Sworn Enemies
There's a common expedient in video game design, where the game will give the player a "sworn enemy", an ancient enemy that the player has to just assume is the bad guy from the start. The only problem with that is, game players today are just too sophisticated to accept a cartoonish version of motivation like that.

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Did you ever notice how many games just start off by handing you a sworn enemy? In GTA San Andreas, they start the game by dropping you in 'Ballas' territory, and the first time you run across one of those gang members, the game tells you that they are your 'sworn enemy.' What I don't get is, Why?


Why are these guys my sworn enemy? Because they killed some of my gang? Sure, but I've killed a whole slew of them, so it's kinda a wash, right? I mean, either we actually keep score, or we just assume that we have to kill everybody. Either way, we've got no real reason for all the hostility.

Some games will start out by giving you a reason for hating the bad guy, and that works out a lot better. You are a simple peasant going about your simple life of collecting mushrooms, when suddenly a boulder destroys your entire village, and as you look up, you see the evil troll grinning down at the smoking crater of your home. . . now that's motivation!

But lots of of the games start you off with a 'sworn enemy' just as an expedient. If you play Sudeki, you start off with them handing you an enemy. An ancient enemy, the Aklorians, who have been at war with your people for some time, and seem to attack you for no reason. At the beginning of any game, I've got nothing but love for all God's people. When you tell me I've got an ancient enemy, I tend to question it more than just jump in and say, "Yeah! Let's kill those bastards!"

I find myself more interested in their motivation than angry with them. I kill those that attack me, but I just can't buy into calling them enemies. Then, about half way through the game, I find out that they are not my "real" enemy. In fact, someone else is manipulating both sides to attack each other. Well, how . . . underwhelming. Sorry, it just doesn't feel like betrayal when you don't really love or hate either side.

What's worse is that most games will foreshadow this situation. Look, if you are told to attack somebody, and you aren't given a reason for it, and people actively avoid questions which might mitigate the hatred, chances are you're being manipulated. If you really want to make the players believe a story, you have to give them a believable motivation for both sides. We hate the bad guys because they want to take over our world. Okay, but if you don't tell me why they want our world, then it just doesn't quite gel. These days, it's hard to accept general greed as a motivation, unless you make your enemy so cartoony in his manner that people accept him as generally shallow and two-dimensional.

Now, this would be a great betrayal. The troll destroys your village, and you see him dancing on the mountaintop, gleefully enjoying the destruction. You hear him say, "Boy I really do hate all humans. I just love smashin' em." Okay, at this point, you accept that your story and motivation are going to be two-dimensional, and you just play the game normally, trying to stop, or kill, the troll. Along your jouneys, you pick up a pal who tells you that his village was destroyed by the troll, and he has been following the troll ever since. So, cool. Now you've got a party in the standard video game sense.

But then you notice, in the middle of one of the battles, that the latest village the troll destroyed was a troll village. You notice that your new friend always seems to know just where to go next to head off the troll. Through cutscenes, you notice all kinds of intricate little details (like the troll is always rubbing the silver band around his head, like it was giving him a headache).

If games can do that, start with a simple two-dimensional story, and slowly evolve it through small, incremental clues, it would keep the player's attention, and build them up for a much better betrayal. For instance, the game leaves clues that lead you to believe your new friend is controlling the troll, but does it in a way that seems like the game is trying to keep that secret from you. Then, just when you're expecting the betrayal scene, where you are ready to confront him, you get stabbed from behind by a huge, new enemy with his own army of controlled trolls. You wake up in a jail cell thinking, "What the hell just happened?" Now, that's a sweet setup.

Any story that leads you subtly into building your own idea of which side is good and which is evil, then completely obliterates those beliefs in climactic storyline changes, will be heralded and loved.
- posted by BrandG @ 7:13 AM 0 comments

 
LDTV - The Wave of the future.
I was just looking through the glut of hardware that makes up my handheld media system. My IPod Video, PocketPC computer, Neuros 442 video player, Treo video phone, and Playstation Portable. It occured to me that they all play video, but none of them are HDTV.

