10 by 10 room

Speaking of visual communications? Kotaku shares the Japanese Wii manual, and it’s priceless.

That person getting smacked? They just seem so freakin’ happy despite it all. So which pic is your favorite?

Check out the the trailer for a new title from Valve, Portal, an innovative blend of FPS and puzzle gameplay.

Women gain prominence in video game world - Yahoo! News

Amber Dalton and twin sister Amy Brady created the PMS Clan in 2002. Boasting international membership of nearly 500 women and girls, PMS — which stands for Pandora’s Mighty Soldiers — is a competitive group that plays Xbox, PlayStation2 and PC games. Its members range in age from 9 to 58, Dalton said, but most are adults.

No one should be surprised at the presence of gaming women, but it’s good to see mainstream news slowly move past the stereotype of gaming hobbies being an all-male shindig.

Also, it makes me happy to see the clan above including both the younger and more mature gamers.

ADDENDUM: I reread the article, and some parts of it do come off a bit condescending, and there’s also the co-opting of actual women power into “girl power!!11″-rebranded sexuality… But this is from a mainstream news source after all, and they’ll get it right eventually.

ADDENDUM 2: OH BURN!!!  Via BoingBoing, found this scathing satire about how (not) to write a “Women in Gaming” article. I’m so feeling the burn. Gotta post a non-vapid link next time.

Greg Costikyan: “I Hate E3“. He’s out there to find support for Manifesto Games, his project to create a new means of distribution for indie / small-press video games. He found bone-crushing disappointment with the same-old-shit at E3; yet in the midst of such sorrow, he glimpsed a beautiful vision…

Here’s my E3 fantasy for a Manifesto Games booth: bare concrete floor. Metal folding chairs. Bare tables with computers on them running games. Signs saying things like: “Gameplay Over Glitz” and “Pardon Our Appearance, We Spend Our Money on Games, Not Bullshit” and “No Booth Babes Here, Move Along.” And our shwag: Manifesto Games branded earplugs, so you can screen out all the pounding music from all the other booths.

I’m excited.

From CNN: Students fight for Mideast peace in video game.

In “PeaceMaker,” players choose between the role of an Israeli prime minister or a Palestinian Authority president. They make policy decisions, communicate with the international community and monitor opinion polls while coping with “black events” — bursts of violence that threaten to throw the game off course.

“PeaceMaker” incorporates news footage of actual events designed to make players feel connected to the real world. The game’s objective is peace through a two-state solution, but players can also wage attacks.

Serious games.

From Seth Ben-Ezra, I present to you the utmost in horrors: Aztecs with Nukes.

It is, in fact, a chilling article. The author plays through the evolution of a warlike race in the popular Civilization strategy game series, seeking the domination of the globe. But faced with the actual possibility of defeat, the game presents him with a terrible and tempting choice.

From Zak Arntson, both an rpg author and video game developer, comes this fantastic essay: Story Now in Game Design.

At its simplest, Story Now in a video game would be the following:

1. Present an emotionally compelling situation which allows for a response.
2. Accomodate different responses.
3. Allow these responses to have different effects on ensuing gameplay.

This is really a fantastic article, and it’s worth reading the whole thing if you have interest in game design in any field, digital or acoustic. There’s even detail about how to make the algorithms work to implement “Story Now” concepts into video games.

Video of the latest Mario title on Gameboy DS

It’s 2D. Can you believe it? 2D. And yet the new-fangled technology is really making it look much more gorgeous and fun. I get the feeling that 2D game formats (platformers, shooters, fighting games) still have a lot of potential in them. The future isn’t just about 3D MMORPGs!

1. Game genres need to change and expand to succeed in the long run.
2. Change is risky.
3. People in charge don’t like risk.
4. Our core audience (the “hardcore”) generally don’t reward risk, either.

Evolution and niches. Psychochild looks it over. Is super-nichifacation of games a symptom or a reaction to a stagnant mainstream? Do niches mean further focus on the hardcore rather than causal players? (Ex: several first-person shooters.) Or are they a means of reaching out to them? (Counter-ex: Puzzle Pirates?)

Those of us playing/making pen and paper games are lucky, because the cost barrier is much lower, whereas that is becoming the limiting factor in video games. (On the flipside, the profit margin is also much lower.)