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Heroine Sheik - Sadism in Surgery Games (aka Blood and Guts FTW)
Surgery games, specifically the Trauma Center series for the Wii and DS, are based on the idea that it’s fun to save people. Sew them up, make them better, be happy. But the fact is, before we pseudo-surgeons can save people, we have to play around in their bloody insides. A new game from the wonderfully dark designers at Adult Swim underlines this sadistic fun. Their Trauma Center parody, Amateur Surgeon, features pizza delivery boy turned back-alley doctor Alan Probe, who’s taught the art of cutting up patients with various fast-food utensils by a former (actual) surgeon–one he has just run over with his van. Probe staples together his wounds, burns them shut with a lighter, then moves on to more gruesome and hilarious Operation-style challenges.
Tokyomango - Danish Geeks Throw Mario Party at Campus Bar
You have to see this one to believe it:
If they sell a Princess Peach Martini, I’m totally going.
Feminist Gamers - Michigan Libraries to Offer Video Games
As the M-I-L pointed out, libraries are about more than books: it’s about making sure that people in your community have access to content and services, and having a safe community space. Having a back room where kids can jam to Rock Band means that kids who can’t afford $150 on a video game (plus extra if they want a 2nd guitar) can still get together with friends and play it — in a space that’s safe and adult-supervised, at that.
Why this is controversial is beyond me. It’s not like the library is going to offer every game ever made, nor are they going to put the collected works of Jane Austen out by the curb to make way for the collected works of Namco-Bandai. And there is a point to waving the pure, cut cocaine in order to get people into your doors when you’re a library: once people are comfortable going into a library for one thing, they’ll start to use the library for other things, and that means patronage.
Play Girlz Gaming Blog - Who’s Hot in Game Development
Just in case you have nothing better to spend your time on this weekend, Next-Generation has put together an excellent Top 100 list that could expand your gaming horizons. Their Hot 100 Developers 2008 “represents the commercial realities of the products released last year or in the next year” while factoring in “critical reception and innovative and creative contributions to the medium”.
Gamasutra - Hey, That’s MY Game! Intellectual Property Protection for Video Games
So you’ve created a video game. Naturally, you’re proud of the result after months of all-nighters spent programming and debugging the source code. Your game includes ideas, puzzles, game concepts, and user interfaces that no game has ever had. You’ve created artwork and graphics that are sure to enthrall even the most skeptical of gamers. Your game is most assuredly destined to be Game of the Year!
Too bad someone stole it and published it before you did. All your “guaranteed” profits gone in a flash. But that’s ok, because software is or at least should be free to copy, right? By becoming a software developer you have automatically bought into the notion that software should be open source, right? Who needs to be fairly compensated for their efforts when ramen noodles are 3 for $0.99?
GamePolitics - Take Two Fires Back at EA
It looks as if this fight could get ugly…
GamePolitics has just received a press release from Take Two Interactive in response to Electronic Arts’ hostile takeover bid.
In the release, the Take Two board confirms EA’s offer and pronounces it “inadequate in multiple respects and not in the best interests of Take-Two’s stockholders.”
Girl in the Machine - Two Things About Fighting Games
One that pisses me off and one that leaves me pleased as punch.
Pissy item first: Dead or Alive is infiltrating Smash Brothers Brawl. It ain’t exactly breaking news anymore, but the developers over at Nintendo decided to lovingly render upskirts for both Peach and Zelda. I won’t be posting any of the videos or images here to prevent myself from having an aneurysm. Please excuse me while I go vomit my breakfast.
The Feminist Gamers blog is a must read for everyone who has ever picked up a controller.
Mighty Ponygirl and her squad routinely provide on point analysis to the quickie posts that populate current gaming blogs. Here are three of my current favorites:
Sony Proves the Existence of the Rare Female Gamer
Wow! Looks like the girl gamer is in fact a statistically quantifiable set of data, which appears to shock the commenters at Joystiq. I wonder how Sony can capitalize on this burgeoning number? I wonder how it was able to market a whole four to upwards of eight percent of its consoles to the sandwich- and baby-making class.
