canadianbacon13 Blog

The Most Godless Game

LittleBigDaddy — Mon, 05 Dec 2011 00:05:00 GMT

Of all the popular forms of media expression in the world today, perhaps the most godless form of all is gaming. Of course, most popular media declines to address spirituality, as to express an opinion on spirituality in any form is almost certain to draw debate and controversy and thus limit profit. Still, it is certainly not unusual for spirituality to be present in modern media. Every year, religious books, movies, and music will regularly make themselves noticed and consumed en masse. Games, however, are an entirely different story. While film may have its Facing the Giants or The Passion of the Christ, or literature its Christian fiction, or music its religious faction, the presence of religion or spirituality of any sort in gaming is uncommon at best and religion in any beneficial form even less so. In fact, I will even go so far as to say that the overall attitude of gaming could be interpreted as one of atheistic rejection of spirituality in its entirety. While that statement seems extreme, I believe there is some substantial evidence to back this seemingly outrageous proposition.

More godless than originally thought.

In a way, this inherent godlessness of gaming is tied to the very nature of gaming itself. For better or for worse, many games are often qualified as power trips, where gamers are handed the role of the latest super-soldier and told to do no less than save the world/galaxy/universe/existence/etc. In the world of gaming, fate relies upon the mastery of the gamer and the actions committed by there hand alone. In gaming, true power is in in the gamer's palm. In essence, the gamer is the god of the world they inhabit, all powerful over their character. Gamers are an outside force manipulating the world they oversee for their own purposes. I find that several aspects of gaming also help to amplify this role of the gamer as God.

Firstly, let us analyze the way that gamers view the world they enter whenever they play a game. One of the most common perspectives in gaming is the third-person perspective, which can range from immediately behind the avatar, à la Grand Theft Auto IV, to the isometric view of Dragon Age: Origins, to the all-seeing view of strategy titles everywhere. In third-person views, total control of whatever the player does is the name of the game. For limited third-person, where only one character is under the gamer's control, total manipulation of a person's fate aligns itself in the style of a singularly-focused deity, manipulating specific characters to achieve a goal in a grander plan. Advance to the overhead of the strategy game, and even though the supposed role is that of a general, in reality this view is more suited to that of a deity, for what general except in modern times has possessed the ability to see all in an instant? Truly this all-knowing, all-seeing capability is more than suggestive of the gamer as the true power in their inhabited universe.

The view of a detached presence.

But what about first-person, where the gamer inhabits only a single mind and doesn't even have the detached perspective of the limited third-person? Well, in first-person, the gamer is a foreigner inhabiting an existing mind, for try as a gamer might the gamer is still not the person they are inhabiting. The gamer is still a manipulative force of unknown quantity or quality tugging the strings of their puppet to do their bidding. Even if this may not ring true of deity status to all, the implication is still that of an outside, unknown force controlling events as they see fit. Few games relegate the gamer to the status as true helpless participant rather than temporarily interfering outsider.

The treatment of death is also something that implies the otherworldliness of the gamer, the mystical power. While almost never treated as such, if at all, the ability of the gamer to basically rewind time to undo mistakes is something that lends itself to the interpretation of the gamer as all-powerful. Has your character fallen to an early grave? No problem, rewind time and the damage is undone. Death is nothing, merely a limitation to the ever-advancing progress of the Lord Gamer. In games, death is certainly not the final word on anything, but is relegated to the status of a cheap and temporary obstacle, even in more punishing games like Dark Souls. So, the gamer is a detached, controlling presence, who within the limits of the game (i.e., the universe they inhabit )is all-knowing, all-controlling over their dominion, who transcends death. So far, the status of the gamer as a deity within their universe is a distinct conclusion that can be drawn. It is an interpretation, but one with some support. However, this status of the gamer as God and not the deity of whatever universe they inhabit is not the only aspect that could lend itself to a conclusion of gaming as a godless form. I believe that the way in which games present themselves as storytelling formats contains within it the seeds of a very, very godless form indeed.

For the most part, gods or spiritual entities of a supreme nature are absent from many games, from the lighthearted such as the Mario series, to the mature, such as Call of Duty (at least to the extent I am aware of). The presence of spirituality in any form is pretty much completely absent in these games other than as an artistic flourish in the architecture, if that. In these games, religion is a non-factor. The best treatment spirituality can usually expect is when the acknowledgement of the gamer as a supreme being is the fundamental aspect of the game, as is seen in typical 'God games' such as From Dust.

