Vaporware

People love talking about games that don’t exist.

Consider that 11 years later people still talk about Duke Nukem Forever as if it were a real game.  Some credulous souls still speak about the RPG Grimoire as if it will ever be released.  Or consider the ironically-named Phantom game console, an idea that seemed to have begun as forum speculation. Read more

Discuss this article in the forums - (1) Posts

There’s no media like no media

The very first tape recorder I saw being used was a reel-to-reel tape recorder that belonged to a friend of the family. The first tape player I used regularly was an 8-track system in my friend’s ’68 Dodge Charger. When I got my Mustang, it came equipped with the very latest in media, a cassette tape player and a couple of in dash speakers about the same diameter as a baseball. Incredible! Read more

Discuss this article in the forums - (1) Posts

Snake? Snake! Nooooooooo…

Thanks for tuning in to the fourth issue of PTD Magazine. We’re pumped to produce our first themed issue about summer movies! I hope you enjoy reading as we pan film tie-in videogames left and right. Well, that was the anticipated plan, at least. Read more

Discuss this article in the forums - (1) Posts

Better safe than sorry

Roughly a year and a half ago, Nintendo sat at the poker table with Microsoft and Sony. At the time, Microsoft had already shown its hand with the 360, and Sony claimed to be holding onto more aces than a standard deck would allow. So what did Nintendo do? Read more

Discuss this article in the forums - (1) Posts

The death of special effects

My son and I went to see The Hulk when the new Marvel Studio film opened in Oklahoma City recently, and we were both impressed with the seamless nature of the CGI elements in the movie.  As we drove away from the theater, we started talking about how filming technology has evolved, making films like The Hulk and Iron Man possible. Read more

C&C in Real Life

John Tyler Hammons, until recently a freshman at the University of Oklahoma, likes to play history-based games like Rome: Total War. “That’s the best video game ever,” the 19-year old told PTD recently while standing in the parking lot of City Hall in Muskogee, a community of just under 40,000 in eastern Oklahoma. Read more

Violence in play is nothing new

Several years ago, a senator in my home state introduced legislation that would ban the sales of video games deemed too violent - including an earlier version of Grand Theft Auto. As a parent, I have no problem with restricting underage players from games that might include graphic violence or sex, but as a citizen of a free country, I always think it’s a mistake when the government tries to legislate morality. Read more

What will happen when special effects aren’t special anymore? [Vertical]

My son and I went to see The Hulk when the new Marvel Studio film opened in Oklahoma City recently, and we were both impressed with the seamless nature of the CGI elements in the movie. As we drove away from the theater, we started talking about how filming technology has evolved, making films like The Hulk and Ironman possible. I told him about the ‘gee-whiz’ feeling I had when I saw Star Wars for the first time in a little movie theater in Sugarland, Texas back in the late 70s, and we started brainstorming about the future of film. Soon, popular stars will develop that are completely created - that is, their voices and features will be entirely generated by computers. With the inevitable improvements occurring in CGI, soon movie-goers won’t be able to tell the difference between live actors and computer-generated characters. And suddenly, we’ll have ‘actors’ who can look the same for literally hundreds of years. Imagine a storyline that spans a couple of centuries - or even a millennium - it could happen.

But what happens when the ‘gee-whiz’ wears off? My grandchildren will take CGI technology for granted, because they’ll grow up in a time when it’s the norm, instead of something that’s new and exciting. I’ll admit, I’ve gone to a few films where the only redeeming quality was the power of its special effects. But what will happen when special effects aren’t ’special’ anymore?

That’s easy - writing will become more important again. The story will become more critical to the success of a film than its visuals. Hollywood comes full circle.

Just think about the ‘website craze’ when the Internet was relatively new to public use. A million sites sprang up that had plenty of flash - but no real content. Predictably, those content-poor websites withered on the vine, and justly so. As the World Wide Web has become more mature, the emphasis has shifted away from sites with scrolling marquees to sites that are content-rich. Only the strong survive.

The same thing will happen in film. Great CGI effects won’t be enough to keep an audience’s attention. In fact today, the best movie is the one with both: great special effects and a great storyline. Marvel’s Spider-man franchise is a good example.

So, I’m excited about the future of film. As a person who would rather read a well-written book than see a poorly-written movie, I’ll welcome the soon-to-appear improvement in scripts and dialogue.

