Let's Spend $100 on Kickstarter! (Part II)

Earlier this month, I decided that if I wanted to keep calling myself a "fan of indie games", it was finally time to join the cause and throw some money down on Kickstarter. Of the 100 bucks I promised to cough up, half went to the four projects I talked about in my last post. In case you're curious how they're doing, two got funded (Stonehearth and A.N.N.E), one is looking fairly troubled with about $40K and six days left to go (Clandestine: Anomaly) and one was outright cancelled (Ray's the Dead), though it sounds like the campaign was terminated because the devs struck a deal with a publisher.

But enough about the past... I've still got a crisp General Grant in my pocket, which left unoccupied is liable to be spent on exotic skin creams to deal with these terrible crows' feet I'm developing. (I'm kidding, of course—there's really no practical way to use paper money to buy anything on the World Wide Web.)

Anyway, here are the rest of the games I chose to fund...

Let's Spend $100 on Kickstarter! (Part I)

I'm sure nearly all of you have heard of the crowd-funding site Kickstarter, but since my grandmother reads this blog, please bear with me for a moment.

Dear G-Dawg: (yes, we actually call my grandmother "G-Dawg")

Kickstarter is an amazing website where individuals can directly fund an exciting new idea, instead of sitting around on their asses hoping someday a corporation or some mad billionaire decides it will be profitable enough. Think of it as a way of distributing a small amount of risk to a bunch of people, which means that there's actually still a way to create something in this shitty economy, even without the intervention of venture capitalists or big-market producers. It's not perfect, but it's a hell of a lot better than pining for a sequel to your favorite cult classic that never ends up getting made.

Also, sorry I never call. Love, Your Grandson.

Unfortunately, despite Kickstarter's massive potential for nurturing innovation, for the most part I've been too lazy, cheap, or cowardly to fund any projects. (I did fund the Double Fine Adventure—recently announced as "Broken Age"—though one could hardly consider that a bold business venture.) Today, I finally decided to man up, vowing to find $100 of worthy video game projects to fund. Here's what I came up with.

Aftermath, Part II

Earlier this month, we celebrated what turned out to be the most tragic Patriot's Day in the history of the Commonwealth (except for, perhaps, the the original one). Then, eleven days ago, my quiet street here in Watertown was transformed into the closest thing I'd ever experienced to a war zone. By this past weekend, the last of the reporters had finally left my neighborhood, leaving me only a lawn full of cigarette butts and a faint, lingering aroma of broken dreams to remember them by.

Today, thanks to my wholly anemic capacity for emotional memory, I can barely remember what it felt like to huddle with my children on the floor of my own home, while about 100 feet away scores of police opened fire on violent mass murderer. So, before I can forget anything else, I thought it would be a good opportunity to have one more discussion about these events, with the intent of returning thereafter to the serious business of playing and writing about video games.

Manhunt for the Boston Marathon Bomber: What to Do When You Suddenly Find Yourself in an Action Movie

When two bombs exploded at the Boston Marathon on Monday—killing 3 people and severely injuring more than 100 others—my first thought was a fairly obvious one: "Wow... that could have been us." We've been down to watch the Marathon many times, and it was simply a matter of chance that instead of navigating the crowds in Copley Square, we had chosen to spend this Patriot's Day kicking around at home in Watertown. Had circumstances been just a little bit different, it could easily have been my family and I caught in that blast.

Except, I don't think deep down I really believed that. Even though a major terrorist attack had just happened in my city, my family and friends all turned out to be okay, and somehow I wasn't surprised. After all, I'm the main character in this story, and in my experience these sorts of things happen to other people.

I'm not sure this kind of narcissistic detachment from reality is particularly healthy, but I bet it's not all that atypical either, and I'm sure the massive amount of time I've spent playing video games in my lifetime has been a factor. Like television and movies, games reinforce our human tendency to distill stories from the randomness and chaos of the universe. We hone our sense of what will and won't happen to a protagonist, which side characters are and aren't expendable, and eventually the whole world appears as a patchwork of overused tropes and predictable plot points.

Just your typical mid-day armored surveillance.
No big deal.

So inertial was my concept of my own narrative, that when my wife woke me up at 3:00 AM yesterday to tell me that there had been a shootout and explosions here in Watertown, I don't think I was all that concerned. Even when we were informed that we were prisoners in our own homes, even as we drew our shades, locked our doors and windows, and retreated to the second floor of our house, I don't think I felt any real sense of danger. Soon they would catch "Suspect #2", the lockdown would be lifted, and life would return to normal.

PAX East 2013: Day Three

8:09 AM - Day three. Last year the third day fell on Easter, while this year we have the Game Developers Conference (GDC) starting tomorrow. We'll see which one is better at thinning the crowd; I'm guessing the latter. Either way, I hope it doesn't have a negative impact on getting to see the games I'm interested in today.

8:46 PM - It's a good thing Boston is an amoral godless Hellscape, because it means there's no traffic this fine Sunday morning and parking is a snap. The methadone clinic is still jumpin', though.

