Sims creator Will Wright might have pulled back from big triple-A projects like Spore, but that doesn't mean that the gaming genius isn't still churning out the ideas.
Saying that he's not working on big-boxed titles at the moment, Wright offered up other avenues for his new projects. "For the most part, the stuff we're working on is not shrink-wrapped,
AAA, Xbox-only. It's stuff that's a little more diffuse, mobile, web. I'm really interested right now in games that get people more engaged
in the world around them rather than distract them from it. Using the
world as a human platform rather than an Xbox. Kind of AR stuff."
Wright has been involved in his Stupid Fun Club for a few years now, and it's been pushing out Wright-ian ideas in all sorts of directions including robotics. Thus it's not surprising that something like AR should pique his interest. We wonder what he things of devices like the Nintendo 3DS and Sony NGP?
Cinema is riddled with memorable, easy-to-loathe villains. For over a century, film history has left a trail of brilliantly nefarious antagonists – characters so thoroughly evil that it’s not uncommon for audiences to stand up and applaud when their comeuppance finally comes. Cruella de Vil. T-1000. The Joker. Dozens, perhaps hundreds, easily come to mind.
Think it’s going to be easy for video game villains to catch up? Hello? HELLO?! Anybody home?! Think, McFly! Think!
Though its antagonist gallery boasts a few burgeoning stars, the video game industry has a long way to go before it can match the dream team of scoundrels, miscreants and tyrants found in over a century of film. To close the gap and ascend into antagonist Valhalla, video game villains need a coach.
Simultaneously one of the most loved and hated film baddies of all time, Biff represents some of the best qualities of a Grade A jerkwad antagonist yet caught on film. He’s callous, he’s egotistical, he’s belligerent, and people the globe over love to hate him in large doses.
Buckle up, buttheads, and enjoy a free guided tour through seven of the graduation requirements at the scenic Villain University, compliments of Professor Tannen.
7: Pick a loyal posse
Don’t knock the 3D glasses. They’re prescription. …and is that Billy Zane?!
Few matters are as important to a nefarious villain as the selection and cultivation of choice goons. Do you want them smart? Do you want them dumb? Should they be outspoken, or should you have their tongues removed to ensure that they won’t squeal under pressure? Decisions, decisions.
On one aspect of the perfect henchman, however, all can agree: loyalty.
Few antagonists boast cronies as devout as Biff’s entourage. Without a moment’s hesitation they blindly follow their leader into righteous battle against skateboarders, gunslingers, and manure trucks. These guys are dying to break the laws of both society and fashion for their ruthless boss.
Villain who could use this lesson: Darth Vader [1]
C’mon, Stormtroopers… You were cloned for this. Cloned. And yet twenty of you can’t score a single hit on Han Solo, despite the fact he’s wearing black trousers in a white hallway. You need to start earning that health insurance you use so frequently.
Villain who could teach this lesson:Giovanni
Jesse and James love working for Team Rocket so much, that they wrote a poem about it. Is that loyalty, or teenage puppy crushing? Either way, they’d capture a hundred Pikachus just for an approving smile from Pokemon’s Godfather.
6: Antagonise your opponents
There’s no better way to chisel away at a rival’s defenses than to douse him with a waterfall of insults from the riot hose of verbal abuse. A wise man may shy away from battle. But once you find that special word that grates at their being?
Then it’s dancing time. Vaya con dios, friend.
Villain who could use this lesson:Donkey Kong
Endless levels, and he only lets a stream of barrels do his talking. A verbal taunt or two would have been nice.
Villain who could teach this lesson:Dutch
Words are needles. They don’t cause much damage… until applied to the right areas, in rapid sequence. Warning: that link is as spoiler as it gets.
5: Laugh in the face of new technology
So, your enemy invents a new piece of transportation before your eyes, and looks more natural riding it than Robin Hood does holding a bow. Do you pause, even for a second, to calculate how best to tackle this new threat?
Hell no. Neither does Biff.
When Marty breaks out a skateboard, Biff charges at him like a bull at a red silk scarf. When that doesn’t work, he chases him with a car. This blatant disregard for higher technology in battle reminds me of the Ethiopians fighting off the Italians just before World War II. Armed with spears, and riding horses, this poor African mob very nearly pushed back an encroaching army of rifled infantry, bombers, and tanks. Sometimes all it takes is guts.
