Ode to a Personal Favorite

I've grown up a gamer. From my younger days at an NES to the time spent at my first console, the Playstation, to times of family bonding at an N64, I can't remember a time when I wasn't sitting in front of a screen, wide-eyed and mashing on buttons. One thing that's always stuck with me though, is the first time a game ever made me feel something.
Kingdom Hearts, a Disney/Squaresoft game, combined Final Fantasy characters with the Disney characters I grew up watching. I fought alongside Goofy, Donald, Aladdin, The Beast, and other characters that I was only ever able to imagine as a kid. Right off the bat, I connected with the young Sora, whose life on Destiny Island was about as simple as I thought mine to be at the time. But then, when the Heartless came and engulfed the Island in darkness, I was taken out of the simplicity and thrown into Sora's shoes to face a great evil.

From there, the game took off, and I loved every minute of it. The hours spent adventuring around with my new Disney friends flew by like minutes, and in some strange respect, I became Sora when I played the game. I think it's because in Kingdom Hearts, Sora is the real outsider. All of the Final Fantasy characters and Disney characters all have their established backgrounds and roots, but Sora, he's pretty much alone save his two besties, Kairi and Riku. But even Riku turns to the dark side, and Kairi's missing from the very beginning of the game.

Anyway, during my time with Kingdom Hearts, Sora's disbelief and sense of adventure and fun were always on par with mine, and each new territory to explore was like an incarnation of the flicks I'd grown up watching. Making friends with Donald and Goofy, and traveling to places like Wonderland and Mt. Olympus was always as new for me as it was for Sora. I felt the urgency Sora faced when put into a new and strange world all alone. I felt the happiness in reuniting with Kairi, and I felt betrayed and confused when Riku turned Heartless.

I invested lots of emotion into KH, and its climax still nearly drives me to tears – I don’t know why, but it makes me feel like a kid again. The innocence of childhood friendship, set against Utada Hikaru’s “Simple and Clean”, gives me the same wonderful feeling I got whenever I used to go to Disneyland, when places like Agrabah and Neverland were mystifying, moving and above all, real. In a sense, Kingdom Hearts let me open up my imagination as a young gamer, not only because I could see everything as it unfolded on-screen, but because I was closer to the characters, which I actually controlled and battled alongside.
Kingdom Hearts was the game that made me see that games could make me feel real emotion, not just the satisfaction of doing something fun and rewarding. I'd like to know from any gamers reading this: What game did that for you, and why?

Race-ident Evil 5

So RE5's producer is claiming that RE5 isn't racist, and isn't backing down. If you're not familiar with this story, here's the piece from Kotaku:

When Capcom first showed Resident Evil 5 at E3 2007, there was a collective sense that what we'd just seen was going to stir the pot, as a big brawny white guy had just done his share of laying waste to an angry mob of Africans. Sure enough, Capcom of Japan received more than its share of criticism from those inside and outside of the gaming press. The first to lobby a notable complaint was blog Black Looks, writing that RE5 was "problematic on so many levels, including the depiction of Black people as inhuman savages."
Newsweek's general editor of tech N'Gai Croal later levied a similar but more measured assessment, saying that much of what was shown in the initial trailer "dovetailed with classic racist imagery," leaving him with the impression that "Clearly no one black worked on this game."
We were curious, in light of new media that seems to show a more racially diverse set of enemies and a noticeably less WASP-y new partner for Chris Redfield, if the team had taken that criticism to heart and altered some of their design decisions
Resident Evil 5 producer Jun Takeuchi told us "No, not really." He said via his translator that cries of racism "didn't have any effect on the game design."
On the subject of Chris Redfield's new sidekick, one who appears to lean toward ethnically ambiguous, Takeuchi said "We wanted Chris to have a partner who was familiar with the environment. She's been in there since pretty much the beginning."
"In terms of the reaction, we're in the business of entertainment," Takeuchi said. "We didn't set out to make a racist game or a political statement. We did feel there was a misunderstanding about the initial trailer."
The Resident Evil 5 producer said they'd sent a team of Capcom staffers to Africa to do research in the area, stressing that they had decided to include Arab and Caucasian peoples based on what they'd seen while on location. We found it odd that there was virtually no non-Black representation in RE5's debut trailer, but Takeuchi was adamant that the current product is in line with their experiences.