Day three. Watch out for falling ice.

PAX East 2013: Day Two

8:23 AM - Thanks to help from my wife and my mom, I'm less encumbered by child care responsibilities this morning. However, I am encumbered by getting only four hours of sleep, so I still get a later start than I intended. Still, it looks like I'm going to make it to the 10:00 panel on JRPGs.

8:54 AM - On the Common, I walk past a church group feeding a line of bundled, freezing homeless people, which makes me feel just great about how I'm planning to contribute to society with my time today. Although, it's not like these games will play themselves.

Round two. Fight!

PAX East 2013: Day One

8:42 AM - This time last PAX, I was standing in the bowels of the Boston Convention Center waiting in a gigantic line full of bizarre people for no discernible reason. This time around, parental duties required that I drop my two beautiful, screaming children off at day care before I could embark on the pilgrimage to PAX East 2013. Heading out now.

10:54 AM - Two hours, two buses, one delayed subway train, and a brisk walk later, I made it to PAX. The expo floor is in full swing. I'd love to head straight to the indie games, but there's a game journalism panel I'd like to check out, so I trek the half mile down the BCEC to the Sphinx theater.

12:51 PM - The independent games journalism panel was decent, though largely the message could have been conveyed just as well by the immortal words of Fleetwood Mac: "Go Your Own Way". HipHopGamer was definitely a highlight of the talk, though. Now I'm finally down on the expo floor checking out the indie games.

PAX East's expo floor. If it looks overwhelming, that's because it is.

PAX East 2013 Starts Tomorrow!

I can't believe that nearly a year has passed since I abandoned my family for the Easter holiday to attend my first gaming expo, PAX East 2012. This time the good folks at Penny Arcade have taken the less blasphemous approach of not attempting to be "bigger than Jesus", which means that although I'll have a tougher time dodging the annual family ham-and-guilt session next week, the good news is that PAX East 2013 starts tomorrow!

If you've ever been to a Penny Arcade Expo before, you know what a great experience it is. Tomorrow morning I'm heading over to the Boston Convention & Exhibition Center for three intense days of impressive game demonstrations, informative and entertaining panels, and the friendliest bunch of weirdos you've ever met. I'll be live blogging all day every day, so keep coming back to the site to see what's going on at PAX!

You can check out the schedule of events for PAX East 2013 here. If you think there's something I should check out, note it in the comments, hit me up on Facebook, or send me a message on Twitter!

Metonymy, or Why the Violent Video Game Discussion Is Ridiculous

I used to believe that the path from thought to language traveled only in one direction. It seemed to me that spoken and written words were a poor approximation of the mind's inner workings, a crude limitation of this dreadfully physical plane of existence. Of course, now that I'm older and wiser (or at least just older), I look back on such naively dualist arguments with chagrin. Our minds and bodies, our thoughts and actions—who we are and what we do—these things are deeply intertwined. It's not only the case that how we think affects what we say, but also that what we say affects how we think.

There's a well-worn rhetorical device known as "metonymy". In general, the term refers to the use of a word or phrase as a surrogate for a related concept, like calling a businessman a "suit". Its most frequent use by far, though, is when we refer to some collective entity using a simpler, related word, like referring to the American film industry as "Hollywood" or the executive branch of the United States government as "The White House". Like any part of language, metonymy is a mechanism for conveying meaning and processing the world around us. However, when using certain figures of speech—especially very common ones—we need to be conscious of how they subtly change our minds, lest they subvert the clarity of our thought. And while I don't believe that using the term "Hollywood" places us in danger of confusing a $10 billion industry with 25 square miles of movie sets in southern California, I do believe it places us in danger of forgetting that "Hollywood" isn't actually a real thing, but rather sort of a metaphor. The film industry doesn't think as one mind, and it doesn't act as a single entity.

The link between violence and video games has been debated pretty much as long as we've had both violence and video games, though it's periodically reinvigorated by current events. The number of ludicrous arguments I've heard and read about the subject is astounding, and seems to be bounded only by the number of idiots in the world with a microphone or Internet access. Usually these arguments are a cocktail of ignorance and deliberate misinformation, like claiming that the point of Bioshock is to murder "defenseless, cowering girls" or passing off obscure, poorly-made, intentionally provocative Flash games as mainstream media. However, inane ramblings like these aren't what bother me the most about this discussion. What bothers me the most is something much more subtle, yet fundamental: the fact that folks on all sides of the debate keep talking about "violent video games" and "the video game industry" as though these are coherent, well defined concepts. It's as though these terms metonymns for some broader concept, except that the broader concept has never been made clear to anyone, least of all me.

When I read the words "violent video game" in the news, what does it mean? Is it a photo-realistic first-person shooter, like Call of Duty or Battlefield? What about less realistic games like Halo or Gears of War? Does this nebulous category only include games with violence against humans, or does it include crimes against robots, aliens, and/or mushrooms? What about something like the Binding of Isaac, a game with a charmingly adorable art style and whose disturbing level of violence is largely due to the fact that it draws its inspiration from the brutality of the Old Testament? Similarly, who are we trying to blame for selling this filth to our children? Publishers like Activision or Ubisoft? The developers of AAA games? Indie devs? What about the designer who makes a violent game as a vehicle for social commentary, or the government contractor who develops a serious violent game for the military?

