This is written off the cuff, more as a rant than anything else. It isn't as well organized as I usually write, but that's to be expected. I just need to get this off of my chest about the recent E3 performance, particularly how Sony performed this year vs. Nintendo and how that contrasts with previous years' performances.

Judging Sony's presentation strictly as a show, it was SO much better than what the other two companies put out there. It was energetic, fast-paced, wasn't built on a numbers game, and showed new things I hadn't really seen before. I know the PSP redesign isn't fantastic, but I really liked it personally. I like its smaller design, that they kept the screen size, extended the battery life, and added a feature to use it as a console so you can play the games on your TV while at home. Given that that's the way I prefer to play any handheld (except for the DS), I really appreciated that feature. Hell they had Chewbacca, and that simple PSP game they showed where the physics of your environment changes based on the player's viewing angle -- I almost had a nerdgasm for those two things alone. But the biggest thing is that, unlike last year's Sony show, this year's didn't work as hard on offending my sensitibilities with viral marketing ads. Regardless of whether or not you liked or were impressed by what Sony showed, they very clearly took charge and made the experience one of strictly showing what they had to offer rather than endlessly talking about numbers.

My worst memory of the Sony show from last year was that stupid and needlessly long montage video of "real people on the street" talking about how great Sony was. It stinks of treating gamers like dumbies who can't identify a viral marketing ad when they see one. It had a huge negative reaction from gamers similar to the reaction from that dumb "I want a PSP for Christmas" website they set up which came back to bite them in the behind only five months later. This year I think they learned their lesson, but Nintendo seems to have failed to learn it by observation. I honestly hated that Nintendo had to follow suit this year and put those dumb youtube-esque video montages up -- not just one mind you -- every time that Reggie wanted to take a break, there was yet another low-IQ commercial popping up there full of viral marketing hype. It was so Sony-from-last-year's-E3 -- they almost made me feel played to. I think just by removing those dumb things they could have improved their presentation -- that's how much of a negative I think they were.

I love Nintendo's direction. I really do. It's my favorite console this gen. so far. I don't like being negative about Nintendo. But that conference was simply underwhelming, with the only thing saving it from being a total loss being that they showed clips from some of their anticipated upcoming games, showed some new peripherals and games that looked interesting, and gave a real timeline for online play experiences. Even then, the gameplay they showed of Zelda DS and Metroid Prime 3 was so short and full of talk, that it was hardly noticeable -- it almost seemed like an ad for that couple's "hardcore gaming website" more than a glimpse of those games. I doubt the time they spent showing actual gameplay during those segments was as long as even one of those youtube-esque video montages. Now obviously, the "hardcore gaming website" couple were brought on stage and featured in a video because Nintendo is concerned that they might lose that group of people. But you don't do that by adding more wallpaper to your marketing presentation -- you do it by SHOWING us what you have coming up that caters to us.

I believe that this year Sony had the best presentation. They may not have "stolen the show" overall the way Nintendo did last year, but their presentation was the most enjoyable and did the least to insult my intelligence. And even after all I said about Nintendo's show, I could easily say much more negative about Microsoft's, which I thought was even worse with all the dubious number throws that were intended to prove to me that Microsoft is "driving the industry", while targetting becoming the new Wii with a Disney sign-on. Obviously I still think Nintendo has the better overall direction, at least from a business standpoint, and my comments here are strictly related to the show they put on at E3. But that's really what E3 is anyway -- a show, and the level at which a particular company talks down to its audience in their part of that show has always been one of the biggest factors for me.

I think what I am looking for in that kind of show is excitement -- a clear, compact, and fast-paced presentation of exciting things to come in the future. In the past, Nintendo was clearly on the prowl in their shows. They intended to steal the show, and they did it, even though they weren't sure at that point they would win the market. They had no marketshare to lose and could only really go up rather than down. There was this energy to it that the other two didn't have. Now it seems like it's been reversed. Nintendo almost seemed like it was in protectionist mode, like they were doing their best to protect their new marketshare from intrusion rather than keep it by demonstrating it was viable for the future. As someone who really believes it is viable, I find the failure to demonstrate it on stage to be almost inexcusible. I wish they remembered from before that the best way to do that is by showing us real things that are coming up in thick, long segments that concentrate on them as new content to be excited about, instead of viral marketing displays and number crunches.

In the vast scheme of things, it's better that Nintendo has actually gained marketshare this time around and lost the E3 performance rather than the inverse condition, which has been prevalent for the last couple of years. But Nintendo needs to remember that E3 was one of the biggest vehicles for their current success. It was at trade shows like E3 that they were able to demonstrate their direction and generate the interest they are currently enjoying. It got their ideas out there and showed they were viable. The best approach is not to tell us your numbers and how viable you are from a financial perspective -- let us, the buying public worry about that. Instead, show us what you have coming down the pipeline. Convince us that you have things worth taking a look at, things that are coming in the future, things we won't want to ignore. We don't need another hard sell at our door with you wearing your Sunday best and handing out quasi-religious pamphlets about the Kingdom of God. We want to see the Kingdom in action.