Frankly, I'm not quite sure what to think of the issue. It's great that the industry's at a point where gaming's a serious enough medium that the racism within them is actually an issue. And sure, they've garnered their share of controversy. Remember the Native-American-shootin' frenzy Gun? How about the Vice City controversy over "Kill all the Haitians"? Certain games have never been about taking themselves seriously, and Resident Evil has always been a franchise all about killing zombies with sweet guns. Sure, this doesn't make RE exempt from offending people, and I agree that changing a game's geographic setting requires diligent research and special sensitivities towards the people who live in those settings. The people who made this trailer didn't seem to catch on.
However, once again, this isn't the first time a Resident Evil game has been inaccurate or offensively stereotypical about its inhabitants. Remember Luis from RE4? I don't know what kind of Spanish-suave look they were going for with him, but they used pretty much every stereotype in creating his character - from the vest, to the long hair, to the boots, to the overdone jewelry, to that awesomely-bad Antonio Banderas accent.

And what about the little villages in that game? Their inhabitants were called Los Ganados, which means "The cattle", or "The mob". The church was the village's center, and its residents were, what, farmers with pitchforks and chickens that just roamed the dirt roads? I doubt Capcom went to Europe to research this before making the game. Do you think any of the people on Capcom's team were Hispanic or from a similar area? Did this offend anybody?
Nobody thought about these things when playing RE4 because they were too busy shooting up zombies, which is pretty much the only purpose the villagers served. I'd be willing to bet that Capcom isn't asking to be taken seriously with RE5. It's a chance to shoot up zombies in a different place from RE4 with better weapons, new characters, and the next-gen treatment.
This is what Newsweek's N'Gai Croal has to say about the issue:

There was stuff like even before the point in the trailer where the crowd turned into zombies. There sort of being, in sort of post-modern parlance, they’re sort of “othered.” They’re hidden in shadows, you can barely see their eyes, and the perspective of the trailer is not even someone who’s coming to help the people. It’s like they’re all dangerous; they all need to be killed. It’s not even like one cute African — or Haitian or Caribbean — child could be saved. They’re all dangerous men, women and children. They all have to be killed. And given the history, given the not so distant post-colonial history, you would say to yourself, why would you uncritically put up those images? It’s not as simple as saying, “Oh, they shot Spanish zombies in ‘Resident Evil 4,’ and now ‘black zombies and that’s why people are getting upset.” The imagery is not the same. It doesn’t carry the same history, it doesn’t carry the same weight. I don’t know how to explain it more clearly than that.
I think the audience isn’t demanding much change. They like the games they’re playing. They’re by and large comfortable with the amounts of stereotypes in their games. You know because another thing that you sort of have gamers run into in situations like this is that, “Oh it’s just a game.” [laughs] You know, if it’s just a game, then why do we care about how culturally relevant they are? I care about how culturally relevant they are. I take games as seriously as other art forms.

Ultimately, I think Croal makes a valid argument. In this day and age, there are boundaries and people need to be careful when they put things out that might perpetuate ignorance and/or racism. And sure, the original RE5 teaser wasn't sensitive to that. However, if that's the stance we're going to take on the games industry, then this issue should have shown its ugly face a long time ago, before Resident Evil 5, before Resident Evil 4, even before Mai Ling's cartoonishly-Asian accent in Metal Gear Solid.
If this racism in games issue hasn't exploded until now, then we've been playing games in blissful ignorance toward them for years. It's not just unfair to lay the consequences of this on RE5, but it's also hypocritical. The fact that Resident Evil had to move to Africa in order for gamers to realize that  Capcom doesn't make the most politically correct games just seems contradictory to me.
But hey, I guess it had to happen sometime, and I'm glad that we're holding games to standards of social justice. I just hope that we're consistent, and that when other franchises hit similar nerves, we stick to our guns and hold them to the standards we're holding RE5 to - not for Capcom, not for sales, but for the sake of the industry and its evolution into a medium where every developer and publisher is sensitive and aware of social issues.

And yes, Croal, I'm especially holding you to this.
~
Check out the old trailer and the new trailer, and make your own decisions.

The fruit of a weekend's worth of reporting...

Video game violence argument ignites in the wake of Grand Theft Auto 4

Grand Theft Auto 4, a video game released on April 29, 2008, hit store shelves surrounded in a cloud of controversy regarding its violent content. Mainstream critics of the game spoke against the liberties the game places in players’ hands, including the freedom to steal cars, run down pedestrians, hire prostitutes, and murder innocent civilians.

Some of the main critics of the game, like CNN’s Glenn Beck, say that the violence in games like Grand Theft Auto eventually becomes manifest in our children. On his show, Beck made the argument that violence in games desensitizes people who play them.

“Killing each other is actually not a natural human instinct. Senior officers found if they trained the soldiers by putting a human silhouette on the bulls-eye during target practice, they could condition the men to shoot more easily… It took 75 years and countless billions of dollars to train our soldiers to kill. Today, 60 bucks buys your kid the same thing.”

