Bioshock - Government Issued Travel Warning

Hot off the press is a Government Issued Travel Warning which has been published for Rapture. A civil war appears to be breaking out there currently and the Government is concerned about the welfare of travellers to the area. At the moment there is no information coming out of Rapture and the Government will maintain the travel warning until a clearer picture has emerged of the conflict there.

Rapture
This advice has been reviewed and reissued. It includes new information under Summary and Safety and Security. The overall level of the advice has been upgraded to Do Not Travel to Rapture.

Rapture Overall Travel Rating
Do Not Travel To Rapture

Summary
* We strongly advise that if you currently have plans to travel to Rapture that you revise those plans immediately. There is extremely high risk of terrorist attack in Rapture possibly targeted at tourists and there is the potential for civil war to break out any day. There is a strong possibility of high level serious crime being committed.
* If you are currently located in Rapture we recommend that you consider leaving. If you decide to remain in Rapture then you do so at your own risk.
* Currently there will be no further government assisted removal of citizens from Rapture due to the increased security risk.
* It is a possibility that while travelling to Rapture you could encounter genetically modified humans. They are to be avoided and to be considered extremely dangerous. It may be difficult to identify such people from external appearances. The creators of this city have attempted to make "super human" people through genetic modifications.
* If you are a citizen and you have undergone genetic modification while staying in Rapture then we recommend you remain where you are as your changed physical and mental condition has meant that your citizenship has been revoked permanently. You will have a great deal of trouble relocating anywhere else in the world and it is recommended that you remain in Rapture.
* Currently it is difficult for the government to get information from Rapture as the founder, Andrew Ryan, has restricted in-going and out-going information from the underwater city.

To read the entire feature then go to Internode Games Network via this link.

Nintendo - Where is Elevator Action??????

Why is it, as Australians, we get the raw deal with downloading legitimate products? Firstly, iTunes and their feature TV content only for US citizens is wrong. Secondly, Xbox Live Marketplace ... all of the good content is for US citizens and the rest of the world can go jump. Thirdly, Nintendo ... why can't I download Elevator Action for my Wii, Dammit?

That is really the only game that I wanted on the Wii Shop. But, it is not available for Australian Citizens. I used to play the game at the arcades as a kid so the content really can't be all that bad. I am able to purchase the game on Taito Legends ... but I cannot download the game on the Wii.

What a joke the international marketplace is. It is all about creating and providing content for the US markets and the rest of the world can suffer. All I want is Elevator Action ... I don't think it is too much to ask for.

How Do You Tell If You Are A Gaming Addict?

This is my feature for Internode this week.

Have you ever sat in the doctor's surgery and played a PSP or DS to pass the time? I know I do it. How would it be if your doctor became concerned with the amount of time you spent gaming and labeled you a gaming addict? Don't laugh. This could be just around the corner. The American Medical Association (AMA) is going to vote on whether gaming addiction is labeled as a disorder, leading to the basis of how to diagnose and treat gaming addiction through medical practitioners in the US. Yet, the precedent to classify gaming addiction in the US isn't so much based on medical science, it is more an exercise based around political points scoring by the AMA. This does not necessarily represent the actions of a concerned number of GPs attempting to improve public heath. Upon closer inspection what you find is that the AMA's report is its own worst enemy because within it you will find not a damning indictment on the addictive nature of video gaming but the attempts by a group of individuals to shape public opinion with a thesis that holds no merit.

So, how exactly do you classify video game addiction and what kind of treatment is such an unusual disorder going to require? The publicity behind the notion of video game addiction has grown over the last five years. Everquest would have to be the game which should largely be considered the catalyst behind creating the notion of video game addiction. While the MMO genre was established by the time Everquest hit the marketplace it was this game which popularized the genre. Ultima Online is one of the oldest serving MMOs, however, the game didn't receive the same amount of negative publicity as Everquest. So many people spent so much of their spare time playing this game that it was given the nicknames "Evercrack" and "Neverest." There were a couple of well documented suicides assocated with the game as well. This type of negative publicity created wider interest in the gaming industry with Psychologists and Doctor's weighing in on the argument of whether gaming can be a negative experience.

To read the rest of the feature go to internode ...

Forza 2 Media Circus Has Begun

It looks like the Forza 2 media circus has begun in earnest. What I don't believe are these so-called game critics, or, if you must, journalists brown nosing their way through previews of this game. I have no denying that Forza 2 will be an excellent car racing game, and one which I will purchase on release. But the problem that I have with this game and these journalists is the fact that they promote this game as a hardcore racing-sim for hardcore racing fans, which is a load of rubbish.

Two previews of the game have gone up today. One of them from Gamearena and the other on the Screenplay Blog. Both of these previewers have stated pretty much the same. Gamearena states, "For the hardcore driving nuts out there, this is as good as it gets." Screenplay states, "and can confirm that it's a wonderfully realistic simulation guaranteed to get any petrol hedonist's motor running." The reality of this is that Forza 2 is a little bit harder than your standard arcade fare, but hardcore racing nuts are driving far better and far more realistic driving sims on PC such as: GTR, GTR 2, Live for Speed, NetKar, GT Legends and a few others of note.

To confirm the complete lack of understanding that these previewers have of exactly what a racing sim is and what racing sims are actually in the marketplace he states, "From a gameplay point-of-view, I'm one of the driving game types who prefers to play with everything on automatic and with as much in-game help switched on as possible, and with all that in place the game played really well, but for the sake of a proper hands-on experience, I also played the game in its most hardcore form, which lead me to last position and pure frustration, though only for the depth of the game's driving and handling physics alongside the great damage and wear and tear system." This is your problem. This guy may like racing games, he may even like some Formula One racing games, but he does not understand what a racing sim is. This is the problem. Forza 2 is not a racing simulator. This can be experienced from the demo. The force feedback is definitely not as well implemented as it is in GTR and GTR 2 (where, in fact, you can feel every bump in the road, and you cannot in Forza 2).