As a researcher myself, I fully support pursuing a greater understanding of the psychological and sociological effects that our ever-evolving media have on our cognitive development, our relationships with one another, and our society as a whole. (Since we're handing out research funding anyway, let's also give more money to cancer research and NASA.) There's some great questions to be answered, like how does imagery of physical violence affect our brains and bodies, and how does interactivity and the agency of the user change these effects? Is there a link between simulating violent acts and aggression, and between aggression and violent acts in practice? Why is obliterating one of my friends in Halo with a rocket launcher so much fun? As we ask these questions, though, we must remember that one of the first and most important lessons of science is attention to detail... and if we don't even fully understand the words we're using to talk about these concepts, then we're a very long way from getting any answers.

Happy 2-Year Blogoversary!

It seems like a lifetime ago that I sat staring blankly at my computer screen in the windowless copy room at my graduate school that served as my makeshift office. It was then that I decided to launch Applied Gaming, because sanity desperately demanded I write about something that wasn't "high-dimensional approximation of positive semidefinite matrices" for a change.

Two years later—despite a dissertation, a second child, and a new house—I'm still writing about the thing I love most in the world. (At least, the thing I love that isn't my wife or our offspring.) I've posted 56 articles (including 20 game reviews), went to my first PAX East, talked with dozens of developers, raised money for charity, and most importantly, I've successfully validated the hundreds of hours (and hundreds of dollars) I've spent on video games in the past two years.

In fact, it's been such a good idea, I plan to keep doing it. So, thanks to all my friends and readers, and keep on visiting the site!

PS - I finished Halo 4 last night; a review is forthcoming.

Extra Life 2012 Charity Gaming Marathon: Live Blog

A word of caution: my live updates may contain spoilers for Dishonored, and probably also for Lego Star Wars. If you're worried that discussions of Lego pantomime might ruin the plot of a 30-year-old movie, you might want to stop reading now.

Today's the big day! It's the morning of Saturday, October 20th, and I've got snacks, drinks, a comfy chair, extra batteries, and a freshly-opened copy of Dishonored for the Xbox 360. I'm ready to spend the next 24 hours playing video games for charity. Well... for charity, and because I really like playing video games.

But first, I'd like to thank everyone who donated. Not only did we raise $1,412 for Boston Children's Hospital, but I learned that my friends are way more generous than I give them credit for. Now of course, it's not a competition... but if it was, as of this morning we'd be ranked 84 out of the 15,020 Extra Life participants, and 4th in our "division" (i.e. people who are raising money specifically for Boston Children's Hospital). I'd say we kicked some ass. You know, if it were a competition. Hypothetically.

But enough with the small talk... I came to play. For the children.

---

8:00 AM (Extra Life Complete!)

We did it! $1,462 raised and 24 hours played (and in addition, I got 640 gamerpoints worth of Xbox achievements out of the deal). Thanks once again to everyone who donated! Now, I'm going to nap for a few hours... which is perfect timing, because our kids just got up... in fact, my son wants us to play more Lego Star Wars.

7:00 AM (Hour #24)

This is it! The final hour. I have to say that Dishonored turned out to be an interesting choice for this gaming marathon. It was the right length for this event, and it had a nice, coherent story arc that was fun to experience in a single, continuous session. It was like watching an entire mini-series in one sitting. Despite its flaws, I've really enjoyed it, although perhaps at this point I'm suffering from something like Stockholm Syndrome.

6:00 AM (Hour #23)

Two hours left. I think I've earned a beer.

5:00 AM (Hour #22)

Three hours to go. I think I got my second wind, which I used to dispose of the Pendleton twins a second time.

4:00 AM (Hour #21)

I'm finally willing to admit that even for me, 24 straight hours of video games is a lot.

3:00 AM (Hour #20)

I started Dishonored over from the beginning. With the freedom of being able to murder anyone I please without having to constantly re-load my saved game, I was able to tear through the first two missions in about 1/4 of the time it took me yesterday morning.

2:00 AM (Hour #19)

Well, it took nearly all of the 18 hours I've been playing so far, but I beat Dishonored! What's more, I completed it with the "Clean Hands", "Shadow", and "Ghost" achievements, which means I saved the city of Dunwall without killing anyone and without being seen by a single enemy. It was a fairly frustrating way to play the game (with a lot of re-loading), although it did lead to some interesting problem solving using the wide array of weapons, powers, and gadgets that Dishonored has to offer. I suppose now I'll start over from the beginning, just see what it's like to go through the game while murdering anyone who looks at me sideways.