I don't know how many of you have read about the recent news going on here in my neck of the woods, but it has definitely been a sign of disturbing things to come.  Gamespot recently put out a post in their Sidebar News Blog talking about the situation in some detail.

You can read about it there, but I will summarize here.  A student at a high school in a neighboring township built a map of his school in the PC game Counter-Strike.  He apparently did this and shared it among students at his school.  It is unclear if they used the map or not, but if they did, the natural assumption would have to be that they did so for purposes of living out a fantasy of taking part in the game in the one building outside of home they are most familiar with.

But that isn't how the majority of school board members at Clements High School in Sugar Land, a few miles from the Southwest edge of Houston, Texas, decided to view it.  The hype and hysteria built around the recent Virginia Tech massacre has awakened memories of other past disasters, particularly Columbine, which involved some kids who also happened to play video games.  As a result, the school board voted to overreact in one of the more extreme manners they could have mustered.  The police searched his home and room, forced him to remove the data from his computer (without a court order, I might add), found decorative swords in his room and assumed they might be for violent purposes, and then the school board basically relocated him to an "alternate educational facility", which is a term that likely refers to a Fort Bend County First-level Reform School.

This reminded me of things we used to do when I was a young kid playing Dungeons and Dragons in the '80s in Virginia (not even two hours away from Virginia Tech).  Our Dungeon Master drew up new labyrinths to explore on a regular basis, and one of those was made out of a combination of all three of our town schools -- Elementary, Middle, and High School.  Even though D&D was more than frowned upon in school, we still brought such maps to school and shared them.  Our Dungeon Master himself collected knives and swords.  It's hard for me to imagine that in this culture of fear, but it could easily be him or even me designated as the target of just this kind of reaction.

When Gamespot posted, I thought that it would be obvious to most gamers that this was, in fact, an overreaction, and something that should be quickly undone in the name of justice rather than furthered in the name of unnamed fear.  And for the most part, I was right, but there were a few individuals who felt that the situation was in fact justified.  I responded to them in the comments rather hastily, but decided that I would probably rather do it in a blog post as well, were I can refine my thoughts a bit.  Basically, what follows is a summary of some of the comments I disagreed with the most, and my responses to them.  I think it summarizes my view on the dangers of this sort of "no-tolerance" behavior encroaching into strangleholds on the rights we have grown to love as Americans.

With current problems with guns in US schools, building a CS map was just stupid; however, stupid isn't the same as threatening - I call it an over-reaction.jhellequin

For the record, I am glad you ultimately came to the right conclusion on the most important part of this matter.  Still, I even have to disagree with the idea that making such a map is "stupid".  There really was nothing stupid about it. It was a fantasy, not even slightly discernible as a threat. The only stupidity is that a group of school board members can't tell the difference between violence and fantasy. I am pretty sure I'd want someone more discerning on something as important as a school board.

Oh come ON people, if the kid had any common sense in his mind, he WOULD have realized it would be a stupid idea.Miracle_Air

Who cares? His idea wasn't hurting anyone, so stupid or not, there is nothing legitimate in this kind of brazen attack on his sovereignty and moving him to another school.

Governments, including school boards, aren't there to quell stupid decisions, which we all make on a daily basis.

The School Board took the Machiavellian approach of asking questions, finding nothing to fear, and then shooting anyway.  They have no excuse for their overreaction.

So the conclusion we can make is this:
1. He's looking for attention and decided to get it this way
2. He really IS an idiot and didn't use logic to think this through and wonder if it would get him in hot water
3. He might ACTUALLY be using it for a violent purpose. But it would be the first case, wouldn't it?Miracle_Air

"Might" is a big word. If someone is planning a violent attack, they don't do it by making a game out of their plans. A guy who knows his school well enough to make a map out of it doesn't need to map it out in order to start a shooting frenzy.  Even if they did do such a thing, that alone would not be a sign of a violent act being planned that would lead to this kind of inquiry.  The Columbine boys had a LOT going on, much of which was obvious and unhidden, which could have provided signs.  In this case, there really is practically nothing to justify a search, let alone such a harsh response.

Safety is important, yes, but not at the expense of turning ourselves into a police state filled with suspicion, innuendo, and virtual conviction on either one of those.

As gamers, we have to look at this in every possible perspective. So I ask everyone who posts from here on to think it through. Ignore the sidecomment about swords, just note the fact he made a map similar to his school. I'd rather argue for both sides than be biased and take one side.Miracle_Air

How can you expect us to do that when you clearly haven't? Even if I were to believe the idea is "stupid", is the identity of the idea being "stupid" the same as "meant to cause harm and clearly constitutes a threat"? If someone can honestly say that in this case, then I think it's time for them review their premises before they start throwing out that suggestion to others.

But from a gamer's point of view, this kid shouldn't have mad that map. Its only more fodder for Jack Thompson. I don't think this is gonna be below his radar.SecretWasianMan

From this gamer's point of view, I can't think of any reason why he shouldn't have made such a map.  It was something he could relate to, and it likely made a game about fighting against a terrorist invasion more realistic to him.  There's nothing wrong with it unless he intended it to be a guide to doing the real thing, but the mere existence of this map and a few swords in his room is indication of nothing.