I started wondering why we care so much about HDTV.

The US government has decreed that we will move all TV signals to HDTV by 2006. The media conglomerates have tried twice to ram legislation through congress that will make it impossible to record HDTV, and half of the people who have HDTV systems think they are watching it, without actually having the systems hooked up properly.

That means half the people who have HDTV only think they're watching HDTV, while they are, in fact, only watching normal TV.

In fact, Hollywood doesn't even want HDTV. Turns out, when you see a movie star in the Megapixels view, you can see their skin imperfections. They look more human, presumably. This, of course, scares the hell out of Hollywood.

So why are we in such a hurry to get HDTV? Every time I've seen it, I've said, "Okay. The picture is clearer than normal. Of course, it doesn't make the movie any better."

Every one of the media viewers I own has the capability to play video at 320x240. And believe me, at 30 frames per second, 320x240 is plenty for a handheld device.

What's more, the compression savings are a godsend. I can get the typical 1.5 hour movie into 450megs at 320x240. That means I can store just about 9 movies (or 13.5 hours) of video on one DVD. 13.5 hours is enough space to store all the Lord of the Rings movies and still have room for the Rankin-Bass versions! (whoa, really showed my geek stripes there)

So that's what I'm doing. I'm letting the whole HDTV movement pass me by. I'm not going to be one of the early adopters who buys a $3,000 TV just so I can get smaller pixels. Instead, I'm going to convert all my DVDs to low res, cut my DVD collection to 1/10th it's size, and carry my videos with me wherever I go.

I think I'd enjoy being the world's first Low-Def Television Missionary.
- posted by BrandG @ 12:37 AM 0 comments

 
Sony's rootkit 'Hot Coffee'
Tags:Sony rootkit GTA Grand Theft Auto Hot Coffee ITunes


Sony is probably one of the biggest backers for Take Two, and GTA in particular. Every GTA game that has come out so far, debuted on a Sony System. So it could be said that Sony has a pretty close relationship with those guys.

It could also be said that Rockstar made a big mistake when it left critically dangerous code (now called 'Hot Coffee') in its game. When they put the Hot Coffee minigame in there, they took out the reference to it, thus removing it in practice without removing it in fact.

Now, in an odd moment of serendipity, it looks like Sony has done the same thing with their DRM software.

It turns out that the (now infamous) Sony rootkit employs code which came from DVD Jon, and was used to circumvent Apple's DRM software. The code from DVD Jon was released under the GPL, which means that in this case, Sony would have to publish the fact that they used this code.

Now, I'm not going to go after them because they broke copyright with their rootkit. That ground has already been covered. What I find funny is the news today about what they're doing with it.

It turns out that Sony had code that would allow ITunes to play their music, but only on the one computer. Of course, that meant hacking the Apple DRM in order to do it.

So, the story of the day would have been "Sony breaks copyrights twice in order to protect their copyrights". But that isn't the story at all. Because Sony took that function out.

Possibly at the last minute, Sony removed the call to their "ITunes enabling" code, thus leaving the functionality out, but not actually removing that code.

So, much like the way Rockstar accidentally leaked a "Hot Coffee" game, now Sony is accidentally leaking a "Hack ITunes" game.

Honestly, what Sony is doing behind our backs really makes the whole "Hot Coffee" scandal seem timid, sad, and tame.

Now, surely Hillary Clinton and all the anti-videogame people will come screaming for blood from people who actually do harm to peoples computers, data, privacy, and content. I'm just waiting to hear them start investigations of Sony.

Any minute now. . .
- posted by BrandG @ 9:06 PM 0 comments

 
Existential Save Games
In this podcast post, I talk about a singularly odd thing that happened in GTA, which brought into question the very nature of the universe.

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I was just playing GTA: San Andreas a second ago, and I noticed something wholly unseen in the history of man.

First of all, you have to understand something about the way they do savegames. When you step on the little floating floppy disk, the game will do five things: save your game progress (obviously), fully heal you, fully feed you, drop any wanted level you may have gained, and advance the clock by six hours.

