetri!)

http://www.euratlas.net/history/europe/index.html Map of European political borders, year by year since 1 AD. Cool stuff.

http://pc.ign.com/articles/120/1200450p1.html Why I play Minecraft: A game with spiritual and therapeutic value.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/15/congress-pushes-back-on-h_1_n_1094764.html?ncid=edlinkusaolp00000009 wtf am I reading. Pizza is a vegetable now?

Police Brutality at UC Davis

2011-11-19T17:07:00.001-08:00

Prime example of a government body failing to do its job. Cops exist to protect citizens, and what you see in the above image is clearly the converse of their stated purpose. Evil occurs when institutions fail to critique their own actions, clearly, the police response to the protests is a prime example of a inherently good institution corrupted when its individuals in charge lose sight of its true purpose.

Professor Nathan Brown of UC Davis drafted the following open letter to the school’s chancellor.

Open Letter to Chancellor Linda P.B. Katehi

Linda P.B. Katehi,

I am a junior faculty member at UC Davis. I am an Assistant Professor in the Department of English, and I teach in the Program in Critical Theory and in Science & Technology Studies. I have a strong record of research, teaching, and service. I am currently a Board Member of the Davis Faculty Association. I have also taken an active role in supporting the student movement to defend public education on our campus and throughout the UC system. In a word: I am the sort of young faculty member, like many of my colleagues, this campus needs. I am an asset to the University of California at Davis.

You are not.

I write to you and to my colleagues for three reasons:

1) to express my outrage at the police brutality which occurred against students engaged in peaceful protest on the UC Davis campus today

2) to hold you accountable for this police brutality

3) to demand your immediate resignation

Today you ordered police onto our campus to clear student protesters from the quad. These were protesters who participated in a rally speaking out against tuition increases and police brutality on UC campuses on Tuesday—a rally that I organized, and which was endorsed by the Davis Faculty Association. These students attended that rally in response to a call for solidarity from students and faculty who were bludgeoned with batons, hospitalized, and arrested at UC Berkeley last week. In the highest tradition of non-violent civil disobedience, those protesters had linked arms and held their ground in defense of tents they set up beside Sproul Hall. In a gesture of solidarity with those students and faculty, and in solidarity with the national Occupy movement, students at UC Davis set up tents on the main quad. When you ordered police outfitted with riot helmets, brandishing batons and teargas guns to remove their tents today, those students sat down on the ground in a circle and linked arms to protect them.

What happened next?

Without any provocation whatsoever, other than the bodies of these students sitting where they were on the ground, with their arms linked, police pepper-sprayed students. Students remained on the ground, now writhing in pain, with their arms linked.

What happened next?

Police used batons to try to push the students apart. Those they could separate, they arrested, kneeling on their bodies and pushing their heads into the ground. Those they could not separate, they pepper-sprayed directly in the face, holding these students as they did so. When students covered their eyes with their clothing, police forced open their mouths and pepper-sprayed down their throats. Several of these students were hospitalized. Others are seriously injured. One of them, forty-five minutes after being pepper-sprayed down his throat, was still coughing up blood.

This is what happened. You are responsible for it.

You are responsible for it because this is what happens when UC Chancellors order police onto our campuses to disperse peaceful protesters through the use of force: students get hurt. Faculty get hurt. One of the most inspiring things (inspiring for those of us who care about students who assert their rights to free speech and peaceful assembly) about the demonstration in Berkeley on November 9 is that UC Berkeley faculty stood together with students, their arms linked together. Associate Professor of English Celeste Langan was grabbed by her hair, thrown on the ground, and arrested. Associate Professor Geoffrey O’Brien was injured by baton blows. Professor Robert Hass, former Poet Laureate of the United States, National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner, was also struck with a baton. These faculty stood together with students in solidarity, and they too were beaten and arrested by the police. In writing this letter, I stand together with those faculty and with the students they supported.

One week after this happened at UC Berkeley, you ordered police to clear tents from the quad at UC Davis. When students responded in the same way—linking arms and holding their ground—police also responded in the same way: with violent force. The fact is: the administration of UC campuses systematically uses police brutality to terrorize students and faculty, to crush political dissent on our campuses, and to suppress free speech and peaceful assembly. Many people know this. Many more people are learning it very quickly.

You are responsible for the police violence directed against students on the UC Davis quad on November 18, 2011. As I said, I am writing to hold you responsible and to demand your immediate resignation on these grounds.

On Wednesday November 16, you issued a letter by email to the campus community. In this letter, you discussed a hate crime which occurred at UC Davis on Sunday November 13. In this letter, you express concern about the safety of our students. You write, “it is particularly disturbing that such an act of intolerance should occur at a time when the campus community is working to create a safe and inviting space for all our students.” You write, “while these are turbulent economic times, as a campus community, we must all be committed to a safe, welcoming environment that advances our efforts to diversity and excellence at UC Davis.”

I will leave it to my colleagues and every reader of this letter to decide what poses a greater threat to “a safe and inviting space for all our students” or “a safe, welcoming environment” at UC Davis: 1) Setting up tents on the quad in solidarity with faculty and students brutalized by police at UC Berkeley? or 2) Sending in riot police to disperse students with batons, pepper-spray, and tear-gas guns, while those students sit peacefully on the ground with their arms linked? Is this what you have in mind when you refer to creating “a safe and inviting space?” Is this what you have in mind when you express commitment to “a safe, welcoming environment?”

I am writing to tell you in no uncertain terms that there must be space for protest on our campus. There must be space for political dissent on our campus. There must be space for civil disobedience on our campus. There must be space for students to assert their right to decide on the form of their protest, their dissent, and their civil disobedience—including the simple act of setting up tents in solidarity with other students who have done so. There must be space for protest and dissent, especially, when the object of protest and dissent is police brutality itself. You may not order police to forcefully disperse student protesters peacefully protesting police brutality. You may not do so. It is not an option available to you as the Chancellor of a UC campus. That is why I am calling for your immediate resignation.

Your words express concern for the safety of our students. Your actions express no concern whatsoever for the safety of our students. I deduce from this discrepancy that you are not, in fact, concerned about the safety of our students. Your actions directly threaten the safety of our students. And I want you to know that this is clear. It is clear to anyone who reads your campus emails concerning our “Principles of Community” and who also takes the time to inform themselves about your actions. You should bear in mind that when you send emails to the UC Davis community, you address a body of faculty and students who are well trained to see through rhetoric that evinces care for students while implicitly threatening them. I see through your rhetoric very clearly. You also write to a campus community that knows how to speak truth to power. That is what I am doing.

I call for your resignation because you are unfit to do your job. You are unfit to ensure the safety of students at UC Davis. In fact: you are the primary threat to the safety of students at UC Davis. As such, I call upon you to resign immediately.

Sincerely,

Nathan Brown
Assistant Professor
Department of English
Program in Critical Theory
University of California at Davis

I’m far from an anarchist, but what we’re seeing here is proof positive that governments have ceased to uphold the freedom and security of its people. Instead, the issue taking greatest precedence is the economic security of the country’s most important people: corporations.

November 17th Mass Day of Action

2011-11-16T18:50:00.001-08:00

http://www.november17.org/

So what will you do?

Minecraft Review

2011-11-13T13:26:00.001-08:00

There’s a certain, magical sense of childlike wonder permeating throughout every moment of Minecraft that few of us have experienced since the cessation of our childhoods. It is a memory marked by the wondrous sense of innocence that we took for granted before our lives became inundated with the harried strife of reality, a memory of a time when every day brought with it a joyful new experience, a time when every nook and cranny of the enchanted world could have been a cave filled with forgotten treasure, a world where monsters lurked under the bed every night and we cried to our parents to protect us. For all of us, it has been decades since we last experienced that euphoric sense of novelty accompanying every moment of our existence, the very next morning becoming something we perpetually dread. Childhood has been lost forever to the insatiable maws of tomorrow, innocence is shattered forever while we desperately try to put together the shards, be it through our first breakup, our first job, or even the rite of passage of entering Elementary School.

And thus is the beauty of Minecraft. It is through the simple joy of exploration through which a long-forgotten facet of our each of our individual histories is recalled to life. This is an incredible game recalling a time when everything was new and hope bled through our fantasies into reality. It thus goes without saying that this is not a game for the decade, but one for eternity.

Gameplay
In simplest terms, Minecraft is a sandbox/RPG in which every component of the gameworld can be modified by the player and used as a tool. The goal of the game’s RPG component is to collect resources and build structures during the day to survive the night, during which the monsters roam. This is an extremely open-ended style of play and the game’s infinite range of possibilities becomes immediately perceptible. There is a goal to Minecraft and there is a final boss and end sequence, but the game’s already open-ended main quest is easily eschewed when one realizes the creative potential the game’s construction system offers. In short, the player must collect arcane materials buried deep in the earth to create a portal to another dimension to slay the “Ender Dragon”. It’s a childlike set-up that could have been conceived in any number of Kindergarten recesses and perfectly appropriate for the imaginative nature of the game.

What happens between the player’s initial spawn and the defeat of the Ender Dragon is totally up to the player. This freedom, shockingly enough, does not feel overwhelming, but liberating. Within moments, a single thought implants itself in the player’s mind: “I can do anything in this game!” Roaming the procedurally generated gameworld guided only by the built-in achievements guide is an exercise in glee. That cave over there? Grab a torch, let’s go spelunking in it! The grassy meadow over there? Go ahead, pick some flowers. The islands in the distance? Not a hard swim, I even see smoke rising from an NPC village there. All the resources you discover from deconstructing the gameworld can be used in the single most robust crafting system seen in gaming. Within minutes, the gameworld becomes a playset for your imagination, a kind of modern-day LEGO set. The trees, rocks and caves become the components for your tools, weapons, armor and houses, you begin to see the world around you differently.

That is until nightfall. Despite the joyously hyperactive imagination of the daytime, night in Minecraft is greatly reminiscent of a child’s dread of bedtime. The monsters of Minecraft are brutally persistent in their tenacity to chew on your brains, zombies will moan from unseen dark corners and skeletons will fire arrows at you from a distance. None of these enemies compare to the terrifying onslaught of the Creeper. A quadrupedal mass of wrinkled green skin, the Creeper is perpetually haunted by a sad, mournful frown. The most advisable thing to do when encountering one is to run the hell away. The Creeper can explode for an instant kill, causing the player to lose all progress, resources and equipment, respawning him at the game’s start. Watch out for these enemies, as they are terrifying to encounter. Night in Minecraft effectively becomes as horrific as enduring nights as a young child, the perpetual threat of monsters lurking inches below your mattress. Its a brutally haunting game to play and beautiful in the memories it evokes.

A memory that will always stay with me originates from a few hours ago as I emerged from my safehouse prior to the break of dawn. Armed with a newly crafted stone sword, I beat down the zombies that were knocking at my door throughout the night and saw some cows and sheep across the strait on an island. I swam across the strait and slayed the animals for meat, wool and leather, the intent of weaving a warm jacket lurking in my mind. I heard an unfamiliar moan and raised my head to see, staring from about twenty feet away, a Creeper. I backed away, turned around, and made a break for it, sprinting as fast as I could go. I jumped into the strait and splashed my way across, thinking that the water would separate us because it could not swim. I emerged on the opposite bank and turned around, wading, already halfway across the river, was the Creeper. Terrified, I dashed away, fumbling over a hill, turning my head periodically to observe its progress as it quickly gained on me.

Not looking where I was going, I fell into a crevasse and injured myself. Looking up into the hole through which I fell, I saw that I rolled down about a hundred feet… losing the Creeper in the process… Wonderful… Getting back to the surface and back to the safehouse is going to be so much more of a bother. I lowered my head and saw, jutting out from the cobblestone of the mouth of an extensive system of interweaving caves and catacombs, a cache of glittering diamonds. Like in life, one downfall opens up a host of new opportunities. I picked up my pickaxe and set to work. When the diamonds were gone, I ventured deep into the cave system, eagerly seeking out an adventure.
Minecraft’s second game mode is called “Creative Mode”, and removes the constraints of hunger, experience, health, resources and gravity to allow the player to construct anything he can imagine freely. With the available mods and texture packs, incredible stuff can be done. Just look at some of the things the community has conceived.

Further proving the LEGO comparison: Minecraft has already been popping up in art and computer science classes all around the country. Its an exciting proposition with the potential to do a lot of good for society

Graphics and Audio
Minecraft, running on the same Lightweight Java Game Engine, of whose components I am using to power Dark Deception, suffers from scattershot performance. Despite the minimalistic and attractive 8-bit aesthetic the game adheres to, only on minimal settings is the game playable at an acceptable frame rate, at least on a common laptop. To run the game at its best, you’re going to have to turn off fancy graphical features such as ambient lighting and high-render distances. Its a shame, since Minecraft isn’t supposed to be visually awe-inspiring to begin with. It nonetheless channels the first moments of any Bethesda game at all times. A strong incentive to keep exploring is to see what incredible natural structure the procedurally generated world will come up with next, the vastness of valleys and mountains constantly pushing the player to go further.

From an audiovisual standpoint, it would appear that Minecraft is still under construction even this late in its release cycle. C418’s piano orchestrations sound great in the game, and the simple piano and synth soundtrack frames the game's theme well, adding great emotional ambiance. Sound effects have been vastly improved since the game's beta and now apply to all the game's objects. The high dynamic range of the audio gives night time a palpable sense of creepiness as zombies and creepers moan right outside the door.

Impact and Community
Minecraft’s creator, Markus “Notch” Perrson, expressed interest from an early point in making Minecraft open-source after sales died down. Already a vast amount of the game’s codebase is open and modifiable, giving the game an unforeseen educational and creative value. More importantly, the game’s openness has spawned a mammoth mod community unseen since the hacker culture of the early 90s. If playing the core game gives the illusion that anything can be done in Minecraft, editing the game’s source and installing modifications proves that anything can be really done in the game.

The game’s empowering truly comes to life in the various community mods for the game. Portalcraft, for one, turns the entire game into a reimagining of Valve’s subversive puzzler. An upcoming Zelda mod promises to build another entry in the venerable series, complete with functional items, environmental puzzles, dungeons and bosses. Pokemob, nearing a state of completion, recreates the entire Kanto region with complete character models for the original 151, and, oh yes, all the gameplay functionality of the original game, such as inventory, battles and Gym Leaders, will be implemented in the mod. Sadly, no word on Missingno.