To all the people saying: "It's free speech! They can't do that!" Yes, this is the land of free speech. You can say whatever the hell you want, but no one said you couldn't get arrested. Don't be arrogant.SecretWasianMan

Yes, actually, that is what it means. The right to "free speech" as both a legal and metaphysical concept places a limit on Government at all levels, preventing arrest on the basis of expression, with the only real exceptions being when such speech communicates a direct threat or a fraudulent claim used to expose others to purposeful risk of harm to their person or property. This means that unless the kid actually made a clear threat (not just something others can assume by their wild conclusion-jumping), or was trying to fool people into self-harm or into giving him their property, then there is no reason why he can be arrested.  Or as the Russian American comic from the '80s Yakov Smirnoff used to say, "In Russia we have freedom of speech.  In America, we also have freedom AFTER speech." (Emphasis mine).

Don't take this the wrong way, but I suggest you familiarize yourself with what "free speech" actually is, and given that arrests can only happen when a law has been violated, you should probably contemplate what the words "Congress shall make no law" mean in the context of first-amendment free speech.

Two weeks and some change after the massacre at Virginia Tech, it's hard to call this an overreaction.  I don't think the student meant any harm but it's easier (and better) to intervene now than risk having the swat team intervene in the future.Halo05

It's not hard for me to call it an overreaction, when it fits every possible essential to the definition of such a term.

Even if I were to assume that it was reasonable to come in and search his house, force him to remove something from his computer without a warrant, etc. etc., I still wouldn't say it was reasonable to relocate him to a first-level reform school AFTER realizing that there was no threat.

The fact is that none of this was a reasonable course. It stinks of emotional reaction instead of thinking reaction, and we don't collectively employ school board members for their non-thinking skills.  Again, there is strong question on whether this even was cause for an investigation, let alone an invasion of this kid's life, and even after finding no real problem the school board still delivered one of the harshest penalties to this student that they had power to deliver.  There can be no better definition of "overreaction" as a concept than that.

m0zart, by no means am I already jumping to conclusions and saying that he was a psychopath on the verge of preparing for some school massacre, but I am saying it was a bad idea.Miracle_Air

Then why in the world are you justifying the reaction, including the punishment.  If the kid wasn't causing harm, and intended no harm, then there can't be a delivered punishment without that punishment being by its very nature unjust.

Of course it very way may be that I feel this way since I've never played CS. But then again, I play games to escape reality. If I were making a map, I would make it something different, rather than copying a school or something, I dunno...

I'm agreeing with both sides, it was probably an overreaction but right now, I'd rather be safe than sorry. If he can prove he made this for the sake of entertainment and not some other purpose, than fine. I'm just saying I think it was a little idiotic and careless to have such a thing sitting around on his comp.Miracle_Air

But you're not safer. All you've done is moved the slight possibility of violence from the hands of this kid into the guarantee of institutional violence against said kid for no discernible or objective just-cause.  No, it's not a game you care about today, or a practice you'd take up, but it could easily be. Would you like to be moved to an "alternate educational institution" because you did something that offended sensibilities without regard to your intent?  Would you like to have something forcibly removed from your computer by command of a guy in uniform carrying a gun simply because it strikes personal irrational fear in him?

None of us are safer. There's still unjustified violence, it's just been institutionalized now.

I think I've made my point. We should be looking from all perspectives. While I myself AM on the side of disbelief in this being something more, I am going to take the side of punishing the kid. Like I said before, it was a bad idea and he didn't think it through. Yes, he PROBABLY shouldn't have to think something through but in an overly paranoid country, it's ALWAYS safer to stay on the side of caution.Miracle_Air

Indeed. And staying on the side of caution is precisely why I have to take the stand the way I have. There is absolutely nothing in this case that justifies going into this student's home, interpreting obviously decorative swords as signs of violence, forcing him to remove a map he created and used in a game from his machine WITHOUT a court order, and finally moving him to an "alternative educational institution" as punishment. And if it can happen to him for something as slight as this, then it can happen to any of us.

I can only hope that someday you snap back into the reality of this situation, even if that means you must experience something similar. Otherwise, I greatly fear for the future, and not from mad gunmen in my schools, but from the increasingly unlimited power gunmen under the hire of the State can wield for simply not liking how you choose to express yourself.  Jack Thompson is a joke that courts pay little or no attention to, but these other trends are no joke.  Quit turning a blind eye to them.

Last year, June of 2006 to be exact, I went to New York for an SOA Developer's Conference for about a week.  I went to see several shows, including the Tony Award Winning Avenue Q (which I highly recommend).  I also saw The Producers, Phantom of the Opera, and a few other plays with gratuitous nudity and one other one with that dude that played Darth Sidious in the Star Wars movies.  In any case, after seeing Phantom of the Opera, I came out of the theater and noticed that while I was within, one of the Marqees had been completely removed and replaced with another just across the street.  It was for a show I hadn't heard of called Manhattan Memories.  I was baffled for a moment until I saw that one of the stars was Mary Jane Watson, and I knew I had to have suddenly stumbled into a filming session of Spider-Man 3 on the streets of New York City.