Of course, there are games where deities exist. Many fantasy games have a spiritual overseer that can be called on for assistance. In this case, the deity is treated as a self-aware power-up by all regards, one who answers to the call of the player, and therefore the player's whims. Spirituality in this sense has been once again relegated to a tool in the gamer's arsenal.

But here is where I look at some of the big guns of gaming. Titles such as Assassin's Creed, God of War, Bioshock, Bayonetta, Red Dead Redemption, Dante's Inferno and Halo all contain elements that reject spirituality or can be interpreted as criticizing it in some way. God of War is perhaps the most obvious of all. The entire series is about a man who becomes a god, only to eventually reject those gods and utterly destroy them, leaving humanity in control of its own fate. The metaphor there is obvious, a tale of the rise of man from the gods they made and later will reject, or at least that is the message I feel may be read into it. Or Assassin's Creed, which proclaims its secularism before launching into a tale where the Church is corrupt and desires only the control of humanity. A criticism of the modern Church if I ever heard one. Or Halo, where mankind is confronted by religious zealots entirely reminiscent of the stereotypical jihad. Or Bioshock, about a man gone awry but not necessarily wrong in his rejection of government and God. Or Bayonetta, about fighting the armies of both Heaven and Hell to make your own path. Or Darksiders, about the war of an honorable man against a plot from Heaven. Or Red Dead Redemption, where the religious crazies throw their life away in the pursuit of dreams. Or Dante's Inferno, possibly the most pro-God one on this list, which is about a man's own redemption by his own means and represents religion as the means of alleviating the fear of eternal damnation, i.e. a relief from fear.

Secularism at its finest...and most obvious.

Even the characters of gaming don't help religions case. Characters with a religion beneficial to them are uncommon to say the least. Off the top of my head, the only one I can think of is Ashley from Mass Effect, whose proclamation of faith took me completely by surprise in a medium I had come to think of as godless. Ashley, of course, finds herself rather outnumbered by the sheer number of religious zealots, fools, incompetents, or foes the gamer will come across in their lifetime. Rockstar's Red Dead Redemption had a notable encounter with a foolish woman who found herself lost in the desert refusing all aid because of her blind faith in her religion. Yes, religion rarely gets a good name in video games.

Jenny's Faith...or Jenny's Foolishness?

Of course, video games are a media venture for profit, and as all media ventures often do, religion and spirituality are often avoided in favor of appealing to as broad an audience as possible. This makes sense. Yet in every other venture, the presence of spirituality still makes itself known. Religious films, religious literature (aside from holy texts, of course), religious music, religious news, religious everything, really. It is only in gaming where there is practically no evidence of a strong religious presence, and where criticism or parody of religion or spirituality is more the norm.

Is this necessarily the truth of the way things are? I do not know. This is merely an interpretation, a reading of various influences and themes in the medium. I am also not here to judge whether or not this reading is good or bad for the gaming industry, as I am sure everybody has their own opinion as to what is good or not good for spirituality in gaming. I am merely here to state my own personal observances. I hope you will, too.

A Gameplay Demo of From Dust

(Please visit the site to view this media)

God of War III fatalities

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Red Dead Redemption: Jenny's Faith

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Sinners and Saints: Dichotomous Morality in Video Games

LittleBigDaddy — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 19:39:00 GMT

The choice often presented to gamers in modern gaming is the question of whether they will be good or evil. Will they let their nemesis live or will they mow them down in cold blood. Will they be polite, lawful citizens of their inhabited universe or will they set their world on fire by being cruel, chaotic rogues? Choices like these are meant to give players the freedom to develop a character unique to them, allowing for additional personal investment in a character. However, these choices are often limited by the dichotomous nature of meaningful choices in modern video games.

A dichotomy is defined by Merriam-Webster as "a division into two especially exclusive or contradictory groups or entities. Also: the process or practice of making such a division." Essentially, a dichotomy is when you have two options that are polar opposites or in no way related to the other. A definition also highlights another aspect of a dichotomy: that it is the act of making that separation into two radically different groups. What is interesting, however, is how much this concept can apply to how morality is handled in modern video games, especially Western video games (and even more so to American video games).