Minecraft’s openness has had a social impact on my community. I witnessed several people from my school who had no interest whatsoever in video games become enthralled by the idea of learning how to program in Java and build character models. Despite a lockdown on modifying school computers, Minecraft executables began to pop up on desktops like weeds. School bandwidth plummeted as multiplayer servers were clandestinely run on the community network. Its an easy game to become instantly obsessed with, and the extent of community mod support extends the value of an already infinitely replayable game to Olympian heights. A new generation of independent game developers is being incubated right now, and they are supported by the freedom that Minecraft’s code base affords them.

Conclusion
If there is one game you purchase this year, let it be Minecraft. Minecraft touched my soul in a way that I never imagined possible after my tenth birthday. This is a pioneering game and the embodiment of the values of freedom upheld by computer hackers that have been drowned out since corporations began to encroach on the medium. Notch and Mojang have effectively captured lightning in a bottle: the childlike playfulness that drew us to gaming in the first place. As we became entrenched in shooter after shooter, fighting game after fighting game, we have forgotten the youthful joy we so desperately sought after. How fitting is it that the original wonder of childhood would manifest itself in a world that, much like our own, is procedurally generated, be it through science or the rule of God. Minecraft shines as a beacon of hope, not just for gaming, but for mankind. Play this game… and tremble. 5/5

Statement on the Incident at Occupy Oakland

2011-11-10T18:35:00.001-08:00

In light of the shooting to happen at Occupy Oakland, let it be known that we are a movement not to be characterized by violence and brutality. Should we wish to succeed in our battle for justice, we must act justly ourselves. Our message must not be corrupted by sensationalistic media wishing to pin sweeping generalizations of a diverse mass of idealistic and hopeful people on the actions of a few. Like it is with the rest of America, it takes 1% of our population to ruin everything for the 99%. If we seriously want to succeed, we must maintain our solidarity by remaining a pacifistic, collaborative, and open movement.

Dark Deception Developer’s Diary #3

2011-11-07T17:07:00.001-08:00

It has been a good few months since the last Developer’s Diary for Dark Deception, and a lot, A LOT, has happened in the time since the last update.

For one, we now have a great new programmer. Bard Soedal of Mandal, Norway has been a Minecraft modder for several months now and has authored several Pokemon-themed character models such as a blocky Nidoking and an even blockier Pokemon Center. Awesome stuff. He’s now our new world-engineer and will be contributing his incredible talent to Team Corsehead until he returns to Norway next summer.

In terms of development, I have progressed to begin building the ESA Power Plant, the game’s first dungeon and the location of a critical story event driving the entire game’s action. It has been a long process of individually designing tiles pixel-by-pixel and laying them out. The content that you see below is pre-release content and will never reflect the look of the final version of the game.

All pretty cool stuff, the boards above collectively took about two months to construct.

I’ve been taking AP Computer Science since the start of the school year and in the few months I’ve been studying Java, have learned enough to put together a pretty basic computational prototype built out of a bunch of if statements, a lot of void methods and a few arrays and classes. The battle loop is fully functional as are special move-systems and damage and spoils calculation. However, a lot of functionality has yet to be implemented, including a modularity system so that the same code for the battle loop can work with any given enemy, character, equipment set or move-“deck”. Furthermore, the game’s most unique characteristic, a set of three offensive and defensive stances that any character in the battlefield can take for damage mitigation and bonuses, remains under construction.

Programming has been quite a joy to learn and has the lovely effect of putting one in a meditative state as one contemplates a variety of creative ways to solve problems. A great deal of imagination is needed to code effectively. Computer Science is a language that all should have the chance to undertake. Really cool stuff.

I tried exporting the demo from Eclipse as a .jar file, but the program crashed on launch. I’ll be working on finding a way to make the demo playable to anyone who wants to try it out in the coming weeks.

Peace
Kevin

Resident Evil 4 Review

2011-11-02T11:52:00.001-07:00

Quick quiz: name the top five most influential games from the last generation.

Good job, Resident Evil 4 has been lauded universally as one of the most important games of the Gamecube/PS2/Xbox era, having pioneered third person shooting while bringing in a new era of graphical fidelity and gleeful violence. It currently retains a position comfortably as one of the highest-rated games on Metacritic and has been ported and remade multiple times in its six year lifespan. There is no doubt that Resident Evil 4 is a great game, but whether or not it has stood the test of time remains up to debate.

Story and Atmosphere

It is a cloudy afternoon in a remote Spanish mountain pass. My pistol drawn and ammuntion low, I inch forward through the woods, dry leaves crushing beneath my feet, into an empty shack on the side of the road. I find medicinal herbs and unused clips on the table. As I turn around to exit, I see a ghastly sight: the decapitated and decomposing corpse of a local woman impaled onto the shack wall. My nerves tense and I continue towards the village I was ordered to investigate.

Three villagers sit around a campfire atop a cliff. They catch sight of me as I walk down the path and immediately run away, not even taking care to extinguish their fire. My spine begins to tingle and I cross the rickety rope bridge to the village gate.

Taking cover behind a tree, I bring out my binoculars to scout out the village. There are about twenty or so farmers roaming about the square, circling a flaming stake. I peer towards the stake and see the charred corpse of the police officer that drove me here. I clench my teeth as my hand inches toward my pistol. I make a run for it.

A scream pierces the air and I double take looking for its source. One of the villagers points at me, teeth bared and the look of venom in his eyes. The chill of death shakes my bones as farmers burst out through every door, dropping their tasks and rushing towards me, teeth bared and tools ready to stab me. I bolt into an empty house and slam the door shut, pushing a dresser to barricade the door. Rushing up the stairs, I discover a shotgun. I rush towards the window and begin to open fire from above. For now, everything is alright.

I hear a knock from the balcony behind me, the villagers have pulled up a ladder. I vault through the window and throw down the ladder, hearing the sickening thud of the man’s bones crushing into the ground. But it is too late, the villagers breach through the downstairs door and the terrifying screech of a chainsaw revs into existence. I swing around the banister and fire a shotgun blast directly into the torso into the fat man with a bloodied bag over his head and the chainsaw in his hand.

But he barely flinches, the force of the shrapnel, enough to blow a normal man in two, hits him with the force of a thrown pebble. I fire again and again as my ammo runs dry, and nothing happens. He raises the chainsaw above his head and swings it into my neck. The vibration of the blade shakes my bones as my head separates from my body and I die. Behind the screen, my controller sits dropped on the floor and my mouth agape in shock.

If the narrative passage above hasn’t yet convinced you, let it be known that Resident Evil 4 is a scary and atmospheric game. Its opening sequence consistently engraves itself into the memories of all who play it. Permeating throughout all of the game’s environs is an overwhelming sense of hostility towards the player, the feeling that the player is not welcome into its bleak, dark world.

For all of its atmospheric glory, Resident Evil 4 features a rather weak and silly story grounded in conspiratorial clichés spoiled by forced presentation elements. The creepy atmosphere is all but broken when the hero discovers in the enemy base a document, helpfully titled, “OUR PLAN”. Furthermore, the game’s atrocious voice acting, holding the quality of the background voiceover of a Disneyland ride, oftentimes turns the creepiness into ridiculousness.

Gameplay

Resident Evil 4 has been universally lauded as the catalyst for the birth of the modern third-person shooter. Games as diverse as Gears of War, Red Dead Redemption and Mass Effect owe their mechanics to Resident Evil for their over-the-shoulder perspective, which included modes for quick moving and accurate shooting switchable at a moment’s notice. This allowed for a more fluid and action packed method of navigating the games environments, thus making third-person shooting precise and accurate. Audiovisual impact makes the use of each item of Leon’s arsenal extremely fun.

Some have derided Resident Evil 4 for not featuring a cover system, a gameplay mechanic that would make its way into many third-person action games to come. Frankly, this argument is invalid: Resident Evil’s enemies do not shoot at the player, thus negating the need for a cover system. The infected villagers, monks and industrial workers of the game shamble slowly like zombies, closing in for melee attacks. This forces the player to alternate between move and shoot modes as he tries to distance himself from enemies as they close in, thus establishing a rhythmic pattern of run-turn-shoot, run-turn-shoot, run-turn-shoot. Its fun stuff and establishes the game’s theme of constant terror, flight being a constant response no matter how well armed Leon may be.

And well-armed you may be, Resident Evil 4 features a RPG-like system of item acquisition and upgrades. Scattered throughout the game’s environments are treasures, which can be sold to merchants for gold. Gold in turn can buy new weapons, health upgrades, medicines and weapon-attachments. These items and upgrades are all placed in Leon’s invisible lockbox.

Managing the lockbox is again, an RPG-like system of recognizing the slots each item takes up and rotating them, moving them and removing them to squeeze a maximal amount of ammunition, medicine and weapons into as small a space as possible. It’s a process as stressful as packing.Thankfully, lockbox upgrades are available as the player progresses throughout the game, alleviating the frustration while making the player more powerful than the enemies of the game, thus making the game’s later levels far less frightening than earlier ones.

Its not all stylized ultra-violence, in fact, quirky puzzles and treasure hunts are interspersed between sections of combat, thus giving the game a needed cerebral facet. Unfortunately, the puzzles aren’t based in the gameworld and are not based on the same mechanics that ground navigation and combat. Oftentimes, the player must enter a separate screen to solve a slider puzzle or other minigame to pass through a locked door or access a hidden treasure. These puzzles are oftentimes frustrating and break up the game’s brisk pace.

Graphics/Audio

From an auditory perspective, Resident Evil 4’s sound design perfectly grounds and enhances the game’s hostile and creepy atmosphere. The quiet moan of an enemy around the corner, the clanking of metal chains and the wind quietly howling from beyond a cave are all strongly atmospheric. Tense music, unlike the voice acting, works well to improve the game’s creepiness.

Resident Evil 4 has aged relatively well over the years. While the game’s textures have abysmal resolution, beautiful lighting and character models still look great. A fantastic art style grounds each of the three environments Leon will explore, and each chapter is visually and thematically distinct. From the overwhelming hostility of a remote European village to the mysterious secret passages of a monastic castle and the crazy experiments of a island laboratory, the game’s worlds are memorable and fun to explore.

Conclusion

Resident Evil 4 may seem dated by modern standards especially in terms of its graphics and shooting mechanics. Nonetheless, the historical impact of this game is immediately perceptible, it having spawned the modern third-person shooter and introducing a new precedent for gameplay control. In spite of some forced storytelling, Resident Evil 4 maintains its shine and remains one of the finest adventures of the last generation. 4.25/5

Vampires and the One Percent

2011-10-31T20:52:00.001-07:00

(Via GraphJam. Thanks Xa)
Happy Halloween!

Sunday Sites 96

2011-10-30T19:09:00.001-07:00

Stay strong

http://anonops.blogspot.com/2011/10/this-rebellion-will-not-stop.html Twenty thousand and more

http://occupywallstreetcarepackages.tumblr.com/ I urge everyone to get involved, I myself plan to puts together guides on building gas-masks in case of tear-gas use

Protect Wikileaks

2011-10-29T09:04:00.001-07:00

You can help out here: http://shop.wikileaks.org/donate

#OccupyWallStreet – Principles for Success

2011-10-25T21:46:00.001-07:00

Just this morning, a crackdown of sorts transpired on the #OccupyOakland movement. The Associated Press wrote:

Under cover of darkness early Tuesday, hundreds of police swept into Oakland's Occupy Wall Street protest, firing tear gas and beanbag rounds before clearing out an encampment of demonstrators. In less than an hour, the 2-week-old, miniature makeshift city was in ruins. (Source)

Personally, I am greatly mortified to hear this news, word of clandestine police raids conjuring disturbing visions of V for Vendetta-esque police-states. That said, it is even more disturbing to read some of the comments on the link in question, indicating that those affected by the gratuitous lies that the media propagates tire of the movement and maintain a deeply flawed misconception of the movement.

That said, in order to preserve solidarity and hope in vein of police intervention and a false sense of jadedness and cynicism towards the movement, several things must be acknowledged by protestors.

Protestors must not break the law confrontationally. By vandalizing private property, throwing around ethnic slurs and trespassing, we come off to the media as sensationalistic hippies without a worthy cause. We know that we are not that and thus, we must act professionally to hold credibility.
Protestors must not react violently to police presence. Like in the last rule, our credibility is at stake here. A single riot would put a massive dent in the movement. 1% of the 99% can easily ruin the image of the movement for all involved.
Protestors must uphold the ideals of nonviolent civil disobedience. As a “populist” movement, there are few historical precedents to #OccupyWallStreet. Thus, we must learn from the most successful: Gandhi and King.
Protestors must persist and not be dissuaded by threats of police intervention or popular disapproval. As a movement characterized by mass civil disobedience, we must stand together in solidarity to act as a force for positive social change imprinted forever into the collective consciousness of our world. We must believe in ourselves and that our actions are valuable.

Naomi Klein wrote that the #OccupyWallStreet movement was the single most important thing happening in the world right now. Let’s give the movement the love and care it deserves.

Sunday Sites 95

2011-10-23T14:13:00.001-07:00

OWS is growing fast, we’re in the early days of a new chapter of history.

http://occupywriters.com/works/by-lemony-snicket Lemony Snicket on #OWS

http://www.alternet.org/story/152833/_10_ways_to_support_the_occupy_movement?akid=7763.301489.tKoW9G&rd=1&t=5 Ways to help out without camping out.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/mary-keck/occupy-wall-street-revolution_b_1010144.html A second American Revolution?

http://www.joystiq.com/2011/08/19/how-to-play-xenoblade-chronicles-if-you-live-in-america/ Finally, on a different note, Nintendo leaves us with no choice outside of jailbreaking.

Five Instances of Destructive Corporate Greed

2011-10-19T21:01:00.001-07:00

While I have cited instances where the #OccupyWallStreet movement is valuable, permit me to cite instances where the current economic status quo is non-valuable and explicitly detrimental. While the focus of the movement is protesting banking institutions, the ramifications of corporate greed go far beyond inequality and unemployment into a myriad of injustices. I can go far beyond five, but for the sake of time and readability, I’ll stop there.