Now, I probably wouldn't have stayed, because I figured that as crowded as it was, hardly anyone would be able to actually see the filming or the stars of the movie even in brief cameos.  Still, I couldn't go anywhere.  EVERYTHING was blocked off until those involved were finished filming.  Besides, my best friend on Earth and his son (who is also my godson) are probably the biggest Spider-Man fans in North America.  So I decided to stick it out and do my best.  I pushed my way to the front and pulled out the only camera I had available at such short notice, the one attached to my cell phone.  Now, this should tell you something about the quality of said photos.  Only three of the photos I took were worth showing, and even then, they weren't that great in terms of quality.  But with the Spider-Man 3 movie and the video game adaptations on practically every console known to modern man looming on the horizon, I've decided to share them with you anyway.

This one is of the false marquee of the Manhattan Memories show, note the bottom star's name listed on said marquee -- our own Mary Jane Watson.

This one is of actor James Franco, right after he filmed a scene playing Harry Osborn with Tobey Maguire.  He's escaping into the crew's van.

Finally, here is the Spider-Dude himself, or at least the most realistic version of him that our sadly-grounded-in-reality planet can produce.  He's escaping after filming another scene, he turned to the crowd and smiled of course, but I wasn't quick enough to catch that one.  I'd have preferred that this picture not have included the less-impressive entourage of movie-making technical assistants, but what can ya do?

So yeah, that's all I have to show.  Believe me, the rest of the twenty or so photos were basically me trying to get good shots and failing miserably.  In short, they are not worth seeing.  Yes, I know these pictures kind of suck, but they are better than what most of you took on that day, right?

Are video games art?  That seems to be the question of the decade, and practically everyone has an opinion on the matter.  As this debate keeps raging both among the industry moguls and among the players in forums, it seems that it's often the artists themselves who are their own worst enemy in the defense of their work.  The creator of Mega Man, Keiji Inafune, joins the ranks of many great video game artists in trying to deny their ... identity as artists.  Take a look at this recent quote from Keiji Inafune at http://kotaku.com/gaming/keiji-inafune/gdc07-capcoms-inafune-slams-clover-producer-242796.php :

Perhaps I might get into trouble if I say this in front of people from the mass media. Games are not a work of art. It's actually a product. If we think of it as a work of art, then... when we think about Picasso and Van Gogh's paintings, the end result is beauty, so it doesn't matter if you sell it or not. However for games, it's a product. It is a commodity. The producer has to think about that.We must because that's what they are.  Not to call them what they are, in this case art, is to inaccurately represent art.  Is there a dichotomy here?  Certainly!  But it's not a relevant dichotomy in determining what is and what is not art -- it only differentiates between different mediums of expression.Keiji Inafune

I realize that Inafune's primary point was not to throw video games out of the art arena, but rather to make an argument for marketing games properly.  Regardless, I think he touched on some of this anyway by accepting some of these faulty premises.  Games must be marketed, but so must art.  Beethoven didn't put on his symphonies with zero advertisements.  Nor did Shakespeare put on plays without tacking flyers on every wall.  When authors like Hugo and Dickens wrote a new novel, do you think they didn't have advertising?  Announcements were made.  Newspapers reported their upcoming novels.  Inafune's statements about Picasso and Van Gogh are particularly out of touch given that both of these men fully intended to SELL their works, with the former becoming quite wealthy doing just that.

This kind of statement is more than just a description of a sane business model, which by itself is perfectly reasonable.  Unfortunately, Inafune goes much farther by introducing what many in philosophy know as the dreaded art and entertainment dichotomy.  Besides being infamously indefensible and patently destructive to any medium of art caught up in its black hole of anti-reason, this is the very dichotomy that fuels the constant "us vs. them" attitudes between those artists producing so-called "great art" and those producing "popular entertainment".  It does this slight of hand to grand extremes, as if the two were so mutually exclusive that they are as separated as East is from West.  The recognition of the realities of the economic system that art is made around could have been easily made without presenting this dichotomy, but that unfortunately isn't what happened here.  Inafune apparently had to make the implication that unless it is totally unconcerned with that economic system, then it becomes something other than art.

