Games

I watched a video yesterday about using video games as a means to help solve world problems. It sounds outrageous at first, until you really think about the problem. But first, how about watching the video :

Ok, now that you have some background, let's think about this for a bit. Technology is amazing, and has brought us many advancements. Gaming is one of those advancements. We have the capability of creating entire universes, purely for our own amusement. People spend hours each day exploring these worlds. Players are typically working toward completing goals set forth by the game designers. When a player completes a goal, they are rewarded. Sometimes rewards are new items, monetary in nature, or perhaps clues to other goals. Each goal is within the reach of the player, though some goals may require more work to attain.

Miss McGonigal argues that the devotion that players show to games can be harnessed and used to help solve real-world problems. Players feel empowered by games, finding within them a way to control what happens to them. Games teach players that they can accomplish the goals set before them, bringing with it an excitement to continue.

I had the opportunity to participate in a discussion about this topic with a group of college students. Opinions ranged from a general distaste of gaming, seeing it as a waste of time, to an embrace of the ideas presented in the video. For myself, I believe that many of the ideas Miss McGonigal presents have a lot of merit. Some of the students argued that such realistic games would be complicated and uninteresting. However, I would argue that such realistic games have already proven to be big hits.

Take, for example, The Sims. The Sims was a huge hit, with players spending hours in the game adjusting various aspects of their character's lives. I found the entire phenomenon to be absolutely fascinating. I honestly don't know what the draw of the game was. Regardless, it did extremely well, proving that such a game could succeed.

Imagine taking a real-world problem and creating a game to represent that problem. At the very least, such a game can foster conversation about the problem. It can also lead to unique ideas about how to solve the problem, even though those playing the game may not be well-versed on the topic.

It's definitely an avenue worth tackling, especially as future generations spend more time online. If we can find a way to harness the energy and excitement that gaming generates, we may be able to find solutions to many of the worlds most perplexing problems.

Duke Nukem Forever. 12 years in the making, so far, and no end in sight. Sort of.

Last Wednesday, 3D Realms, a division of Apogee Software, closed its doors. 3D Realms was formed back in 1994, presumably as Apogee was to be phased out. The first title they published was Terminal Velocity, a futuristic combat flight simulator developed by Terminal Reality. From there, they developed their first 3D game, Duke Nukem 3D, releasing it in 1996.

The Duke Nukem franchise began earlier, in 1991, when Apogee released the first Duke Nukem side-scroller. Duke, with his irreverent humor and fast action, became an instant hit. The 3D first-person shooter furthered this popularity with excellent level design, multiplayer action, and plenty of adult humor. Duke was such a hit, the next episode in the series, Duke Nukem Forever, was announced in 1997 and expected to ship in mid-1998. However, numerous setbacks, rewrites, changes in game engines, and other behind-the-scenes action, the game remains incomplete and unpublished today.

The unfortunate demise of 3D Realms means that Duke may never be published, though Take 2 Interactive still holds the publishing rights. There are rumors that George Broussard, designer, is looking for funding to continue working on the game. After 12 years, though, is there any hope left?

Since the announcement of the studio closing, screen shots and footage have started to leak. From what has been leaked, it looks like this could have been an incredible game. There's some gameplay here that seems fairly new to the FPS arena. Here's the leaked game footage:

In addition to the footage, a number of screenshots have been leaked. Voodoo Extreme has a great collection of screenshots, including plot details, and design documents for the entire game. Shacknews has a collection of screenshots from a number of the artists. I've included some of this art below.

3D Realms had a good run, and now it's time to say goodbye. Perhaps Duke Nukem Forever will see the light of day, but I'm not holding my breath.

Back at the beginning of August, a small game developer based in the UK asked for honest feedback on a fairly straightforward question, "Why do people pirate my games?" I can only imagine how many emails he received in response. So, he read each one and compiled his thoughts in a well-written response. And, to top it off, he's changing the way he does business in an attempt to make some of those pirates honest.

Cliff Harris, the game developer, received the typical pirating reasons. These include cost, ease of access, and DRM. A few surprising reasons included the "I don't believe in intellectual property" response and complaints about current generation game quality. And, of course, there were also responses about pirating because they could.

Cost was somewhat surprising because he mentioned that while there were the normal complaints about the high cost of current games, there were also complaints about the price of his games, which ran in the $19-23 range. In some ways, I can agree with this. Games you buy at a retail chain generally run $50-60 when they are first released. Over time, depending on the platform, prices will drop. Ultimately, it takes years for most titles to drop into the sub-$20 range. One argument against price was the thought of impulse buying. I know, for myself, that impulse buying is a big one. I spend a great deal of time determining what the next console game I get will be due to their high cost. On the other hand, sites like Big Fish Games allow for quick impulse buys.