When players are faced with moral choices in video games, especially American video games, the choice they are given is almost always an A or B situation, a situation which is almost always between a clearly defined good or evil action. Take, for example, the popular Red Dead Redemption. One of the mechanics of this game is the Honor scale, a numeric slide that measures our characters honor, sliding between the nefarious and the saintly. Actions have numeric values that affect the positioning of the meter's indicator toward one of the two extremes. This system is reflected in many other video games, and has been for years now. The mechanic has been present in one form or another in games such as Knights of the Old Republic (Light/Dark), Fallout 3 (Good/Bad Karma), Mass Effect (Paragon/Renegade), Fable (Good/Evil), and numerous others. In each instance, morality is defined by a visible quantifier, a scale that gives players an indicator of the morality of their actions. Even the position of the values on the scale can serve as a visual indicator as to the morality of an action (good is pretty much always above evil). It's an easy and handy way to show players an immediate consequences of their actions. Note, however, the exact number of moral definitions given to these scales: two. The choice is always between one of two extremes, quantified by a given value that assigns impact to a decision. For a very good action, four hundred good points! For a moderately evil action, fifty evil points! And neutral options rarely do anything at all.

This quantification inherently differentiates the two decisions by polarizing decision making. There are ways to soften this inherent polarization, such as Mass Effect's use of two character morality meters to provide the simultaneous existence of good an evil in a character (though ostensibly they are not morality meters, but character response meters, but the difference is negligible). On most other games, there isn't even the option for simultaneous morality, as all morality is handled on one scale and there is no gray option for a complicated moral character. In fact, in such games, gamers can even be indirectly punished for not allying themselves exclusively with one side or another. In effect, video games are creating two unique, independent groups which are exclusive from the other. They have created a moral dichotomy.

There are definite benefits to a moral dichotomy in video games. It provides a clear definition of ethics in a video game for a player. In Rockstar Games' Grand Theft Auto series and Red Dead Redemption, morally dubious actions and decisions are often immediately awarded with a negative consequence in the form of law enforcement. While it is certainly possible to defeat your pursuers, as your negative actions stack up the consequences scale right along side the actions. Eventually, the evil player is left with relatively little gain and a lot of pressure from the stacked up consequences. What grey there is is often of relatively little consequence or passed off as one extreme or the other, such as killing a man to save a woman being defined as a good deed.

Clearly defined duality also allows for the simplification of consequences. Take Bioshock's Little Sister mechanic, where players are given the choice to save or kill mutated children. While benefits are provided for each side, the choice isn't gray in the slightest: it's a clear option between the morally responsible in a morally corrupt world or the morally hideous. The fact that killing only one of the Little Sisters immediately hands you the 'bad' ending is proof enough of this moral polarity. The player is given a clear option, and the choice to take one road or the other is absolute and immediate. It gives players a moral foothold in video games, where each new gaming experience requires players to be reintroduced to the rules of each new world. Clearly defined and dual morality is a universal standard that allows for easy transition between ethics in vastly different environments.

However, the constant enforcement of absolutes in video gaming is not entirely beneficial, to gaming or to gamers. Gamers are constantly handled A or B choices, consistently breaking down reality into a multiple-choice test where there is one right or one wrong answer. Certainly players are free to choose which, often knowing the consequences, but there certainly isn't much gray in between for players to explore. Reality is certainly not a limited set of values for people to choose and dutifully follow. Reality is defined by shades of uncertainty as to what is right and what is wrong. Gaming, still a young method of storytelling in many ways, struggles with this uncertainty. Subtlety is not a trademark of gaming in any way, and doubly so when it applies to morality. There are very few games out there that present true moral choices to the player beyond simple kill/don't kill situations. In Western gaming, the Mass Effect series is one of the more notable attempts to provide moral uncertainty, but is often contradicted by, of all things, its conversation system, which not only often presents clear moral distinction but often places the moral value in the exact same position on the conversation wheel. If a player never wants to make an evil decision in Mass Effect 2, simply keep flicking the thumbstick up and to the right. Perhaps the better attempts would be Quantic Dream's ambitious Heavy Rain, which often creates consequences off of actions without an attached arbitrary moral value. It provides actual subtlety in gaming by letting characters simply act and move with the world rather than pause and manipulate it according to their numeric vision of morality. Duality may still be present, but it is quiet and restrained, more like the real world.