I am very weary of hearing these statements, coming initially from critics and now increasingly from video game artists themselves, that art has to be something so elevated that we can only see it from a distance, as if it is something that common "unelevated" men couldn't relate to or even, *gasp*, enjoy without this admiration pouring out some "anti-art" taint onto the subject matter.  It's nothing new, as we see it in many other artistic mediums.  It's unfortunate that so many things we call art today are things that many of us cannot directly relate to without having to imagine circumstances other than our own.  For instance, every single one of my favorite operas, such as Don Giovanni or Le Nozze di Figaro, were once simple theater pieces that the masses related to far more than those who commissioned their composition.  It wasn't unknown for a common ditch digger to whistle arias from Figaro or drinking buddies to even sing an aria from Don Giovanni on the streets.  Heck, Figaro itself was a controversial play before it was ever an opera -- a play that some believe spoke to the concerns of the French lower classes so starkly that it helped to fuel the French Revolution.  They were pieces that were as relevant for their day as certain movies we watch or games we play are to us today.  Yet the simple fact that men today don't as easily relate to the themes of these past works somehow makes them "art" in the minds of many, while something they can more easily relate to can't achieve that status until they die off and the subject matter becomes remote again.  It's a strange distinction to push, if only because it makes the status of "art" inversely proportional to the dwindling relevance a work in any given medium has for its most timely audience.

So many things we think of today as high art were considered to be simple entertainment in the time that they were conceived by the men who are now known as artists.  In the days when Shakespeare, Marlowe, and a bevy of others were writing epic and frivilous plays for the stages, they were doing so for the common people on the streets far more than for the royalty and noblemen.  It was, in fact, many (though not all) of the well-educated in positions of authority who considered these endeavors to be too common even for the commoners.  In Mozart's day, he was considered to be crass and crude, his operas too playful, his choice of subjects too disrespectful, and his music too childish.  In his day, you went to the theater to watch his operas wearing your most common clothes, with the intent on dancing and singing in the aisles.  Today by contrast, we watch him while dressed in three-piece suits and keeping our mouths shut, making sure that proper respect to this "high art" is paid in commensurate discomfort.  Dickens and Hugo wrote literature for commoners, despite being viewed now as required reading for a serious class on literature as "high art".

I could throw out a dozen more examples, but none of that would convince the snobs who decry anything which could possibly entertain as art.  I suppose I've had enough of the would-be high artists who decry capitalism because their works don't sell, but I think, especially lately, that my real beef is with those in the world of entertainment who embrace the asanine judgements of their craft as less than artistic.  This kind of sanction of the victim can never be positive, especially to those of us who see a bright future for the artistic medium of video game development.  The question is this: just what is it that allows these individuals to exclude video games from the category of art?

In the early days of film, movies and films were just not taken seriously by the art-loving public at large.  It was considered much more personal to watch a play.  Most felt that you could get more out of a live production for no other reason than that there was an intimacy between a cast that had to face a very finite audience than film acting could ever hope to achieve on a more abstract level.  The theater additionally had an artistic merit attached to it -- it was more than just entertainment in the eyes of many.  It was very serious business.  On the contrary, it was common for many critics of the day to treat film as less than art.  Yet, here we are today with film trumping most stage productions in their ability to effectively tell a story.  And now, film is not excluded from the arena of art, nor are film makers considered less than artists.

So what happened?  Film still has that same limitation today that it had back then, but those involved in creating films have instead concentrated on its strengths, such as the ability to present a more wide-scale telling of a tale, the ability to impress more direct realism into a given situation, and being able to plan and execute every detail of a scene over and over until the result is exactly as the artists involved envision.  The fixed medium that is film came with both handicaps and advantages. There is less intimacy, and thus more detachment in film than the live stage, but there is also the power to be more effective than the stage in at least as many ways as the stage originally was perceived to have over film.  Film advanced as a medium at a rate proportional to the rate at which artists learned to use the strengths of the medium.

Video games have more than a passive chance at becoming a medium with not only the same marketing power as film, but also its own unique artistic power to tell a story.  Video games in particular have a potential that film cannot have to the same degree -- the potential to break the fourth wall.  They naturally treat the player as an active participant.  They can, through their presentation, either shield the player from the "realities" they present or actively involve him in them.  Video games can effectively tell a story by playing the player.  That's a potential that remains only rarely tapped in these youthful days of the craft, but its possibilities seem endless to the casual observer who takes the medium seriously.

Ultimately, no number of pontificating critics who have never bothered to examine the medium seriously will be able to hold those video game developing artists back from developing their art to their own exacting specifications.  Anyone who thinks those critics will be the biggest road block needs to rethink that position.  The bigger concern is what we've seen in the comments by Inafune along with those of many other video game development artists in recent years.  If they aren't taking their own art seriously, why should the critics?  If they don't know they are artists, then how can any of us?

Last week I read that special-edition bundles of "Blue Dragon", the Japanese RPG that Microsoft is sponsoring in hopes of grabbing some of that tough-as-nails Japanese market, have actually sold out.  It has also spawned some renewed sales of 360 consoles in Japan.

While sales are still low compared to the US and Europe, even the staunchest advocate of Japanese isolationism has to admit that this is a threatening start.  Going from a "crack and crevice" market to a niche market with a single RPG demonstrates that they are at least starting to think in the right direction.  Still, I can't help but think that more needs to be done.

Here's a fact: various nationalities have extremely varying cultures, and where they really seem to differ most is in the field of entertainment.  That might not sound controversial, but sometimes it sure seems that way given the approach that some business entities take when entering new markets.  Microsoft cannot hope to win the Japanese market by trying to market direct action games like Halo.  I've said for a while that what Microsoft really needs is a bevy of Japanese RPGs, and though they have had some in the past, they haven't really made enough.