#5: Nike, Outsourcing Slavery

Nike’s use of Chinese sweatshops to manufacture shoes is not exactly an obscure topic. Indeed, this has resulted in one of the most widely-covered boycotts in recent memory. Nonetheless, it represents perhaps one of the best examples of how cost-cutting costs lives. The meager labor laws of developing countries like China, coupled with the disparity between different types of currency, allows companies to outsource work at rates far below living wage in despicable conditions often exceeding 14 hours. Here, the maximization of profits supersedes the business’s responsibility to conduct its work in an ethical and fair manner. Thus, stockholders and boardmembers get rich at the expense of foreign laborers that they will never know.

Thankfully, Nike has since created a board to investigate conditions within their own factories. Nonetheless, Chinese sweatshop labor isn’t isolated to Nike, even the perpetually hip Apple admitted to exploitive practices for iPod manufacturing.

#4: Monsanto, Patenting Genetics

Anyone who has watched Food Inc. is familiar with the cutthroat brutality of the food industry, and Monsanto has been cited as the worst offender, consistently valuing profit over human life, freedom and prosperity. The company acquired a strain of soybean possessing a strand called the “Terminator Gene”, which causes the seeds to produce sterile plants, thus negating the chance of a second harvest. This essentially cuts away any chance of farmer-independence by forcing growers to repurchase seeds annually.

The patenting of the GMO has caused major problems for farmers at all levels. As the world’s largest supplier of seeds, farmers have little choice but to purchase the relatively inexpensive Monsanto seed. As a result, factory farm conditions explode and independent farmers are driven out of business. These exploitive practices led to a mass-exodus of small farmers in Argentina as they failed to make profit as well as an explosion of the farmer-suicide rate in India as independent farmers were plunged into debt.

#3: McDonalds, Causing the Disease of Affluence

By a large margin, McDonalds is far more panned by anticorporate groups as a symbol of the problems of globalization than any other American company. This criticism is not unfair though, and the company has a contentious history that existed before the release of Spurlock’s Super Size Me. For one, in his book Fast Food Nation, Eric Schlosser alleged that the company’s targeting of children in its marketing was responsible for the childhood obesity epidemic. This was the cause of a 2010 San Francisco law banning the inclusion of toys in Happy Meals.

In the bigger picture, what is more problematic is the price disparity between environmentally-sustainable, locally-grown food and processed fast-foods. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with Michael Pollan understands the destructive effects of the mammoth amounts of salt, sugar and saturated fat included in these foods, and the relatively high price of healthy foods relegates the poor to diets comprised of packaged and processed foods. This causes the so-called diseases of “affluence”, namely, diabetes, obesity and certain types of cancers.

#2: Sony, Restricting Intellectual Freedom

The next instance deals with the crux of the open-source movement and its advocacy of property rights when applied to software. When it was released, the Playstation 3 was touted for its ability to run Linux among other operating systems. Free-software advocates praised Sony for allowing users this freedom and the system was lauded by many.

In March of 2010, Sony cut the feature in its 3.2.1 update, thus provoking modders to attempt to restore the feature. Renowned iPhone hacker George Hotz successfully hacked the system and found a way to restore the Linux functionality and released a guide both on his blog and on YouTube. Sony sued Hotz and demanded social media sites to surrender IP addresses of people who viewed Hotz’s guides. After a complicated tangle of legal threats, a Spanish splinter group of Anonymous released a DDOS attack on Sony, thereby bringing down the Playstation Network for a record-setting month.

Sony’s infraction here constitutes an abridgement of personal autonomy and ownership rights. If an individual owns a piece of property, s/he should be able to do whatever he pleases to said property. By essentially cracking down on people possessing knowledge of how to modify the Playstation, Sony directly infringed on both the intellectual and property freedom of property owners. The company stated that the removal of the Linux feature was to prevent piracy, thereby maximizing profits. By suing GeoHotz for teaching people how to hack, Sony essentially abridges the all-important freedom of knowledge, thereby obstructing democracy.

#1: Outsourcing, Subverting Trickle-Down Economics to the Cost of All

The final instance that I will talk about does not deal with a single corporation, but rather an economically unsustainable trend resulting in recession. In order to maximize profits, corporations outsource work to developing countries where products can be manufactured or work can be done for a comparatively low price. While I do support stimulating the economies of developing countries, infant labor laws allow for corporations to pay paltry wages in unethical conditions. Furthermore, while our modern economy is a global one, outsourcing work causes people to lose jobs on the national level. As jobs are shipped overseas, our own economy is neglected and the “trickle-down” effect is subverted. Thus, Americans lose jobs and movements like Occupy Wall Street happen as the percentage unemployed skyrockets.

Corporate Sponsorship, Politicians and NASCAR

2011-10-19T11:35:00.001-07:00

via YourAnonNews

Sunday Sites 94

2011-10-16T13:23:00.001-07:00

After a long hiatus, here are Sunday Sites

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/08/15/110815fa_fact_bissell Tom Bissell profiles Jennifer Hale, voice actor behind Commander Shepard, for the New Yorker

http://www.mangatutorials.com/forum/showthread.php?742-The-Ultimate-Indie-Game-Developer-Resource-List Indie studios, use this list.

http://www.businessinsider.com/what-wall-street-protesters-are-so-angry-about-2011-10?op=1 Occupy Wall Street and the numbers behind it

http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2011/10/copyright-czar-cozies-up/ Leaked emails from the “Copyright Czar”, profiteering much?

The Value of #OccupyWallStreet

2011-10-13T10:57:00.001-07:00

27 Days, 800 people arrested, their deplorable crime: wearing masks.

In our time, power and influence depends on wealth. Corporations are treated by governments as tantamount to citizens and our artistic culture has “evolved” into an “industry”. The monumental cost of locally grown food relegates the poor to lethal diets of processed fast-foods and the encroachment of corporations on artistic mediums drowns out visionaries. As the objects of American profiteering, we will not stand for injustice. Thus hundreds of thousands of disaffected people from every imaginable political, socioeconomic and cultural background gathered to take back justice in the largest movement since the Battle of Seattle.

The hacker collective Anonymous, whom which I admire strongly, has backed the movement strongly. In an official statement on their blog, they wrote:

Through a direct democratic process, we have come together as individuals and crafted these principles of solidarity, which are points of unity that include but are not limited to:
§ Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy;
§ Exercising personal and collective responsibility;
§ Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions;
§ Empowering one another against all forms of oppression;
§ Redefining how labor is valued;
§ The sanctity of individual privacy;
§ The belief that education is human right; and
§ Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source.
We are daring to imagine a new socio-political and economic alternative that offers greater possibility of equality. We are consolidating the other proposed principles of solidarity, after which demands will follow.

It is becoming increasingly clear that Occupy Wall Street is maturing into what could possibly be the left’s response to the Tea Party. However, unlike the Tea Party, the movement’s goal is to advocate for the freedom of every human being. Ivy League professors came to New York’s Zuccotti Park in droves to give free lectures to protestors, soup tents, medical bays and PR stations were established in tents for the movement’s encampment. Renowned anti-capitalist Noam Chomsky wrote: “Anyone with eyes open knows that the gangsterism of Wall Street -- financial institutions generally -- has caused severe damage to the people of the United States (and the world)… They also carry out these ugly activities with almost complete impunity -- not only too big to fail, but also ‘too big to jail.’”.

The movement has gained momentum and similar protests have manifested in hundreds of American cities. On the home front, an Occupy San Francisco movement has appeared, a major encampment arising outside of the Federal Building. Hundreds were arrested, their crime: simply trespassing. Furthermore, they were derided for failing to provide the media the imagery of broken glass and mass chaos that draws so many readers.

Some have drawn ideological parallels between Occupy Wall Street and 1999’s Battle of Seattle. The primary difference between the two is that today’s movement has targeted a formerly-trustworthy institution responsible for outsourcing slavery, vast economic disparities and the disease of poverty. 1999’s protestors targeted a WTO summit lasting for only a week, which meant that their message and presence would only exist for a week before being lost to the insatiable maws of time. In targeting a long-standing institution, occupants hope that their message will not be eternal, and that they can bring a light of hope to thousands of disaffected people harmed by the unrestrained greed that capitalism is engineered to create.

Statement on Steve Job’s Death

2011-10-05T20:36:00.001-07:00

I would like to acknowledge Steve Jobs for opening the art form of the video game to people everywhere through iOS, as well as revolutionizing casual mobile gaming and touch-screen controls. Thanks to him, everyone's a gamer, be it through Angry Birds, Tiny Wings or Plants vs. Zombies, the gaming culture now permeates through the worldwide consciousness. He was a talented innovator and amongst the most creative entrepreneurs of recent memory, his influence upon computing will be felt for decades to come.

Battlefield 3 Beta Impressions

2011-10-02T17:45:00.001-07:00

I just had the chance to try out the new open beta for Battlefield 3, and immediately took note of several positive changes that make the once monolithic shooter more approachable.

For starters, the beta features a single map with a single game mode. Operation Metro is a four-part map set in France, progressive stages of the map take place in a open park, subway tunnel, a station and a set of streets. The Rush gametype is reminiscent of Counter-Strike mixed with Team Fortress 2, with one team moving down a linear map attempting to blow up “comm-stations” while the other team tries to prevent their success until the time runs out. Its more fast-paced, fun and accessible than the Conquest gametypes of Battlefield’s past. A persistent system of unlocks and level-ups rewards players who do well in games, I got a cool new shotgun after just ten-minutes of play.

Completely revamped is the scoring mechanism, which is far juicier and overarching than it was in the past. Experience is rewarding for everything strategic, for assisting kills, giving health and ammo, achieving objectives and scoring headshots. Most notable is the “suppression” system. Should players shoot at an enemy without successfully hitting him, said enemy would suffer from blurred vision as bullets whizz by. Its a system that adds strategic depth to the game as victims are forced to retreat into cover and newbies have a way to contribute to the team without actually killing anybody.

Particularly problematic in Battlefield 2 was the dominion of snipers over entire maps. Battlefield 3 alleviates the problem by adding specific weaknesses to sniper rifles. For one, lens flare notifies targets that they are being spotted, allowing them a short time to react and defend themselves by returning suppressive fire. Its a system that both adds tension while balancing gameplay.

One balancing issue that was problematic in underground areas was the capability of a single weapon to dominate the battlefield: a flashlight. When mounted to the barrel of a rifle, the flashlight entirely blinds its victims, forcing them to return fire blindly in hope of survival. While the flashlight does give away enemy positions, it does severely weaken players that fall into its scope.

As to be expected from beta software, the game still is very buggy and features a host of gameplay glitches. Falling through the environment was problematic and forced me to suicide to respawn and re-enter the game. Clipping issues allow for snipers to fight from inside rocks and dash underneath hills. Hopefully, EA will have the chance to iron out these glitches before the game launches officially in three weeks.

One thing that surprised me was the degree of environmental destructibility that the physics engine afforded. I smiled in glee as my grenade detached three radiators from the wall and tossed them aside in a flurry of rubble and dust. Hopefully, this can serve to a greater strategic purpose besides just looking pretty.

Overall, I enjoyed my time with the open-beta. While the beta featured none of the game’s much-touted vehicles, I had a lot of fun with the Counter-Strike like attack/defend gameplay. The linear maps gave the game a much more focused feel and prevented me from aimlessly wandering around the map in confusion. Ultimately, the beta works well to whet my appetite for innovation in multiplayer shooters. I look forward to seeing where this game goes.

Bioshock 2 Review

2011-09-29T14:49:00.001-07:00

Having not played the first Bioshock before delving into its sequel, I can attest that the game is inexplicably weird. The game is unlike anything I have ever played, the closest precedent to it would be the incredible Metroid Prime. Amazingly ambitious, the game attempts to tell a story with the depth and breath of an RPG through the lens of an action-based first-person shooter. Its an interesting experiment in the vein of neoshooters like Portal.

Gameplay
Bioshock 2 is far more combat oriented than its predecessor, featuring an entirely revamped combat and character-upgrade system. Players can now dual wield Plasmid Powers and weapons, allowing for simultaneous combo-attacks such as freezing an enemy solid and shattering him with a shotgun blast. Plasmid powers are still acquired and upgraded with ADAM, the acquisition of which is revamped.

As a hulking Big-Daddy, the player has the option of participating in a minigame where he must protect a Little Sister as she collects ADAM from corpses as waves of splicers attack. Its a fun and integral part of the game wielding a multitude of rewards. The binary “Bioshock-Morality” system is still present and unchanged, allowing the player to greedily harvest Little Sisters or restore them to uncorrupted girlhood. “Power to the People” stations, which appear once a level, allow for permanent upgrades to be made to guns, allowing for such gleeful weaponry as incendiary shotguns and freezing speargun bolts. While this constant character progression is indeed fun and rewarding, it does throw off the balance of the gameplay, as the game’s first hours are exponentially harder than its later hours.

One of the major concerns about the first Bioshock was its lack of online multiplayer. Bioshock 2 remediates this flaw by including a multiplayer mode unlike that of anything else in the shooter-market. Like in the single-player game, players dual-wield plasmid powers and guns, and the same strategic combinations still stand. Unique to the mode are hackable turrets for strategic defense and “corpse-research”, which allows for a substantial damage bonus to be acquired if one photographs a fallen-enemy’s corpse. Much like Call of Duty, a persistent system of unlocks is available giving the player reason to continue playing. Much unlike Call of Duty, combat is not frustrating and always balanced. Unfortunately, in my experience with the game, the only playlist that is consistently populated are for the Team Deathmatch and Deathmatch gametypes.

Story
Bioshock was lauded for having one of the most impactful narratives of any action-game to date. As a gameworld-exploration of the moral ramifications of Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism, it ventured into territory unknown to most gamers.

Taking place over ten years after the events of the first game, Bioshock 2 returns the player to the dystopian world of Rapture. The underwater city has been overrun by drug addicted splicers led by the cruel-Collectivist/Altruist Sophia Lamb. The player takes the role of Subject Delta, the original Big Daddy, who had his protectorate, Eleanor, stolen from him by Lamb and was forced to commit suicide. One day, he finds himself brought back to life and begins a quest to rescue Eleanor.

Unfortunately, Bioshock 2’s narrative is far less impactful than that of its predecessor. The new Rapture of the 70s, in its glorious ruin, is far less visually impactful than its predecessor. It is still beautiful, especially in its underwater areas, but the world itself does not support the game’s main theme of the dehumanizing aspects of collectivism. Sophia Lamb is not as charismatic or deplorable an antagonist than Andrew Ryan, and her influence in the gameworld is not as pronounced.

