Category: Games

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Stop Pollinating Yourselves

flower-game-screenshot-2

Attention game journalists:

Can we stop overselling Flower please? Yes, it’s a lovely little game. Yes, it does a lot of interesting things with control. Yes, it has wonderful atmosphere and a nice message. But how about we let players discover these things for themselves? Do we really need to engage in a Most Embarrassing Hyperbole contest every time we talk about the game?

Here, I’ll help. Here’s a handy list for anyone planning to review, blog about, or otherwise cover the game:

Things Flower Does Not Do

  • Redefines gaming forever
  • Cures cancer
  • Justifies, on its own, the purchase of a PlayStation 3
  • Reverses global warming
  • Personally fellates the player
  • Magically turns your significant other into a gamer
  • Rescues us from the post-holiday lull
  • Saves the whales
  • Feeds the hungry
  • Allows you to stop considering other games for Game of the Year
  • Sticks it to The Man
  • Helps you clean your apartment, you filthy troll
  • Brings about peace in the Middle East
  • Takes the place of real flowers for your loved one
  • Makes you any smarter, hipper, or more attractive
  • Loves you

Things Flower Does

  • Kills a couple hours in a soothing, and yet thought-provoking, fashion
  • Surprises the player…if you people will let it

Thank you for your attention.

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A Brief History of Internet Gaming

[While trying to help one of my nieces with a school project, I dug up the bit I contributed to EGM’s award-winning Future of Videogames piece from early 2007. But after looking at it again, I realized they had to cut my Brief History of Internet Gaming sidebar down quite a bit to fit it into the mag. This is the original version.]

1969 – The first ARPANET link is created, building the first strand in what would eventually become the Internet.

1978 – The first multi-user dungeon (MUD) is created. Little more than a customizable chatroom, the MUD is nevertheless the predecessor to today’s MMORPGs.

1985 – Quantum Computer Services launches Quantum Link, an online hub for the Commodore 64, featuring simple multiplayer board games. The service is later renamed America Online.

1991 – Neverwinter Nights, the first MMORPG with graphics, is launched on AOL. It costs $6 an hour to play. Its server capacity: 50 players.

1996 – Quake is released, shortly followed by QuakeWorld, a client for playing the game over the Internet. The era of the online FPS is born.

1997 – Ultima Online is launched. 100,000 subscribers sign up within the first six months, only to be brutally PKed and have their boats stolen.

1998 – The Dreamcast is released in Japan, becoming the first game console to launch with a built-in modem. Also, the last.

1999 – EverQuest and Asheron’s Call are launched, completing (with UO) the unholy triumvirate that has strongly influenced MMORPGs to this day.

2002 – Xbox Live is launched on the original Xbox, setting new standards for communication both in-game (with standardized voice chat) and cross-game (with a unified login and friend list). PS2 and Gamecube also debut online functionality, but neither approaches XBL in popularity.

2003 – EverQuest is ported to PS2 in the form of EverQuest Online Adventures. The gaming world notices, yawns, and goes back to hunting for new Final Fantasy XI screens.

2004 – Halo 2 is released, featuring one of the most popular online components in any console game. Within the next two years over half a billion games of Halo 2 will be played online. Also this year: World of Warcraft launches. You may have heard of it.

2006 – PS3 and Wii are launched. Xbox Live takes note of the systems’ respective online offerings, heaves a sigh of relief, and returns to lounging on its jewel-encrusted throne.

2007 – Halo 3 launches. A crippled Internet limps along under the strain of a few million players all getting online at the same time.

2008 – “Internet2” is completed, offering researchers and universities 100 Gbps transfer speeds.

2009 – Debut of 100-Gbps streaming porn.

2010 – Most metropolitan areas now offer free Wi-Fi within city limits. All that shared bandwidth makes users nostalgic for the dial-up days.

2029 – The Internet, now self-aware, sends a T-800 back in time to kill Sarah Connor.

2050 – Humans move to an internet-only existence, uploading their brains to permanently live in the electronic world.

2112 – Attention, all planets of the Solar Federation: We have assumed control.

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Selling Out

Not too long ago, the New York Times ran an article about the rise of music licensing. It’s an interesting article, and it makes a lot of good points about the growing importance of licensing to musicians’ careers. I imagine if you thought about it you’d probably agree that a well-chosen commercial can make a big impact on a musician’s career these days. Just think of any recent Apple commercial: Would Feist be enjoying the popularity she currently has if Apple hadn’t used “1 2 3 4” to relaunch the Nano? Somehow I doubt it. I imagine, at least, that she probably wouldn’t have been on Sesame Street.

So I agree with the article up to a point. But then the author starts dishing out gems like this one:

What happens to the music itself when the way to build a career shifts from recording songs that ordinary listeners want to buy to making music that marketers can use? That creates pressure, subtle but genuine, for music to recede: to embrace the element of vacancy that makes a good soundtrack so unobtrusive, to edit a lyric to be less specific or private, to leave blanks for the image or message the music now serves.

I’m sorry, Mr. Pareles, but that is just so very much bullshit. Continue reading “Selling Out”