Another thing they need to capitalize on is this recurring theme in Japanese games where characters and environments from alternate warped realities which mirror our own come through a variety of portals and manifest themselves here in the normal world.  Let's face it, Japanese gamers love to play with their yin-yang (no pun intended), and Microsoft needs to think of how they can use that to their advantage.

The premise can be as light-hearted as Mario vs. Wario, and the Japanese market will eat it up.  They can also sell the alternate in dark and sinister realities merging with our own world, such as a small and isolated Japanese town known to worship an interdimensional alien god who copies his M.O. from the Gospel according to Luke, which landslides into an alternate reality full of chess-playing Zombies and screaching sirens in the backgroud.  They can even make it insanely hard, and it will still sell like water in a desert.  (Disclaimer:  Any similarities to "Siren" are completely coincidental).

Still, even if they made a thousand Japanese RPGs and stole the lucrative Final Fantasy series from the pits of Sony and Nintendo exclusivity, and even if they made games that had so many levels of yin and yang that it would confuse an Egyptologist, they still need a certain other ingredient that they are severely lacking in.  That element is what I like to call "strangebrew".

"Stragebrew" is my term for the myriad of odd Japanese games with themes that only make sense in la-la land, but for the strangest of reasons become mega-hits first in Japan, and eventually all over the world.  I have to admit -- even I have become addicted myself to these crazy themes.

Maybe Microsoft just needs someone to jump-start them with a nice pool of fresh ideas while all the best ideas aren't already taken.  Anyone from Microsoft reading?  I doubt it, but if you are, here are some of my brilliant and COMPLETELY original ideas:

*** A game where a spikey haired lawyer fights a judge with a below-80 IQ, a few genius prosecutors uninterested in justice, and a floaty underage psychic in training who channels the spirit of your beautiful but recently-deceased legal assistant.

*** A surgery simulator with a unkempt youthful doctor who is constantly berated by his cute but fussy know-it-all nurse, and who has the strange ability inherited from his Greek God ancestor to cast spells which slow down time.

*** A rhythm game about Government "men-in-black" cheerleading agents who put our tax dollars to work by dancing up pyschic energy to '70s Disco music to solve a whole host of civilian problems, like bringing boy and girl together during a strenuous babysitting session, or helping a poor wonewy dog find his way home.

*** A strange compilation of increasingly insane mini-games featuring a blue horned devil, a shirtless Japanese uber-hunk trying hard to look like Frankie Avalon, and a bikini-clad babe from the theoretical Japanese version of Baywatch.

*** A game centering around a super cyber being who is a cross between a King, a God, and a cheesy mustached adventure actor from American movies in the '30s, who loses all of the stars in the universe during a drinking binge, and thus has to send his shy, short, but princely son to roll practically everything he sees (including stray, useless people) into a set of giant spheres to replace those lost stars.

*** A game about a cute and chubby but largely immobile smiley-faced blob capable of only the odd jump, which the player must move around by turning the Earth on it's Axis and defying the laws of gravity, with the express intent of making said chubby smiley-faced blob even more chubby.

*** Maybe the most unlikely of all, a game that presents you with a host of tests and practice exercises which might remind you of 3rd grade multiplication table tests with the express purpose of measuring your brain's speed, and with the additional express purpose of improving your brain's speed over time.  Add to the mix an annoying and preachy Japanese professor with a face which itself could inspire a new "count the polygons" game, and you'll have a sure hit.

Ok, so these aren't my ideas.  I ripped them off from legitimate game designers.  If these games sounded familiar, they should.  They've all been done, or are currently in the process of being done, on systems that are selling far greater in Japan than the XBOX 360.

I've heard a lot of talk lately on forums, from some game journalists, and even implications from Microsoft itself, that the Japanese market may be too closed-minded for an American console to do well within its North Pacific shores.  There may be some truth to that.  But I think the problem might be more complicated.  Maybe Microsoft is the one with the closed mind.  XBOX 360 developers probably need to open their own minds, take a look at what is working there, what isn't, and act accordingly.

The XBOX was never very popular in Japan.  I mean in last week's sales charts, the last-gen Microsoft offering only sold SIX consoles in the entire country.  That's less than one per day.  That may not seem so bad for a console that was dropped a year ago, but when you compare it to the fact that the original Gameboy Advance, which was discontinued almost five years ago when the Gameboy Advance SP was released as its replacement, sold TWICE as many, you begin to see the breadth of the problem.  While the XBOX 360 is doing much better than that, it's still nowhere near where Microsoft needs it to be.

I don't buy into the apologist view that Microsoft doesn't need to do well in the Japanese market.  Microsoft's vision for the XBOX 360 is larger than America and Europe.  In fact, it's larger than the gaming market itself.  Gaming is a means to an end here, not an end in itself.  When Sony announced their intentions in the late '90s to design the PS2 as a Linux-driven PC centralized in the home, it jump-started Microsoft's plans to enter the gaming market to counter those plans.