Villain who could use this lesson:Ganondorf
So you don’t have the complete Triforce. Do you really need it to conquer Hyrule? Really? Genghis Khan created the largest land empire ever seen, and he did it entirely without your magical ability to turn into a titanic three story pig monster.
Villain who could teach this lesson:Arthas
When the Horde and Alliance march on Icecrown, they do it with airships, powder, and guns. They’re nearly annihilated more than once by the claws, blades, and cold hunger of several hundred thousand charging, technologically-uninclined undead.
4. Find your own Gray’s Sports Almanac
“I wish I could go back to the beginning of the season, put some money on the Cubbies!“
Biff is to the Gray’s Sports Almanac as Sauron is to the One Ring. It is the secret hen that lays him his golden eggs, and with it he becomes more powerful than anyone could possibly imagine.
It’s not always possible, but finding and securing a gem like this can double or even triple a villain’s power. There isn’t an antagonist around who doesn’t become exponentially more frightening with a secret weapon which can tip the balance of nature in a way that fundamentally alters the course of the future (see lesson number one).
Villain who could use this lesson:GlaDOS
When you have an ultra-secret weapon, like the Portal Gun, you don’t give it to a disgruntled inmate you’ve been holding in solitary confinement. That person will use it both for science and vengeance.
Villain who could teach this lesson:Kefka
Without magicite this clown would still be getting harassed at birthday parties.
3. Teach your kids everything you know
Nurture or nature?
Every Biff we encounter, from grandaddy Buford ‘Mad Dog’ Tannen to grandson Griff ‘Speaks-like-a-young-William-Shatner-on-meth’ Tannen, is basically the same guy. There are unique quirks to each of them, but it’s clear that a whole bushel of apples has fallen very close to the tree. Genetics may have something to do with this phenomenon, but I personally think it has to do more with a pattern of reliable parenting.
Villain who could use this lesson:Dracula
The Lord of Darkness has one son, Alucard; just one heir to instil with his hopes and dreams of a darker tomorrow. Does the prodigal son embrace his Gothic inheritance? Nope. On the contrary, he leaves the castle in a huff and joins Trevor Belmont and the God Squad. Ouch.
Villain who could teach this lesson:Bowser
Bowser Jr. wants to grow up to be just like his dad, and everybody knows it. This little guy is harassing Mario with bombs from the Bowser Balloon while he’s still in nappies! Talk about your good start.
2. Confidence, butthead!
Nothing puts the raw, unapologetically brazen confidence of Biff Tannen on display like a conversation with himself.
Spend one minute with Biff and you’ll know that he wouldn’t pull a single well-groomed, 50s-styled hair for you. This is vitally important for any aspiring villain to learn, because a villain without confidence is about as easy to topple as a skyscraper without a foundation.
Villain who could use this lesson:The Origami Killer
Does a serial killer who reaches out to the friends and loved ones of his victims for emotional closure sound overly confident to you? Me neither. The Origami Killer has a lot of psychological loose ends that he needs to tie up before he can unlock his potential as an philosophically-unshakable homicidal maniac (see: Charlie Manson).
Villain who could teach this lesson:The Flood
When you’re an ancient race of hungering alien parasites locked away in the deep places of the galaxy, there’s really no reason to care what people think of you. If you did, you’d probably just end up feeling self-conscious.
1. Mould the world in your image
Biff’s 1985[2]. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy.
Few locations have been stamped with the personality of their leader like Biff Tannen’s alternate-timeline 1985 Hill Valley. This is what a Gray’s Sports Almanac can do: create a unique brand of villain recognisable throughout the world.
King K. Rool had the Gangplank Galleon. Liquid Snake had Shadow Moses Island. Louis XIV had the Palace of Versailles. A man’s personality, good or evil, is best represented by his castle.
Villain who could use this lesson:Carmen Sandiego
By avoiding customs agents like some sort of international ninja, Carmen deliberately avoids keeping a home base. But what good does that do her? She needs some sort of Fortress of Solitude where she can stash her stolen artifacts, or at least buy some furniture with all the money she gets by selling them on eBay.
Villain who could teach this lesson:Deathwing
Say what you want about his sheer lack of character development – this angsty, angry dragon took an Azeroth that Bambi would love, and remodelled 90% of it using fire into a craggy, molten wasteland that a cockroach wouldn’t call home.
I think a man in uniform is captivating. A man in uniform, who can make toys out of found items and then uses them to inspire people is amazingly captivating! This is exactly what Private First Class Rupert Valero does and so he is.