And besides, with all this new CGI wizardry, maybe someone will be brave enough to make a movie of the Foundation Trilogy. You could stretch that excellent storyline over a couple of centuries!

10 PRINT (”Hello World”); [Vertical]

Welcome to the first issue of Playedtodeath, Oklahoma’s premier video gaming news venue.

We’re glad you picked us up and we know you’ll look forward to fresh newsprint every month, as well as daily industry and cultural updates on our interactive website.  Each month we’ll talk about the things that are important to gamers:  reviews of new games and gaming systems, features that focus on your unique lifestyle - including the cooler places to hang when you’re not leveling up - and straight talk about the products that you find interesting (your phone does what?)

To make sure we provide the very best in computer gaming news, we’ve assembled an international staff of writers who bring years of computer gaming experience to the keyboard.  Our people know the movers and shakers in the industry personally, and we don’t cut corners when it comes to bringing you the latest stories:  when Kaz Hirai keynotes the 2008 Tokyo Game Show, we’ll be in the audience mentally translating yen to dollars and wondering how many people can legally share a sleeping tube.  When a new energy drink is introduced in OKC, we’ll be there to guzzle a freshly-minted can and crush the empty against our foreheads (or better, our friend’s forehead).  When Nintendo or Sony or NCsoft rolls out a new release, our reviewers will literally play it to death, to give you the best info to use in deciding how to spend your gaming dollars - that’s our promise to you.

And we want you to participate in this adventure, too - by giving us honest feedback on the reviews and articles you read on these pages.  If your thinking is concise and your analysis piercing, we might even print your emails in our Forum feature (spelling and sentence structure is important - we hope you didn’t stop paying attention in fifth grade).  Let us know about gaming-related events for our monthly activities calendar, like the LAN party you have planned in the basement of your sister’s cousin’s daughter’s house - who knows, we might show up and bring door prizes (generally expired pizza coupons and stuff like that).  Playedtodeath will occasionally even be news (as opposed to reporting it), when we sponsor the biggest LAN party in the state of Oklahoma later this year (keep your schedule clear during Fall Break).  And every month, you’ll have a chance to win cool stuff (with very little effort on your part).

In short, we’re going to make every effort to be that computer gaming newspaper that you always wished (at least since last Thursday) you could read while you were waiting for a Saturday night table in Bricktown.  

So, enjoy - and keep doing that thing you do with the PS3 controller!

Call of the Couch

I used to be a PC gamer.

I used to get into arguments on internet forums about how console games were necessarily inferior to PC games, how they were less sophisticated, were poorer, simpler, and so on.  I don’t get into those arguments anymore.  The war is over.  The PC lost.

This isn’t to say I don’t play PC games now.  I do; I play many.  It’s just that the argument that PC gaming is somehow a singular experience no longer holds water.  In the early 1980’s, many people argued that arcade games were singular and that home machines would never be able to recreate the immersive experience of, say, Star Fire.  That argument was proven wrong, too.

There are a few reasons for these changes.  First, and most importantly, as consoles have grown more powerful, nearly everyone has to come face to face with a simple fact:  it’s more fun to play a game on the couch than at a desk.

There are other reasons as well, though.  User interface design has improved and simplified to where the controls of most PC games can be mapped to a console controller.  Now that text adventures effectively don’t exist anymore (yes, I’m aware of the IFComp and other amateur efforts, I’m painting in broad strokes here) a game that actually requires a full keyboard to play is less likely to be “intricate and deep” and more likely to just have a poorly designed user interface.

What I’ve seen happening is not that PC games aren’t being made anymore but that the locus of innovation has shifted.  There will always be a market for PC games.  There will always be clever games made by small independent developers on on every platform, even the oft-maligned Macintosh, but now the truly interesting advances are coming from new user interfaces.  I’m talking about innovative custom controllers, as in Guitar Hero, and in entirely new console paradigms, as exemplified by the Wii.

A year ago people were speaking of Nintendo in funereal terms, an also-ran long passed by Sony and Microsoft.  Today, they’re leading the charge of the next wave, and they did it not by spending money on faster and hotter chips, but by innovating and developing a new user experience.

I don’t know where the next great innovation in games is going to come from.  But I do know one thing: it’s not going to happen at a desk.  It’s going to happen on a couch.

Next Page »