The comments on the post show that at least someone is thinking critically:
Housework and the Partnered Feminist Gamer
Ultimately, what it comes down to is: women’s housework is expected to come before leisure time, and men’s participation in housework is considered secondary to leisure time. Women’s leisure time is valued less than men’s.
I really bristle at the common “solutions” for the problem: The first, the “work strike” is unacceptable for a number of reasons. First of all, a messy/unclean house is hazardous. Dirty dishes left piling up encourage vermin and disease, and tripping over a pile of discarded crap in the middle of the night on your way to the bathroom is never fun. Oh, and, it’s passive-aggressive, and all it’s going to do is allow your anger to fester as you watch stuff pile up and your partner is zoned out in front of Assassin’s Creed. Not to mention, if “house work” also entails childrearing, then going on a work strike is basically neglect. The second solution is the “lowering of standards,” which again, is a problem. For the reason mentioned above: the cleaner a house is, generally, the safer it is. Also, I find it very patronizing that a woman is expected to lower her standards with nothing required of the partner. Having to actively ignore a problem because you’ve “lowered your standards” can be as much work (maybe even more) as just doing the chore yourself. Finally, a variation of the “work strike” is the Lysistrata gambit–or sex strike–not ‘allowing’ your partner to have sex with you until they start cleaning up is frankly so stupid I’m surprised when I ever hear it brought up (with the exception of being too exhausted from housework that you’re not in the mood). Apart from the fact that it assumes that women are the “gatekeepers” of sex, who have no initiative for it and can take no pleasure from it, it’s such a non-sequiter. It’s would be like going on a hunger strike because your partner didn’t fill up the car. There is no (nor should there be any) relationship between clean house and dirty sex. Trying to create one is just asking for trouble in the relationship.
And finally, my personal favorite…
“Shut Up and Play the Game” Isn’t a Dialog
Ms. Dean seems to be under the assumption that as long as she comports herself online in a “ladylike” way, she is entitled to respectful treatment from men, and goes out of her way to distance herself from those mean, scary feminists when she calls for women to be treated as equals in the game. What I think she fails to realize is that being a “Lady” (particularly a “Lady” as opposed to a “Feminist”) isn’t going to get you treated like an equal, it’s going to get you treated like a commodity. In fact, it’s been pretty-well documented that the recent push to encourage women to be “ladylike” is actually a movement set in motion by the antifeminists like Flannigan, Schlafley, and organizations like the CWA and IWF as a means of silencing women when they call for greater equality in their life. They do so by creating a false dichotomy between being a “woman” and being a “feminist.”
Respectful behavior should be rejoined with respectful behavior. Feminism does not, no matter what Ms. Dean has been instructed to think by the antifeminist paragons of “Ladyhood”, equate to shrill ball-busting killjoy out to spoil everyone’s fun. A feminist, Amanda may be surprised to learn, wants exactly the sort of thing she advocates in her article: women being treated as equals in the game in their own right, and not as masturbatory tools for anonymous males.
Read and enjoy.
GeekSugar - Are You a Casual Gamer?
Interesting poll and responses from over a hundred (mostly female) gamers.
Heroine Sheik - Sex with a Wii-Mote: At Least I’m Not the Only One Who Thinks This Way
Back in 2006 I reported on the shaky (sorry) phenomenon of players using the vibration in their video game controllers for masturbation. The Nintendo Wii hadn’t yet come out when I wrote the article, but the boxy Wii-mote design had been recently released–so my coverage includes some speculation from, well, excited fans that the shape might be conducive to insertion. Personally, I’ve always felt the Wii-mote’s boxy corners, not to mention its oh-so-pure white aesthetic, ruled it out as a sex toy, but who am I to judge?
Women in Games Conference Blog - What’s It Like to be a Woman in the Games Industry
Two of our intrepid WiG 2008 hosts were recently featured in an iCast at the University of Warwick, discussing this very question. Three cheers for Nicola and Sara!