1:00 AM (Hour #18)

Okay, that wasn't the final mission, but I'm sure this one is. I was cruising right along for a while, but these last few parts of Dishonored have been kind of bullshit. There's enemies everywhere, and they seem to have absurdly large fields of vision. Combined with the fact that the game doesn't notify you terribly well when you've "alerted" a guard (there's a tiny icon and barely audible sound cue), it's been pretty frustrating trying to play through these missions totally clean.

12:00 AM (Hour #17)

Time for the graveyard shift... only 8 hours left! I've got a fresh cup of coffee, and I'm pretty sure I'm nearing the end of Dishonored.

11:00 PM (Hour #16)

I'm facing a bit of a dilemma... I could really go for a drink, but I'm thinking that might not be conducive to gaming for another 9 hours. I probably should have a coffee. Maybe I'll compromise and have an Irish coffee.

10:00 PM (Hour #15)

It's not over.

9:00 PM (Hour #14)

The Lord Regent will... no longer be a problem. It's all over, right? Right??

8:00 PM (Hour #13)

Halfway done! The Death Star has been destroyed, we escaped the Cloud City, and then there was a lot more tears and screaming as bedtime descended. But now the offspring are in their rooms, peace has returned to the galaxy, and I'm heading back to Dunwall.

7:00 PM (Hour #12)

The family's back home, so I've switch to playing some Lego Star Wars until it's time for the kiddies to go to bed.

6:00 PM (Hour #11)

I'm starting to wonder how bad playing video games for 24 hours straight is for my physical health. Better than a hot-dog eating contest? Worse than joining an intramural Beirut league?

5:00 PM (Hour #10)

Food accomplished. After a brisk walk on a beautiful October day and a buffalo chicken wrap, I'm fully recharged and ready to sit on my ass for the next 15 hours.

4:00 PM (Hour #9) 

Eight hours down. I'm feeling like I'm about halfway through Dishonored, or perhaps even a little more. Now would be a good time to take a walk with Ocarina of Time for the 3DS and grab some take-out. I'll try not to get hit by a car.

3:00 PM (Hour #8) 

Wow, it's really nice outside. Perhaps I should take a break and bring my Nintendo 3DS for a walk.

2:00 PM (Hour #7) 

Either it's because I'm getting better at this game, or because my house is actually calm and quiet for a change, but this mission seems a lot more manageable than the last. From the few times I've screwed up, I've found that the combat is actually pretty well done. Too bad I'm trying to get through the game without killing anyone.

1:00 PM (Hour #6)

Neutralized the High Overseer in deliciously ironic fashion. Apparently my next mission will take me to a brothel, to dispose of the infamous Pendleton twins. I'm getting the hang of the controls and mechanics, but they still suffer from a lot of the issues I've found in other first-person stealth games. It's hard to tell when you're properly hidden or not, and things like climbing and jumping tend to be very finicky.

12:00 PM (Hour #5)

After several hours of screaming, the kids are finally out of the house and on their way to a birthday party for the rest of the day. Not a moment to soon, because this no-kill approach to Dishonored is pretty godsdamned frustrating. I may need to start dropping bodies soon.

11:00 AM (Hour #4)

My quest for justice is proceeding well. Soon I should quest for some lunch, though.

10:00 AM (Hour #3)

Stumbled my way through the tutorial mission, and mission #2 is under way. At one point I had to convince my son that the "sleeping" corpse he saw was "playing" with that swarm of ravenous plague-infested rats.

9:00 AM (Hour #2)

Dishonored so far: it seems I used to have honor, but then I lost it. Most of the people in this city seem to be real assholes; it's going to be tough making it through this game without killing anyone.

8:00 AM (Hour #1)

Popped in Dishonored... I'm good to go. Despite being a first-person stealth action game about bloody revenge, apparently there's an achievement if you make it through the game without killing anyone. I've told my wife that perhaps this will help us get through today while minimizing the number of murders my children witness.

Extra Life 2012 Is Tomorrow!

The Extra Life 2012 charity gaming marathon starts tomorrow, Saturday, October 20th! Starting at 8:00 AM, I'll be playing video games for 24 hours straight. That should be more than enough hours to log some good quality time with Dishonored, although I'll likely end up playing some Lego Star Wars with my son, and maybe a bit of Bomberman too. Regardless of what I'm playing, I'll be live blogging and tweeting all day, because the only thing more fun than playing video games for one full rotation of the Earth is reading about it on the Internet.

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who donated. Because of your amazing generosity (the average donation was $78.38!), we absolutely crushed our goal of $1,000, with our current total standing at $1,254. To be totally honest, part of the appeal of doing this charity event (other than the excuse to play video games, of course) is how good I would feel about myself. I wasn't expecting how good it would make me feel about other people.

If you haven't donated yet, there's still time! Here's a link to the donation page: http://www.extra-life.org/participant/appliedgaming.

I'm looking forward to tomorrow! As for a Sunday with two kids and zero sleep... well, that I'm looking less forward to.

Extra Life 2012 Update

Update: we've passed our goal—thank you to everyone who has donated! Of course, $1000 was just an arbitrary number I picked, mostly because it seemed achievable and because it looks pretty in our conventional base-10 number system. There's no reason we can't raise even more!