Perhaps another interesting example of a more subtle and less polarized approach to morality in a video game might be Atlus' Catherine. Catherine has been praised for allowing gamers to make decisions in much less dramatized and more considered ways, through innocuous questions rather than bold choices between a clear right and wrong. By making players truly consider their personality, Catherine made for a truer representation of morality. It made players think about what they truly wanted their character to be like, rather than simply choosing between two extremes. Although not a moral dilema on the scale of the numerous choices made by gamers in sweeping epics like Mass Effect or Fallout 3, where hard choices like those facing players in Catherine occur roughly every ten minutes, the handling of moral choice in Catherine is arguably superior to the simple polarity of larger games.

Dichotomy has its place in gaming. There are always true polar opposites and a choice to be made between them. But the degree to which modern gaming quantifies morality in choices is representative of how gaming is still making its way through unfamiliar territory. Advances are being made, in leaps and bounds at times and in small steps at others. Eventually, perhaps gamers can look forward to truly complex morality on a grand scale. Evidence of such a future can be found even now. But there is still a little ways to go.

Supplementary Videos:

Heavy Rain: Moral Compass

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Mass Effect 2 Conversation

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Catherine Trailer

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Disclaimer: In the interests of full disclosure, I have never actually played either Heavy Rain or Catherine. However, appropriate research was done when writing over this topic.

16, 291: A Reflection

LittleBigDaddy — Sat, 29 Oct 2011 04:18:32 GMT

Numbers tend to lose their significance at times. Earning $50,000 a year is considered a low number. 200 people are killed in a fire and people barely blink an eye. Numbers have a tendency to distance themselves from what they represent. No matter how big a million may be in real life, in the page it may take up all of half an inch of space. It's easy to see a large number and compress the true value to the space of what it takes to write the number on a page. I realized this in relation to video games when I decided to look at some stats a few months ago.

I play a lot of Halo: Reach and Halo 3. I enjoy the series very much, as do millions of other gamers, and if asked I will always place Halo as my favorite gaming series ever. As a very cool feature for the series, an internet-connected console with a registered Windows Live account has access to an amazingly detailed online stat-tracker. The program will record every kill made, every death, every level beaten and much more. So, out of curiosity, I decided to go through the three major profiles I have played online with Halo: Reach and to a limited extent Halo 3 and add up the total number of kills I have made. And then, when all the numbers were added up, I paused.

16, 291

Over the course of almost a year of Halo, three months of which I lacked an Internet connection, I have killed 16, 291 representations of a living being. I have killed the entire population of high school...seven times and then some. I have personally ended the lives of almost a fifth of my hometown. In other words, I have killed a lot of people in that video game, and there’s probably another two thousand unaccounted for. This made me take pause for a moment, reflecting on the industry I love so much in contrast to the thousands of virtual avatars whose lives I have ended so happy.

Gaming is a violent hobby, at least virtually. Let’s face it, combat is the number one attraction for a lot of gamers. Over the years, the photorealism and simulation accuracy of these games has increased astronomically. Killing has become something of a grotesquely refined art for millions of gamers.

Now, I am not anti-violence in video games. I am no crusader for whitewashed games that present a smiling face to the world, pretending that violence doesn’t happen and never will. Violence is natural, and without it a lot of species would find daily life pretty difficult.

Violence is also, put bluntly, a lot of fun (in video games, at least). The fact that Call of Dutyregularly tops sales charts establishes that pretty handedly. Even games that may not seem to be combat-centric feature violence in a mitigated format. I’m fairly certain that mega-game Angry Birdrevolves around the core tenet of birds flinging themselves in a fit of suicidal impulses at walls to murder pigs under the weight of the subsequent unbalanced masonry. The visceral thrill of violence is second to none in gaming, a medium that revolves around visceral experiences more than any other.

Violence always has been, and always will be, absolutely central to the video game industry. War is a favorite experience for many gamers, including myself. The next time I sit down for a few hours with Halo or Red Dead Redemption I will, like many gamers, happily commit small-scale genocide without a second thought. But perhaps it is appropriate at times to remind yourself of just how easy violence can become.