2010: you were a jackass. Let’s go over what the last year of days brought to the table:
- A papier-mâché worldwide economy
- The BP oil spill
- Bluetooth popularity
- The Last Airbender, Sex and the City 2, Jonah Hex
- More terrorism
- Justin Bieber’s autobiography
- Final Fantasy XIV
- The Denver Broncos record
- Your peacock…cock……….cock
- No ‘first contact’
- No zombies
- No fun
Yep, 2010 took in all our hopes and dreams, absorbed their precious nutrients, and laid an egg of sadness. I thought 2009 was bad, but then the next year burst in like a tornado of suck, demolishing all hopes of a better and brighter year. Thanks, buddy. Thanks a lot.
With so much to not be thankful for, it’s good that we were offered such a wide array of quality games into which we could escape when things outside were ugly. Here are my five best digital alternatives to heroin presented in 2010.
5: Starcraft II
I’m torn here. On one hand, this game was terrific. The gameplay was great, the graphics made my computer wheeze with happy asthma, and Battle.net’s sexy new makeover made it the prettiest girl at the prom. Everything was great in Starcraft town.
…except that its story was shorter than Daniel Radcliffe’s post-Harry Potter career.
When I play a Starcraft, I want three chapters – one for each race – so that I can have a full dose of story. With more than just a Terran chapter, Starcraft II would be better ranked on this list.
4: Civilization V
Anyone who doubts that absolute power is addicting should watch a non-gamer sit down at a computer and play Civilization V for twelve hours straight. This game has a way with people… and that way involves gluing people to a computer screen for unhealthy hours without end despite the desperate pleas of their forgotten families.
Lost friends and loved ones aside, Civilization V was a perfect upgrade to the classic series. Less military units, a historically understandable social upgrade system, and shiny new graphics improved everything smoothly and effectively (except for maybe the AI). There are hundreds of strategies you can use to win, from combining a race with a certain social upgrade, to obsessively courting lesser city states or mixing science and diplomacy in order to keep large, militaristic opponents at bay.
Keep doing what you do, Sid.
3: World of Warcraft: Cataclysm
What to say about Warcraft that hasn’t been said a thousand thousand times… In every possible way, shape, and form, this game has been done to death. So why was Cataclysm better than Civilization or Starcraft II? Because after sporadically returning to Warcraft for over five years, I’m still not bored. Cataclysm’s new low-level zones and dedication to story have kept it sexy through a long and often arduous marriage, causing me to come back to it despite numerous shallow affairs (City of Heroes, Champions Online, Star Trek Online, et cetera). Cataclysm is the latest outfit in a series of spicy, exciting costumes which WoW has donned in order to hold the attention of millions.
Anyone who has skim-read two sentences of any of my articles knows that the value I place on a game’s story is paramount. You can make the best damn game design in the history of time, but if it doesn’t make me laugh, cry, or have an asthma attack in anticipation, then I couldn’t care less. Games need to make me feel, or they’re not worth my time.
Heavy Rain had more feelings than a pregnant woman watching Fried Green Tomatoes in a Ben and Jerry’s factory. It takes modern game design, mates it with Choose Your Own Adventure novels, and makes something great.
If you fundamentally don’t want to play a game that doesn’t involve killing twelve-thousand Space Nazis with a spoon before ripping off your shirt and yelling your own name (in my own special way, I just attempted to describe Call of Duty), then avoid playing Heavy Rain tonight. You probably have a Klan meeting to attend anyway.
Otherwise, though, you have no excuse.
1: Red Dead Redemption
Without question the greatest game released in the last three or four years. You may disagree, saying that Red Dead is boring, overly violent; a juvenile portrayal of the American West. That’s fine. Though I disagree with what you say, I’ll fight to the death for your right to say it. But as I lay my head on the block for your inherent natural rights, my last words will follow thusly:
“You. Are. Wrong.”
Red Dead Redemption brings all the ingredients of an amazing, memorable game to the table: great gameplay, a powerful emotive soundtrack, badass, well-developed characters, terrific voice acting, competitive online play, a treasure chest of endgame secrets, downloadable content, and endless replayability. But what does Red Dead Redemption do best? What is the aspect of it that makes it one of the greatest games of all time?
It creates a world.
Hundreds of game journalists have done reviews on Red Dead Redemption, and they all cite the feeling they experience while playing: the exhilaration that only comes when a person immerses themselves fully in a setting that is not their own.
