Of course, it’s also unlikely too many people will be interested in me. I am, after all, somewhat boring–particularly on Facebook. But I somewhat dread a game designer contacting me randomly after having seen me on someone else’s site and walking in on me taking a personality quiz for little girls. Not that I do that, or anything. I just might some day. You never know.

And no, I’m not giving out my Facebook on here. Why would I? There’s nothing of interest on there. If you really want to find me, go ahead and try to find me. You know who I am and where I study. It can’t possibly be that hard.

So now you’re thinking, “All right, Andres, how does this tie into games?” Yes, I know I’m a game designer and I should be focusing on things like Metal Gear Online and GTAIV, but instead I decided to talk about Facebook–because believe it or not, in-game communication with players isn’t all too far from what Facebook just integrated.

And since you’re all so picky about MGO and GTAIV, I will talk about them–in context with Facebook.

The thing about most games–and this is mostly when dealing with the online multiplayer aspect of any genre–is that communication is crucial for anything to work in an online setting. The reason Facebook is so successful is because it centers around the idea of communication and connection between human beings. Video games in an online setting have had a hard time hitting the right formula in order to thrive because they haven’t been able to find the appropriate balance of communication versus play. (Brenda Brathwaite would be so proud of me.)

In the instance of Rock Band, you have an absolutely gorgeous system for playing your favorite songs with friends, rocking it out and sharing the moments through an online setting–but the connectivity is so limited you might as well just get together at somebody’s house and play there. There’s no real connection to be made outside your little group of friends. When people go online, they want to be connected to the World Wide Web. In that instance, online play has been dramatically downplayed and remained a disappointment for those hoping for a richer, expanded experience.

To open a little on MGO before we get into the online communications versus play idea, I have to say I love this game. Metal Gear Online is a gold shooter–it feels natural to the touch and very different from so many FPSs I’ve played. While I love first person, I have to say that MGO’s beautiful third-person action so far trumps any Halo, Counter-Strike or Unreal you throw at me. The transitions between shooting and CQC and laying traps is so efficient and quick that someone with the absolute upper hand can be devastated by a few small mistakes, allowing the dark horse to burst out of nowhere with a smack to the face. Not to mention that they have something called “Sneaking Mission”, in which you get to be Snake. You get to be Snake. That’s enough said.

In case anyone ever wondered about why AI seems so stupid in MGS4 for not seeing Snake lying camouflaged on the ground, trust me–I can’t see him either. It has nothing to do with stupidity. He’s just hard to see.

In MGO you have different issues–on the connectivity side, the fact that at any given time there may be no more than 2000 people logged on to the MGO server and all of them are in different closed games makes matchmaking becomes incredibly difficult. You might find yourself trapped in a game with a range of skill levels between 0 and 7, ensuring that if you’re lower level, the game will be too hard and if you’re higher level, the game will be too easy. Communicationwise, MGO seems to have no issues–other than the fact that your email can only hold so many messages and that there’s no private chat, so talking to your friends while on the menu and deciding what you want to do is somewhat difficult. It has many ways of talking while within an actual match, including keyboard, microphone and predetermined communication commands. Of course, once you have a mic you’ll usually just be shouting into it whenever anything happens, since you’re on a private channel with your team. Interestingly enough, Kojima Productions made the interesting choice of disabling your communication when you are no longer capable of speaking–for example, when stunned, asleep or dead. It makes dying all the more frustrating because you can’t comment on it, but it stops a great deal of raging over the communication channels as an amazingly efficient fix. The communication versus play, however, is a tad unbalanced in this scenario, since while MGO plays beautifully like a completely non-standard shooter with different dynamics from any other FPS I’ve ever played online, it needs to have a lot tweaked in order to function correctly–mainly the issue with how easy it is to get a headshot, and how difficult and one sided it makes the game. Getting close to someone is now an art, and relies on a great deal of luck and patience–both of which are not exactly prime elements to focus on in any FPS. You want skill, timing and precision to be the elements to focus your gameplay on. We’ll see if Konami lowers the headshot ratios by when MGO comes out in June–I will most certainly be playing it because it is simply a true pleasure and just amazing fun when your team and you really coordinate.

GTAIV has its own version of gameplay–but I keep feeling after playing it that the entire thing seems somewhat tacked on, like an addition to gameplay merely created to compete with the upcoming release of Metal Gear Online.

First, however, the main game. The game itself is pure gold, and I’m enjoying it very much–though I’m a little disappointed with how the new features of the game don’t really switch up the gameplay. They make gameplay more interesting and efficient and dynamic, yes. But in terms of “new”, nothing fresh really comes to the table. To be expected–it’s another GTA game, and GTA is simply GTA. The story is lovely, however, and I’m enjoying it when I’m not busy working or on my last days of MGO.

