In a period where the Australian government appears to be going on a rampage censoring games left, right and centre, it’s worth taking stock of the type of thing they do deem appropriate for consumption, namely the ways horror hero Jason Voorhees has killed his many victims over the years in all 12 of the movies NOT censored in Oz via this fantastic illustration from the National Post. Click for full size.

Roll on an 18+ rating for those poor kids.

[via National Post]

Your videogame developer association is at a crossroads. The senior board staff are leaving left, right and centre and member apathy is at an all-time high. You’re looking for something, anything, to drum up passion once more in 13,000+ strong community where the vast majority of members are signed up automatically by employers often without their knowledge, or only to recieve industry-related discounts. What you need is a controversy – one so great that it will get folks who had never even considered themselves members calling to arms, becoming the hottest gossip in studios around the globe as the soap-opera plays out in real-time…

In step Dr. Timothy Langdell, a masterstoke of invention in a creative industry run on heroes and villains. This surely fictitious character was supposedly a board member on an association to advocate the rights of game developers internationally, yet was continuously embroiled in litigation with the most defenseless small game-related companies unfortunate enough to approach his trademarked “EDGE” brand. This was a developer/publisher with a claim to over 700 games backing up that brand, yet had not released a game since the early 1980s, leaving confusion in the marketplace (and therefore a legal leg to stand on) impossible. Such a stickler for legality, Doc Dastardly had been exposed time and time again using others work for his own financial and status gain, ranging from game, comic and television works in no way connected to him, to stooping so low as to pass off a 15 year old girl’s artwork as coverart for his incoming “products”.

It was this last practice that drew the ire of most IGDA members already frustrated with his ongoing suit against a celebrated iPhone game developer, signing Cease and Desists as IGDA Board Member, further damaging the reputation of the organisation. To which end, over 2000 members including myself signed a petition to oust him, or at least call a meeting to do so. A meeting was called, (to decide how to call a meeting), after which the meeting was set. In some semblance of decency, Little Langdell resigned a week later, but not without kicking and screaming on the IGDA forums and comically failing in updating his online store to support his case.

So there it was – a villain vanquished – the members feel empowered and are now looking to the next challenge in resurrecting the IGDA’s status – the character served his purpose. But the story continues. Langdell, it appears, is not so fictitious after all, and lives on beyond the board. You can follow his continuing comically incompetent capers here…

[Unlike the subject, sprite image used with permission of the artist]

On a recent road trip down to NYC for the long weekend, MJ and I were customarily delayed a little extra at the border control due to my non-Canadian status. The conversation with the patrol officer went a little like this:

Officer: What is your status in Canada?
Me: I’m on a work permit.
Officer: And what kind of work do you do?
Me: I make videogames.
Officer: Made any famous videogames I might have heard of?
Me: Well… perhaps. My last big one was called Mass Effect? [...] It’s kind of an eighties sci-fi story in a similar vein to Star Tre…
Officer: Is it rated E for Everyone?
Me: No, M for Mature. It’s quite grown up.
Officer: [Indignantly] Well I’ll make sure my kids never get to play it.
Me: Well you make sure you do Officer, so you can carry out your job as a parent with every bit the efficiency of your day job.

OK, so the last line only played out in my head as I nod politely lest I wish to follow up with “Step on the gas!” and and ensuing police chase all the way to the Big Apple, but it’s one of the few times I’ve witnessed first-hand the ignorance of opinion that all videogames are for children. When are these parents going to finally get it that they are in fact QUITE RIGHT to ensure their kids don’t play senior-rated games? That’s the whole reason the ratings are there in the first place.

This is awesome, and so close to home it hurts. I often say that the lowest and most indefensible point of working in games is that many of them consist of nothing more that shooting people in the face.

[via lightspeedchick]

In the spirit of UK:Resistance, “because you can’t not use pictures like this when they come along”.

Seen on mental health blog The Trouble With Spikol via Marie-Jo.

I don’t usually care to think about anti-videogame attorney Jack (John Bruce) Thompson lest it give him credence or, worse yet, a notion that his voice is relevant in the overarching debate over videogame censorship. But this time he’s really outdone himself with such a noteworthy argument that it’s worth sharing.

After the recent Show Cause order by the Florida Supreme Court, in order to overcome “the Court’s inability to comprehend” his arguments, they imposed a limitation on his ability to submit any further filings after a stunt involving his submission of a children’s book-styled motion in illustrated form containing clip-art images between the text depicting “swastikas, kangaroos in court, a reproduced dollar bill, cartoon squirrels, Paul Simon, Paul Newman, Ray Charles, a handprint with the word “SLAP!” written under it, Bar Governor Benedict P. Kuehne, a baby, Ed Bradley, Jack Nicholson, Justice Clarence Thomas, Julius Caesar, monkeys, a house of cards, and the motion concluded with the cover of Thompson’s book, Out of Harm’s Way“.