In the past, I have always assumed that it worked like this: I walked into my safehouse, got something to eat, had a bit of a lie down to refresh myself, and then came out six hours later. However, I have a spinning savegame icon that's standing in between two pillars in front of a garage, so it's not really a safehouse.

Anyway, I was running out of health, because my wanted level was at about three stars (not impossible to survive, but impossible to ignore). Cops were pouring out of the landscape, shooting off all of my armor, then most of my health. I got to the savegame icon with only one percent health, and a cop pointing his gun in my face. As I was looking down the cobalt blue barrel, the screen flashed to a "Save Game?" prompt.

I said yes, and the game resumed. It was six hours later, I was still standing in the middle of the parking lot, and still looking death in the barrel, when the cop put his gun down and walked away.

It had such an existential feel to it, like the last scene in Time Bandits, where Sean Connery gets back into the firetruck and waves as they drive off.

I figure this is what happened: The cops were pursuing me when I suddenly blipped out of existence. They ran a five-hour exhaustive manhunt, during which I could not be found. One cop stayed in place, swearing to all the others, "I don't care what you say! He freakin' vanished, man!" Then, just as he was giving up hope, I blipped back into existence in front of him. The vision of me, appearing like magic in front of the cop was a highly religious experience, one that made him rethink his whole moral outlook. He put his gun down, swearing never to raise it to another man in anger, and went home to tell his wife that they were going to buy a farm and live off the land.

Of course, it could be one of those normal gameplay invariants, but I like my version better.
- posted by BrandG @ 11:35 PM 0 comments

 
Video Game Ethics 4 - Sex
In this podcast, I talk about the ethics of sex as handled by games. With added 'Hot Coffee' goodness.

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It's kind of tough to talk about video games, ethics, and sex, because I don't think humanity has completely defined what appropriate sexual ethics are.

I mean, sexual issues seem to wax and wane with each generation. For instance, in America, just thirty years ago, homosexuality was never referred to on TV or film.

In that thirty years, however, we have seen "Will & Grace", "The L Word", and even the Crying Game. So, morals swing a lot over time.

Rather than try to determine where games stand on the right or wrong of sex,let's look at where they stand on individual issues within the realm of "sex".

Before I get started, let me point out that I'm drawing a distinction here between sex in games, and sex games.

The first group is personified by games that you can buy on the shelves at any Best Buy or Electronic Boutique (Leisure Suit Larry, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto).

The second group is usually bought over the internet or downloaded (Hentai games, strip blackjack games, stuff like that).

Without trying to offend anyone, I'm going to call the first group "Normal" games (games that revolve around gameplay), and the second group "Hentai" games (games that revolve around sex).

I should point out that there are very few games out there that have courtship or sex, and of those few, they all feature a male courting a woman.

But while you may see a game where the male has to buy expensive presents, flowers, and candy for the female, you won't ever see a strong female lead striving to convince a male to love her. In this, at least, art imitates life.

Monogamy:

Of the entire range of "Normal" games, there are almost no games that support monogamy.

Whenever courting is represented in a video game, it is almost always a man courting a woman; and in all of those situations, the man is allowed to court as many women as he wishes.

Every episode of Leisure Suit Larry was about the player trying to have sex with as many girls as he could.

In Fable, a man can marry a woman in a grand ceremony, then walk to the nearest town and marry again.

In Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, there are six different women who are designated "girlfriends".

It is quite possible, and apparently pretty common, for people to co-mingle in "The Sims". They can even get married, although even that is limited to kissing and hugging. Also, the Sims condones poligamy by allowing the male to marry as many females as he wants.

Now, there are several games out there that have a woman as a goal ("Save the Princess" to receive a chaste kiss on the cheek), but in those games, there is never an alternative.

You can't get to the end of the game and say, "Actually, I think the evil witch is more my type."

And because there's no choice, it's not really monogamous (was Adam really monogamous with Eve, or was there just no other choice?).