“With Red Dead Redemption, Rockstar succeeds in creating one of the most impressive open worlds I’ve ever seen in a game, and it’s telling that — even after playing for over 30 hours — all I want to do is get back on my horse and gallop back into the wilderness.”
- Will Tuttle, GameSpy
“Red Dead Redemption is a must-play game. Rockstar has taken the Western to new heights and created one of the deepest, most fun, and most gorgeous games around. You can expect the occasional bug or visual hiccup, but you can also expect a fantastic game that offers the Western experience we’ve all been waiting for.”
- Erik Brudvig, IGN
“The leading edge of interactive media has a new face. [...] In the more than 1,100 articles I have written for this newspaper since 1996, I have never before called anything a tour de force. Yet there is no more succinct and appropriate way to describe Red Dead Redemption.”
- Seth Schiesel, New York Times
My critic colleagues and I agree: Red Dead Redemption is one of the best games ever made.
No. Your praise and thanks – your heroics and gallantry – spur from two sources: your own imagination and the games that spark it. All that fame, all that fortune? It’s all in your head.
You are Don Quixote, the man a la Mancha; destiny calls and you go. The wild winds of fortune will carry you onward. And onward, to glory, you go.
You will never feel more than when you look at this picture.
Games are powerful. Perhaps more than any other medium, they can make us feel.
Nowhere else can you control a character and have your decisions determine the fate of both individuals and worlds. It’s a living, breathing medium sewn together from the best parts of others – empathic art, striking cinematography, moving soundtracks – and has become a factory of innovation, oiled by creativity and fuelled with ambrosia.
Because of their heightened capacity to incite feeling in us, it should be no surprise that games – like novels, films, or psychedelic drugs – are addicting. Hopelessly addicting for some. Not only are their puzzles and challenges food for our minds, their stories and settings are a feast for our souls.
A game has the power to involve a person so completely that some of us substitute it for the world around them.
But is that a good thing?
Choose a race. Choose a class. Choose the right raiding party…
The great majority of gaming’s opponents cite addiction and detachment from “the real world” as primary reasons why the medium is especially unhealthy[2]. They see it as a vortex, sucking in the time and attention of its followers to the point where they forget what is truly important:
“Reality.”
But what is reality? Who determines what is real? Are there scientific units by which our perceptions are measured? This question – concerning what makes something real – is the key to understanding why gamers game, potentially segregating themselves from the outside, “normal”, world.
Lucky for us, there are plenty of old, dead, bearded white people who have thought about it at length[3]. (Yes, I’m delving into philosophy. There’s a picture of a scantily clad 8-bit Samus at the end of the article for you if you read all the way through).
There are many philosophers and psychologists who address the mental ability that causes a person to actually believe he is a mythical Spanish Lord, or a level 85 tauren shaman, but one stands before the rest: Rene Descartes.
Rene Descartes, voted “Silkiest Hair,” University of Poitiers, Class of 1616.
Descartes is famous for his dream argument, which has become a cornerstone of not only modern philosophy, but also of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, Larry and Andy Wachowski’s The Matrix, and Christopher Nolan’s Inception. If you’ve spent hours in a movie theatre parking lot discussing any of these films, then you’ll know that this Frenchman is deep.
The dream argument proposed by Descartes asks us a fundamental question: could it be possible that all this – everything you touch, feel, experience – is just a dream? Is it possible to tell whether or not you are actually real? Is everything we sense – from the grains of sand rubbed in between our toes to the universe we peer into on starry nights – nothing more than a well-crafted, believable lie?
Our thoughts, created by our own minds, are the only concepts that we can ever know for sure are real; the only concepts we create uniquely based on whatever we’ve seen in our crazy, messed-up lives. Even if they are inspired by “the dream,” our independent thoughts prove that we actually exist. Without them, Descartes argues that there would be no concrete evidence proving that human beings, and the normal, humdrum lives they live, are real.
Congratulations! You made it through three paragraphs of philosophy. You’ve now had more liberal arts education than George W. Bush.
If Descartes is correct, then we can assume that…
a) Reality is a relative concept, and…
b) Our thoughts and perceptions, moulded by the experiences we have in all settings (both ‘fake’ and ‘real’), are what make us …us. They define us as unique people.
Which brings us back to how gamers relate to Don Quixote. If our thoughts truly are the only realities we can know in this world, then we have the power to create – to choose – the environments in which we live, even if they do not correspond with the norm. We can, to a point, forge our own unique realities that suit us.