Returning to the multiplayer, it seems to be very much the single player game with more players in it, shooting each other. It’s really not as glorious as I expected, and the fact that contacting your friends is practically nonexistent and gameplay modes are nothing short of a repeat of Unreal’s and Team Fortress’s match modes makes it rather disappointing. It’s still kind of fun, but some modes are somewhat pointed or biased and people playing them are downright stupid. I think there were several mistakes made in the GTA multiplayer, and that makes me wonder really if it was in the original plan of the fourth game or if it was put in to try to sell more and build more hype versus the looming colossus of Metal Gear Solid 4.

To close on GTAIV, the game is already starting to stale a little bit on me–and of course I’ll beat the whole thing and enjoy it, but I realize it’s just like playing another GTA, and because I know the gameplay so well I feel like I can’t get anything more out of it other than story–of course the story will be good, with Rockstar’s witty cynicism and newfound ability to narrate. But it’s a sad feeling I’m left with because I only just got the game and everyone’s giving it such high praise. But really, people… it’s Grand Theft Auto. It’s always going to be Grand Theft Auto.

So Facebook has got the formula for connectivity versus play–but do they? I still think even they haven’t refined the formula, because nothing on Facebook catches my attention anymore. I loathe it–I just can’t become interested in wasting time on it. So we still have a lot of experimentation to go… don’t count on the perfect MMO formula just yet, folks.

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I recently stumbled on an old Columbine article while searching for an old computer game I can’t seem to find anymore. The interesting thing is, I recently downloaded and played the Super Columbine Massacre RPG! game, and was planning on reviewing it. Now I think I have enough links to be able to put this all together in one massive post. Fun, eh?

So when people argue games are excessively violent, they sometimes seem to use logic that absolutely blows my mind. Yes, I am aware of the existence of these violent games (though why Gunslinger Girls was on this list is an absolute mystery to me–I wasn’t aware boys were asking for this during Christmas). I am aware kids will want to play games like Grand Theft Auto and Halo. I am aware these games are not suited for them. But are you aware, General Public, that we know this already, and despite the angry outcries that we simply want to sell more games to more children and corrupt their minds, we’re constantly trying to improve ourselves by taking a look at what you say. I’m fascinated that people actually believe we’re trying to market adult games on kids. If I had kids, trust me, I wouldn’t be giving them Halo. They’d be playing Pokemon and Harvest Moon and Super Mario Bros., like 10 year-old-kids should. I’m sorry if our “confusing advertising and [] vague and poorly promoted rating system for videogames” isn’t enough for you. We kind of thought it would be a great idea to put people dying in previews for games that had people dying in them, for the sake of being obvious, and slap big Ms and Ts and Es on the front of game boxes with a subscript that reads “For Mature” or “For Everyone”. It seemed like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. I’m so sorry if it just doesn’t cut it. Next time, we’ll add little talking boxes, too, so when you pick up a game, it’ll scream its rating at you like a banshee.

And, of course, this year’s list of violent no-no’s. Funny that all of these are rated M and shouldn’t be played by children. M means not for children. I need to make a shirt out of that. One side: “I’m Rated M” and on the back, “Kids Shouldn’t Play Me.”

As Brenda Brathwaite just posted, people assume games are for children, and that all these violent games are harmful to them. Well, they’re not made for children That’s why we rated them ‘M’, for Mature. That doesn’t make them bad. Crash was a violent and impacting movie about stereotypes and people fighting with each other, and that won an Oscar for best picture–runner up being Brokeback Mountain, a movie about gay cowboys. Last my Church roared at me, homosexuality was evil. Not that I’m going to take their side on that, but why then are these the movies that are being nominated for Oscars, while videogames are being raged against?

Honestly, I’ve worked in a game store, and I’ve had all kinds of horror stories of adults yelling at me because I wouldn’t sell a minor a game. I couldn’t even get a word in with the man until I finally cracked as he was pulling his wallet out to pay for Grand Theft Auto. “SIR!” I roared, and half the store stared at me for a moment. “Do you have any idea why I refused to sell the boy the game?!” The man looked somewhat lost for a moment between being yelled at and realizing he had no idea why I had refused to sell the game. “Well, no. Why?” I took the game from his hands gently and showed him the M logo, implying it was for Mature audiences only. Then I read the rating contents on the back of the game in list fashion: drug use, sexual situations, extreme violence and gore… his eyes grew progressively wider and wider as I spoke, and when I was done he turned to the boy with a wild expression. “And you were going to buy this?” The boy stood there, looking numb, and pointed next to him. “I was buying it for him.”