In Hentai games, monogamy is not even a consideration. Most of the game is involved not with which woman you should sleep with, but rather details about how you sleep with them.

T&A:

Given how much it's been covered in the past, it's almost not worth mentioning that body styles in video games have grown unbelievable.

Every leading man has a 30-inch waist, washerboard abs, four foot wide shoulders, and rippling muscles.

Every leading lady fits a 36-24-36 DD format, and in some games, you can even set how much the breasts bounce when she moves.

This section is obviously tailored to the lowest common denominator, and it will not change. Why? You may ask? Because there's a lot more people in the lower common denominator than in any other group, and they spend money the same way anybody else does.

And, of course, it's even worse in the Hentai games.

The Act:

In Normal games, showing the act is very rare, and usually involves creative editing. GTA will show a car bounce up and down if you hire a prostitute.

Leisure Suit Larry will show some suggestive imagery, but put black "Censor bars" over the private parts of the couple. Probably my favorite example of this was in the first LSL, where the Censor bar was the exact same size as Larry, so it looked like the bar was bouncing on top of Larry's date.

A more common form is to fade to black, or show an exterior shot of the room, while you hear the moaning coming from inside.

Either way, games apparently don't think it's necessary to show much in this situation. Why, you may ask? Because it's got nothing to do with gameplay, and gameplay is king.

In Hentai games, you rarely see much of the act, because in most cases, it's just a series of images with lurid descriptions. However, in the games that show animated sex, they rarely shy away from showing any part of the act.

Now, no modern discussion about sex in video games would be complete without talking about the biggest news story in video games this past year, the Hot Coffee Mod.

It seems that, while developing the game Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, the guys at Rockstar thought it would be fun to make a minigame based on sex itself. However, the company decided to cut the minigame, because of censorship concerns. For all we know, this happens a lot in video games, but we never find out, because they always remove that code before shipping the game.

And, in fact, we probably never would have heard about this one, except that when they took out the minigame, they didn't completely remove it. And so, after some enterprising hackers got into the game, they unlocked the sex minigame, and created a mod so that everyone could play it.

Now, to be fair, there wasn't a whole lot to see there. It was basically a couple of sexless Barbie dolls bumping into each other, in time with a beat. The game was already rated T for Teen, so it was pretty much in line with what had been seen before. A lot of people compared it to the sex scene from "Team America: World Police" where two marrionettes bounce into each other humourously. It was, frankly, pretty tame.

The gaming world went nuts. Parents groups were up in arms. Walmart, KMart, Target, they all said they would be removing the game from their shelves. The ESRB decided to re-rate the game as "Adults Only", a rating which had previously only been used for Hentai and other porn-based games.

So this is probably the clearest indication we can get as to what the culture thinks of sex. Whereas it was entirely valid to suggest that a player can have sex with multiple partners, it was entirely off-limits to actually show two androgynous people engaging in consensual sex. Once again we get the message that the image of sex is bad, but the concept of sex is good, or at least, not worth mentioning.

Re-cap:

So, games seem to be physically and emotionally immature, either incapable or unwilling to commit to one relationship. Also, they seem somewhat chauvinistic in their portrayal of men pursuing women. However, they seem to be pretty prudish when it comes to nudity in the games.

That seems kind of odd, that they are okay with multiple partners, but unwilling to show naked people. But when you think about it, it's not that odd. Our censorship is based on images, not on content.

Next up - Gluttony and Envy
- posted by BrandG @ 9:47 PM 0 comments

 
In-Browser Podcast Player
If you look at the top of this page, just under the title, you'll see a Flash player that will let you listen to the Rambling Brand Podcast in your browser!

If you're like me, you load up podcasts on your MP3 player for the commute to work. If, however, you want to 'try before you buy', this gives you a great opportunity. I hope you like it.
- posted by BrandG @ 8:56 PM 0 comments

 
Lying
In today's post we look at the ethical situation in video games regarding Lying. Where are you allowed to lie in a video game? How do most games handle it (if at all).

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- posted by BrandG @ 8:09 AM 0 comments