Just a reminder... the Extra Life charity gaming marathon is this Saturday, October 20th! Starting at 8:00 AM, I'll be playing video games for 24 hours straight to benefit the Children's Miracle Network. So far we've raised $824 to help Boston Children's Hospital treat sick and injured children, and I'm hoping that by this weekend, we'll have raised the rest of our $1,000 pledge.

Of course, that's where you come in. If you haven't donated yet, now's the time! Every little bit helps... sure, a $50 or $100 donation is a great way to both help children and win some brownie points with your truly, but even $5 or $10 gets us closer to our goal. Here's the link to my donation page: http://www.extra-life.org/participant/appliedgaming.

Also, on the day of the event, don't forget to check back here at Applied Gaming! I'll be live blogging with updates every hour, so you can make sure that I'm playing video games non-stop instead of "slacking off".

Extra Life 2012: Play Games. Heal Kids.

I've never had much interest in the whole "charity" thing. I don't particularly enjoy helping people I know, much less complete and total strangers. However, one thing that does interest me is finding new ways to validate the unreasonable amount of time I spend playing video games. Also, as a father of two, I have managed to develop some level of fondness for children. I realize how fortunate I have been that my son and daughter are growing up strong and healthy, but I also realize that many families are not always so lucky.

That's why I've decided this year to participate in Extra Life, an annual event where participants engage in a 24-hour video gaming marathon for charity. The donations raised support the Children's Miracle Network Hospitals, which treat thousands of sick and injured children each year. Last year, Extra Life raised more than $1.2 million dollars to help children with life-threatening conditions like cancer and cystic fibrosis, and this year they're aiming to raise even more.

On Saturday, October 20th, 2012, I'll start playing video games at 8:00 AM, and won't stop for 24 hours. In exchange for me doing... well, basically the same thing I did during every spring break in college, I'm asking people to donate to help me reach my goal of raising $1,000 for the Boston Children's Hospital. Your donation is tax-deductible and all proceeds go directly to the hospital.

Here's the link to my donation page: http://www.extra-life.org/participant/appliedgaming.

Of course, the big question is what game(s) should I play during a single 24-hour sitting? Maybe a big, open-world fantasy like Skyrim, or something punishingly difficult like Dark Souls? Perhaps I should play something recently released, like the new XCOM or Dishonored? Or, maybe I could play a different game each hour for 24 hours? Should I go retro? NES? SNES? Maybe I should try a speed run? (Final Fantasy VII in 24 hours?) Maybe I should just try to play the most terrible games I can find, like this one.

The point is, I'm open to suggestions. Regardless of what game or games I choose, be sure to check back with the site on Saturday, October 20th, where I'll be live-blogging during the full 24 hours I'll be parked in front of my Xbox. Thank you in advance for your donation!

What game or games do you think I should play? Let me know in the comments!

Aftermath

Originally this post was going to be about something else—perhaps a discussion of the screen in video games as a boundary object in the realm of imagination, or some other equally urgent topic. However, as I'm sure was the case for a lot of people, the horrific events that occurred in Colorado on Friday got me thinking about other, more somber things.

Police tape blocks off a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, where a gunman attacked movie goers on July 20, 2012.
(Credit: Thomas Cooper/Getty Images)

First of all, whenever a tragedy like this happens, I'm always struck by how completely it dominates the media. During the days and weeks afterward, torrents of analysis wash over us as talking heads rehash every moment of the event in excruciating detail. As each incremental bit of new information is uncovered, the reporters and pundits absorb it immediately into their continuously-streaming narrative of the tragedy, doing so with a zealotry that can't help but come across as macabre. (Don't worry, the irony of me contributing to the avalanche of press by complaining about it is not lost on me.)

A generous person might say that the media frenzy isn't about ratings and morbid curiosity, but rather that it's about getting people the information they need to process this tragedy and perhaps find some closure. I understand that a lot of people need someone or something to blame, because answers like "there are insane and dangerous people in the world" and "shitty things just happen sometimes" don't really cut it. However, the problem I have with this approach is that everything I see or hear or read about an event like this makes the whole thing seem more surreal and detached from the human experience, not less. I'm not sure if this is true for the family, friends, and community of the victims, or if they're to busy grieving to watch Fox News. Regardless, I can't imagine that all of this coverage really helps them or anyone else all that much.

Perhaps part of the problem is that like most of the people I know—and like most of the people talking at me from the television—there is very little in my life experience that allows me to understand this kind of reality in any tangible way. I don't know anyone who has ever been murdered, or anyone who has murdered someone else. I've never killed anyone myself, at least not that I know about. I've never fought in a war or engaged in mortal combat with another person. In fact, I've been in very few life-or-death situations of any sort, and most of these were pretty firmly under my control. Pretty much every experience I could potentially use to begin to comprehend something like this has been absorbed through a screen in the form of television, movies, and video games, and nearly all of it has been fiction.