Even after Sony later pushed those plans from the PS2 to their future PS3, Microsoft saw the worrying trend and acted swiftly to enter the market.  Sony's almost decade-old vision of releasing a gaming system that could replace the home PC is a threat to Microsoft's one extremely lucrative product line -- it's own PC-based operating system.  Whatever anyone else thinks, Microsoft knows that it can't afford not to take Japan.  But it will take more than a powerful system to do it.  It will take a change of direction.

I come from a small Virginia town that borders West Virginia. While growing up, it became apparent to me that the State of West Virginia is eaten alive with a particularly dreadful strain of socialism which in some ways mirrors syndicalism -- specifically, the coal mining union dominates the State, controls its politicians, and even makes decisions for or against other completely unrelated industries on a regular basis. In fact, one of the reasons I left the area was because the State legislature blocked a well-known software development company from opening shop inside its borders, a company which had already pre-hired me for a position which I would have taken after graduation. The reason for this was apparently a fear that the near dead coal mining industry might be supplanted by something more important which might wrest from them their entrenched power.  I've become fond of calling it the Soviet Socialist Republic of West Virginia.

I've long since escaped from behind its iron curtain, and now reside in Houston, Texas.  Houston (and Texas in general) is an area I think isn't so poisoned with the anti-businessman mentality.  Where I live now, production is valued.  Business is not only legitimate but absolutely necessary.  Work is not only valued but rewarded by the right to keep what you earn.  Whenever I return home to visit my parents, I am always amazed at just how much things are continually decaying.  New businesses are practically non-existent, and old businesses are taxed out of existence continually.  Even businesses that could afford to exist in this bear trap move across the border to Virginia's greener pastures.  It's truly depressing, and I try to keep such visits to a minimum.

Anyway, to make a long story short(er), I went back to that area a few years ago to take my niece to a musical in Roanoke for her birthday.  While I was there, I noticed a headline blaring on the front-page of the local newspaper: URBAN RENEWAL COMING!

So I stood in line to buy the newspaper, something I almost never do.  I was somewhat eager to find out which bright-eyed entrepreneur would dare open up an enterprise in a State which in practice despises both entrepreneurs and enterprises. Does this guy know what he's up against? Do his stockholders realize that a huge portion of their profits, already taxed doubly at the Federal level, will be taxed even further and even more unreasonably within the borders of this State?

I get the paper and eagerly read through the first two paragraphs of introductory nonsense used to fill up any given article, and I finally get to the meat of the matter: "but it looks like good fortune has smiled on our area once again. The State has decided that our area is the chosen location for the new State Prison, which has become necessary due to the increase in prison population."

And with that, it all makes sense -- well, at least in the warped alternate universe that this State operates under.  *THAT* is urban renewal?

There are several things that baffle me about this. How can a state prison be described as urban renewal? This thing isn't creating new capital -- its draining it from other areas. That this destitute area of West Virginia is going to be kept up by the rest of the State, and by the numerous Federal grants coming its way for this very purpose, is hardly "renewal" of any kind.

The other aspect that is driving me nuts is that, somehow, a State that loses population through migration to other states on the average of two per hour, and is one of the only States in the union to have a much higher death toll than a birth rate, can still find new people to jail and new reasons to jail them.  Maybe after a while, they'll use this as a new excuse for yet another tax increase on businesses.  How else will they ensure those prison guards will keep their jobs if they don't tax those businesses?

I am new to the XBOX 360.  I bought one on a special deal that left the total price for the platinum edition at almost exactly $360, which includes both tax and shipping.  After reading about the backwards compatibility updates recently, I figured that maybe my boycott against buying the 360 was becoming irrelevant, and at this price, I felt like I was getting a deal.

Tonight I played through "Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth" again.  Needless to say, I was almost immediately disappointed for a variety of reasons.  First off, the game's very important introductory scene in the insane asylum doesn't play.  The screen goes black with only the lighting behind widnows showing up.  I searched the XBOX forums at www.xbox.com, and I see that there are many other very serious glitches I can look forward too -- including crashes that take place during a boss battle, and at the ending sequence of the game.

After feeling a good bit frustrated at this experience, I decided to pop in "Knights of the Old Republic".  I went ahead and searched the forums to see what I might be up against, and with a few reports of jerking here and there, I figured I might be ok.  NOT!  The dialogue skips, stutters, and holds up.  During any battle, the presentation starts to sputter and jerk around to the point that many battles were practically unplayable.  I had to turn the thing off in a fit of anger just avoid smashing it up against the nearest available wall!

Here's another observation!  Both games required an "update" to be downloaded before they played.  Hmmm!  I had heard that Microsoft had written emulators for each individual game, but I had kinda been dissuaded of that recently by a Gamespot friend.  Seeing that each game required an update download, it makes me wonder if indeed Microsoft is taking the route of making individual emulators for each game.  If they are, I can honestly say that as a software engineer, that approach to hardware emulation stinks to high heaven.

