Video Games as ... art? (Picasso Sniper 4 now on sale!)

Kotaku had an interesting commentary on the zombie genre and its recent movement away from zombies as a mystical / unexplainable phenomenon, and into the realm of science with each game having a (mostly) plausible explanation.

Ever since the Spring of 1996, I have enjoyed a really well done zombie survival game. I have also noticed the shift in the genre, both in film and in video games, away from the mystical and towards the scientific.

I think it has less to do with the notion of unexplainable zombies being stale and played out, and more to do with the growing awareness of the dangers of pandemic. As per my last post, I really believe that the idea of infectious diseases has just entered into the public consciousness in such a way that it is terrifying yet conceivable to imagine a disease like rabies, which turns a family member into a violent stranger.

This scenario is far scarier than the idea that a passing comet has a mystical power, or that hell is full to overflowing, precisely because it is a lot more relevant to modern life.

I've loved video games since I can remember. Throughout my lifetime, I've been able to witness the evolution of games from insanely difficult arcade style offerings that had little or no story, to the extremely complex interactive novels that seem to be the modern archetype.

I really do believe that as a new, interactive form of media, it took a while for both the technology and the artists to catch up to its possibilities. Now, please don't misunderstand and think I'm one of those pretentious nits that thinks every single game is a form of art. Sometimes you just wanna shoot zombies in the head. I'm well aware of that.

In fact, very few games these days are, as a whole, intended as a work of art. It is still an industry fueled by profits, and these days games sell based on how fun they are to play. That said, there are still "artistic moments" in most games, and I suspect that this idea will continue to develop along with the game industry itself.

Games are evolving to become more meaningful to our modern lives. They often have parallels to real events. In many cases, they have a subtle commentary about contemporary politics. I believe that games will continue to develop in a way that they remain relevant to our modern lives, much like other forms of media.

I was browsing the forums at GameFAQs a few months ago, and distinctly remember someone posting about how outrageous it was that a game on the current Iraq War was in development. They said it wasn't something we should be entertaining ourselves with, or crassly making money on. Other posters responded with the logical continuation of that line of thought, asking if the original poster thought no movies should be made on any controversial subjects, too?

This line of ignorance, where video games aren't valid as a form of expression, is thankfully on the decline. Yet I suspect this narrow-minded attitude will struggle on, frustratingly impossible to make fully disappear. Much like the insurgency in Iraq.

Does the idea of "work ethic" need an update?

I recently had class with a professor who was quite ill but still came to teach, and he was very proud of it. The prof continually referred to how he was sick and yet he still came here, so we never had an excuse to miss class, et cetera. He said that's the problem with people these days, "no work ethic". While I don't disagree that a lot of people nowadays are sadly lacking in the ability to work hard, I have a problem with equating work ethic with potentially spreading infectious diseases.

He coughed continually, sneezed no less than ten times, and generally made me worry about if he was contagious. In general, I'm not one to worry too much about such things. However, throughout the recent years we've had plenty of epidemic scares. Mad Cow, SARS, bird flu, and most recently the swine flu. There has been a massive campaign of public awareness. In major urban centers all around the world, they have pamphlets encouraging everyone to stay home if they have symptoms, to not risk spreading infection.

There's a fun flash game called pandemic, (now in its second iteration,) in which the player takes on the role of a contagion which tries to exterminate the human race. A morbid affair, yet quite fun.

Now, perhaps it's because I'm in the country-side now, but it definitely doesn't appear that local culture (and in particular the idea of a "strong work ethic" meaning you come to work even if you're sick) has caught up to our understanding of illness and how we can prevent spreading our infections to others.

Even on my small campus in the middle of nowhere, we have signs posted all over the place warning us to wash our hands and stay in our rooms if we have any symptoms. Yet the reality is it is a rare professor will understand if you err on the side of caution, a precious few bosses who want their sick employees to sacrifice productivity. Our culture still considers it a virtue, rather than a vice, to ignore our accumulated knowledge and government posted guidelines.