Quality is another interesting reason. When a new games comes out, there's generally a lot of hype. Unfortunately, and probably as expected, most games don't live up to the hype. The major letdown in most new games seems to be the gameplay or lack of content. The game is too short, or difficult to play due to poor control schemes. Game demos often don't show the full game, giving false impressions. In the end, you pay a good deal of money for a game you don't enjoy. And to top it off, there's no way to get your money back. So many people opt to pirate the game instead of paying money for something they might not like. Of course, more often than not, they still don't pay for the game, even if they do like it.

For myself, I don't really have any interest in pirating games these days. While I would love to have the latest and greatest games (Bioshock and Mass Effect come to mind), pirating often means that you lose some of the features. You almost always lose the online portion of the game, since most online games use some form of DRM to ensure authenticity. Growing up, getting a job, and having little time to play might be a reason too...

Of course, there is one particular reason to pirate games that seems to come to the forefront of my mind these days. DRM. Let's say I can only get a few games a year. And let's say I put off getting something like Bioshock or Spore, opting to get it later when it hits the bargain bin. The problem is, these games may never hit the bargain bin. Or, when they do, they won't work anymore. Why? Because in order for the games to work, the activation servers for these games must be up and running. Good business sense dictates that most times, when a service costs more to run than the revenue it brings in, it's time to discontinue that service. So when it becomes more costly to run the authentication servers as compared to the revenue the game is bringing in, they'll get turned off. Or, worst case, the company maintaining those servers dissolves and the servers get deactivated because there's no-one to run them anymore. The effect, in the end, is the same. The game I purchased is unusable. I recently saw it phrased another way, "you can't buy new games anymore, you only rent them."

The sole purpose of DRM, of course, is to prevent piracy. And is it working? Well, sure it is. It prevents casual pirating, such as making a copy for your friend down the street. With DRM, casual pirating becomes more difficult, often out of the reach of typical users. So in this way, DRM is a win. On the other hand, the advent of the Internet has made it extremely easy to find and download copies of games and other programs that have been altered to remove the need for activation. In other words, the DRM was cracked. Casual pirating becomes easier again.

And let's face facts, DRM is not nearly as hard to crack as you may think. Let's take a look at the latest "state-of-the-art" DRM as applied to the new game, Spore. Spore was already on the torrent sites, with a full workaround for the DRM, 3 days PRIOR to its release in the US! The game hadn't even been released yet, and it was already pirated! Great job, DRM.

Of course, pirating is illegal, and there are no real excuses for it. But publishers should learn the reasons behind pirating. Why has it become so big? Is it purely because pirated versions are readily available via the Internet? What makes a pirate start pirating? Is there anything that can be done to reduce pirating, without alienating the legitimate user? Surely the draconian DRM schemes we use today aren't working well. In fact, there are some games that won't work unless they can re-activate every few days! And if you can't get a connection to re-activate, you can't play! But, dammit, I bought this game!

I have to applaud Cliff on his response to all of this, though. He has decided, through all of this, to not only reduce the price of his games, but to give up DRM completely (even though his DRM was a one-time lookup thing and almost completely non-intrusive) and lengthen his game demos. That takes a lot of courage to do, especially since his livelihood is riding on this. Hell, his willingness to do this has even intrigued me to the point where I may just have to buy one of his games, just to support his decision! I suppose I'll have to check out his selection and see what's there to play...

The Wii is pretty popular these days. Nintendo has done an excellent job providing entertainment for just about anyone with this one device. Funnily enough, that includes fitness buffs. About 3 months ago (91 days, actually), Nintendo launched the Wii Fit.

The Wii Fit is one cool little device. It's essentially a flat surface, about 3 inches tall, packed full of electronics. The board is broken down, internally, into four quadrants, each quadrant having its own scale. What this means is that when you stand on it, four scale simultaneously weigh you, resulting in both an accurate total weight, as well as a weight distribution that can be used to identify your balance. Thus they named the board the Wii Balance Board. Yeah.. Marketing.. They're such geniuses.

So, 3 months ago, I went out and bought one of these beasts. Yes, I stood in line, at midnight, just to make sure I got one. Not a bad idea, apparently, as they have become somewhat scarce these days. At ay rate, I got one, and I started using it that morning. A lot has been said about the benefits of the Wii Fit, but I will tell you, from experience, that I'm damn happy I spent the $90 or so on it. I've missed weighing myself once since I bought it.