Although the game’s release triggered Beck’s argument, Grand Theft Auto 4 was making waves even before it was sold in stores. In the days leading up to its release, Grand Theft Auto made the news when the Chicago Transit Authority pulled its advertisements from bus stops. Take Two interactive, the game’s publishers, filed a lawsuit against the CTA on May 5, 2008, claiming that they had violated a $300,000 campaign agreement without any explanation.

Of course, Grand Theft Auto was not the first video game to stir up controversy. Death Race, an arcade game first released in 1976, gave players points for running down pedestrian “gremlins”. Although the game was based on a film starring Sylvester Stallone and David Carradine, its violent content provoked a major public outcry and inspired the very first organized protests over a video game.

The more recent Mortal Kombat, released in arcades in 1992, caused an uproar that eventually provoked the creation of the Entertainment Software Rating Board, which is still the standard for rating games today.

Violent games also came under fire in 1999, when Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine High School killed 13 people before shooting themselves. According to their parents, both Harris and Klebold were fans of the game Doom, a first-person shooter in which players must use guns to kill evil creatures.

As many people continue to speak out against violence in video games, others maintain that games pose no more of a social threat than movies or music.

“The older generation is still under the impression that games are toys, that all video games are for kids, or that video games are dangerous,” said Leigh Alexander, associate news editor for video game news site Kotaku, “there’s a lot of misinformation…. The responsibility is definitely on the parents to understand the kind of media that their kids are consuming.”

Others who believe that violence does not have directly adverse effects on players say that ultimately, games are only meant for entertainment purposes, and that parents should be able to tell whether or not their children are mature enough to play them.

Christopher Zamora, a 16-year-old gamer from Chicago, said that many teens are mature enough to understand the difference between real life and a video game.

“You’ve got to realize that it’s just a game. It’s not that serious. You’re not going to go out and shoot people or do what you see happening in the game. You just know it’s a game and do it to have fun, not for the violence.”

While there are opinions on both sides of the table, the question still stands as to whether or not violence in games actually correlates with violence in real life.

Lawrence Kutner, Ph.D, and Cheryl K. Olson, Sc.D, are co-founders and directors of the Harvard Medical School Center for Mental Health and Media. In 2004, they started a study on the effects of video games on teenagers. The $1.5 million study was funded by the U.S. Department of Justice and included more than 1200 middle school students.

Olson said that the results of the study were surprising and unexpected.

“About 44 percent of 7^th and 8^th grade boys were playing Grand Theft Auto video games a lot. For kids who play at least one M-rated game a lot versus kids who play other games, there was an increased risk of common aggression or school problems. The higher the proportion of mature games, the more at risk they were for common teenage problems.”

Olson also noted that the study only illustrates a correlation, and that it does not cover whether or not video games actually cause violent behavior in teens.

“Odds are, if your child is otherwise healthy, an occasional violent game isn’t going to hurt them at all. One thing we found is that a lot of kids said they got their anger and stress out by playing violent games. It’s probably a healthy thing in moderation, but we just don’t know.”

Until definitive research is conducted, the true effects of violent games on teenage minds are still yet to be determined. Until that time comes, Olson says that only parents can take action to monitor and protect young minds from potential harm.

“Sometimes content that parents object to in a game isn’t apparent right away. If there’s something you object to, you can spot it and talk to your child about it.”

To Alexander, the only thing more important than completely controlling your kids’ experiences is to understand that doing so is impossible.

“As much as parents want to, they can never completely control what their kids see and do... your hope is that you just have a good enough relationship with your child that he or she is doing those things safely, and if he is doing something inappropriate for his age, that he feels comfortable discussing it with parents.”

SIDEBAR

In order to best regulate what kids are playing, it’s important for adults to be aware of how the ratings system works. The following are some tips for knowing what’s okay for kids to play.

- Check the rating. Each game is labeled with a comprehensive rating that identifies any objectionable material in a given title. Check out this graphic for more information.

- Know your kid. One of the reasons why it’s so difficult to pinpoint the cause-and-effect relationship between violent behavior and video games is that each child is different. When buying a game for a child, keep in mind whether or not he or she is mature enough to play the game.

- Put the games in an open area of the house. This method, according to Olson, lets parents see exactly what it is their kids are playing, and it minimizes their time spent playing it. Placing games in a more open area also reduces the chances of kids playing inappropriate games.

- Take advantage of parental controls. Game systems like the Xbox 360 contain parental control features that automatically regulate which games kids play and how long they play them.