Sez Nicola:
I just wanted to let you know that Sara and I took part in a ‘ Warwick iCast’, a video which is part of “a project to develop an internet video service for the University of Warwick focussed on the promotion of research, science and business activity”. The iCast was about women in the gaming industry and was filmed at Rare at the end of November, and featured myself, Sara, George Kelion (PR guy at Rare), Nathan (a CS lecturer at Warwick ) and Becca (a CS student at Warwick ). We were basically discussing various issues / experiences.
Well it’s gone live! Check it out and tell us what you think.
Joystiq - Wired: National Intelligence Seeking Terrorists in WoW
Wired reports that U.S. intelligence is planning on developing a data mining program using World of Warcraft that will help root out violent extremists that play MMOs. The ultimate goal of the “Reynard project” is to develop software that is capable of “automatically detecting suspicious behavior and actions in the virtual world.” On one hand, we can see why they’d want to keep an eye on a community that’s 10 million strong (fun fact — there’s 142 countries with a smaller population than WoW). On the other, we’re not sure we want The Man looking over our shoulder every time we craft a Big Iron Bomb.
Gamasutra - Stories from the Sandbox
What makes the stories in sandbox games special is that unlike the stories found in other types of games, these are not told primarily by the game’s developer. Instead, they are created and directed largely by the player’s decisions.
The large number of decision points and wide range of possible outcomes in a sandbox game, usually augmented with randomization by various game systems, make the variation in experiences from game to game and from player to player — one of the key selling points of sandbox games — both highly personalized and effectively limitless.
Game Politics - GD: Free Speech Lawyer Tells Game Biz to Defend Against “Junk Science”
Walters advised the game industry to prepare its defense against what he termed “junk science” research used by critics to attack video games:
This is what you’re up against. You have people who will accept anything that the junk scientists try to present as fact, and try to create legislation upon it…
The video game industry needs to clearly and overwhelmingly debunk these theories with its own extensive research… To the extent that the industry can develop a research bank… it should do so before it needs it and not at the 11th hour.
Gamasutra - Designing Games that are Accessible to Everyone
Many of the most popular games and systems are inaccessible to various forms of disability, such as visual impairments. Equally troublesome is that the games that are accessible are generally not playable by the mainstream market, due to the very design quirks that made the game accessible in the first place!
For instance, there are a number of games designed for the visually impaired, but they frequently neglect critical elements for the sighted (i.e. graphics). And therein lies the problem — games for the blind shouldn’t mean games for only the blind. Games for only the blind is a terrible model that most blind people themselves hate.
GeekSugar - Heidi and Spencer Plan to Tap Into the Video Game Market
This is wrong on soooo many levels.
Spencer revealed to Us Magazine that he is working with Electronic Arts’ on the game and that “it’s top secret” and “everyone will be addicted.” He also mentioned that there will be two versions — one for adults and one for minors.
Level Up - Objection: Is the Cultural Trajectory of Videogames Doomed to Parallel That of Comic Books? Part I
Based on this trend alone, even if there were no changes in interface or accessibility, it stands to reason that videogames would become more pervasive simply because videogame “literacy” is becoming more widespread.
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Copyright © 2007 - July 5, 2008 Iris Gaming Network.
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February 21st, 2008 at 1:21 pm I’ve got a friend. Her husband stays at home and raises the kids. They own a PS3. There are 3 people who use the console– 1 woman 1 girl, and 1 man. I’d bet that Sony counts that as 1 male user, 0 female. Because if I had to bet, I’d bet that hubby signed up for the PSN and gave his own demographic information.I wonder how often that sort of thing happens? How much data isn’t being captured by the survey?
February 21st, 2008 at 1:42 pm I’m sure that’s exactly what’s happening.As our generation advances, we see that gaming is a “family” event, not just limited to one or two members of the household. Sony just hasn’t accounted for this in their data.