Class…

I just read that THQ picked up the award for Best Animated Videogame of 2007 at the 35th Annie Awards. That’s very impressive in a year that also brought us Assassin’s Creed and Team Fortress 2. The complete list of nominees were:

• Avatar: The Last Airbender “The Burning Earth” – THQ, Inc.
• Bee Movie Game – Activision
• Ratatouille – THQ, Inc.
• Transformers: The Game – Blur Studios

Congratulations to the team at THQ – beating off such stiff competition must have really taken a lot of hard work and talent, and I look forward to your future output. And congratulations to the Annie Awards jury for such a keen and incisive analysis of the current state of my industry – I also look forward to your future output.

A lot has been said over the past few weeks concerning the sexual content of Mass Effect, most notably the controversially unresearched Fox TV spot below. As a former member of the dev team responsible, (who directed a portion of the motion-capture actors involved – though full cutscenes weren’t my gig), I can perhaps speak with a little more candor on the subject.

To recap, the story so far:

1. Conservative radio journalist posts 3-page condemnation of “Virtual Orgasmic Rape” allegedly portrayed in Mass Effect.
2. Fox picks up the story, (shown above), draughting book author and panel to blast the game’s supposed pornographic nature.
3. Gamers take offence to the author’s comments, particularly the fact that all of the commentators neglected to actually play the game, spamming reviews of her recent book on Amazon, (some of which is hilarious).
4. EA, (now the parent company of BioWare), issues a statement to Fox, requesting that they officially correct their misinformed allegations.
5. Fox responds to EA, inviting them onto the show for a second, predictably biased, debate.
6. Original conservative radio journalist apologises for his error-strewn piece, surreptitiously removing the initial post.
7. Author apologises, retracting her erroneous statements after finally observing someone play the game.

EA is correct in saying that this is not only a gross misrepresentation of the game but is also disappointing to someone that worked on a project he considers offered a somewhat more mature and substantial experience than that described in the segment. For an altogether more accurate description of the “Romance Plots”, as they were always named during development, Marie-Jo has posted an excellent write up. I know that others still at BioWare share this sadness that the game has been run through the mud due to a combination of ignorance, self-publicity and a prescribed agenda masquerading as journalism.

However…

Can we honestly, as an industry, say that these kinds of criticisms leveled against us are wholly without merit?

One thing I’ve been repeating a lot recently is that I’m sick of games that involve nothing more cerebral than just shooting people. That kind of baseless content is indefensible against mass-media criticism, and to be perfectly honest, is hard to justify as a daily job let alone a creative one. There’s an almost automated reaction against any form of censorship of videogame content but how often do we, as developers and as gamers, stop to consider the cultural validity of the way we spend our downtime?

I’m not here to argue whether “adult” games are influential to minors that shouldn’t be accessing that kind of material as that’s another debate more well-trodden elsewhere, nor am I to take apart the arguments and sheer lack of research present in the above piece, (which hardly deserves debate), but regardless of the answer, consider this. Videogames, by their very virtual nature, can conjure up any kind of experience imaginable. In the words of my first Lead Programmer, “Anything’s possible, it’s just a question of time“. Why then do we continue to churn out endless waves of purile and/or conflict-orientated entertainment, and more to the point, why does the general public continue to lap it up?

Our greatest mission going forward, (one that is shared with all the most passionate developers I speak with), is the search for legitimacy as a creative medium and cultural validity as a form of entertainment. I believe Mass Effect is one of a small but growing number of videogames that can stand against the generic criticism thrown around by the sensationalist press, which makes it all the more frustrating that it should be singled out in this way.

You know you’ve hit the big time when your cutscene gets a Penny Arcade strip all of its own, so congratulations to Brad on making headlines with his bi alien sex scene – reportedly the lone element that pushed the game into the Mature ratings bracket in North America.

I seem to recall him spending an awfully long time on this one, despite the ESRB’s guidance that naked bodies can’t be on screen for longer than 10 or 15 seconds – presumably after which time North American teenagers’ heads explode.

There’s nothing new here as Jade Empire also allowed same-sex relationships, though the consummation was hidden by a fade to black unlike the heterosexual variations. Interestingly, this wasn’t the result of homophobia within the team, but instead a quick fix to disguise the mismatches given the sheer number of different sized characters that could become intimate with one another.