He was pointing at his twelve-year-old little brother.

I have a younger brother. I played GTA with him. I made sure to point out, “Look, this is real, this isn’t, and obviously this is all cartoony so I hope you can understand that the main character is a total ****head and doing any of this in real life would mean we’d kick you out of the family.” And he got it. He understood. I also have a little cousin whose father got him an Xbox. My uncle and aunt are huge about raising kids. Big God people. Their firstborn was hyperactive so they had to learn a lot about parenting very quickly. And my uncle recently asked me if I recommended Medal of Honor Airborne for his 14-year-old, since he was looking for Christmas presents. And I know he chooses Medal of Honor because it’s a historical game, filled with learning impulses, and he knows my cousin needs to stay active and is extremely adept at First Person Shooters. I would have recommended Age of Empires 2 more, if he wanted my cousin to get an educated learning experience, but weighing RTSs versus the point and click nature of FPSs made me go for MOH.

I don’t think there’s anything wrong with kids playing some violent games with guidance. My folks took me to R movies sometimes and sat me down after each, explaining what we just saw. And I think that’d good. It’s part of growing up, since we don’t have kids running around the downtown streets anymore and watching their friends get killed in freak accidents (and I allude to parents and aunts and uncles I know). We need to make up for all the lost growing-up-experiences.

So parents need to have a deeper influence on what their kids are doing. That’s why the ESRB is there. I hope people understand this, because it’s really important. We didn’t put the ESRB up to help ourselves. It’s not there to promote our games. If we had our way we’d get rid of it and sell every game as E–more profit that way. I joke at work all the time about the elements we could put in that would earn us an M-rating. The ESRB is there for you, Mom and Dad. Use it. Raise your kids. They’re not going to raise themselves. But they will want to play games.

Right now, the ESRB has to go on defense to counter the statements made by the Video Game Report Card. Though the ESRB recieved a satisfactory grade (B) for the way they’ve handled ratings, people still seem displeased. One of the statements issued was that the ESRB messed up on their rating forManhunt 2, which was originally written down as AO, banning it from most consoles (which I disapprove of–I think an AO rating shouldn’t bar a game from being on a console, but there you go, I don’t run the world). Manhunt 2 was censored a great deal and given the less-stringent rating of M, but, apparently, “PSP version of Manhunt 2 still contained violent content, although it was only made accessible by users who hacked into the handheld.” Oh, wow. So, what are you suggesting? Are you worried children will hack into their PSP to unlock Adults Only content? Are you serious?

First, let’s look at the improbablility of the situation. In the circumstance that a child finds themselves with the highly advanced technological ability to hack a console (my siblings can barely connect to the Internet) and they get possession of an already M-rated game which they technically shouldn’t be playing, yes, they are in high danger of finding adult content in Manhunt 2. Of course, if my child had that technological knowledge, I’d be more worried about who they’re talking to online that’s giving them these detailed instructions. Now, in the circumstance that a 17-, 18-year old (the age you have to be to actually buy Manhunt) gets a hold of Manhunt 2 and hacks it on his PSP… WELL. Technically, at that age, you’re legal, aren’t you? You have to be 18 to purchase an AO game and, oh, that’s right, you’re just a year away now. How is that making any difference whatsoever?

I think the issue here is just that people want to get rid of violence in games absolutely. And that, to me, is mortifying. It’s like saying “Let’s get rid of violence in comic books!” So Superman… will be… diplomatically engaging people threatening to destroy the planet. Or, “Let’s get rid of violence in movies!” So… Tarantino will be making… nothing. For the rest of his life.

You know, you have every right to censor what comes into your home. It’s your home. It’s your money. Kids can scream all they want but it’s still your rules. And if you sit them down and explain in a rational manner what it is you’re thinking when you make these rules, I’m sure you can get through to them. Or maybe you won’t. But that doesn’t mean you have to cede to them. I didn’t get to watch Titanic. I don’t know if I’m a better or worse person because of it, but there you go. Everyone else watched it. So what? I was kicking and screaming, but I realize now it wasn’t even that good a movie. I watched it recently and thought, eh, I didn’t really need to watch Leo DiCaprio wading around in water at that age. Your kids will probably understand when they’re older, too. Just make sure you have a reason for what you do.

We’ve covered ratings now. Rating gets in the way of the art process, according to my thesis. So what if a game ignores rating altogether? What if they try to do something that simply is unacceptable by most people’s ideals?
With the release of Super Columbine Massacre RPG! for RPGMaker 2000 came angry mothers, fathers, uncles, aunts, sisters, brothers, friends, and that guy who just rails against anything on his blog. I was shocked when I first saw its name. I was shocked when I heard the premise. But I’ve had a lot of time to dwell on it.