- Think ahead, and think realistically. Adolescents are crafty. They’re capable of doing inappropriate things without a parent’s consent, and to a point, there is no way one could possibly take control of a teenager’s explorative mischief. That is by no means reason to give up on the task of parenting, but understanding a son or daughter and preparing for the unexpected goes a long way.

More of My Video Game Journalism

Here is another article and a multimedia piece, too:

"Editing & Writing the News" Final Class Project:

The GameStop on Church Street became a video game Mecca Saturday night as dedicated video game fans waited to get their hands on the newest Nintendo piece – Super Smash Bros. Brawl. As they waited, the anxious gamers competed against one another in a Smash Bros. tournament that quickly became a spectacle of its own.

Over 50 people huddled around a single TV screen and Wii console to battle it out, laughing and cheering for the gamers they wanted to win. Once midnight rolled around, though, the competition froze and the fans lined up outside to pick up their pre-ordered bits of heaven.

The anticipation and fanaticism of the loyal fans at GameStop was a testimony to the remarkable growth of the video game industry in the past year.

2007, in particular, was the best-selling year ever for video games – the industry overall experienced a 43% increase from 2006's sales to generate $18 billion in total revenue.

The statistics, published by retail information group NPD, mark an interesting new place in the world for video games; now, more than ever before, games are branching out to a larger audience and striving to be looked upon with greater respect from consumers.

Stephen Johnson, Lead Editor of video game network G4TV's website, says there’s a good reason for the sales jump: "The year that just passed was sort of a landmark year for video games. Because there were three very, very strong consoles out, and all three of them have a selection of really great games that are on a technologically higher level than anything that has previously come out, it has caused consumers to buy a lot of video games."

And the statistics prove it. Game consoles jumped 73% from 2006, generating $5.12 billion. Software, in a similar manner, managed to rake in $9.5 billion, a 28% increase over 2006.
Amanda NeMoyer, A Medill sophomore who said she doesn't play games frequently, said that developers "have started to make games that appeal to more people like Guitar Hero and Rock Band that more people who wouldn't consider themselves very into video games can find fun."

Reilly Brennan, Vice President of Media Relations for game publisher Midway, took that one step further and applied it to the developers’ responsibilities: “It's up to us to make these games accessible not just to people who are into this stuff and want the hardcore experience, but also new players - we kind of make it accessible to everybody.”

Which is something that the gaming industry has yet to fully accomplish. According to the Entertainment Software Association’s latest research, adult gamers have already been playing video games for an average of twelve years. Most gamers, then, have been playing for a long time, and newcomers to the video game medium are hard to come by.

Scott Olstad, a Medill Sophomore who calls himself a gamer, thinks the that gaming industry will remain more or less the same in the near future.

“I think casual games will have a much wider role, which is a good thing, but I think it's not going to look too vastly different from what we have now.”

In contrast, Perry Gunderman, an 18-year-old Evanston resident who's been playing games since he was a toddler, foresees big changes in a small time period for the games industry: “I imagine that one out of every three people will own a video game unit by 2010 or 2011."

Whether or not video games become fully mainstream within the next 5 to 10 years, the current generation of games has seen a shift in the intrinsic ability of video games to affect audiences. Better graphics, more impactful plotlines, smoother gameplay, and movie-like voiceovers make it more possible than ever to tell a great story using the video game medium.

Johnson believes these new methods of storytelling have helped with sales and audience expansion: “The technological limitations that gaming used to have it no longer has, and that frees up a lot of people to create more interesting artistic experiences like BioShock and Shadow of the Colossus, and that'll draw more people into gaming. It becomes less about what button you push... and more about an overall artistic expression.”

There are obvious differences between the way gamers and non-gamers looked at the future of gaming. On the whole, those interviewed who didn’t play games said they wouldn’t gain the status of movies or literature, and those who did said that video games would eventually break into the mainstream.

Either way, the gaming industry is steadily growing, and we can only wait to see whether or not it breaks through society’s mold.

Olstad’s take: “There's going to be a time when games hit a tipping point in the mass market where people can view them not as a child's play thing, or not as something that corrupts your kids, not as juvenile; people will see it as a legitimate form of art, just the same as literature and movies. And people will treat it with that kind of respect. But we're definitely not there yet, and it's gonna be a while before we get there.”

Radio Story for "Multimedia Storytelling" Class:

The First Games Piece

This piece was my first and most personal one yet, and it can be found at www.northbynorthwestern.com. I figured it was a good essay to start out with.

Take that, Roger Ebert. Video games are art. BY JOSHUA CALIXTO

A massive creature towers above you, dwarfing the hills behind it. As your heart races in fear, you know you have no choice but to slay this monster if you are to restore the life of your loved one. Armed with no more than a sword and a firm resolve, you run toward the colossus, and begin climbing up its legs.