Of course, I'm not complaining about this state of affairs; ultimately it's a good thing that I don't have a more intuitive understanding of how to cope with the fallout from a mass murder. However, a barrage of media analysis coming from people who probably don't have much more perspective on these matters than I do doesn't provide much insight either.

Eventually, once the dust settles a bit, people will really start to dig for the "cause" of this tragedy. Discussions will ensue regarding family values, mental illness, gun control, the perils of life in a free society, and a host of other issues. Video games and other violent media will enter the conversation, as they always do. Perhaps some reactionary legislation will be passed regarding sequels for movie franchises based on comic books—stranger things certainly have happened.

People will continue to talk about this terrible event for years to come, while still thinking about the ones like it that happened in the past, and dreading the next one like it which will inevitably happen at some point in the future. My point is that whether we're the man on the street, a television personality, or just some jackass posting his ramblings on the Internet, those of us who have so little perspective on these matters would do well to remember that.

Distilled Reality

I don't like to brag, but I own a lot of video game houses. I'm the owner of five residences in the province of Skyrim alone, and in Albion anything bigger than an anthill has my name on the deed. Some of my many electronic properties were even built with my own two thumbs, like the mansion I designed for my Sims or the low-res countryside villa I constructed in Minecraft (from cobblestone I mined myself).

I still own my 300,000-gil mansion in Costa del Sol, one of the first video game properties I ever bought.

Given my depth of experience in the arena of virtual home ownership, I wasn't terribly concerned when (back in the real world) my wife and I recently bought a single-family house for ourselves and our two children. Moving into our new home, however, I quickly realized two things:

1. We own a lot of crap, and most of it is very heavy to lift.
2. The countless hours I've spent playing games like The Sims and Minecraft have led me to very seriously misjudge the amount of time, expense, and effort required to establish a suitable residence for oneself and one's family.

In other words, it appears that owning all these video game houses has done fairly little to prepare me for buying an owning a house in the real world. Upon reflection, I've realized part of the problem is that certain key parts of the homeowner experience have not been adequately represented in gameplay.

Hey, if it can hold up a Honda Civic, then it should be able to keep my cabinets from falling off the wall, right?
(Yes, this is really how I fixed my kitchen cabinets.)

For example, despite the province of Skyrim's incredibly low real estate inventory (which apparently consists only of five houses), I didn't have to engage in any multiplayer battles against other prospective buyers who were all competing for the same property. When playing Fable III, buying a property in Albion never involved filing a mountain of paperwork in order to get a mortgage, whose underwriting inevitably would have unlocked entire new dungeons full of paperwork for me to navigate. And don't even get me started on the lack of a plaster repair game mechanic in Minecraft.

I suppose what we're really talking about here is a question of immersion. Video games often talk about being more "immersive", but to be honest I'm not always sure what that means. In a truly immersive version of Skyrim, for instance, upgrading the blacksmithing perk would have required the Dragonborn first to complete a five-year apprenticeship, and exploring the frozen mountains of Winterhold would probably have involved less enchanted loot and epic battles with dragons, and more crushing loneliness and frostbite. With these changes, I'm not exactly sure what kind of game Bethesda would have ended up with, but somehow I doubt it would have sold 10 million copies.

Here's an MLS photo of "Breezehome", a little place I own in Whiterun. It's an historic Scandinavian-style cottage in a great school district, provided you don't mind your children occasionally being eaten by dragons.

My point is that people like video games not because they provide some sort of alternative "virtual" version of reality, but because they provide something far better than any virtual reality: distilled reality. Like the corresponding physical process, the distillation of reality that video game designers perform removes the impurities of the real world (like taxes and wallpaper removal), leaving us with an invigorating aqua vitae chock full of action, mass murder, puzzles, instant gratification, and bizarrely athletic plumbers.

Regrettably, like any libation, distilled reality must be consumed in moderation, lest its side effects lead to unfortunate consequences. In my case, getting drunk on booze or reality both result in similar kinds of behaviors, including (but not limited to) unpredictable fits of anger, horniness, and the firm belief that I would probably be able fight a dragon. Nevertheless, there's nothing like a bourbon Manhattan and some Gears of War deathmatch to take the edge off at the end of a tough day... and like my distilled spirits, I don't expect I'll be giving up my distilled reality anytime soon.

PAX East 2012: Day Three

9:00 AM - Latest start yet. I think I must have been feeling pretty good last night, because when I got home I was self-assured enough to eat blue cheese dressing out of the jar with a fork. I do feel the tiniest bit guilty walking across Boston Common hung over and on my way to a video game convention, while folks in their Sunday best head the other direction for Easter service.

11:31 AM - Hitting the expo floor for reals today. First stop: Assassin's Creed III. Now I'm normally not one to gush, but the gameplay footage looked absolutely phenomenal. The concept of operating in a wide-open and natural environment like a colonial New England forest is a great innovation for the franchise (which had been getting fairly stale), and it seems that a lot of the movement and combat systems have been rebuilt to accommodate that change. Plus, murdering Redcoats with a tomahawk is always a crowd pleaser, at least provided you're not British.