Allow me to relate another tale of violence that prompted a moment’s thought in me. I had the pleasure of playing Rockstar’s brilliant Western experience Red Dead Redemption recently, a game that delivered hours of immersive entertainment. The game also features a stat-tracker similar toHalo’s, albeit in-game and somewhat shallower. Like Halo, Red Dead Redemption tracks the number of poor souls whose lives ended at the prompting of your lead-tipped bullets. About two hours into the game, I had recorded about 30-40 kills. Ten hours later, I had about 600, and I still had ten hours to go. By the end, the number was likely well over a thousand.

The thing about that which made me take note when I usually ignore those numbers was, perhaps, the environment provided by Red Dead Redemption. Rockstar has a pension for creating brilliant, open-world simulators that have, at times, been criticized for being almost too realistic, something you don’t hear much from gamers. Considering the realism provided, and the usually plausible interactions with characters within the game, the fact that your character walks around with more blood on his hands than almost anybody in recorded history without the populace fleeing in mortal terror every time he walks through town is a little unbelievable. In the real world, regardless of intention, 600 murders by your own hand is considered at least a little inhuman.

What astonished me was the ease with which the blood had pooled at my feet without me noticing. In my focus on that next target, that next enemy, I had failed to notice the sheer number of targets I had actually killed. It made me think of the ease with which such a concept can translate to real-life. I am not saying gaming makes killing easy, I am saying that similar principles apply to someone committing vast quantities of murder, like genocide. It is easy to pretend your enemy is faceless, distant, and above all, 'not you', leading to the normalization by which the murder of your enemy becomes simple and routine.

Here are a few statistics regarding people and killing:

-Staff Sergeant Albert Waldron holds the record for most confirmed sniper kills by a US Marine at 109.

-The greatest female sniper of all time is reportedly Lyudmila Pavlichenko, a Soviet sniper with 309 confirmed sniper kills.

-Simo Häyhä, nicknamed “The White Death”, holds the record for most sniper kills by any one person in any major war with 505 confirmed kills and potentially 200 more unconfirmed.

(A picture of Simo Häyhä, the greatest sniper in any major war)

-Dr. Harold Shipman, also known as “Doctor Death”, murdered 218 proven victims over the course of 23 years, though the number may be as high as 250, making him the greatest serial killer in modern history in terms of confirmed murders.

(A picture of Harold Shipman, the greatest serial killer in modern history)

-A trio of sisters purportedly poisoned over 600 people in Italy from 1633-1659.

It makes me think about what I play and do for fun when I realize I have killed many, many more times than these people. Every death in real life means the end of somebody's life. Their hopes, dreams...they cease to exist in this world. And video games make sport of this fact. Yes, it is only a virtual avatar with no soul, no real life. But it is a simulation of an act with real meaning and real impact.

My purpose here is not to attack violence in games. My purpose is not to suck all the joy of shooting up virtual avatars. My purpose is not to be some condescending voice of morality about violence. I love shooters. I love guns. I enjoy combat in video games, and will eagerly mow down waves of Covenant the next time I hop on Halo. But perhaps, just every now and then, it is appropriate for gamers to stop the bloodbath, if only for a moment, and think on just how many ‘bad guys’ they’ve killed without realizing it, just as I paused to think about the 16, 291.

A short documentary video on Simo Häyhä. The voice-over isn't appropriate, I think, but the content is fine.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The trailer for the popular 2007 shooter Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, a war simulator.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

The first ten minutes of the famous D-Day sequence from Saving Private Ryan which I feel is one of the few depictions of war that comes close to truly conveying the gravity and horror of war.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

Lastly, here is a link to my Bungie.net account, on which my current kill total for my profile on Halo: Reach may be located.

P.S.: This blog was written to share an experience I had regarding violence in games. While I enjoy violence in video games very much, there are aspects of it that I believe sometimes are undervalued or under-examined.

Also, since my last blog (which attacked the Catwoman DLC policy featured in Batman: Arkham City), I have regained Xbox Live. However, my original opinion still stands that this is a poor attempt to control a product. The original blog can be found here.