I think one of the reasons people were most furious about SCMRPG! for is the fact that it’s simply a game about Columbine. They think, “How could you disrespect the deaths of so many people?” And it’s true–it’s a chin-out, bold and outrageous thing to do that hits close to home in the hearts of many. I mean, I don’t see that many games about the Holocaust, for example. It’s just not done. People won’t even make jokes. Hitler jokes are funny. But Hitler’s just one dude. The Holocaust was millions slaughtered.

Another reason why people think SCMRPG! is garbage is because it seems to be a game that makes fun of the idea that heavy metal and DOOM make people violent murderers. So it’s a game defending gaming and Marilyn Manson. By talking about murderers. In a way it’s a somewhat stomach-turning formula, but it more-or-less makes sense.

The creator, Danny Ledonne, worked with Emberwilde Productions to direct and document the production and reception of SCMRPG! called Playing Columbine, and the IGDA screened it a week ago or so. I haven’t watched it, but I’m going to look around the Net to see if I can find it. I’m not really sure how to react to the video, honestly. I don’t know if I can classify this game as art. If art is something that evokes emotion, well sure, this evokes a lot of emotion in me. Rage, pain. Then again, I felt the same way watching Schindler’s List.

The thing about SCMRPG! is that as I was playing it, I began to somewhat understand what the killers must have felt, and must have been thinking. It’s amazing. I realized that as a kid, I probably went through a lot of the same crap these kids went through. And yet I’ve grown up and found different ways to deal with my problem, whether by sarcastically critiquing the society around me or trying earnestly to help it change. I recognize, as I play the game, that these boys made the wrong decision. And I feel bad for them. That was the point of the game, I suppose, as put forth by Danny Ledonne in his artist´s statement. He wanted something more profound than just a memoir for people lost in the tragedy. He wanted people to see what the real issue was–not games and heavy metal, but neglect and loneliness, things we all suffer from. It’s all it takes to drive someone over the edge.

Something more recent to take a look at is the Virginia Tech Massacre video, done in Halo 3, sort of re-enacting Virginia Tech with as much delicacy as possible while trying to still illustrate the events. For someone like me who plays FPS all the time, it’s difficult to really think about this video in real life terms, with this actually happening to someone. But when I try to put myself in the situation of someone being shot, it’s really rather mortifying.

And that’s one of the things that really moves me about videogames–using a game, someone went ahead and made a memento for people to remember a tragic event. A game. You see a lot of games about World War II, but often they’re really all about war and how the U.S. won it. I want to see a videogame about the Holocaust. I want a Schindler’s List kind of game. Now there’s art.

Tom Brokaw recently made me shake with fury when he suggested that videogames and blogs were cancerous. Apparently, he believes that blogs and videogames move people to try and do the same the Virginia Tech Shooter did, and then he argued that showing the killer’s final note on the air wasn’t giving him victory and inviting people to emulate them, but rather putting people on guard and “show[ing] how dark he was, and what the reality is.” So… videogames and blogs promote mass-murder? And I point to SCMRPG! and the Virginia Tech Massacre video. Showing the Virginia Tech Murderer’s video was showing people his innermost, evil thoughts. And SCMRPG! wasn’t? That was the thesis of the game–looking into why those boys did what they did, and making you feel somewhat stricken because of it. These things are not promoting violence. As controversial as they may be, they are reflections of people’s reactions to the times, and show a general concensus in the population of disagreement with what we see, and a desire to change it–whether by probing into dark minds or making people have to face their emotions.

Games like Manhunt 2, people say, are filled with needless and wanton violence. What about movies like Saw? I still see Saw entering theaters. In fact, it’s thought-provoking movies like The Golden Compass that get slandered. Why is that? Why are we criticizing the wrong things?

See, the problem isn´t the fact that we give kids virtual guns. The problem is we don’t tell them what they’re for, and then we give them a reason to use them in a way they shouldn’t. Columbine, for example–nobody cared about those kids. They only had each other. They were alone. Nobody taught them what how to deal with what they were dealing with. I, on the other hand, recieved a lot of support from various teachers–and I mean real teachers: English teachers, Math teachers, History and Drama teachers. The issue is we don’t teach anymore–we let kids learn. And they will learn whatever they see, unless we learn to teach accordingly and make sure the things they see are given context.

If there really are blogs out there that promote killing and death, then move to try and stop them. Write counterposts. Link people back to you and be smart about it. Teach them. Don’t just point the finger and say “bad”. All you’re doing is giving people more traffic by leading the population with your all-accusatory finger.

And if you really think video games are about murdering and slaughtering innocents… well. I’m not sure what you’re playing.

Maybe you should be playing Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

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