So this is just a quick post because I found a recent exchange with my wife funny and think others may as well. Quick disclaimer, I am 30 years old and at least 90% of my game collection is rated M (see previous post for list of current games). So here's the exchange that took place while I was playing Assassin's Creed:

Me: This game is really violent at times.

Wife: Do you have any games where you don't kill anything?

Me: Lego Star Wars

Wife: (laughs) All you do in that game is kill things, I've watched you play it.

Me: Wait, (looking at Oblivion box) you mean a game where I don't kill anything?

Wife: (Laughs) Right.

Me: Like not even evil cave trolls or anything.

Wife: Right, a game that has no killing, no matter what it is.

Me: Well...I have Madden.

So, how about you guys, any games where you don't kill anything?

Well...can you?

My current collection of games either in progress or waiting to be in progress numbers 10 (11 if you count the free copy of The Darkness that came with my Bioshock purchase). Every time I sit down to play, I have to look at the assorted game cases and have to decide which game to load up today. Once I get it going, I realize it's been so long since I played it last that I've forgotten half the story, three quarters of the controls, and all of what I am supposed to be doing.

I've recently decided to try and finish a few of the games that I am more than half way through before getting into the others; but that's still 3 games and each one has at least 10 hours of gameplay left. Add to that the fact that I am something of a completionist (although I don't care about achievement points so I won't be spending hours collecting every stupid flag in Assassin's Creed) and you may start to get a sense for my dilema.

Right now I'm ensconsed in Assassin's Creed, Mass Effect, and Lego Star Wars; I've played about 5 hours of both Halo (campaign, I won't even talk about how much multiplayer time I have) and Bioshock; I've also got GRAW, Oblivion, and Madden all in various stages of just begun; and COD4 and Half Life yet to be started (plus that copy of The Darkness I mentioned earlier). So it kind of seems to me like right now, in this moment, I actually do have too many games.

Any thoughts?

So last night I dutifully tuned in to the IAA awards show. Even though my wife said that watching a gaming awards show on the internet was lame (I'd use a different word here but it might get me in trouble), I love Jay Mohr and I was interested to see how my favorite games would stack up. The show itself was not bad, Mohr was a little more irreverant than the audience seemed to expect, maybe the NyQuil really had fried his brain, but I thought he was funny. The production wasn't stellar, but I wasn't really expecting it to be; it would have been nice if people were a little more organized, but what can you do? The acceptance speeches were short and to the point (memo to Hollywood) and even Ken Kutaragi managed to keep it under 10 minutes despite his difficulty with the language.

I was a bit disappointed Bioshock didn't win either best game overall or at least best console game, but COD is an amazing game so I don't feel like my favorite was robbed of anything (plus it won all the little awards no one outside the industry cares about). Again, a little disappointing, but not tragic.

No, the real debacle to the whole evening was the Red Carpet show put on by Gamespot. Now I know that the Live team isn't used to doing a red carpet show, but honestly people, it looked worse than amatuer hour. Neither of the hosts looked or sounded very comfortable on camera (kind of important since they are the ones driving the bus), neither of the hosts asked interesting questions (or even seemed to know anything about gaming for that matter), the camera work was awful and poorly lit (let's spring for a light or two), and I'm not sure who was in charge of operating the sound board, but listening to two interviews at once or at Laura trying to position the next guest just reeked of unprofessionalism.

In light of all of that I have a few tips for Gamespot for the next time around:

1) Get people who know how to behave in front of the camera and who know something about games and game developers to host the Red Carpet

2) Use steady cams and have the area properly lit (a tripod and a lamp outta do it)

3) Don't throw back and forth between the two hosts after every interview, get someone off camera to line up the next interview so the same host can have 2 interviews in a row

4) Get someone who understands what an off switch is to operate your sound board

I know Gamespot is not in the video production business and I was not expecting to see Ryan Secrest host the Red Carpet, but it looked bad and it looked half-assed, and it made me feel like maybe my wife was right and watching the award show on the internet was kinda lame.

Not that I have that many regular readers (although there are a few of you), but I have been conspicuously absent this week. Have I been embroiled in Halo? Finishing the last 10 hours of Mass Effect? Harvesting...er...rescuing Little Sister? No; I have become adicted to EvE-Online.

Now I know this game did not receive much critical acclaim and many fans of the MMO genre are not fans of the game, but I am absolutely loving it. More complicated than WoW, more original than all the others, I have been playing non-stop in my free time for a week and I still have no clue what I am doing (which makes it all the more fun).

Anyway, my absence from the rest of my life has caused me to question what it is about MMOs (and really all videogames) that I find addictive. It's not just the social aspects (I tend to solo more often anyway), it's something about the coalescence of planning skills, gathering items, and making money. Perhaps it is because these are things we have to do in real life and so we are accustom to these activities, yet in the game there is nothing lost but pride if we are not good at any of these tasks. It could also be something about the competitive nature of MMOs with their focus on leveling and pvp.

