Evil Lair: On the Architecture of the Enemy in Videogame Worlds
Topic: Games
8:20 am EDT, May 20, 2009
Jim Rossignol:
Game developers are unconstrained in their designs for the enemy. Such designers will be punished with poor sales, not death in the gulag, if their designs for the overlord are unpopular. They could go anywhere with the homes of evildoers: halls of electric fluorescence, palaces carved from corduroy, suburban back yards.
And yet, in spite of this freedom, most videogame designers choose to make a definite connection to familiar – or real-world – architecture. Perhaps they think that the evil lair must emanate evil. There's surely no room for ambiguity with videogame evildoers: the gamer needs to know that it's okay to aim for hi-score vengeance.
We are on the cusp of perfection of extreme evil -- an evil whose possibility spreads well beyond weapons of mass destruction.
Robert Draper, for GQ:
Donald Rumsfeld has always answered his detractors by claiming that history will one day judge him kindly. But as he waits for that day, a new group of critics—his administration peers—are suddenly speaking out for the first time. What they’re saying? It isn’t pretty.
I'm just, like, in his arms, all snug. I'm his first ever girlfriend and we've been together 18 months. My ideal night with him is playing Dungeons & Dragons on Xbox or painting Warhammer figurines.
Dave Arneson, Co-Creator of Dungeons and Dragons, Dies at 61
Topic: Games
8:40 am EDT, Apr 13, 2009
Dave Arneson, one of the co-creators of the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy game and a pioneer of role-playing entertainment, died after a two-year battle with cancer, his family said Thursday. He was 61.
From a year ago:
Gary Gygax, a pioneer of the imagination who transported a fantasy realm of wizards, goblins and elves onto millions of kitchen tables around the world through the game he helped create, Dungeons & Dragons, died Tuesday at his home in Lake Geneva, Wis. He was 69.
From the archive:
Thirty-one years after the invention of Dungeons & Dragons, the original role-playing game remains the most popular and financially successful brand in the adventure gaming industry.
I'm just, like, in his arms, all snug. I'm his first ever girlfriend and we've been together 18 months. My ideal night with him is playing Dungeons & Dragons on Xbox or painting Warhammer figurines.
From the economic point of view, this was the year video games overtook music and video, combined. As a rule, economic shifts of this kind take a while to register on the cultural seismometer; and indeed, from the broader cultural point of view, video games barely exist.
There is no other medium that produces so pure a cultural segregation as video games, so clean-cut a division between the audience and the non-audience. Video games have people who play them, and a wider public for whom they simply don’t exist. Their invisibility is interesting in itself, and also allows interesting things to happen in games under the cultural radar.
A common criticism of video games made by non-gamers is that they are pointless and escapist, but a more valid observation might be that the bulk of games are nowhere near escapist enough.
The trouble with these games – the majority of them – isn’t that they are maladapted to the real world, it’s that they’re all too well adapted. The people who play them move from an education, much of it spent in front of a computer screen, full of competitive, repetitive, quantifiable, measured progress towards goals determined by others, to a work life, much of it spent in front of a computer screen, full of competitive, repetitive, quantifiable, measured progress towards goals determined by others, and for recreation sit in front of a computer screen and play games full of competitive, repetitive, quantifiable, measured progress towards goals determined by others. Most video games aren’t nearly irresponsible enough.
If I had to name one high-cultural notion that had died in my adult lifetime, it would be the idea that difficulty is artistically desirable.
Recently:
Bosses complain that after a childhood of being coddled and praised, Net Geners demand far more frequent feedback and an over-precise set of objectives on the path to promotion (rather like the missions that must be completed in a video game).
From the archive:
If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about.
As a prank, students from local high schools have been taking advantage of the county's Speed Camera Program in order to exact revenge on people who they believe have wronged them in the past.
Students duplicate the license plates by printing plate numbers on glossy photo paper, using fonts from certain websites that "mimic" those on Maryland license plates. They tape the duplicate plate over the existing plate on the back of their car and purposefully speed through a speed camera. The victim then receives a citation in the mail days later.
County Council President Phil Andrews said that this could hurt the integrity of the Speed Camera Program.
From the archive:
Typography is not simply a frou-frou debate over aesthetics orchestrated by a hidden coterie of graphic-design nerds.
There is, however, some reality to the idea that the U.S. is seeking "administrative revenge" against this person for demonstrating that their security is weak.
Now you can be the protagonist of the petroleum era: explore and drill around the world, corrupt politicians, stop alternative energies and increase the oil addiction. Be sure to have fun before the resources begin to deplete.
Get ready to race at blazing speeds and experience futuristic, adrenaline-filled racing action! The iconic anti-gravity racing franchise is back and moving at light speed with WipEout® HD. Delivering 1080p High Definition visuals running at a breathtaking 60 frames per second, WipEout HD features a selection of the best tracks taken from previous versions of the wipEout franchise, meticulously crafted and fully reworked to showcase the processing power of PS3. Features eight racing teams, classic tracks from previous Wipeout releases, five gameplay modes, plus 8-player online racing and Trophy support, all set to a hard-hitting techno soundtrack of nine fully-licensed music tracks remixed in Dolby™ 5.1 surround sound.
The NeoCube is composed of 216 individual high-energy sphere magnets, which can be formed into BILLIONS of shapes and patterns. It is highly addictive and only available at www.Shop.TheNeoCube.com
From the Basement to the Basic Set: The Early Years of Dungeons & Dragons
Topic: Games
10:03 pm EDT, Jun 18, 2008
Thirty-one years after the invention of Dungeons & Dragons, the original role-playing game remains the most popular and financially successful brand in the adventure gaming industry.
This fact is so well established in the conventional wisdom of the adventure games industry that it's difficult to find adequate sourcing for the assertion, and it seems ridiculous to even try. In that time, D&D has introduced millions of readers to the concept of role-playing. Even those who eventually move on to other systems usually get their start with D&D. Most gamers' understanding of "what happens" in a role-playing game is therefore shaped by how D&D explains these concepts. An analysis of how D&D's manuals have explained the duties and roles of players throughout the game's many printings therefore offers a glimpse at the evolution of the role-playing form itself. If Dungeons & Dragons is the lingua franca of most role-playing gamers, its definition of the role-playing experience defines an important touchstone helpful for critical study of the role-playing phenomenon.
This article gives a broad overview of D&D in its first era, from its origins in the basements of two Midwest game designers to its evolution into a boxed set of simplified rules aimed at the mass market. By the end of this period, Dungeons & Dragons had entered the common consciousness of the American public, and all subsequent revisions (and there have been many) can accurately be described as variations on the original. But how did the original come to take form?