No photography or video recording was allowed inside the theater, so here's a picture of the outside instead. 

12:02 PM - Checked out some more of the indie and XBLA offerings. There's some good stuff down here, including Guacamelee!, a luchador-themed action-adventure game, and Charlie Murder, a beat-em-up with RPG elements from Ska Studios (makers of Dishwasher: Dead Samurai).

Ska Studios art always looks like you wish the sketches in your high-school notebooks looked, if only you had been an amazing artist and super angsty.

12:46 PM - Had a great chat with the Australian creator of Antichamber, a first-person puzzle game that uses "non-Euclidean" geometry. (Basically, it's like running around in an M. C. Escher drawing.) He described the painstaking design process of user testing and game refinement as he attempted to make the game as intuitive as possible (yet still mind-bending).

Hey, it's not like Euclid is the only person who knows how to organize a three-dimensional metric space.

1:15 PM - The shout-out for Dust: An Elysian Tail at the Giant Bomb panel last night must have had an effect, because a lot of folks were interested on the game today. An upcoming XBLA action-adventure title with a beautiful fantasy-themed visual style, Dust was actually designed, illustrated, and coded by a single guy! I actually ended up in line with Ryan Davis and Jeff Gerstmann from the Giant Bomb site, and got a chance to talk with Ryan about his opinion regarding the collection of games this year.

2:16 PM - Took a break to eat a surprisingly tasty food court burrito, as well as count the number of people walking by wearing Utilikilts. Answer: five.

3:51 PM - Attended the panel, "How Young Is Too Young for Games?" Given how much we hear in the media about violence in video games and its effect on children, there doesn't seem to be much in the way of reliable research on the subject, and the little that exists is inconclusive. The panel's shocking conclusion: there's no substitute for moderation and good parental judgement.

There was a setup where you could text in which games had been most influential in your own childhood development. I sure hope the guy who said that World of Warcraft affected him the most when he was "0 to 5 years old" was either confused or kidding.

4:50 PM - Round two of the expo floor. Best experience by far was Dyad, which you maybe could call a shooter, but is really more of a psychedelic audiovisual experience. Whatever it is, it's coming to the PS3 Network this summer.

After playing this game, I actually was so mesmerized that I wordlessly stood up and then lazily wandered in an arbitrary direction for about a minute, before coming back to the booth and apologizing to the designer for my behavior.  

5:36 PM - The expo floor is closing down. I managed to hit a few more games, but nothing was better than what I've already mentioned. I think it's time to call it a day.

11:24 PM - After making my way home and relaxing for a few hours, I'm prepared to render judgement on my first PAX experience. In two words: mission fucking accomplished. Here are a few take-aways:

1. I was surprised to discover how many panels there were, by the breadth and depth of their topics, and by how informative and entertaining they were. I naively expected that I would spend most of my time on the expo floor, but I ended up much preferring the panels.
2. On the exhibition side of things, I found checking out the indie games to be the best use of my time. There's nothing like getting to play some awesome game that a few dudes created in their basement, while they stand next to you and politely answer any idiotic question that pops into your head. Also the lines are short.
3. Finally, for all those people that think there's a link between video games and violence: I just watched 70,000 people cram into about a square mile of space for three full days where they played violent games literally non-stop, and remarkably no one was murdered. That should be all the evidence anyone would ever need.

PAX East 2012: Day Two

8:00 AM - Got a (much) later start this morning. The last panel I want to hit is at 9:00 PM, so I thought a bit of extra sleep would be nice. It's also tough not to take the opportunity to sleep in when your toddler and newborn happen to be in another state.

10:36 AM - Briefly hit the expo floor before the next panel. Highlight was playing an upcoming XBLA title Hell Yeah!, a tongue-in-cheek Metroidvania game about a demonic rabbit and his Hellish minions.

I spent the first few minutes of gameplay trying to dodge all of the flames, until I realized that (a) fire is pretty much everywhere in Hell, and (b) as a skeletal demonic rabbit overlord, it doesn't hurt you.

1:24 PM - Great Irrational Games panel about the monster design process for the upcoming Bioshock Infinite game. Sounded like these guys really work from the bottom up, continually thinking about the narrative and each character's integration into the game world. They even talked about some of the early 20th century period research they did, touching on topic ranging from automatons to photography to antiseptics.

Concept art for one of the "Boys of Silence". They also played the sound effect for his "scream attack" at a high volume. It's not a sound you want to hear more than once.

2:16 PM - Met up with with a friend from Red 5 Studios who is here promoting FireFall, an upcoming massive multiplayer online shooter. We chatted while I followed her around the massive convention center on her quest to deliver swag to the other promo stations.

FireFall had one of the more impressive booths on the expo floor.

4:06 PM - Phenomenal panel on legal issues in the gaming industry, featuring lawyers from Take-Two and Gearbox (among others). The discussion covered a range of great topics, from last year's video games first amendment case in the Supreme Court, to data privacy (regarding the PSN hack), to always-on DRM, to banning sex offenders from online services. Also covered was the landmark case of Pac-Man vs K .C. Munchkin.