Alonso Quixano is an aging farmer from Spain who has lived a simple, humble life. For decades, his existence was a quiet one consisting of farming and caring for his housekeeper and niece. As the years go on, Alonso begins reading books on chivalry and heroism. He takes them completely literally, actually believing that wizards, cyclops, and dragons exist. This becomes his reality. In such a world, wrought with danger and damsels in need of saving, Alonso does the only responsible thing – he dons a rusty suit of armor and sets off in search of adventure as a knight-errant.
Like a gamer may disregard a boring, dead-end job in favor of an exciting adventure in Hyrule, Azeroth, or the Mushroom Kingdom, Alonso redefined his own reality and existence so that it suited him. He effectively altered his reality. The power was in his mind: he had the ability to change his environment so it better suited his psychological needs. The so-called real world lacked fire, lacked passion, so what the hell – he upped and moved to another, as do millions of gamers every day.
When it comes to reality, my belief is that every person experiences a different world, unique to them. Even those who embrace the ‘normal world’ see it through a different lens than any other human being in history. That’s how our minds work: we interpret “forms” (as Plato and Aristotle described them) and, using the power of our own past experiences, passions, and inherent logic and creativity, forge them into something completely unique – a reality that is completely our own.
The worlds and narratives offered by games often play a large role in what reality we create for ourselves, just as the world in which we walk, eat, and breathe does. Our physical bodies may be more attached to the environment that offers the food, water, and oxygen that it needs to survive, but our mind does not necessarily care – it can live anywhere.
At first glance, reality can be a tricky concept to grasp, due in part to humanity’s persistent need to justify its actions by basing them on a universal truth. We want there to be just one reality; just one universe with laws to abide by, because having those parameters would be simpler than a world in which we are constantly forced to interact with billions of unique, often conflicting world views. Global mental solidarity is easy, but it is not human. What is human is to take the concepts presented before you – all of them – and mould that mental clay into something extraordinary.
Whether you’re playing games, reading books, taking in a film, travelling, or even simply sitting at home watching your cat scratch paint off the living room walls, you are creating a unique set of experiences which, when combined, define who you are and how you think; a reality, unique to you, that nobody but you can ever understand. Embracing that – like Don Quixote did – may be the only way to truly live.
Footnotes
[1] Yep, that’s right… Lady Gaga. I apologise for nothing. ^
[2] The others cite how idiotic we look playing DDRMAX. ^
[3] When they weren’t experimenting with cocaine/heroin/psychedelic toad backs/cocaine. ^
If you enjoyed The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind or Oblivion, you might be one in a short list of people who want to travel back in time and experience a free download of The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall. Here’s a screenshot of the original cover, and a couple screens from the game:
The minimum requirements are for a DOS-age machine. In fact, you probably need to run the game in an emulator:
486DX2/66 MHZ, DOS 6.0, 8MB RAM, 50MB HD Space, 256-color VGA graphics card, Mouse, Soundcard (Sound Blaster, Sound Blaster 16, AWE 32, Pro Audio Spectrum, Ensoniq Soundscape, Gravis Ultrasound).
The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall is a first-person computer role-playing game (CRPG) for MS-DOS, developed by Bethesda Softworks and released in 1996. It is a sequel to the CRPG The Elder Scrolls: Arena and the second installment in The Elder Scrolls series. On July 9, 2009, it was made available for download on the Elder Scrolls website.
A
new tile set for Pretty Good MahJongg is now available. The Modern Tile
Set is a classic MahJongg tile set with a modern twist. This clean,
sharp tile set is usable in all games in Pretty Good MahJongg,
including the solitaire games.
Here is the ninth EcoContest entry titled ‘Do you twig?’. Take this quiz created by Peter Kuhn and see how informed are you about the problems with deforestation.
In the About screen there is some technical information on the project that may be of interest if you are a Silverlight developer.
Create a Silverlight application that helps convey the idea of sustainable forest management. Win 3 passes for MIX11 event in Las Vegas, one with full travel package, and many Telerik licenses. The contest submission period ends March 6th, 2011, hurry up!
Thanks to the contest sponsors - CompletIT and Telerik – for supporting us!
Android Apps and Games Pack (01 – 03 – 2011) | 312.56 MB Release Group: P2P Release Name: Android Apps and Games Pack Feb 27 2011 Release Date: 27th Feb 2011 Filename: Android Apps and Games Pack Feb 27 2011.rar Filesize: 312.561 MB (327,744,464 bytes) Type: Applications | Games