Back around 1918, the world faced a huge epidemic that killed many millions of people. (It's believed to have been H1N1, the same as our currently infamous swine flu.) Although exact numbers vary, there is agreement that the flu claimed many more lives than the entirety of World War I.

I think it might just be time to update our concept of a "strong work ethic", combining the sentiment of a dedicated worker with the common sense of a 21st century citizen.

"I'm sick, and yet I'm still here."

Yes, I can see that. Thank you for the potential illness, jackass.

Here there be (more) pirates

Just an update on my previous exploration into the realm of loot and plunder on the high seas...

So apparently Ubisoft recently announced their own style of DRM that's going to be included with all future titles. It requires constant internet connection to play. It takes the other DRM that I described as invasive and makes it look quaint.

I doubt I'll ever play another Ubisoft title again.

Update: (March 6th)
A pirate group announced that they cracked Ubisoft's latest protection efforts! Read about it here.

Mount & Blade (This is not a euphamism)

Another solid game that one of my friends got me into is Mount & Blade. And when I say "solid", I guess I'm lying to your face. It is a half-assed game that has tons of flaws. This can be forgiven somewhat because the whole thing was originally done by a husband/wife team, and the team still remains extremely small. But the real reason for forgiveness is because, in spite of its flaws, it is an incredibly fun game to play!

The basic beauty of the game lies in its realistic mounted medieval combat simulation. Heck, I mean, I figure its realistic but I'm no expert on the subject. Let's just compromise and say its believable, and feels quite natural.

Overall the game world is quite lacking in content, but the open-ended sandbox nature of the game gives you plenty of enjoyment nonetheless. You can start a character that focuses on earning a fortune through trade, hiring mercenaries to protect your caravan as you go. Or you can create a tournament champion who travels the world, seeking the wealth that can be earned by winning various tourneys through the lands. Best of all, you can be a mercenary captain who builds a war band and hires on to one of the various kingdoms vying for control of the region.

There really are plenty of possibilities, though I would have to say by far the best is earning a title and fief. This game really does feel like its a beta build of something a lot better than it currently is, and it is sorely lacking in any overarching plot. However, there are plenty of free mods which fix these and other problems, as well as give you tons of replayability.

The game is mostly about tactical combat, though there are RPG elements involved in how you level up and acquire various skills and companions. I bought it on sale a while back, and have been quite pleased with the bang for my buck. Currently its being sold for around $30 USD, but you can sometimes find it on sale at various digital distribution services. With all the mod support, even the full price tag isn't too bad in my opinion.

Best of all, the game has a free demo you can download and play. Basically the demo is the full game, with a very low level cap. So I recommend at the very least trying the demo.

I find it interesting how much time I've sunk into a game that feels so incomplete, but can't say that I regret it. What are some other games that have the feel of being horribly flawed, yet you can't get enough of?

Here There Be Pirates

Piracy.

Nowadays, it has a cool vibe. People love to talk like pirates. We have those movies with Jack Sparrow. Piracy is considered "cool".

Maybe that's why piracy of software, especially games, is so widely accepted?

Almost everyone would say that stealing is bad. And almost everyone I know has pirated at least a few items of intellectual property. Songs, movies, TV shows, and computer games.

There has been a lot of debate about the issues surrounding software piracy, these days. The big corporations keep implementing more and more invasive anti-piracy protection (generically called Digital Rights Management, or DRM), which tends to only punish the people who paid for the product. The pirates crack software easily, while the paying customers have to deal with tons of issues directly caused by the (ineffective) protection.

For example, I bought Bioshock when it was first released. I brought it home, naturally excited to dive right into such a highly anticipated game. However, when I put the game disc into my DVD drive, it failed to run. I continued to check, and tried all sorts of trouble shooting methods, but determined that it was only Bioshock that couldn't be read, and that although it could be read briefly, something was killing it from being accessed.

Next I checked on the web, only to find out that tons of people were having the exact same issue. It was well over a year before I could finally get the problem solved, and only then by buying a new computer. To this day I have no idea what prevented it from playing on my old one, but as a paying customer I was well pissed off.