I simply cannot BELIEVE that Microsoft has faltered so completely on the "feature" of backwards compatibility for it's XBOX 360 console.  I honestly thought that Microsoft was poised to steal a significant portion of the market from Sony with it's release almost a year in advance.  But there was more than just early entry that made the Playstation 2 a success for Sony -- backwards compatibility with the Playstation was a BIG reason that many careful parents and more dedicated players were less hesitant about buying a new console.

I feel like I should have waited longer.  It really angers me that I have to keep my old XBOX just to enjoy even the games that XBOX 360 "claims" compatibility for.  If these two games are any indication of what "backwards compatibility" means to Microsoft, then it looks like I'll have to hold onto my XBOX console for a long time to come.

Ok so this blog entry breaks the mold on my previous blog entries.  It's about a console system rather than politics, and it's a short screed rather than a long rant.

I hate the name "Wii".  I've hated it since it was first announced.  I've been making it a point of principle to continue calling the system the "Revolution".  In fact, I fully intended to go into the store on the say it was available and ask for a Nintendo Revolution, rather than a "Wii", and even perhaps to insist on that name if some proselytizing sales associate attempted to correct me.

Now I called Gamespot today to do two things:  complain about a terrible employee who is rude to everyone, and reserve copies of The Legend of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for my DS, and The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for both the Gamecube and the Revolution (I intend to get and play both of them).  When I asked if the game was available, I made the mistake of calling it the "Wii" version, which really upset me, because without my principles, what am I really?  In retrospect I am glad I made that little mistake.  The sales associate told me, point blank, that the system is being renamed again.  He said that Nintendo has informed Gamestop of the renaming, but hasn't released the new name yet.

I hope this is true.  I think "Wii" was a terrible name on the best of days, and being the fanboy that I am, there was virtually no way I could spin it into a successful title.  Has anyone else heard this?  Any Gamestop employees out there who have been told the same thing?  I hope this wasn't just the usual Gamestop dufus throwing out bones.

On this day of December 5, more than 200 years ago in 1791, an individual I hold to be the greatest composer who ever lived (and one of the greatest geniuses) died.  That composer is Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, a man who has influenced me more than most, and my own Gamespot namesake.  Mozart was a man who more than anyone else I've encountered knew how to encode the mystery of human happiness into his music.  His sense of life pervades everything he wrote, and its positive outlook overwhelms me each and every time I partake of it.  Even when writing slow and moving numbers in dark minor keys, Mozart could not help but return to his major key "all is not lost" resolutions.  Mozart had made a few foreshadowings into the darker romantic styles that were on the way in a few short decades, such as the two Symphonies in G-minor, the Piano Concertos in D-minor and C-minor, and his lesser known but Beethoven-esque sublime Piano Sonata in A-minor (K. 310).  These were rare but much appreciated.

Theories abound about the cause of his death, ranging from liver or kidney failure, cholera, and of being poisoned by his politico-musical rival, composer Antonio Salieri.  Though Salieri had literally confessed shortly before his own death to killing Mozart, that confession is deemed to have been a dubious last-ditch effort at gaining some status after having become less and less known over time.

While most will concentrate on the mysterious cause of his death at this somber time, I choose instead to shrug the conspiracy theories and concentrate on the incredible body of work that was his life, and on the potentional we lost in his untimely death.  While its generally known that Mozart was one of the most prolific composers who ever lived, its not often reflected on just how much potential we lost on his untimely death.  After one of his most successful years at composing, a year when he had departed from his classical roots and was clearly heading in the direction of 19th century romanticism, he passed away, leaving his darkest and most penitent work, the Requiem Mass, unfinished.  This most mysterious of his compositions was comissioned by a man who hid his identity from Mozart, under sworn secrecy, with the intent to steal the work and publish it under his own authorship.  These mysterious circumstances combined with the delirium Mozart had faced in the last stages of his illness led Mozart to believe that he was being comissioned by a spirit to write the requiem for himself.  Hence, from the completed part of this work, in the sublime melancholy music, Mozart seems to be wailing his recognition of his portending death, his fear of his ultimate fate, and his own heartfelt repentant prayers to God for mercy in his final hours.

Given Mozart's stylistic moves in this last year of his life, I mourn his loss more than personally.  I mourn what powerful works we have lost in his untimely death.  In a single year, he gave us the Requiem Mass, his mysterious opera/singspiel "Die Zauberflote" ("The Magic Flute"), his religious themed chorus "Ave Verum Corpus", the Masonic Funeral Music, and his sublime clarinet concerto, all with themes that demonstrated Mozart's sudden departure from his strictly classical roots, and attempt to move into the newer musical styles of the day.  Who knows what future work we would have been treated to by Mozart's move into what became known as romanticism.

As is my custom, I'll be listening to the Requiem Mass today, in its entirety as finished by his student Franz Xavier Sussmeyer, and will be listening to his last two operas, "La Clemenza di Tito", and "Die Zauberflote".  I hope you will take some time in your busy schedule today to remember this monumental genius.