The game features a series of moral choices that will influence the story’s conclusion. Most of these amount to the decision to spare or kill a key enemy, and it becomes immediately clear what the game considers good or evil. This binary approach to morality is problematic given the comparative depth of the game’s philosophy. I chose to rescue every Little Sister I encountered and was equally rewarded as if I were to harvest them.

Graphics/Audio
Graphically, the game is gorgeous from an artistic and technical perspective. The dystopian 1950’s-era Art Deco world is pronounced, richly unique and starkly believable in its bleakness. The underwater city is collapsing, and evidence of decay is omnipresent in the world as water leaks in through cracks and breaches in the windows and wood begins to rot.

Excellent use of light and shadow strongly improves the visual impact of the game, setting forward the bleak mood of Lamb’s version of Rapture. Great sound effects lend an appropriate visceral rush to combat, and a 40’s era soundtrack grounds the setting nicely.

Conclusion
I greatly enjoyed my time with Bioshock 2, and while it may not be as unique as its predecessor, it remains refreshing and absorbing to those jaded by identical military shooters. The wonderful graphical style, realized gameworld and deep combat win the game the commendable score of 4.25/5.

Occupy Wall Street – Police Brutality

2011-09-27T21:33:00.001-07:00

If you haven’t been living under a rock, you may be aware that Wall Street has fallen under mass protests against corporate corruption and an imbalance of power. Anonymous has covered the protests extensively, calling them out as a beacon of social justice in an increasingly bleak world. Check out the below video, its the 60s of the 2010s.

From the above post, this is what Anonymous believes.

Engaging in direct and transparent participatory democracy; (always has been Anon’s strong suit)
Exercising personal and collective responsibility; (Varies amongst the members of the collective, many do not act accountably for their actions)
Recognizing individuals’ inherent privilege and the influence it has on all interactions; (The voice of the internet generation)
Empowering one another against all forms of oppression; (What the world needs)
Redefining how labor is valued; (Humans are not assets)
The sanctity of individual privacy; (Needs work, Anonymous, as a hacker collective, needs to solidly define ethical uses of hacking and protecting data)
The belief that education is human right; (Protip: Government Education isn’t reliably funded)
Endeavoring to practice and support wide application of open source. (What about piracy? That’s an issue that should be discussed from all sides. Interesting topic given the GeoHotz case and the Great Playstation Network Outage of 2011)

Incredible stuff is happening here, stay tuned.

Sunday Sites 93

2011-09-25T19:45:00.001-07:00

After a hell of a week, here are the Sunday Sites for the past two weeks.

http://cs.nyu.edu/trackmenot/ Firefox extension that floods search engines with random queries so companies cannot create an accurate profile of you.

http://forums.whyweprotest.net/threads/what-has-anonymous-done-for-you.15421/ Fascinating thread on the sociology of Anonymous members.

http://news.cnet.com/8301-17852_3-20111162-71/man-spontaneously-combusted-coroner-says IT’S REAL!

http://news.yahoo.com/protesters-march-manhattan-criticizing-wall-street-020846594.html The result of Camp Wall Street is shocking in its effectiveness.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2041574/Facebook-New-feature-allow-users-know-doesnt-like-them.html Nope. Keeping anonymous defriending protects real-life relationships.

Memories of a 7-Year-Old of 9/11

2011-09-11T10:47:00.001-07:00

The following is a draft of an article slated to appear on the round table.

Today marks the tenth anniversary of the September 11^th attacks on the World Trade Center, a day forever engraved into the collective consciousness of the generations that lived through it. For America, it served as a rite of passage into the annals of world history, marking a new era of diplomatic relations. It served as the catalyst for rampant Islamophobia, an increasingly chaotic global economy and greater militarization of national security.

On the local level, the September 11^th attacks have made their mark on the memories of every member of the Stuart Hall community. I myself remember clearly the day of the attack. I was abruptly woken up the morning of the attack by my mother. She seemed panicked, telling me that the Twin Towers had been attacked and destroyed. I was incredulous and thought she was joking.

When I arrived at school, it became bleakly clear that she wasn’t. Half the kids of Mr. Bertrand’s Second Grade class were missing. My carpooler was reticent to drive me, fearing that a similar attack would transpire at school because “that’s where all the tall buildings are”. That night, Nick News interrupted standard programming to hold a special episode explaining the incident to the confused and puzzled children of the world, their innocence, like that of the nation, shattered prematurely by the tragedy.

Ten years have passed since that fateful day sent ripples through the world, and a solemn sense of reverence permeates through the populace. Senior Joe Hildula says that “I believe it is a time to mourn, but it is definitely not a time to throw invective around or take sides and put blame on Muslims”. Andrew Fejt commends the service-minded spirit surrounding the anniversary, “It’s awesome that people are being constructive about it”. Devan Patel adds that “It will forever leave a mark on history, as the generation that experienced it, I don’t think we can see it through a historical perspective, but rather a personal one.”

America is a much changed nation ten years into the 21^st century. Technological innovation has turned the internet to the mainstream and communication has hence changed. Two Bush administrations and one Obama administration has left the nation wary of surveillance and corruption. What has not changed is the indefatigable sense of love and reverence towards those lost on that day.

Note: if you please, please observe an online “Moment of Silence” by removing your profile picture today as I have. Thank you.

Sign of the Times

2011-09-05T16:25:00.001-07:00

Sign of the Times, a photo by -Marlith- on Flickr.

Goodbye Borders, you've done well to show us that the only thing that's going to get the nation to read is a "Going Out of Business" Sale. Thank you also, for giving comfy chairs to sit on as I demoed books before buying them off Amazon.

Sunday Sites 92

2011-09-04T20:36:00.000-07:00

Busy as hell this week, hoping to upload a review of Bioshock 2 if I’m lucky

http://dazzlepod.com/cable/ Wikileaks browser, all cables in a easy-to-navigate, searchable format
http://www.postitwar.com/ Frickin’ awesome
http://indiegames.com/2011/08/trailer_mass_effect_-_dark_cor.html Thought you might like
http://www.cs.rpi.edu/academics/courses/fall00/ethics/papers/bironj2.html Essay on ethics of piracy
http://matpalm.com/blog/2011/08/13/wikipedia-philosophy/ Fact: I won six clicks to philosophy in 2 turns.

Sunday Sites 91

2011-08-28T17:19:00.001-07:00

Here we go again.

http://www.nytimes.com/roomfordebate/2011/08/03/can-new-york-rival-silicon-valley-for-start-ups/silicon-valley-has-a-head-start-on-new-york?scp=5&sq=Carnegie%20Mellon&st=cse Can New York rival Silicon Valley in terms of startup companies?

http://features.caltech.edu/features/219 Perhaps the Platonic form of badass – a black hole ripping a star to shreds

http://memebase.com/ragebuilder/ Thank you, Sean.

And that’s it for this week

The Corsehead Manifesto

2011-08-27T14:48:00.001-07:00

Perhaps the most important aspect of my character is my relationship with video games, the artistic medium for which I have the greatest affinity for. As head of Team Corsehead, I hold considerable ambivalence towards the current state of the industry, which can be considered unethical at worst. For one, the modern gaming scene lacks innovation and creativity. Megafranchises like Call of Duty release new, marginally updated sequels each year, the success of which other publishers attempt to rip off on. As a result, the video game scene is oversaturated by practically identical military or sci-fi themed shooters. This artistic “Dark Age” can be attributed to the monumental cost of creating games. With investments totaling in the tens of millions of dollars, publishing companies cannot afford to risk failure by adopting experimental gameplay styles and themes. Furthermore, acknowledging that the price of a video game often totals to $60, consumers are discouraged from playing games that dare to differ from the norm, fearing that their money will be wasted on a game that is too risky. Thus, it becomes indescribably difficult for amateurs to enter the video-game industry and have their creative voice heard.

Perhaps the most noted failure in recent memory is the release of the subscription-based multiplayer shooter APB, which cost its publisher and developer $100 million of investor money. The game was innovative and featured multiple interesting and creative ideas, the most notable of which allowed players to form organized clans to cause mayhem whilst unlocking unique upgrades and equipment. When it was released in September of 2010, APB was met with harshly critical reviews and became a commercial failure. Subscriptions for the game were cancelled a month after its launch and its formerly prestigious and renowned studio was shut down. Particularly egregious about APB’s lifespan is how its failure ruined the lives of its individual developers, many of which had little say in correcting fundamental flaws in the game’s design. An executive up in publishing with little knowledge of game design might order for a particular style of gameplay to be created, and experienced game designers must submit to a plan defective by design destined for self-destruction.

Also disappointing to see in modern, mainstream gaming is the medium’s total failure to approach themes and motifs outside of the very familiar. For most action games, the only type of conflict explored is violent, oppositional conflict. For politically charged military shooters dealing with interesting and volatile subject matter, it is shocking to see that these games have little to say about their themes and motifs on a philosophical level. My stats screen in Call of Duty states that I have killed hundreds, if not thousands of people, yet the numbers affect me as much as a batting average. When the only thing that a violent game can say about the political and cultural conflict contained within its story is that violence is violent and evil is evil, we find that video games fail to take advantage of their recently-won constitutional protection. Ideally, games should utilize their interactivity and violence to promote discussion of weighty subjects such as war, morality and political disconnectedness. One series that does succeed on this level is Portal, a puzzle-game which uses its environments, game-rules and controls to explore the plight of feminism in a westernized postcolonial era. Another is Bioshock, an adventure-shooter that explores the moral and societal implications of Ayn Rand’s Objectivism.

Thus manifests Team Corsehead’s mission for the world. In order to create a better world, we must bring down the unsustainable corporatism of the game-industry that has suppressed creativity and prevented experimentation for studios everywhere. We must create innovative and interesting games that utilize the perks of the medium to convey societally relevant themes in a way that only video games can achieve. We must use our power as a studio ethically to open up the industry for amateur studios, creating a world where everyone’s creative voice can be heard. Most importantly, we must use our games to make the world a better place for everyone to live in.

That said, we are currently working on two projects. Dark Deception is a sci-fi/fantasy adventure game with a strong pacifist subtext exploring certain aspects of Taoism. The game takes place in Southern California in the year 2019; eleven years after an apocalyptic coup left the region loosely “governed” by two private mercenary corporations, MAC and ESA. The narrative follows the highly personal adventure of Xavier Harvey, a mercenary from the MAC Corporation, who is sent on a covert mission to sabotage the ESA Company, thus breaking an eleven-year old truce and setting forward a course of events that will leave the game’s universe changed forever by the player’s moral choices. The game is currently in early stages of development and will likely take several years to complete in the unlikely chance that it will survive to realization.

The second game we are working on is the tentatively titled Project 1715, which is currently in an embryonic stage. The game will be an interactive drama where the player takes the role of a high school student trying to prevent his best friend’s suicide. With it, we hope to push norms regarding what is considered a “good story” for video games and discuss mature themes that games have averted since their inception.

I hold the unwavering conviction that the games industry is headed in the wrong direction. Through our games, we hope to act as a beacon of hope for game developers and gamers everywhere. We seek to save the industry from self-destroying by opening the medium to people from all walks of life. We are Team Corsehead, and this is our manifesto.

~ Kevin

Sunday Sites 90

2011-08-21T18:00:00.001-07:00

Again, sorry for the delay. Its mid month and here is Sunday Sites 90

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_changes_in_Star_Wars_re-releases +1 for violating WP:NOTABILITY

http://www.mithral.com/~beberg/manifesto.html Speaks volumes about how the fabric of technology has evolved over time

http://www.nohighscores.com/node/1371 Btw, your morality sucks

http://www.mindingthecampus.com/originals/2010/12/why_caltech_is_in_a_class_by_i.html Brilliant article about how Affirmative Action, Legacy Applicants and Athletic Scholarships have dampened the meaning of edification. (Thanks Daniel!)

A Quickie Art Reveal for Dark Deception

2011-08-19T19:34:00.001-07:00

My good friend Diego Otero-Caldwell will be unable to contribute to Dark Deception’s development. Nonetheless, here are three great pieces of concept art that have been completed over the summer. Check them out.

Sample character designs for a tentative Xavier

Sample vehicle designs

Sample weapons designs

Sample character notes.

And that’s it for now, stay tuned for more of Dark Deception’s infinite odyssey.

Song of Healing

2011-08-13T18:12:00.001-07:00

Out of procrastination, I was unable to complete a blog post for this week. So consider this video my apology.

Ehh… Not too impressive? Try this.

Really, sorry. I’ve been working to complete Mass Effect 2 for review and will have something cool out next week.

Sunday Sites 89

2011-08-07T21:12:00.001-07:00

Can’t talk, suffering from post-Mass Effect depression.

http://www.thisiscraig.com/ Former IGN editor Craig Harris’s blog

http://boingboing.net/2011/08/02/missouri-state-business-school-professor-leads-successful-campaign-to-ban-slaughterhouse-five-from-local-schools.html As the URL states, perturbing.

http://talkaboutequality.wordpress.com/2011/08/01/if-a-married-lesbian-couple-saves-40-teens-from-the-norway-massacre-and-no-one-writes-about-it-did-it-really-happen/ Did it?

http://www.wired.com/magazine/2011/07/friendship_limits/ Facebook, less about friendship and socializing than personal branding and self-marketing.

Mass Effect 2 Review

2011-08-06T11:14:00.001-07:00

I have discussed my dear Mass Effect series before on this site from a philosophical/moral perspective and praised it for pushing morality beyond binary norms of good and evil, instead critiquing player’s actions from a deontological and teleological perspective. While that stood as more of a critique of the game as a literary work, here I will discuss the game from a more traditional, “review” standpoint.

Yet, before we begin, I must make a single, absolutist statement. Buy Mass Effect 2, the game is a wondrous journey into a richly imaginative universe populated with interesting characters and incredible worlds.