I have a problem with people marketing a game to a specific audience when it is not what they say it is. This is not a hardcore racing simulator. This is a racing game. The cars do not react like racing cars out of a racing sims. It reacts like an arcade racing game. The reason why these games are popular is due to the sheer amount of customization that you can do with the cars. The reason why these games "do not" capture the hardcore PC racing sim market is because these games do not cut the mustard as "racing sims".

I find this kind of reporting to be misleading. It attempts to represent the game in a specific way to a particular part of the market. It has no real respect for gamers as consumers and really is a blight on the gaming landscape. If a product is good enough it will succeed no matter what the criticism. The problem is that we live in a gaming landscape that does not promote honest criticism or thought of the product. At some point in time, and I think to a certain respect it is starting to happen now, gamers will not appreciate this type of reporting about products they are going to spend $100 on. Or, think about it this way. The average wage is not a whole lot of money. There aren't a whole lot of people who have more than $1,000 per week in disposable income. Just say, that their disposable income is only a couple of hundred dollars per week (which is probably a bit optimistic because of it being disposable income). Then to purchase a $100 game costs a lot to gamers. Considering the pick up rate of the Xbox 360 is 5 games per console then this means that gamers are spending approx. $500 on games per annum. This purchase may represent 1/5th of their total software purchased for the system in that 12 month period. For this reason more thought should be put in to how gaming journalists represent the products they are not meant to have any stake in promoting.

It would be far better if these so-called journalists had a greater appreciation for the diversity of software in the marketplace and didn't believe the spiel that some paid marketing consultant has told them about the game. This is the problem with gaming journalism. There are not enough unique perspectives on the gaming industry. No one is prepared to make up their minds for themselves. They regurgitate exactly what is told to them by the companies promoting the games. They are happy to go along and get paid to play a game for hours on end. It is a nice lifestyle. Why would they want to provide critical thought about what it is they are reviewing or previewing when they can just regurgitate what they are told without any thought in the first place. One of these journalists won the "Lizzie" award for best gaming journalist this year too. Intersting to note that nominees for this award are "self-nominated". Nice.

I Do Feel Sorry For Bethesda

No matter what happens tonight and what is contained in the Fallout 3 teaser trailer I feel that Bethesda will bear the brunt of the "fan base". At what point in time the fans began to feel like they owned the intellectual property I am not sure. But no matter what Bethesda do there will be some sort of backlash. Even if they managed to perfectly replicate the feel and play of the originals someone will be offended.

There seems to be a lot of resentment within the gaming community towards Bethesda. I think their greatest crime is that they have not produced run of the mill games. They have had the guts to attempt to do things a little bit differently. Level scaling didn't work. I liked it to start with but not to finish with. That doesn't mean that I thought Oblivion was crap. I got over it. Let's face it, there aren't many games which have attempted to be developed on the same scale that Bethesda does. Further to this, as far as I am concerned, gaming is first and foremost a business. Based on this simple fact they are not going about the process of developing a game just for the love of it. It would be nice to live in an idealistic world where this happens, but it doesn't. People seem to depart living in the "real world" and enter some fantasy land (much like the games themselves) when they go off half cocked about a game developer.

Anyway, no matter what Bethesda does with Fallout they are going to cop some schtick from a part of the gaming community. It is going to happen. As far as I am concerned Fallout 3 will be whatever it is that Fallout 3 is. Bethesda will do their best (as, from what I understand, being fans of the franchise) to produce something that is indicative of the game world based on the experience that they have at their disposal. They are not Interplay and this is probably for the best if Bethesda are to survive as a long term business proposition.

Avatar and the Creation of Digital Self

There are definitive boundaries between life and the digital world. Boundaries which cannot be physically crossed. The notion of avatar has been developed as a means to create some literal notion of digital identity and help to bridge the ethereal layer between the real and not so real. While we have lived with these notions for some time, I believe it was initially introduced in the Disney movie Tron and was further developed as a notion through the Ultima games where the hero was labelled an avatar. The origins of the concept stem back to the Hindus. There have been several news stories over the last couple of months which have involved several game developers immortalising disadvantaged and in-need children in to their games. The release of Rainbow Six: Vegas on Xbox 360 last year allowed gamers to scan their own faces in to the game with the Xbox camera. They could then battle out on multiplayer with a pretty accurate depiction of themselves online. Now, there are participants in Second Life who have created cemeteries for players who have passed on in the real world. An online funeral for a WOW player was gatecrashed last year creating some amusement and consternation for gamers and non-gamers alike. Is there an underlying spirituality developing behind these concepts as gamers strive to create some notion of immortality by summoning an online simulacrum of themselves to continue to live in cyberspace beyond their physical beings? Where will it possibly end?

People don't like to talk about religion or the notion of immortality any more. Where discussion around the dinner table was once either focussed on politics or the state of the church, people now tend to find these things somewhat passée. While 'religions' such as scientology continue to appeal to celebrities and find a place alongside their over inflated wallets, these varied notions of spirit don't necessarily correspond very realistically to the virtual world. The notion of avatar is originally attributed to the Hindus. It refers to the summoning of the deva, or higher being, to the physical manifestation on Earth. Or, to put it more simply, it refers to one of the Hindu gods taking human form. Christianity also develops this notion through Christ, where Jesus is the physical manifestation of God. I guess, considering mankind invented the internet then the similarities between the use of the term avatar and our manifestation of self on the internet are actually very close.

...if you would like to read the full feature then click on this link.