What's so special about this thing anyway? Well, I've done a lot of thinking about that because I've fought with weight loss in the past, and I've always failed miserably. In fact, for the last 3 years or so, I've neither gained nor lost a pound. And while that may sound good, what you don't realize is that I spent about a year and a half hitting the gym 2-3 times a week, I tried dieting, and I've tried casual exercise at home. Nothing seemed to work, and I was getting a tad frustrated. I wasn't massively overweight, but my doctor did categorize me as morbidly obese. That puts my BMI over 30. In fact, my BMI was almost 38 when I started using the Wii Fit.

Arguments aside, I wasn't happy with my weight, or my BMI. I'm not the most active person in the world, and I don't really enjoy exercise that much. But I had to do something, and the Wii Fit seemed, at least to me, to be a good idea. So far, it has worked out better than I ever hoped. I've dropped 35 pounds in 3 months, lowering my BMI to under 33. I feel fantastic, energetic, and a hell of a lot more confident. On the downside, though, I'm going to need a new wardrobe pretty soon.. Belts will only hold me over for so long.

So how did I do this? How did I lose so much weight in such a relatively short time? Well, first and foremost, I have to hand a lot of the credit to the Wii Fit. No, not because I use it to exercise, although that does help, but more-so because it tracks my weight. Seriously! Every morning I get up and weigh myself, and I immediately know where I stand. I know if I've slacked off too much, or if I'm on track to losing the weight I want to. It's incredibly satisfying to look at the graphs every so often and see the curve of the line indicating the weight you've lost.

I do about 20-25 minutes of exercise on the Wii Fit 3-4 times a week. My schedule has changed a little recently, so one day a week I'm usually on the Wii Fit for a little over 30 minutes. That's it for the Wii Fit! The rest of it is on my own.

I've reduced my food intake by a lot, which is probably the hardest thing I've done. I love food. I'm not keen on gorging myself, but I absolutely love my wife's cooking. I also love pizza and chinese. I used to be able to eat half a pizza with no problem at all. So, reducing my intake was difficult. I cut out soda and candy right from the start. Occasionally I'll have a soda, but not often. Reducing the rest was a matter of spreading it out a bit over the day. I eat smaller meals for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and I usually have a snack or two during the day. That snack is anything from a handful of vegetables, to something like a handful of pretzels or a small bowl of pudding. I don't watch calories or fat that much, but I am aware, somewhat, of what I'm taking in.

Next, I spend about 30 minutes a day walking. This is usually the first half of my lunch break. I'll head out of the office, and walk around town for a while. I end up covering about 1.5 miles during that walk. It's a casual walk, but at a somewhat brisk pace. I don't make any lengthy stops, mostly just stop at street corners so I don't become road pizza. It rains once in a while, and I'll miss out on walking that day. That hasn't happened too often, though, so I guess I've been lucky. My plan is to do laps up and down the parking garage if it rains for more than a day, though.

Finally, I do a little exercise before bed. It's about a 5-10 minute workout routine. I spend about 5 minutes lifting barbells to strengthen my upper body, and then I do a series of abdominal crunches and finally I do the Plank for about 60 seconds. Occasionally I do an exercise I learned in the military called a butterfly, though I've only found it referenced online as a six-inch killers. It's pretty simple, just lay on your back with your hands underneath your buttocks. Lift your feet about six inches above the ground and hold them there for 10-30 seconds, depending on your exercise level. Drop them slowly down, rest for a moment, and then start again. Another variant on this is to hold both feet at six inches, then move one foot up to about 12 inches. Switch feet, bringing one down and one up, sort of in a kicking motion. Each "kick" counts as half a rep. Do about 10 reps, then rest. The idea is to do a small set of exercises just before bed, enough to get the heart pumping, but not enough to work up a real sweat.

Overall, I do roughly an hours worth of exercise a day, and I usually end up taking the weekend off, though I'm always watching what I eat, and I endeavor to do my nightly routine every night. It's working so far, and I truly feel great. I want to shave off another 50 or so pounds before I'm really satisfied, but I've definitely started moving in the right direction!

An interesting short film I ran across over on one of Surfer Girl's blogs.  For those those don't know, Surfer Girl is the secret identity of a games industry insider who has been blogging some incredible info about past and future games, as well as political related material...  Great stuff!

This particular short film inspired an attempt at a new game by American McGee called Oz.  Based on the Wizard of Oz books, it was intended to be similar in nature to the Alice game, dark and scary, but was going to use cardboard cut-out graphics similar to the video.  At any rate, it's a pretty cool little film.  Check it out.