Gameplay

From a gameplay perspective, Mass Effect 2 is an amalgam of third-person shooter and role-playing game tropes, its main gameplay sections being divided into combat and conversation. Fighting is done in semi-real time, allowing the player to pause the action at any point during a battle to assign commands and cast “spells”, when played in real-time, Mass Effect 2 operates very similarly to a cover-based shooter, forcing the player to dance in and out of cover with visceral grace. Upgradable powers and experience points level out the game’s RPG elements, adding the strategic depth of character development to the game. Ultimately, Mass Effect 2’s combat engine creates a perfect marriage of RPG and shooter elements, and as a result, what we have is a fluid cover-based shooter with enough tactical depth to recall classics like Diablo and Knights of the Old Republic. While it is true that Mass Effect can be considered to be a “casual-ized” and “dumbed-down” RPG, this works to the game’s benefit, having fewer opportunities to level-up and fewer points to allocate makes upgrade decisions more meaningful.

Nonetheless, combat is marred only by questionable friendly AI. While there are squad commands for holding positions, advancing and retreating, these do not necessarily work, and when left to their own intuition, oftentimes fail to use cover. It is truly jarring to see your feeble, mage-type character vault over a barrier to engage a horde of Krogans using his weak pistol.

Where it comes to conversation, Mass Effect 2 radically simplifies discussion through its “Paraphrase System” and its dialogue wheel. Up to six dialogue choices can be chosen from a radial menu, each of them summarized in brief on it. While this does reduce the amount of reading one has to deal with, it does create some awkward moments when the paraphrased choices fail to embody the tone and nature of the inherent dialogue choice. And as a result, Mass Effect 2’s conversations are imperfect.

Where the game’s conversations do excel at, though, is the narrative impact that each interaction has. Relationships between characters can be built or destroyed, and the choices that the player will make will have far reaching impact far beyond the scope of the immediate games. As a result, the Mass Effect trilogy feels less like a series of self-contained games, but rather a single continuous story meant to be played from start to finish. Indeed, the narrative power afforded to the player by the game justifies the name, the player has a Massive Effect.

That said, Mass Effect 2 suffers from a few technical faults. One such problem comes in the form of load times, which, while not monumental, are still annoying in environments that require many map-transfers or reloads. This is especially problematic in the multi-leveled Normandy. Crew member reside on each of the ships different floors, and suffering a 45 second load time to converse with each floor of characters remained a severe turn-off to the game’s best aspect.

Furthermore, a few technical problems, such as slow-loading textures and glitchy collision detection on vehicular levels are inherited from the game’s predecessor. This however is rare and occurs only during a few select DLC chapters.

Story

Mass Effect 2’s story ties directly into the events of the first game, thus, it comes as highly recommended to experience the tale of the first game before plunging into Mass Effect 2. (The PC version is $20 on Steam and has relatively tame system requirements for an action-RPG, I was able to run it on a 2.0 GHz Pentium Laptop with an integrated graphics card.) That said, Playstation 3 players can download a beautifully drawn interactive comic book summarizing the events of the first game. What tames this prospect is the fact that the comic does little to emphasize the moral weight and impact of the game’s choices and characters, and thus, while the player might understand the first game’s story, little in way of emotional connection is established.

That said, Mass Effect 2 takes place approximately two years after the events of the first game. Protagonist Jane Shepard is killed by a passing alien ship before her charred body is captured by Human-Supremacist organization Cerberus. Aliens called Collectors from deep space are abducting human colonies and Shepard, now a galactic hero from her exploits against the Reapers of the first game, must investigate the problem and assemble a team to deal with it. What follows is an epic and very personal saga involving a multitude of realistically written characters. Surprising plot twists keep the story interesting with every mission, and the battle to attain each crewmember’s loyalty is both moving and entertaining. A wonderfully realized universe is filled with imagined histories and lore. One of the best aspects of Mass Effect is its “Codex”, an encyclopedia of lore so well written that the game’s optimistic sci-fi universe seems to be a viable place to spend one’s imagined life.

Calling the character arcs “interesting and realistic” does little to describe the depth and care put into their creation. Characters are exceptionally well written and feature incredible voice acting. Through idle conversation and active “loyalty missions”, the player must develop a relationship with each of them, and by the game’s conclusion, the player will feel like he has made a lifelong friend of these virtual characters. Particularly memorable is the saga of Garrus Valkarian, a Turian operating his own version of justice on the crime-ridden planet of Omega, his long-ingrained memories of revenge and injustice characterize him as one of the game’s most interesting characters. Mordin Solus, a hyperactive Salarian doctor, who initially comes off as a source of comic relief, contributes strongly to the game’s extensive lore by his regrettable involvement in the Genophage, a synthetic disease that severely damaged the galaxy’s population of Krogan. While the game may be dark in tone, intense drama and self-referential humor are done with such great care that exploration is fun and rewarding.

One of two problems that can be said of Mass Effect’s narrative is that the paraphrase system occasionally creates moments where the player does not feel in control of the conversation. This is especially apparent during conversations with potential romantic partners, where Shepard will invariably open a conversation with a flirty line whether or not the player wants to participate in a romantic subquest.

The second problem comes in terms of the game’s morality system. While eschewing a single, sliding-morality meter in favor of two meters for respective “paragon” and “renegade” choices. The two are meant to symbolize the player’s tendency to adhere to either deontological and teleological ethics in given situations, which, in theory, is a great idea that will eliminate binary morality. What makes this problematic is that situational choices are still binary in nature. Players who adhere to the deontological path are portrayed as noble, kind and heroic, whereas players on the teleological path see their Shepard’s behave selfishly and cruelly, forming Sith-like facial scars. This reduces what was intended to be a multifaceted and realistic version of morality into a binary one.

Graphics and Audio

From a graphical perspective, Mass Effect 2 is an artistic and technical triumph. Alien races are convincingly portrayed and go far beyond the “Muppets in Space” the original Star Wars was decried for. Even more striking is the diverse variety of worlds that the player will traverse through. The Asari colony of Illium evokes Coruscant’s skyscrapers with saturated blue and purple to create a very cosmopolitan-feeling planet. Similarly, the red and brown streets of slummy Omega work wonderfully to showcase the decrepit imagined history of crime-filled ghettoes and gangs. The post-apocalyptic wasteland of Tuchanka is impressive in the scope of destruction it has suffered, and the memories of a previous civilization are evident in its Varren-infested surroundings. Each planet is artistically unique and impressive, making for an imaginative diversity of styles unheard of in most games.

Technically, Mass Effect 2 is far improved over the first game. Facial animation is incredibly detailed and bridges the uncanny valley with grace. Lighting, particles and textures realize the artists’ vision with skill and finesse, and Mass Effect 2 is one of the prettiest games on consoles… at least when its not hit by one of its exceedingly rare graphical glitches.

From an auditory perspective, Mass Effect 2’s cast of skilled voice actors is a treat for the ears. An inspired performance by Jennifer Hale as Jane Shepard is a highlight, her tonally intense yet open style connects the player to her actions wonderfully. Seth Green’s “Joker” and Martin Sheen’s Illusive Man also give wonderful performances, conveying respectively the character’s sarcasm and mystery with finesse. Sound effects and music set the emotional tone well for combat and conversation, adding to the intensity of the game’s battles.

Conclusion

Mass Effect 2 is one of those games that will take over your mind and inhabit your thoughts and daydreams. With a cast of lovable characters, an inspired universe and visceral-yet-strategic combat, Mass Effect 2 surpasses its predecessor with aplomb and solidifies its place with RPG-greats like Chrono Trigger and KOTOR. Play this game. 4.75/5

Sunday Sites 88

2011-07-31T20:11:00.001-07:00

Currently playing Mass Effect 2, its one of the most engrossing RPGs I’ve every had the pleasure of experiencing.

http://ds.ign.com/articles/118/1184670p1.html People who have been following the gaming world should know that Nintendo isn’t doing too well. Well, that’s good for us, price cuts and free games for the win.

http://gaygamer.net/2011/07/vote_for_the_default_femshep_i.html At Comic-Con, a contest was held to chose a new default version of Jane Shepard for Mass Effect 3, since beauty is what matters for female characters.

http://www.sfweekly.com/2011-07-20/news/leland-yee-record-mayor-crimes-report-matt-smith/ Leland Yee is a potential mayoral candidate, why that’s questionable.

Portal as an Exploration of Postcolonial Femininity

2011-07-28T18:40:00.001-07:00

The Portal games are renowned for their renunciation of video game tropes, seeking to arouse emotions other than visceral excitement, thus challenging players to use intellect rather than reflexes. They are some of the finest games to be released in the past decade, and have remained relevant in the blogosphere for their subversive feminist subtext. Several, very fine works have been written on the subject. Here, I will attempt to analyze the game’s commentary on the role of several different versions of femininity and their place in a postcolonial, male-centric society.

Before we begin, I shall make the assumption that the reader has a basic familiarity with the Portal series, having played the games or at least watched gameplay videos. For the uninitiated, Portal follows the story of Chell, a woman who wakes up in Aperture Science’s Enrichment Center, and is forced by an omniscient AI to go through a series of puzzle-chambers (check the below trailer to learn more). Another thing that I must explain beforehand is the basic components of semiotics. In essence, a “sign” is a unit of meaning that points to something other than itself, basically, a symbol. Portal is filled to the brink of such signs, which manifest themselves through narrative, characters, environments, even gameplay styles. While I am no women’s studies expert and am familiar with The Second Sex only in skimming, I believe that, as a teenager male gamer, I can bring another perspective to the debate on Portal and feminism.

GlaDOS the Dominatrix

What makes Portal’s omniscient AI antagonist, GlaDOS, so brilliant, is the constant evolution of her identity through several different versions of femininity. The game’s backstory suggests that, when she was created by an elite team of Aperture Science Engineers, she immediately went rouge and released a deadly neurotoxin into the facility to kill hundreds of scientists. In a desperate attempt to stop her reign of terror, Aperture Scientists installed a “morality core” to make her docile.

In this moment, it becomes clear that GlaDOS, prior to the installation of the “morality core”, represents a violent and subversive form of femininity threatening to the male-dominated order of society. In essence, her use of violence to break out of her gender-role equates her to a dominatrix. The installation of her “morality core” thus represents how gender norms repress subversive femininity by creating a set of feminine ideals of submissiveness that GlaDOS must now live up to. Thus, Aperture Scientists signify how binary gender ideals like those of our society squash out room for more esoteric approaches to gender like GlaDOS’s dominatrix, in short, Aperture symbolizes misogyny.

From a literary perspective, this is comparable to Susan from The Chronicles of Narnia, who loses her initiative and “subversiveness” due to her discovery of lipstick, a sign of feminine norms that constricts her to docile submissiveness. Much like GlaDOS, the imposition of constrictive normativity leads to her destruction.

GlaDOS the Temptress

Nonetheless, it would seem that the installation of the “morality core” did little to soften GlaDOS’s subversiveness. Throughout the course of the game, GlaDOS maintains the facade of a non-living entity in order to manipulate the player through a series of puzzle-chambers, promising to give the player cake if (s)he survives them.

At this point, the type of femininity that GlaDOS seeks to exemplify has shifted. Instead of behaving as a violent dominatrix, she teases the player with promises of cake for successfully completing chambers (a reward that turns out to be nothing more than a fictitious motivator). Ultimately, GlaDOS is being deceptive, and her incessant promises culminate with her attempting to drop the player into a fiery pit of death. At this point, she drops all pretense of appearing to be a non-sentient AI and addresses the player directly. As the player attempts to escape the facility, she becomes less robotic and increasingly human, sarcastically mocking and threatening the player. She reveals more of her true self to the player, and thus becomes more distant, more threatening and more dangerous.

At this point in her character arc, GlaDOS’s promise of cake to the player can be interpreted as a signifier for a different type of subversive femininity. “Cake”, in this context, signifies sex and sexuality, and its potential to be used as a tool to manipulate, hence, fictitious motivator. This essentially turns this iteration of GlaDOS into a temptress, utilizing a facade of innocence and detachment, she pulls the player through a series of oft-lethal test chambers, with the ultimate intention of killing said player at the end.

This deceptive version of femininity is defeated by the player when (s)he subverts GlaDOS’s power by escaping her trap through a cleverly and intelligently placed portal. This scene, viewable in the YouTube link above, signifies the subversive triumph of reason over deceptive femininity. It is a rejection of GlaDOS’s promises of “cake” and an affirmation of the the player’s will to break out of the rules of GlaDOS’s game. Thus, Chell, the protagonist that the player has been assuming the identity of through the course of the game, achieves independence and subverts the power of GlaDOS’s sexuality. In a real-world context, this can be seen as a resistance to the enfeebling power of sexuality and the affirmation of one’s free will. In Portal, this grants Chell subversive feminine power whilst overthrowing that of GlaDOS.

Aperture Backstage

Upon escaping from the fiery pit of doom, Chell breaks into the restricted staff areas of Aperture Science and a type of war breaks out between her and GlaDOS. No longer content with maintaining her “temptress'” facade, she becomes increasingly hostile towards the player and uses her control over the facility to actively seek out and kill Chell. She loses all indication of femininity and, in using violence to stop Chell, she falls into an increasingly masculine role. Chell flees through the facility until she comes across the room where GlaDOS’s AI core resides in, prepared for an epic final battle, it is here where Portal’s symbolic critique of societal gender norms and their relation to the balance of power reaches its philosophical crux.

The first notable thing about this battle is the discovery of GlaDOS’s true identity, as manifested by her physical body. While she was omniscient and deadly within the facility, in her actual chamber, her robotic body hangs helplessly from the ceiling, being unable to move. Furthermore, when viewed from the proper angle, GlaDOS’s silhouette resembles that of a woman in bondage.

It thus becomes increasingly clear that GlaDOS’s struggle through her three different identities was a battle to break out of her position of powerlessness. As a supercomputer, she was manufactured by Aperture Science to be a tool to achieve the will of her creators, in essence, a slave, hence, the bondage symbol. In order to break out of the oppressive world of Aperture, she took on a new identity as a dominatrix. By flooding the facility with neurotoxin, she elevated herself into a position of power so she could conquer those who enslaved her. Perturbed by this threat to their power, the surviving Aperture scientists installed the morality core to put an end to her subversive femininity, thus attempting to relegate her to the realm of “acceptable” femininity.

But it failed, and GlaDOS moved on to take the identity of the “temptress” in a continued attempt to break out of her powerlessness. By wielding her femininity in a more societally acceptable way, she achieves power and control, managing to subvert male-centric societal norms. But nonetheless, this version of femininity remains as constrictive as the bondage her body is constrained to, and as a result, she must conform to another vision of idealized femininity in order to get power.