Ultimately I'm not sure why I get so sucked into these games, I just know that I do.

So, with Jack Thompson defending Mass Effect and Cooper Lawrence potentially changing her tune (or maybe just caving to pressure from gamers), has sanity returned to the discourse on videogames? I'm inclined to say no (just wait for GTAIV to hit shelves), but I'd love to hear your thoughts.

I don't normally post twice in the same day (or even twice in the same week), nor do I typically post short little blubs, but I just saw this link and needed to comment on it.

You see, I know a little something about manufacturing since it's the industry I work in and this quote made me lose my lunch: "First, MS has under resourced that product unit in all engineering areas since the very beginning. Especially in engineering support functions like test, quality, manufacturing, and supplier management. There just weren't enough people to do the job that needed to be done. The leadership in many of those areas was also lopsided in essential skills and experience."

Everything about that is deplorable. It basically means that in every critical technical area from design to ship was understaffed. The worse part is where he says that that management didn't have the essential skills and experience. This is a chronic problem in US manufacturing and a key reason why we are lagging behind other countries; lately any kid with an MBA is allowed to run an engineering department even if said kid has no technical expertise.

Okay, sorry to go on an operations rant, but to hear that Microsoft understaffed the entire design, development, and engineering team, gave them bad leadership, and was so arrogant as to think they could solve the problems on the fly for a MAJOR gaming system tells me a lot about what they think of their customers regardless of all the good Bill and Melinda do in their time off.

So I was originally going to talk about attacks on gaming in general, you know, the old, video games make children violent drug addicted killers. I was going to talk about how people don't know anything about modern games and how in the 50s the big evil was rock and roll and how older generations always attack youth culture and blah blah blah. Since that is old news and others have covered it far better than I ever could; I've decided to talk about what I perceive to be the root cause of the problem: public ignorance around who is actually playing these games.

According to the ESA the average game player is 33 years old. What I find most interesting about this is that people who were kids at the start of the video game era would be in their mid-30s by now. Why is this interesting? Because when video games first appeared the people playing them were kids (ie. under 13). I think that this simple fact has influenced the public perception that video games are for kids, rather than being something adults can enjoy too. Does anyone care about 30 seconds of implied sex and side-boob in an R rated movie? Of course not (not to mention a movie with that little sex would be rated PG-13). So why the hoopla when it is in an M rated game? Because people understand that R rated movies are aimed at adults yet fail to realize the same thing about M rated games since in their minds, gamers are still pre-teens. I'd be pretty worried too if I thought a generation of 10 year olds was playing Mass Effect.

I know, I know, kids get their hands on the games. Kids also sneak into R rated movies; is Fox going to run an expose about how there is 30 seconds of implied sex and side-boob in the movie Fight Club? Probably not, since such an expose would be ridiculous. How about discussing the violence in a movie like 300? Nope, no controversy there. When it comes to movies it is understood that the audience for those rated R will be adults and that the production companies have no moral responsibility to remove any sex and violence just because some kids might manage to sneak into the theatre. Yet no one seems to understand this about games.

So, what is the solution? I have a thought: perhaps instead of getting defensive about a specific game or gaming in general, we as the gaming community need to do more to educate people on the facts about who is playing video games and why some games contain mature content. Once they understand that Bioshock and Mass Effect and Call of Duty 4 were developed for adults, maybe they will stop getting all freaked out. To get everyone started here is my best analogy: South Park. Everyone understands that just because South Park is a cartoon that doesn't mean it is for kids. The same thing is true for M rated video games.

This week I'd like to pose the following question: Has the skill-set required for gaming changed in the last decade?

Over the weekend I decided, for nostalgia sake, to download the demo for the original Sonic the Hedgehog from the Xbox Arcade. Fifteen years ago (half my life ago, man do I feel old) I was an avid Sega Genesis player and this was one of the games I played a lot (partly because I liked it and partly because my seven-year-old sister begged me to so she could watch). How did this bout of reminiscing lead me to questions about gaming skills? I'll tell you…

Sonic is all about timing. So were the original Super Mario Brothers, Choplifter, Galaga, and countless other side- and vertical-scrolling games in the 80s and early 90s. These games had no save points and the levels played exactly the same every time. Sonic's jumping fish, Mario's turtles, they all came on-screen at exactly the same place and exactly the same time; if you died, you started over from the beginning. This repetition led to games that are all about knowing just the right time to jump in order to bounce from one creature to the next, collect all the rings, and finish the level in the shortest time possible. Even Doom was all about knowing when the next alien was going to come around the corner.