4:48 PM - They're having a promotion at the Far Cry 3 booth where they promise you a free copy of the game if you let them shave your head. How about a deal instead where I pay you $60 and I get to keep my hair? Or even better, one where I pay you $0, I keep my hair, and I don't have to play Far Cry 3?

Could be worse... yesterday they were giving out tattoos. (No joke.) I hear tomorrow they're doing free dental work.

6:02 PM - Decided take a walk during my dinner break to ditch my gear. While the stereotype that gamers are unkempt and malodorous is often overstated, I have to admit that Boston's dismal spring air did seem a bit more refreshing than usual.

6:45 PM - Considering all the Dungeons & Dragons and Magic the Gathering I've seen here, I was astonished to end up in line next to a group of people playing actual cards. Further inquiry revealed the game to be an arcane Vietnamese variant of Asshole called "Killer".

7:45 PM - Attended a panel on freelance video game journalism, featuring Susan Arendt, managing editor of The Escapist (who was on yesterday's panel about game criticism). Heard some good tips in case I ever take this little hobby of mine to the next level.

10:00 PM - Giant Bomb Safe and Sane Family Funfest 2012. Panel topics included the site's recent acquisition by CBS Interactive, the crew's list of PAX must-see games, StreetPassing, Cards Against Humanity, prestidigitation and Hank Lee's Magic Factory.

11:36 PM - Giant Bomb post-party at J. J. Foley's. Got a chance to meet a bunch of great users, as well as talk with Brad Shoemaker and Patrick Klepek from the site. Also there was beer.

2:24 AM - It's been a long time since I was in a bar late enough to be herded out at closing time. Tomorrow morning might be a rough start.

PAX East 2012: Day One

6:00 AM - Got up way earlier than I ever manage to do for work, at least when there's not a screaming child involved. Not sure how long it will take to drive, subway, hitchhike, and/or walk down to the area of Southie where the Expo is, but I wanted to give myself time.

8:44 AM - Fed, caffeinated, and mildly molested by public transit, I arrive at the venue. It's pretty hectic, but after a bit of wandering I find an enormous queue. I don't know what it's for, but I stand in it anyway.

9:04 AM - Found out what the line is for; it's to stand in a bigger line.

Penned in like lambs to the slaughter... if the lambs were then given swag bags.

10:21 AM - The bigger line eventually led to the exhibit halls. I had wanted to catch Jordan Mechner's keynote, but no way am I leaving to go wait in another line.

View from one of the convention center's skyways.

11:46 AM - The exhibit halls are pure sensory overload, the gamers' equivalent of Las Vegas. Fortunately, everyone is super friendly, either because everyone has a shared interest, or because they're not from Boston. I avoided the long lines for the blockbuster games like Borderlands 2, opting instead to check out the many small indie offerings where I can talk directly to the developers.

Sculptures of the characters from the upcoming Borderlands 2.

12:57 PM - Sat in on the "Gaming for Grown-Ups" panel, which featured (among others) Ken Levine of Irrational Games. Started off as a bunch of old guys talking about their gaming glory days, but ending up being kind of inspirational. Left me hopeful for my future in gaming. If nothing else, my generation seems to be an incredibly important target audience for games, so we're going to keep getting the coolest shit.

2:06 PM - After another sweep through the exhibit halls, decided to wait in line for some merch. Line was long, but fortunately the Plants vs. Zombies dancers were there to entertain us.

2:45 PM - Ran into a co-worker. Neither of us were aware the other was a gamer. On a totally unrelated note, I'm super glad I decided that the full Princess Zelda costume was more of a Saturday outfit.

3:16 PM - Attended the panel, "Stuff Your Criticism, I Want a Review!" Panelists discussed the subtle differences between reviewing video games as consumer products and critiquing them as art and media. They did not discuss the third option (which I prefer), sniping at their petty flaws like a judgmental douchebag.

View from above the main entrance.

4:50 PM - Interesting panel on video games in education. Best part was a demo of "Code Hero", a Portal-style game that introduces programming concepts by having the player solve puzzles through manipulating segments of the game code as they play. The Oregon Trail and Number Munchers were not mentioned.

6:15 PM - Grabbed a burger at the food court with a Canadian sound designer I met on the Giant Bomb site.

7:00 PM - I'm exhausted. With the exhibit halls closed, no interesting panels going on, and more than an hour until the concerts start, I decided to call it an early night and head home to rest up for the long day tomorrow. I enjoyed the panels today, but didn't really see anything on the exhibit floor yet that blew me away. However, there's still a lot left to see over the next two days.

Gaming Is Good for You (Infographic)

I found this infographic posted over at FrugalDad. Perhaps facts like these are just propaganda or wishful thinking, like scientific studies that tell us that red wine prevents heart disease or that masturbation reverses the aging process. Nevertheless, they're still a handy bit of ammunition whenever the wife wants you and the kids off the Xbox so she can watch The Vampire Diaries.


Source: Frugal Dad