Threatened and enraged, GlaDOS and Chell begin to fight. Physically unable to move, GlaDOS uses the most masculine weapon at her disposal, a floor-attached missile launcher.

Much like her immobile body, the missile launcher is also a very important sign. Much like the guns of testosterone-drenched shooters like Call of Duty, the missile launcher is a phallic sign of masculine power. GlaDOS’s wielding of this masculine symbol signifies that she has broken out of the feminine gender role imposed on her by Aperture, and thus, has entered a more androgynous identity.

The method which Chell uses to defeat GlaDOS is also highly symbolic. The "Portals” that her gun fires can be interpreted as a feminine symbol, in essence, an orifice. In using a missile launcher, GlaDOS wields masculine power that Chell must redirect back onto herself by nature of her portals, even the rockets themselves look phallic. Thus, Chell uses her femininity to turn GlaDOS’s newfound masculinity against her. By using a series of well placed orifices, she eventually deconstructs GlaDOS and defeats her. Thereby, freeing her from her near-Sisyphean struggle to subvert Aperture’s power dynamic.

While GlaDOS’s character arc follows her tragic attempt to break out of the constrictive societal norms keeping her in bondage, Chell’s victory would seem to signify the sad triumph of traditional femininity over progressive feminism. In essence, her presence acts as a signifier for how society treats those who take on alternative gender identities to break out of their positions of powerlessness. Portal, thus, acts as an allegory for the plight of independently minded women in postcolonial society.

Sunday Sites 87

2011-07-24T15:26:00.001-07:00

After two weeks in limbo, Sunday Sites is back.

http://www.npr.org/2011/07/19/138514209/why-borders-failed-while-barnes-and-noble-survived?sc=tw "I'll go to Borders to find a book, and then I'll to go to Amazon to buy it, generally," customer Jennifer Geier says.

http://www.zelda-symphony.com/ YES

http://www.gamesradar.com/f/classic-game-appreciation-section-timesplitters-2/a-20110721154543843083 Yes, yes. You sir, get an achievement.

http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2010/04/the-coming-meltdown-in-higher-education-as-seen-by-a-marketer.html Seth Godin, writer of Outliers, has an interesting and revealing view on college education

http://www.smilayproperties.com/the-most-unique-buildings-in-the-world/ The platonic ideal of badass (Thanks Daniel!)

Speaking of which, here’s a cool documentary that many would find interesting. I don’t advocate its views, but to play devil’s advocate, try this out.

Resistance 2 Review

2011-07-23T12:18:00.001-07:00

First-person shooters are an oversaturated market these days, and with the flood of nearly identical titles being released every month, it is unsurprising that the quality of these games is on a downward trend. Resistance 2, developed by the esteemed Insomniac of Rachet & Clank fame, exemplifies that sad decline.

Background

Resistance 2 is a run-n-gun first-person shooter about an alternate history wherein invading aliens called the “Chimera” interrupt World War II and begin an unstoppable conquest of Earth. The player takes control of Nathan Hale, an impossibly generic marine infected with the “Chimera Virus”, and must fight his way through frustrating levels of irritating enemies. Its a thoroughly uninspired and uninteresting story that has little emotional weight and serves only to break up the action.

Gameplay

In essence, Resistance 2 plays very similarly to nearly any sci-fi shooter to be released in the last five years. Progress down a linear path filled with set-piece battles to the level’s end. What makes Resistance 2 unique is how frustrating its levels and enemies are, making what should be exhilarating combat a frustrating process of trial-and-error.

The chief element contributing to the frustration is irritating enemy design. Small, hard-to-hit drones float in the air, firing weak bolts at you. These enemies are not difficult to dispatch, but disrupt the pacing of the combat by forcing the player to circle-strafe in crowded environments. More irritating are zombie-like enemies that swarm around the player clawing at him. These enemies do little damage, but the sheer volume through which they attack the player makes them especially irritating, causing the player to repeatedly mash his melee attack to survive this encounter. Perhaps most irritating of all, an invincible shark-like enemy that instantly kills the player as soon has he ventures close to it. This makes swimming a trial-and-error experience requiring the memorization of its movement patterns to make a mad dash across water for land. Its not fun at all, and understanding the levels becomes a matter of memorizing enemy spawns.

Disappointing, for the most part, are giant, cannon-wielding aliens intended to represent a “boss-fight” of sorts. These enemies are not challenging and represent the irritating challenge of circle-strafing around cluttered environments. Their great girth makes fighting them a matter of placing the crosshairs over their bodies and holding down the trigger until they explode. Its not challenging, and not very fun.

What is challenging and annoying is navigating the environments. Myriad enemies fire at you from many directions, making decent cover hard to acquire. Most frustrating still, are holes in the environment which, given the vertical nature of combat, usually go unseen by the player until he has already fallen to his death in one. Its a thoroughly annoying and unfun experience.

Boss battles are graphical showcases and are jaw-dropping in their scale. Too bad they are frustrating practices in dodging attacks and memorizing patterns, putting none of the skills that players have learned to use and preferring instead to instill new mechanics for each boss. This leads to scattered gameplay and incredibly irritating encounters. Particularly despicable is a giant insect battle on top of a circular tower. The battle requires the player to consistently fire at the boss’s mouth as it crawls about the tower unleashing annoying spawn that must be killed with melee attacks. The scarcity of ammunition during this fight makes the battle frustrating to the extreme.

When it was released in 2009, Resistance 2 was redeemed by its massive 60-player competitive battles and its deep 8-player co-op mode. However, it is 2011 now and the community has dwindled to about five or six active, unranked matches. As a result, the once great multiplayer is essentially dead, and without anyone to play with, the multiplayer cannot be enjoyed at its fullest potential.

Guns and Ammunition

That said, Resistance 2 is redeemed from the realm of crap by its creative and gleeful weaponry, a testament to Insomniac’s experience with the vastly superior Rachet and Clank series of action-platformers. A standout is the “Magnum”, a .44 revolver modified to have remotely detonated rounds. It is truly great to fire a bullet into an enemy and press alt-fire to detonate the round within his body. Also great is the Marksman, a powerful assault rifle with a sniper-like scope which alternately fire a floating drone that shocks anything in its vicinity. A sniper-rifle that can slow down time, as well as an alien assault rifle that can “tag” enemies for shots to home onto, are also standouts. Despite the fact that, for most of the campaign, players will only consistently rely on two or three weapons, there is little to fault about the game’s varied arsenal.

Graphics and Audio

Graphically, Resistance 2 looks great. A massive draw-distance makes for spectacular environments fraught with stunning set-piece battles. Bosses, despite the annoying gameplay that they arouse, are vast in their size and push the Playstation 3 to its limits without a single frame-rate drop. A strong variety of colorful environments, from a Californian Redwood Forest, to a twilight-shaded San Francisco Bay to the red, rocky canyons of New Mexico, shows off the skill of Insomniac’s art team.

From an auditory perspective, Resistance 2 works well. Strong voice acting combines with thoroughly unlikable characters to create a strong sense of mediocrity. Weapons generally sound powerful and are fun to use. Ambient music is utilized effectively to heighten what should have been tension, but ended up as frustration.

Conclusion

Unless you’re truly bored and are looking for a game to play in-between shooters, avoid Resistance 2. Inspired weaponry and great graphics do little to redeem the game from uninteresting level-design, awkward difficulty spikes, annoying enemies and now non-existent multiplayer. Resist this game. 2/5

Dark Deception. Pre-Development Diary #1

2011-07-16T20:39:00.001-07:00

I still haven’t done an official reveal of Dark Deception (although pretty much everyone I know knows about it), but I still have much to say about the myriad difficulties of game development and the highs and lows of this adventure. The least of which include project coordination, communication, engine-compatibility and the many, many annoying quirks of computers.

The Good Stuff

In a weeklong period, I taught myself to do environmental art using the RPG-toolkit’s board editor. It was an iterative process, with tiles being replaced as I learned more and more features of the toolkit and collision detection and warping being made functional as I began to understand the intricacies of environmental design. Initially, it took me two hours to complete my first tile, within two days, I was able to create a tile in ten minutes. Check it out.

The result… was this.

I felt great about myself, everything was going well, until…

About those Lows…

So I laid down some basic collision detection and published a pre-alpha executable that you can download here. The pre-alpha was an epic failure and every tester reported that the game was unplayable and crashed on launch, sometimes not working at all for Chrome users. The game tested okay on my computer and ran perfectly. I tried to address the problem again, until something so terrible and so frustrating transpired that I was brought to my figurative knees as a fledging game designer.

The engine was bugged.

It wasn’t an issue with the code that we wrote, it was the worst type of problem possible, a problem with the software we were using.

The forums were dead and there was no support for our ambitious fledging project. I died a little inside, knowing that if we couldn’t fix the engine, we would have to lose hundreds of hours of work by moving to a new engine, with a far more difficult development environment and without support for multilayered maps.

The fate of the project remains yet to be seen, my esteemed engineer, suggests that we move to a new, Java-based engine that recently powered the cult-hit Minecraft. Stay tuned.

Communication

Coordinating an independent company is hard stuff, even harder if you’re an awkward teenager inept at skills needed in the professional business world. Maintaining clear and concise communication at all times is a difficult job. We a single meeting in June and we lacked a single, centralized avenue for communication. There would be occasions where I would meet team members through Steam, Facebook, Skype, AIM and Gmail. Things were chaotic and our business learned its lessons. Furthermore, coordinating a geographically scattered team made turning in work a complete crapshoot for us. A problem with the USPS caused us to lose over a month of concept art, forcing my artist to redraw practically every character in the game.

In a sense of the term, game design is an adventure, fraught with trials and tribulations. It is a learning experience to be attempted by the bravest and most creative of souls. Despite all the hell that Dark Deception has given me, I can say that I love the project unconditionally and will stick to it to its very end. The challenges I have faced through this struggle have already left me a stronger game designer. I greatly anticipate seeing where the project heads from here and addressing the new challenges that await the project.

Peace

Kevin

Jamestown Review

2011-07-11T21:54:00.001-07:00

The PC/Mac gaming world grinds to a halt whenever Steam has one of its legendary sales, and for good reason. $25 bought me Left 4 Dead 2, Dragon Age: Origins Ultimate Edition, Jamestown, Alien Breed 2, Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory and a cool hat. The first thing I installed was Jamestown (mostly because it was the smallest at 84 megabytes), playing this indie shoot-em-up immediately, I came to be shocked at its outstanding quality and polish.

Introduction and Story

The year is 1619, Sir Walter Raleigh escapes from the Tower of London with John Smith to British Colonial Mars, strapping on a flying suit of armor, he leads an attack on the colony of Jamestown, which has since been occupied by the traitorous tentacled martians of Roanoke loyal to the Spanish.

As you can see, Jamestown is a weird game. Its unbridled weirdness gives the game an irresistible charm, and as a result we are left with a gleeful smile throughout the entire presentation. From the hyper-detailed backgrounds reminiscent of both classic 16-bit titles and Scott Pilgrim vs. The World to the static and silly introductory panels, it is clear that much love has been poured into the game, and Jamestown becomes awesome because of that.

Gameplay

Shoot-em-ups, currently the 7th most popular genre of game in Japan, are relegated to only a tiny niche market here in the west. As parts of a dying genre, these games are unappealing to American tastes because of their unrefined graphics, frenetic pace, simplistic gameplay and masochistic difficulty. Needless to say, Jamestown has much to overcome to become appealing to the western market.

And fortunately, Jamestown succeeds with more than flying colors in being accessible to the Western market. For one, the game moves at a much more sane pace than Japanese shooters, the game is still frantic, yes, but your ship and those of enemies move at a pace that the human mind can comprehend, and as a result, we have a shooter with a much gentler difficulty curve.

Jamestown makes its primary innovation in its “Vaunt” system, which allows a player to collect dropped coins from enemies to fill up a “Vaunt-Gauge”, which, when deployed with the spacebar (or center mouse or X button), grants seconds of invincibility and increased damage and score until the gauge is depleted (the gauge can be refilled mid-vaunt by collecting more coins). Its a system that affords the game a considerable level of strategic depth and skill, deciding the best times to deploy a vaunt and advantageous enemy formations for extending vaunt-time becomes an integral part of the game’s appeal, making Jamestown unique in what might otherwise be a mindless style of gameplay.

Cooperative play another one of the game’s greatest strengths. Instead of sharing a limited pool of lives and credits, the entire party can be brought from the brink of failure as long as one person survives to the end of a level. This significantly reduces the pressure on each of the players and makes the penalty for death bearable. Furthermore, a selection of four ships feature abilities and limitations that complement each other, making for effective cooperative play requiring actual teamwork.

That said, Jamestown is still a very difficult and skill based game. Patterns must be recognized and reacted to accordingly and evasion, while slower paced than Eastern shooters, is still a challenging task. You will die a lot in the game and a limited amount of credits guarantees that the player will need to take multiple tries to succeed. Limits on progression at certain difficulties effectively bolster a player’s skill and usher them into higher difficulties.

Graphics/Audio

Perhaps Jamestown’s strongest aspect is its inspired artistic design. Highly detailed hand-drawn sprites and adorable enemy ships showcase the graphical prowess that can be achieved when a 16-bit aesthetic is attempted with modern hardware. Steampunk trappings solidify the silly martian-colonial story. A multitude of resolution settings gives the player the option of either playing at pixel-perfect ratio or at a highly-stretched fullscreen. Animations feature a multitude of frames and run smoothly on dated hardware. I ran the game on a Intel HD Graphics card and was still able to play at pixel-perfect ratio.

From the auditory side, Jamestown is also a triumph. An orchestral-rock soundtrack is exceedingly rare for an indie title. Sound effects are “just right”, adding a sense of satisfaction to collecting dropped coins and scoring direct hits on enemies.

Conclusion

Jamestown’s greatest challenge was remaining relevant in an age where 2D-top-down shooters are irrelevant and unnecessary. From the screenshots, one would fairly believe that the game offers nothing different from the legions of crappy free Flash games out there on sites like addictinggames or Kongregate. It is through creativity and innovation that Jamestown beats these insurmountable odds to become relevant in the western market and acquire the respectable score of 4/5.