Now, compare this to a modern FPS or RPG. I suppose if you die enough times on a given level you'll start to figure out where to stand to take your shots or how to sneak past that final guard, but ultimately the AI is far more complex in modern game engines. It's not so much about the repetition of playing the same level over and over until you have your timing down pat; it's about seeing the AI and reacting to it, never to come across that specific scenario again unless you play through the game again.

Then there is the multiplayer content that is becoming the hallmark of successful games. I don't think anyone would argue that playing against 5 other human players is the same thing as playing against 5 AIs and that it requires an entirely different set of skills, such as anticipating where opponents will be and how they are likely to react when you throw that frag grenade at them.

For me, I find that playing modern games requires a different set of skills and reactions from the ones I used playing side- and vertical-scrolling games as a kid. I wonder how well the current generation of teenagers does at playing these games since the skills required are different from what they have grown up with (I know a lot of online chatter has been criticizing the upcoming shooter The Club because of its focus on learning a level's timing, something I'm kind of looking forward to). So, as I travel down memory lane I ask you, what do you think? Have your gaming skills changed over time as the games have changed or is it all a part of the same basic skill-set?

This week I'd like to talk about something I think we can all relate to, especially in light of last week's rampant speculation around the Xbox 360 Ultimate Edition which, so far, has failed to materialize: The Rumor Mill.

In general all people have a tendency to gossip and participate in the rumor mill; we've all heard about office gatherings "around the water-cooler" to discuss who is secretly dating who, and who is about to get fired, and so on. It's just human nature to want to be "in-the-know" and have information that no one else has, it's also human nature to want to share that illicit knowledge. It just seems to me that we gamers engage in this practice more than other people; we also argue more vehemently about sources for information and what we think about a given rumor's veracity.

Case in point: the aforementioned Xbox 360 Ultimate. All the message boards were swimming with speculation about what Bill Gates' big CES announcement would be. What the specs would be. Even what the SKU would be! I mean really, the SKU? Only inventory control geeks care about things like SKUs (trust me, I am one). People argued over whether it would or would not have an HD-DVD drive. Whether or not this would mean 360 games would come out on HD-DVD. How much this would annoy gamers who had already purchased a non-HD-DVD equipped console. On and on it went. And then, what happened, NOTHING. Not one word about a new system. Did the rumors die? Or are they just lying in wait for the next major convention so they can all resurface?

Another area that always garners a large amount of speculation from gamers, release dates for anticipated games (can anyone say GTAIV?). We scour the internet looking at dates posted on retailer's web-sites. We post anonymous sources. We link to bloggers who think they have the inside track. For whatever reason, we are unable to just wait for the official press release, we MUST speculate. Will it really come out on April 1st, or is that an April Fools? Will Resident Evil 5 come out this year or next? Will MSG4 ever release on Xbox? Despite all the evidence one way or another, we still argue and flame, and argue some more.

So why is this? Why do we as gamers engage in so much gossip and water-cooler conversation? I have a few theories:

1) As a group we tend to be incredibly plugged in to the internet so we have a wide array of message boards, blogs, and game sites to feed our insatiable desire for news. Speculation on a single blog spreads through the web like a virus infecting other blogs and forums. Quotes are taken out of context in one place then endlessly repeated everywhere else. We have instant access to the latest rumor and a place to debate it immediately.

2) We greatly anticipate upcoming games and systems from the moment they are announced, even if development has only just begun. This leads to a desire to know all there is to know about what is happening with the game during its entire lifecycle. It also leads to constant chatter on message boards about when they might be released. The problem only intensifies when a release is delayed. Reasons for the delay abound as we desperately try to find someone to blame for our inability to play it right this very second. Which leads me to #3…

3) As gamers we tend to be young (true there are gamers in their 40s. I myself am in my 30s, making me part of an "older" generation of gamers. Yet even at 30, we are still considered young and that is how we act), and being young we want instant gratification, instant answers. We want the Xbox 360 Ultimate edition to be real because we WANT to buy it. We WANT to play MSG4 on our 360s (more on the Platform Wars another day). We WANT GTAIV now! So whenever we find the tiniest shred that appears to indicate that we can have what we want, we start to speculate, and wish, and hope, and gossip, and debate.

Ultimately I don't really know the answer to my question; these are just some theories I have on why we spend so much of our time as gamers speculating on what is to come instead of enjoying what we have in the present. What do you think?

So 2007 saw it's fair share of excellent games, lame games, and games that just plain sucked. It also saw quite a few game studios appear to spend more money on advertising than they did on the game.

The most recent example of game many think was over-hyped is (you guessed it) Assassin's Creed. While I enjoyed this game, the criticism is well placed. For all the ads and gamer anticipation, this game was a bit of a let-down (and I don't even care about the story-line).

So here's my question as the year draws to a close: What was the most over-hyped game of the year in 2007?