The colossus, fighting for its life, attempts to shake you off. As you cling to its hair for your very survival, you frantically seek out its vitals. Finally, you spot a weak point on the giant’s head, and drive your sword into its skull, causing a spray of black blood to spew forth. The mystical colossus roars in pain as it crashes to the ground, and slowly dies. The earth rumbles and you are, once again, alone with your horse.

This moving scene was one of many in 2005’s Shadow of the Colossus, a critically praised Sony Computer Entertainment adventure game. Gamespot lauded Shadow’s artistic style, calling its aesthetic presentation “unparalleled, by any standard.”

Since Shadow of the Colossus‘ release, the video game industry has been growing at a steady rate. The industry’s total revenue last year was $18 billion – a record high. And no wonder: Now, more than ever, the intrinsic ability of video games to affect audiences is evolving. Better graphics, more impactful plotlines, smoother gameplay, and seamless voiceovers make good storytelling through video games not only a possibility, but an expectation.

Even though it’s already over two years old, I still find myself deeply nostalgic about Shadow of the Colossus, specifically the beauty and gravity with which it told its story. My time with the game was an artistic experience that was as arresting to me as some of the best films I’ve seen.

Movie critic Roger Ebert once said, “A game can aspire to artistic importance as a visual experience.” But he also said that the video-game medium could never achieve the status of “art”. This may have been true in the days of rudimentary Atari and Pac-Man, but in the 21st Century, interactive entertainment is reaching unprecedented artistic standards of design, gameplay and overall experience. Sure, most games serve only as a means of escape and, just as in Hollywood, most developers are in it to make money and not to push the medium’s limits. But every once in a while, a game transcends the standards, and revolutionizes genres and expectations. These gems, like some Oscar winners, aren’t always best-sellers, but they provide consumers with a unique, artistic experience.

We can talk all day about what “art” really is, but a more effective way of arguing the value of video games as art would be to carry the argument across other media that are already recognized as art. I'll take film.

Many movies aren’t artistic, moving or evocative. Some of the most popular movies– just like the most popular games– contain few individualizing aspects, and instead stick to tried-and-true formulas to make money. The gaming industry, however, gets more flak for this lack of content because the artistic side of gaming has yet to be fully realized. If people watched movies like Saw and Meet the Spartans exclusively, film wouldn’t be a respected art form, either.

Shadow of the Colossus is a perfect testimony to the artistic potential of video games. It illustrates important, evocative aspects of gaming that many critics of the medium have yet to experience, and is more moving and impactful to me than most films I’ve seen.

Nevertheless, Ebert’s main argument against games as art states that, “video games are inherently inferior to film and literature,” as they “require player choices, which is the opposite of the strategy of serious film and literature, which requires authorial control.” He also made the point that, “no one in or out of the [video game] field has ever been able to cite a game worthy of comparison with the great dramatists, poets, filmmakers, novelists and composers.”

In refutation of Ebert’s first statement, the very beauty of video games is that they let the player act within the story’s context. The experience of playing a video game is more akin to acting in a film than watching one. Actors, like gamers, play their character within the context of the story, yet no authorial control is sacrificed.

This duality of control speaks to the uniquely-effective way whereby video games can contain emotionally touching players. As I played Shadow of the Colossus, I realized that the creatures I was killing were innocent, and though I felt accomplished, I felt no glory nor happiness after taking them down. Killing the colossi was a joyless task, a necessary sacrifice. Shadow confronted me with a moral dilemma – something no other medium has ever done.

In response to the second quote, Ebert forgot to mention the fact that film, poetry, literature, and music were already respected art forms when their masters were noted as such. How can someone call a game a piece of art when they don’t believe the video game medium can produce it? Maybe we already have modern Francis Ford Coppolas and Steven Spielbergs in game developers like Fumito Ueda.

As some statistics show, the gaming industry is doing quite a bit to universalize its audience. Until the time comes, though, when people appreciate games for the means of artistic expression that they are, most consumers will remain deprived of the artistic value that games in the current generation have to offer. 2007 was, in my opinion, one of gaming’s best years thus far, and I’m convinced that it’s only a matter of time before the video game medium gains respect. But until that day comes, I’ll be playing Shadow of the Colossus: a modern masterpiece.

Mission Statement

The video game medium is changing, and within the next few years, there will be dramatic shifts in the way people view, play, make, and talk about games.
Keeping this in mind, the goal of this blog is to discuss games and encourage games-related discussion with the purpose of spreading the word about the progress of this flourishing medium.