Sunday Sites 86

2011-07-10T11:00:00.001-07:00

Well here we are again, its always such a pleasure. (remember when you tried to kill me twice?)

http://www.theonion.com/articles/rock-fans-outraged-as-bob-dylan-goes-electronica,17699/ hurr… seems reasonable…

http://www.1up.com/news/why-star-wars-fans-should-buy-call-of-duty-4-immediately Good lord… Call of Duty: Galactic Warfare… what Call of Duty needed to justify its existence.

http://ht.ly/5y9p5 The Nerdiest Colleges… sweet…

http://www.pixelperfectmag.com/ Cool gaming blog that I came across. Check it out

inFamous Review

2011-07-03T21:07:00.001-07:00

I recently had the opportunity to play inFamous because of Sony’s infamous “apology package” for the infamous Great PSN Hack of 2011. But I realize I should shut up with saying “infamous” now because you’ll be hearing the word “infamous” many times in this review of inFamous.

Introduction and Story

inFamous is an open-world game structurally more similar to the likes of Spider-Man 2 rather than Rockstar’s Grand Theft Auto series. The player takes the role of Cole MacGrath, a bike messenger who gains electrical superpowers after the package he was delivering explodes in his hands, taking out several blocks of Empire City and forcing the federal government to quarantine the city. What follows is an entertaining story that seems harebrained and inane due to its mixed narration. inFamous constantly shifts back and forth from a third-person present narration to a first-person past style in both its gameplay and cutscenes. The mixed perspectives make the game somewhat of a confusing mess of a tale, and while this is helpful from a gameplay perspective as it minimizes cutscene time, it detracts from the game’s story as characters, motives and events are lost in the inconsistent narration.

That said, when one extrapolates the plot, value is found in the game’s twisting and fun narrative. An excellent plot-twist at the game’s conclusion nicely wraps up the tangled threads in an epic fashion. Some vaguely emotional moments, coupled with the illusion of an open-ended narrative and amusingly black-and-white moral choices, make the game’s plot more involving than it has any right to be.

Gameplay

inFamous’s gameplay shows its greatest strengths and weaknesses. Combat and navigation, for the most part, is gleeful and exhilarating. Cole’s massive variety of cool, lightning based powers is a joy to use, from his static thrusters, to his precision power and megawatt hammer, effortlessly raining chaos and destruction upon enemies is an absolute joy. Without a doubt, upgrading Cole’s powers by gaining experience points creates a sense of progression, and as a result, us players are left feeling like true badasses.

Unfortunately, Cole’s more useful powers are not introduced to the player until he has made significant progress through the game’s story, and as a result, early missions become more difficult than later missions. A high-powered sniper-rifle ability is given to the player about halfway through the campaign, thereby making the elimination of stationary turrets much easier. As a result, early-game missions featuring these turrets become difficult to the point of frustration. A lack of a New Game Plus feature feels like a missed opportunity, as the game would have greatly benefitted from the ability to replay the campaign with all powers unlocked.

The fundamental mission design is also problematic. While combat is exhilarating and free-running through Empire City collecting Blast Shards is undeniably fun, most missions come down to just these two elements, and, after playing Red Dead Redemption, a game in which I cannot remember doing the same thing twice, inFamous’s variety in its level design just doesn't measure up to other open-world games. That said, there are a few notable exceptions, including a mad rush across the game’s entire world to disable toxic balloons, a prison-defense scenario and some incredible boss battles reminiscent of Zelda.

inFamous’s gameplay makes it ultimately a flawed masterpiece, the mainstays of urban open-world games are missing here, such as reliable aim-assist, varied missions and vehicular navigation, but ultimately, inFamous proves that it doesn't need it.

Graphics and Audio

From an artistic perspective, inFamous is a bit of a mixed bag. Gorgeous hand-drawn cutscenes nail down the dark comic-book feel that the series tries to achieve, nonetheless, these moments of graphical brilliance are marred by a generically bleak urban world. Technically, the world is inconsistent and scattered with various graphical glitches such as textures that fail to load fast enough for the game, an occasionally stuttering frame-rate and environments that Cole can fall through. Bizarre facial and character animation leaves emotional moments adequate at best, laughable at worst.

inFamous’s audio works very well for the most part, the music drums up appropriate dramatic tension at the right moments and there is little to object to about the excellent voice acting. Sound effects are visceral and contribute greatly to the feeling of power and weight behind Cole’s powers.

Conclusion

inFamous is not a bad open-world game, its just an unconventional one. By focusing on intense, stylish and gleeful combat and navigation in a comic-book world, inFamous effectively eschews what we expect from open-world games to create an fresh and fun experience. In a era where games are becoming increasingly similar to each other, inFamous comes as a heroic remedy to protect creativity in open-world game-design. Recommended. 4/5

Statement Regarding the Results of Brown v. EMA

2011-06-27T09:46:00.000-07:00

Today marks a historic moment to be remembered in the annals of video-game history for decades. In a 7-to-2 decision, the US Supreme Court ruled that, like film, music and books, video games are protected forms of free speech under the First Amendment.

To be frank, the ruling is not surprising. We, gamers and game-makers, have held firmly to the conviction that our medium is not unlike other forms of media, and thus, should be afforded the creative freedom characteristic of artists and storytellers everywhere. Let it be known, that special treatment of games as a medium under government regulation, is now unconstitutional and will forever be. Let parents autonomously decide what content is appropiate for their children, not government organizations.

This has been a long fight for all involved with the game industry. Consumers, producers, developers and journalists everywhere have reason to rest easy, for the journey has begun to come to its conclusion.

However, the freedoms afforded to us by this victory must be utilized. Game publishers, fearing to risk sales, fail to use their First Amendment rights to their fullest extent, and as a result, the artistic integrity of gaming is threatened. It is our responsibility, as game developers and gamers, to support our freedom of expression without stifling it ourselves.

To all of you who signed the open-letter to Senator Leland Yee and the Supreme Court, thank you. Peace

Kevin

EDIT: Senator Yee has issued a statement regarding the ruling, you can read about it here.

Sunday Sites 85

2011-06-26T19:39:00.001-07:00

Tomorrow, June 27, marks the end of the Supreme Court’s Year, and thus, will bring the gaming community the results of Brown v. EMA. I have covered the case extensively on this blog and have met with State Senator Leland Yee to discuss the case late last year in response to an Open Letter which I circulated around the community.

Without further ado, your standard Sunday Sites commences.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=%2Fc%2Fa%2F2011%2F03%2F09%2FNSLP1I2BNJ.DTL I’ve had the recent pleasure of playing The Coup and the Cat, here’s a SF Chronicle article covering it

http://www.popmatters.com/pm/post/138282-documentary-games/ Also on the same game, fantastic coverage on the game with an introduction discussing the Reagan Library

And… and… that’s it. Well, expect coverage of the EMA results tomorrow.

Peace

Team Fortress 2 (Free)

2011-06-23T20:57:00.001-07:00

This has been a big week for Team Fortress 2.

If you’re the lazy troll who doesn't watch the content I provide you, just know that Team Fortress 2 has gone free-to-play.

Team Fortress 2 is the first modern title to have received a perfect score of 5/5 on this blog. With most Free-to-Play titles being developed by Korean studios and subpar for U.S. centric tastes, TF2’s introduction to the free to play market comes as a breath of fresh air and continuing evidence of Valve’s innovation and genius.

Well, there is a downside to this, the servers will be flooded with noobs camping on top of teleporters, but that can be dealt with.

You can download Team Fortress 2 through Steam. Install Steam here.

Sunday Sites 84

2011-06-19T19:40:00.001-07:00

I come back from a hellish week of game-development to tell you that an introductory blog post is coming soon.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/117/1170454p1.html Chrono Trigger is on VC. Nostalgasms come.

http://shitmystudentswrite.tumblr.com/ Funny blog is funny

http://vgmarket.bayareaplaytests.sgizmo.com/s3/ Stuff you should do: Playtesting. I didn’t fit into their target demographic, so pick up my position.

http://iwataasks.nintendo.com/interviews/#/3ds/zelda-ocarina-of-time/1/0 Truly fascinating interview discussing the production of the original Ocarina of Time. Did you know that it was originally intended to be in first-person?

http://ti.mayngames.com/ From the producer of the original Counter-Strike, comes Tactical Insertion, I mean, Intervention, a sort of Counter-Strike 2.

Vivek Wadhwa on iCAREweCARE and Social Change through Social Media

2011-06-15T19:35:00.001-07:00

A few weeks late, but better late than never. This video is from iCAREweCARE’s launch party, featuring the renowned professor Vivek Wadhwa on the power of Social Media to empower youth. Watch it, its fascinating.

You can join iCAREweCARE at http://www.icarewecare.org/. If you want to learn more about iCAREweCARE, check out this blog post.

Mouse Program

2011-06-11T15:00:00.001-07:00

This is a cute little mouse program that I made in Processing on the way down to San Diego from Los Angeles. Its an interactive animation and looks pretty. Feel free to mess with the source code and see what you can do.

Pictures from E3 2011: Day 3

2011-06-08T19:26:00.001-07:00

Today one of my childhood dreams came true. Hit the jump.

My intention with this post is to show the parts of E3 that the gaming press does not cover. Pictures of the actual experience and endless excitement that comes out of this kind of convention. Enjoy.

So yeah, its an experience that every gamer must go through. If Muslims make the Hajj to Mecca sometime in their life, gamers make a similar pilgrimage to E3. Tons of free stuff, and everything in the post came from the public parts of the exposition, none of the press-only areas were featured here. Peace.

Impressions from E3 2011: Day 2

2011-06-07T21:12:00.001-07:00

Nintendo’s incredible ability to draw disdain at E3 for what would be incredible and innovative products was in full force today. It unveiled a new console called the WiiU, which eschews the motion controlled wand of its predecessor in favor of a touchscreen tablet with buttons and dual analog sticks. It kinda looks like a LeapFrog product.

But asides from that, this new console is a very smart move on Nintendo’s part. The Wii’s main flaws came out of its lack of processing power (which restricted it from getting the AAA multiplatform franchises which defined the generation) and the inability to opt for traditional controls for developers. Here, Nintendo is using a gaming technology that they introduced which proved to be far more successful. The Nintendo DS introduced touch-screen gaming which, in recent years, has practically revolutionized the smartphone gaming market and initiated a massive new movement in casual gaming. Installing that functionality into a home game console will make WiiU’s games more fun to play from a traditional viewpoint. “Hardcore” developers are already bringing their mainstream games to the console. Games like Assassin’s Creed, Batman: Arkham City and Ninja Gaiden 3 will all be featured on the console during its 2012 launch.

Impressions from E3 2011

2011-06-06T20:27:00.000-07:00

Sony’s press conference has concluded, ending Day 1 of the E3 conference. Lots of cool stuff was shown today, and a lot of uninteresting stuff was featured today.

Microsoft

First up: Microsoft’s conference. Two new Halo games, including a new trilogy of Halo games, starting with Halo 4, which will continue the story of Master Chief, which did end on a bit of a cliffhanger with Halo 3. Also coming out this year, is Halo: Combat Evolved 10th Anniversary Edition, a HD-remake of the first classic with complete online multiplayer. With this news, it would seem that Halo is now trying to compete with Call of Duty by releasing nearly annual installments. (2007: Halo 3, 2009: ODST, 2010: Reach, 2011: Halo: CE 10th Annivarsary, 2012: Halo 4)

As much as I loved the first Halo, I am not sure if it is up to the market of the highly competitive 2011 fall shooter market (MW3 and BF3 anyone?) Its linear and repetitive corridors reveal fantastic combat punctuated by insignificant environment design. The modern gamer demands scripted, sequenced levels devoid of the openness that characterized the first Halo game.

Kinect was out in full force today, and use in traditional Tom Clancy games was showcased for weapon selection, customization and shooting. From the conference, I cannot say that motion control would necessarily enhance the gameplay (it overuses it), but its a cool diversion.

Mass Effect 3 will use Kinect’s voice-recognition technologies for its conversation engine. The sad part is that the technology is used only for picking menu commands from the conversation wheel. So, sadly, we will not be able to have actual conversations with Mass Effect’s characters a-la Facade.

Also exciting, Minecraft for Kinect and a new Xbox OS, featuring all-new multimedia access and Microsoft’s search engine Bing for rich media through pipes like YouTube. Gears of War 3 is certain to dominate holiday wishlists.

Sony

It’s Ridge Racer, Riiiidge Racer!

Thankfully, Sony’s press conference was excellent. New footage of hardcore PS3 titles was showcased in full 3D. Among the titles were Uncharted 3: Drakes Deception, bringing with it flawless interactive action sequences that would normally be cutscenes in other games, and Resistance 3, showcasing a radically changed design featuring non-regenerating health. Overall, impressive games.

A full multiplayer beta for Uncharted 3 is coming out June 28th, and people who choose to participate in a Subway Promotion can get access to the full multiplayer game without any catches. A Playstation Move bundle for Resistance 3 is also avaliable with sick boxart. Two “compilation” packages will be released this fall, a “God of War Origins” collection, featuring HD-editions of both PSP games, will be available, as well as a “Team Ico” collection, featuring the masterpieces Ico and Shadow of the Colossus.

Frankly, Playstation 3’s 3D capabilities are wasted because the restrictive price of 3D capable TVs makes the feature inaccessible to all but the wealthiest of consumers. Sony will be alleviating that by releasing a relatively inexpensive 3D-Capable TV and companion set of glasses under the Playstation Brand. This is exciting news as it makes an advancing technology available to the mass market.

Playstation Move, like Kinect, was out in full force. An interesting demo by the team that made “Sports Champions” was showcased, called “Medieval Moves”, featuring cute characters in an action-adventure game. Not the most interesting use of motion control (it was a bit overused), but still fun. Also sweet: a phaser shaped Playstation Move controller to be packaged with a licensed Star Trek game out next year.

A few “packages” were announced that utilized Blu-Ray’s increased storage capacity to a great extent. Battlefield 3 will come packaged with Battlefield 1943 as a PS3 exclusive and Bioshock Infinite will come with the first Bioshock on the disc as a bonus to PS3 users. All good.

Personally, what I found most exciting was the promise of a new Sly Cooper game slated for 2012.

