J. Paradise recently began a series over at DailyGame called Confessions of a Girl Gamer, cataloguing some of the less-fun aspects of multiplayer gaming on Xbox Live. As a female gamer, she noted some of the less pleasant behaviors of the majority of the other gamers on the system, who presumably are male, if common sense and all known statistics can be trusted.
While most of her complaints are entirely valid and each of the behaviors she describes is undoubtedly annoying, I thought there were one or two points which deserved to be responded to, given the criticism the gaming industry receives almost daily in the current political climate for promoting sex and violence. Before this and other articles get referred to in an attempt to heap the charge of promoting sexism among America's youth gets piled onto the heap, it might be worth thinking a little further on some of the topics J. Paradise raises.
Kotaku today asks if female gamers are going to generate the extra revenue needed for the industry to grow, based on a story at MarketWatch (free registration required).
At the same time, Daily Game is carrying part one of Confessions of a Girl Gamer, which amounts to, among other things, complaints from J. Paradise about being constantly asked if she is really a girl, followed by being called a "bitch", "slut", "whore" and being told to get back in the kitchen.
This article I think warrants a longer response, and I hope I'll have a chance to give it soon.
In the absence of real information, outrageous rumors about Halo 3-- a game that hasn't even really been announced officially by Bungie-- are circulating far and wide. Since Bungie probably isn't going to shoot them down just now, I thought I'd take aim and do some Halo 3 Rumor Control in the latest Narc's Retort.
We've seen this set of rumors, supposedly coming from someone whose uncle works at Bungie (oh dear God not again--Ed.) several times in the past few days. They were even translated into French at Halo.fr.
Given that Bungie seems to be enduring some kind of self-imposed silence bordering on self-denial with regards to the very existence of Halo 3, even to the point of failing to confirm or deny the existence of the game after it was referred to by no less a personage than Microsoft chairman Bill Gates.
That, plus the fact that historically Bungie, like other game studios, usually doesn't comment on rumors, means that regardless of the particular situation right now, these rumors would no doubt spread unchecked anyway.
Rampancy's roots lie next to Bungie's, which is to say, in an Apple orchard. Halo was originally announced at MacWorld in 1999 as a game that was supposed to ship on Macs (and PCs, of course) in early 2000. Of course, lots has changed since then, and for those who still have an interest in Macs at all, as I do, this week was full of discussion about the interesting news that Apple will begin making computers with Intel CPUs next year and conclude 2007 by converting their entire line.
Faster than the information could move out on the Internet, there was much crying and screaming and gnashing of teeth, accompanied by rampant speculation, baseless predictions, obvious errors and scurrilous lies.
With that in mind, the newest Narc's Retort is intended to be an exposure of ten myths that have grown up around Apple's Intel conversion, many based on long-standing myths about Apple Computer. Most of them are off-topic for this site, really, but the first is on how this transition may impact game development on Mac OS X. The article is quite long, so after you read that bit you can stop. If you're a Mac user or just interested, feel free to continue on to the end.
Not even a week has elapsed since what was a rumor picked up as a scoop by News.com became confirmed truth by the power of Steve Jobs' renowned Reality Distortion Field.
Gerard Jones at the New Hampshire Union Leader admits that he hates GTA, but believes legal efforts to blame video games for violence in society are misplaced and inneffective. Thanks, HBO.
Newsweek seems to think that Sony's strong-but-silent approach won over E3 attendees, opposed to Microsoft's MTV extravaganza. Thanks Major Nelson.
Worth pointing out is one major gaffe in the article, in the following quote:
Because Sony is the leader—it has more online users in North America than Microsoft has globally—the burden is on Microsoft to prove that it can knock off Sony's crown, or at least tarnish it.
At the very least, this quote should not have the word "online" in it. If it means to say that Sony's installed base of consoles in North America is larger than Microsoft's, that is true-- but not online. Halo 2 has put Xbox Live way above the numbers registered by Sony's online console offerings.
UPDATE: Sony Computer Entertainment president Ken Kutaragi has also been quoted as referring to Microsoft as "not a threat". GameSpot has a record of the mudslinging between Xbox officer Robert J. Bach, Kutaragi, and Nintendo president Satoru Iwata, translated from a Japanese language interview in Asahi Shinbun.
More than a year ago, before Halo 2 or Doom 3 were released, there was trash talking in the chat rooms about Id's attempt to add a real storyline to their game. Now that the Xbox version has been out for awhile, I had a chance to compare Doom 3 and Halo 2, as I promised I would last year.
Major Nelson has linked to A Gamers' Manifesto at Pointlesswasteoftime.com; it's a nicely-done but adult-language rant asking for game companies to make better AI, stop exaggerating graphics and ruining immersion, among other things. It's also worth pointing out at this time Life after the Video Game Crash, a prediction that the video game industry will falter due to its many ills after this year, and Burn The House Down, a GDC panel featuring Warren Spector, Brenda Laurel, Jason Della Rocca and Chris Hecker about those many ills.
Price points, smack talk, mac talk, and rip, mod and burn today in a specially-compressed E3 2005 random edition of Narc's Rants. I'm not at E3, so the rose-colored glasses are off.
So much has gone on recently that it's almost impossible to write a complete piece on each one before the news recedes into obscurity. Here are a few items of note and my take on each, then, before things pile up so high I can't get out from under them:
By their prices, you shall know them
So, Microsoft lets the bomb drop this week that the Xbox 360 will be backwards compatible-- sort of. That "sort of" should include Halo and Halo 2, according to Newsday via HBO. But as they look backwards to look forwards, is Microsoft reaching far enough back for owners of the original console? This is the latest of Narc's Retorts.