Another time, I was living abroad when Spore was released. I bought a digital delivery version of the game since that was the only practical way for me to obtain it. I was soon dismayed to find out that during my entire life, I would only be able to install my copy of Spore three times. Ever. This was highly offensive to me, once I realized what I had paid full price for. (This was later updated to be more generous, but that's beside the point.)

Some few companies have a novel approach to the issue. Stardock, for example, points to the ineffectiveness of "protection" efforts, and acknowledges that this tends to work only as a punishment for paying customers.

Stardock generally doesn't use any DRM for their software, but any software updates have to be downloaded directly from them, and require a purchased license in order to do so. I like this business model; they provide a base product that works but then they continue to make it better through extensive post-release updates. It does not treat the customer like a criminal.

Also, it in essence turns pirated versions of their software into really good demos, requiring you to pay to get access to the updates. I would be interested in knowing how many people pirated their stuff first, really liked it, and ended up paying to buy the license and get updates.


In order to provide an alternative to the invasive DRM options currently available, Stardock has developed a new form of software protection: Game Object Obfuscation (GOO). You can read about it here. It sounds interesting, and certainly appears to be better than the other alternatives.

And though Stardock's unusual policy of no DRM is commendable, I can sympathize with developers who think that's a scary prospect. Because like it or not, piracy is entrenched and popular.

One thing I see again and again is the rationalization of piracy. I am sick and tired of the flimsy justification for theft of intellectual property. If you pirate software, don't try to justify it.

Realize that you're stealing someone's property. And it isn't just a faceless corporation, but a team of  developers who are likely overworked and underpaid. I think that the anonymity of the internet allows the human element to disappear from the equation, which produces all the ridiculous lines used to explain why it is OK that you pirated your games.

Besides, people who come up with silly justifications sound really lame.

Sword of the Stars

First let me say: once a week went right out the window! And I largely blame Sword of the Stars for this.

I'm a big fan of 4X sandbox games, so when my friend started urging me to try out Sword of the Stars I began watching for it to go on sale. A few months later, my patience paid off and I was able to scoop up the game cheap, including all expansions! It was just in time for that same friend to visit for a very small LAN party. We started playing together and I must say, it is an extremely complicated game that was very overwhelming at first.

Having a friend there, literally in the same room as me, helped immensely with the wicked learning curve. And honestly, once I get the hang of the basics, and the 3D star field that makes up the strategy portion of the game "map", I found the game to overall be quite intuitive and very accessible. The game's basic user interface was especially nice.

The UI was extremely practical, very useful, and lacked unnecessary clutter. Pretty much any list lets you easily reorder it based on a value you double click, and there's a ton of useful information to access by just one or two clicks.

I know that I've mentioned GalCiv2 previously, and that I said it is exactly what I wanted from a space 4X game. Well, allow me to eat my hat, because after having played SOTS I now see many flaws that I thought were simply inherent to the "space" sub-genre of 4X games. (Bare in mind that I actually don't have much experience in this area, since I missed out on all the MoO series.)

In GalCiv2 there's a lot of bullshit planet building decisions that aren't fun at all. Generally you follow the same pattern on every planet, and the whole thing is just a chore of micromanagement. SOTS has the perfect solution; abstraction. In SOTS, solar systems are abstractions, battles are abstractions, pretty much everything is an abstraction. But that doesn't matter, because it is still immensely fun! GalCiv2 is a decent game and fun to play for a time, especially if you enjoy designing your own ships (perhaps the strongest card GalCiv2 has up its sleeve), but the lack of depth to game play really made me lose interest quite quickly.

Another problem in GalCiv2 is that every race plays the same. The later expansions took steps to address this, but the differences still feel mostly superficial. SOTS, on the other hand, borrows from the StarCraft philosophy and makes each race play entirely differently. Their stated goal was to feel like you got four different games when you bought SOTS, and I think they really succeeded. (Note: the total number of races is now up to six, through expansions.)

Anyways, SOTS had gone right under my radar and so I figure I'd devote a post to share the love. They just announced SOTS 2 is in development, and we're about to see an update that includes some fixes as well as a few extra goodies, so hopefully some of the digital distributors will have it on sale soon. Keep your eyes peeled!