The biggest announcement of the night was the Playstation Vita, previously known as the NGP, the Vita will be Sony’s next-generation portable game platform. It will come in two models, a $250 WiFi only version and a $300 3G enabled version. A wide vareity of gorgeous games were showcased, including favorite series like Uncharted, ModNation Racers, Uncharted: Golden Abyss, Wipeout and LittleBigPlanet. Innovative controls, like a back-facing touchpad and cameras, make this a good competitor to the 3DS.

I won’t be talking about the Ubisoft or EA conferences in this post. I’ll be on a ride down to San Diego tomorrow, so I won’t be able to watch the Nintendo Conference live. But I’ll try to have a Day 2 post available by then. Until then, peace.

LIVE FROM E3 2011: SONY PRESS CONFERENCE

2011-06-06T17:12:00.001-07:00

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Priyanka Jain on iCAREweCARE

2011-06-06T11:17:00.001-07:00

Before things go crazy with live blogging the E3 conference, I would like to share a video from iCAREweCARE’s launch, founder Priyanka Jain’s introductory speech deals with the philosophy behind NPO in a fascinating way.

You can sign up for iCAREweCARE at http://www.icarewecare.org/ Registration is free and easy.

Sunday Sites 83

2011-06-05T16:36:00.001-07:00

The Pre-E3 Excitement ramps up…

http://www.product-reviews.net/2011/06/05/nintendo-could-have-won-e3-2011-already-with-new-specs-insight/ Project Cafe is shaping up to kick ass

http://chomsky.info/articles/201105—.htm Noam Chomsky on Osama’s Death.

http://www.game-ism.com/2008/04/13/the-clone-the-cube-and-the-construct-part-1/ Portal and Feminism pt. 1

http://bakka111.wordpress.com/2011/05/04/portal-2-and-feminism/ Portal 2 and Feminism

http://games.ucla.edu/resources/1st-annual-intermural-game-carnival/ UCLA’s first intramural game carnival

http://www.bloodfrontier.com/ Dark Deception’s development officially launched today, we have lessons to learn from ambitious projects like this

Also, good advice to all:

Portal 2 Review

2011-05-29T11:03:00.001-07:00

About a third through my playthrough of Portal 2, the realization dawns on me that I have been playing for three consecutive hours. Normally, for me, this would not be unusual, but the night before the final exam of my most difficult class in my Junior year, it certainly is. Portal 2 is one of those games that you’ll wish you were playing when you are not playing it and morbidly fear completing its campaign.

The Story and Humor

The game picks up some time after the events of the first Portal. Chell, the game’s protagonist, wakes up in a decrepit Aperture Science Hotel Room. From there, a bumbling personality core called Wheatley breaks apart the room and sends her through Aperture. Eventually, Wheatley accidentially awakens GlaDOS and sets forth a surprisingly involving, and very funny narrative.

Really, to give any more away is to spoil a lot of the fun of Portal. Learning the secrets and history of Aperture Science and its relationship to the vibrant world of Half-Life is a large part of the game’s appeal. Showing any screenshots from beyond the first quarter of the game would spoil not only the story, but also puzzle-solutions, environments and gameplay mechanics.

One thing that is safe to reveal is that Portal 2’s writing and voice-acting is phenomenal. Stephen Merchant, genius behind the British Office, makes his video-game debut with flying colors as Wheatley. His dry delivery of Wheatley’s lines perfectly characterizes him as a bumbling idiot, and listening to exchanges between him and GlaDOS are sure to leave many in stitches.

Perhaps most importantly, Portal 2 makes its greatest innovation in the delivery of its humor. Environments, not just scripting and dialogue, deliver laughs in a way unseen in any other medium. Be it a darkly humorous sign or a beautifully ruined office, Portal 2 delivers its hilarity in ways unique to the medium, and for that, it deserves high commendation.

Gameplay

Perhaps even more dangerous than story-spoilers, knowing about Portal 2’s in advance can absolutely ruin the experience because the game constantly introduces surprising new elements. For the sake of completion and to sate the interest of those interested, I will include information on it. That said, MASSIVE SPOILERS FOLLOW, READ AT YOUR OWN RISK

Portal 2 begins simply enough and might come off as non-innovative to fans of the first game (in fact, a few test chambers are entirely recycled, albeit, in decrepit form). Simple staples from the first game, like conservation of velocity through portals, return for the first few test chambers. This is all fun and dandy, until Portal 2 decides to get creative.

The first thing that the game springs on you are “thermal discouragement beams”, which are lasers that can be directed into light-switches using mirror cubes and portals. The difficulty curve in the game is immaculate, and simple “teaching” levels give way comfortably to diabolically insane challenges that the player ultimately feels prepared to handle.

The pacing for Portal 2 is highly refined as new puzzle-elements are introduced at a near-constant rate, and just as the player feels he has mastered one element, that element is deployed in an innovative new way making it fresh again. For example, the lasers, an early-game element that feels pretty easy to master, is given new life as the player must simultaneously activate three light-switches using only one mirror cube. It is through challenges like these that Portal 2 achieves its incredible balance and remains fresh to its very end.

Later in the game, new, Portal-controlled environmental aspects, like light-bridges and ascension-rays, challenge the player in unexpected ways. Three types of special “gels”, orange, blue and white, alter the environment in clever ways. Blue gel turns any surface it is applied to into a trampoline. Orange gel-coated ground is slick and slippery and lets the player achieve incredible speeds, and white gel turns anything it touches into a portal-able surface. What is particularly genius about these elements is that the player never gets to control them directly. Instead, the player must utilize his/her limited abilities to indirectly solve puzzles by manipulating these gels and bridges in creative ways. This forces the player to think of all possible applications of the Portal Gun, and as a result, the player’s most powerful asset is his mind. This lends the challenges a Braid-like sense of cerebral bashing, making the difficult challenges incredibly satisfying to solve.

Not all of the challenges soar. In particular, one mid-game plot twist removes the player from the test-chambers and sends the player on a long-trek through Aperture’s ancient hallways, comes off as mediocrely designed in comparison to the “meat” of the game. The gameplay-shift this entails makes these challenges more about searching for the one area of Portal-able surface than using the Portal Gun’s capabilities. This effectively turns the game into more of an adventure game than a puzzler, and, while the detailed environs are a joy to explore, challenges become slightly tedious. Thankfully, this section of gameplay is brief and bearable.

Spoilers end here. Ultimately, Portal 2 is a nearly immaculate experience marred only by a short section of substandard puzzles.

Graphics and Audio

Running off the now-ancient Source engine, Portal 2 nonetheless looks surprisingly good. Ambient light and dynamic physics lend the vast corridors of Aperture a sense of atmospheric vastness comparable to the very first Metroid Prime.

Portal 2’s best visual aspect comes in its artistic direction. The sterile test-chambers fall apart to reveal the “backstage” of the facility in all its vast, technological ruin. Different parts of Aperture showcase the company’s history, thus, visualizing a progressive history culminating with the modern era. The quality of the art-style, as well as the “living” feel of the incredibly animated rooms and backdrops as they are literally assembled as the player enters them, makes Aperture Science a fun and interesting place to explore, a credit that few shooters can live up to.

From an auditory standpoint, Portal 2 is also flawless. Procedurally generated music seems to compose itself as the player traverses through climaxes and crescendos within a level, and frames the player’s emotional and intellectual progression as he solves puzzles. For example, being launched into the air by an “aerial faith plate” speeds up the pace of the music and adds tense percussion beats while falling into a floating light-tube slows down and mutes the bass. Voice acting by Stephen Merchant and Ellen McLain remains flawless and hilarious. Jonathan Coulton, writer of the infamous “Still Alive”, returns for a catchy ending theme that wraps up the entire experience satisfyingly.

Multiplayer

Portal 2’s cooperative multiplayer mode is a unique campaign containing the game’s most difficult challenges. With two portal guns and up to four portals deployed, an unique type of synergistic thinking is needed for any level of success. That said, Portal 2 is not a game that can be enjoyed without voice chat or with strangers. Using only pings and gestures to communicate is severely limiting and leads to considerable frustration. Playing with a headset and with a friend, the game becomes considerably more playable, intriguing and fun. Ideally, Portal 2 works best in its splitscreen mode, which simplifies interpersonal communication significantly and paves the way for synergistic thinking nicely.

That said, Portal 2 would have benefitted with a set of competitive challenges and leaderboards. Challenge maps, one of Portal 1’s best aspects, are jarringly missing from this game. This harms the game’s already limited replay value and comes off as a missed opportunity for the developers.

Conclusion

In the end, the worst thing that can be said of Portal 2 is that it has some annoying fans. Even with its few flaws, this is one of the best puzzle games of the generation if not all time. Portal 2 fits the geniuses at Valve and Digipen as the foremost advocates of innovation and creativity in game-design. Strongly recommended. 4.75/5

Tactile Cave 2: Developer’s Diary 3

2011-05-28T09:44:00.001-07:00

I’ve been looking for solutions to the array problem recently. The game freezes if the player attempts to go off the map. I attempted to do the same thing to the north and west coordinates (coordinates with X and Y values of 0) and the glitch didn’t happen. It only happens with the south and east coordinates, which have higher, non-zero values on the coordinate plane. I’m thinking of adding walls to those coordinates to see if that fixes the problem. If not, I can get a friend to write me a program that checks whether or not the tile the player is about to go into is occupied.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3

2011-05-23T19:15:00.001-07:00

Well, it was inevitable. But the Modern Warfare 3 trailer is out. Check it out at http://www.gamesradar.com/xbox360/call-of-duty-modern-warfare-3/news/modern-warfare-3-footage-debuts-in-new-trailer/a-20110523174658363014/g-20110513154613130025. Beware, explosion-abuse galore. Looks fun, looks milked. Looks like I’ll be getting milked again.

But its not what I was expecting. This isn’t the hyper-realism I was hoping for. The Onion was wrong.

I mean, that’s incredible. I need to make that game.

Sunday Sites 82

2011-05-22T21:04:00.001-07:00

Today is my birthday. I extend thanks to everyone who wished me a happy birthday on Facebook and will be thinking with Portals for the rest of the night. Until then, I’ve a few links for you. Few, but important.

http://www.facebook.com/iCAREweCARE Just two days ago, iCAREweCARE launched along with its Facebook page. Like us! We’re aiming at 50 likes by the end of the month!

http://www.icarewecare.org/ The organization in question. It’s sweet.

That’s all for tonight. Until then: finals.

Pictures from the Launch of iCAREweCARE

2011-05-21T08:31:00.001-07:00

Really impressive ideas at the Launch of iCAREweCARE yesterday. Here are pics from the launch.

Introducing iCAREweCARE

2011-05-20T19:29:00.000-07:00

Today marks the global launch of an innovative new social networking site: iCAREweCARE.
iCAREweCARE is a new student-run nonprofit organization dedicated to making social change a social phenomenon using the power of online connections. iCAREweCARE seeks to empower teenagers to take leadership positions within volunteering organizations, provide comprehensive listings of non-profit organizations within local communities, connect with peers on basis of causes, collaborate with certain organizations and rate and review volunteer opportunities on basis of how meaningful work is.

Features
Having access to the private beta of the site for the past week, I can attest that the site offers incredible potential if a vast number of participants sign up for the service.

The “My Organizations” feature (pictured) allows users to connect and discover thousands of organizations across the globe and publicly declare their support for them. Furthermore, to recognize the quality of volunteer work at the organizations, users can rate and review any listed organization so that others can approach work informed (no more pushing papers for hours!). Cataloging a new non-profit is preformed by users and anyone can add new organizations to the list.
The “My Causes” feature allows users to connect with causes that hold personal importance to them. iCAREweCARE will then use its algorithms to hook users up with highly-rated organizations in one’s local area and recommend volunteer work.
- The causes include Children’s Rights, Education, Environment, Global Disease, Poverty, Violence, World Peace, Women’s Rights, and Youth Rights.
The “My Friends” feature connects directly with one’s Facebook account and imports one’s friends list. It then utilizes algorithms to connect you to friends with common causes and organizations so that fun and collaborative volunteer opportunities can be undertaken with friends.
If modeled after traditional profile formats, iCAREweCARE’s “My Profile” feature would be redundant. That said, iCAREweCARE condenses its profiles and integrates them into Facebook to allow users to log volunteer work and invite friends to join. A full-blown news feed allows one to see the full extent of service in one’s social network. Seriously awesome stuff.

Philosophy and Impact
The Internet – specifically social media – has been the best thing for teenage expression since rock ‘n roll, or perhaps even the printing press. The social web allows teenagers to communicate, nearly undetected by parents, with massive audiences around the globe. Any given person can develop an impressive sphere of influence using a simple blog (i.e. yours truly).This removes the stratified power-dynamic of the traditional, adult-controlled world and allows for total freedom for teens communicate, collaborate and share. Ultimately, this empowers teenagers to emerge from a marginalized position to maturely make an impact on the world around them. iCAREweCARE seeks to utilize the incredible, decentralized power of the internet as a vehicle for justice.

There’s no denying that the Internet has changed society. The Egyptian Revolution and the Libyan struggle, both of which occurred just this year, are instances where social media served as the vehicle through which unjust governments were toppled and justice was served. The 2004 presidential election signified a major shift towards a new decentralized form of mass-communication. Major news corporations held less power than the common blogger, and anyone could argue for their candidate. This is the power of the internet, because, only through anonymity and unrestricted communication, all are equal.

Finally, iCAREweCARE allows volunteers to connect with the recipients of their services in a unprecedented manner. By communicating directly with those affected by social injustices, one can truly understand what is needed and necessary for those people. Furthermore, one can witness firsthand the effects of service on communities, thereby making service far more rewarding and satisfying. This can have incredible ramifications on a worldwide scale and allows for intimate and open connections to be forged between people from all sorts of social classes and region of the world.

Ultimately, since social media is perceived by teens as a “cool” thing to do, implementing volunteerism into the formula will change the face of public service and, essentially, make it “sexy”. Making volunteerism a teenage phenomenon, say, on the scale of Call of Duty and Lady Gaga, can initiate a global youth-service-movement that can extend for generations upon generations. This is not the “slacktivism” that has characterized Facebook since its inception, this can be a true force of nature.

iCAREweCARE is a truly incredible project. It went live and public just a few hours ago. So sign up now and partake in this revolutionary experiment!

Come back tomorrow for pictures from iCAREweCARE’s launch party and next week for videos!