Batman's Darker Side: The Catwoman DLC and a Gamer's Anger

LittleBigDaddy — Sun, 16 Oct 2011 02:14:00 GMT

Batman: Arkham City is one of the most anticipated games of autumn. It is also one of, at this point, the most critically acclaimed. It is the sequel to an amazing game that I love very much. It has also made what I feel to be a monumental misstep that has enraged me as a gamer and consumer. That misstep involves the Catwoman DLC and required online code that was announced earlier this week.

I am not a well-funded gaming individual. By saying that, I mean I do not have the resources to purchase every new game, every new piece of hardware that delivers the latest gaming craze, every DLC pack for a game. I do own a Xbox 360. I enjoy it very much. I do not have an Internet connection, as the circumstances I live in prevent me from doing so. Since this effectively prevents me from partaking of DLC, multiplayer, or any other Internet-enabled Xbox features, I have come to a point where the single-player experience for a game is my main draw. I have played the Mass Effect series, the Bioshock series, and Red Dead Redemption over the last year, all of which were phenomenal one-player experiences that I enjoyed immensely. They also, with the exception of the original Bioshock, have DLC and multiplayer features that I never partook of. And you know what? I was perfectly happy with this. I was grateful to even be experiencing these wonderful games. Was I missing out on some pretty significant content at times? Yes, but nothing that affected what I felt was the core experience of the game: the single-player portion that rarely needed any outside enhancement. I even played Halo 3 and what is possibly my favorite game, Halo: Reach without multiplayer, and while I missed it (the multiplayer) I still regularly play the campaign and firefight for long stretches at a time without online play. And why? Because the single-player experience was self-contained and never required any Internet connection to play in a manner that massively overhauled the experience.

At this point you're probably wondering if I'm ever going to get to the point. After that admittedly lengthy paragraph, where I have established that missing out on DLC doesn't really bother me, I'm here to tell you why I'm angry over DLC. As of October 13th or so, I stumbled across an article on IGN (which you can find here) announcing that the Catwoman portion of the new Rocksteady Studios video game Batman: Arkham City would require a DLC code (or an Online Pass as it's called) obtained with a new copy of the game to be able to download and play. There is so much wrong with that sentence I wound up needing an entire blog post to talk about it.

As was established in my second paragraph, I have no Internet connection, and am happy with that because the core single-player experience in pretty much every major game release is self-contained and has no DLC which is essential to the experience in a way that inconveniences gamers like me. Batman: Arkham Asylum was an admirable example of this. It was (and still is) an astoundingly good single-player experience that never forced the Internet onto the player. As such I, like many gamers, looked forward to the sequel to a great single-player which, judging by reviews such as GameInformer's own rare perfect score, is an awesome experience, of which the Catwoman character was supposed to make up a good 10%.

Wait, hold up: was that 10%?

Yes, as was toted several months ago, Catwoman would add some interesting flavor to the game in some pretty substantial ways. Look at it this way: if the length of Batman: Arkham City's core experience (that means the time the story without time spent looking for collectibles, etc) is about twenty hours long, two hours of that experience is spent playing as Catwoman. While that may not sound like much, the ratio shifts with the length of the experience: a ten hour campaign means one hour is spent as the vixen temptress, an 100 hour experience means ten hours are spent, and...well, you get the idea. A decent amount of time was supposed to be spent with this character. According to IGN's video review, the character even changes the way the opening of the game plays out. This is not a character who was included as a distraction, like the Joker Map Pack included with the PS3 version of Batman: Arkham City which was a marginal purchasing incentive that Xbox 360 owners felt mildly irritated by missing out on then moved on with their lives. This is an integral part of the experience in some regards. It literally changes the opening of the game, it's that integral (though yes, the campaign is perfectly playable without the content, it's just missing a whole tenth of the entire experience).

Therefore, when I discovered all of a week before the release that I would not be able to access ten percent of the game without an arbitrary internet connection, I was extremely upset. Batman: Arkham City is a game I very much looked forward to (and still do), and Catwoman was a character who was a very awesome icing on an already delicious cake. To find out that this was all DLC is something I find completely unacceptable. DLC is a part of the gaming industry, and it's something that's both a good business move that prolongs the interest in a product and a potential for a huge boost in post-purchase value for a gamer who loves a game's content and desires more. Some gamers (myself included to some extent) have found the recent trend of DLC being released extremely close to, and sometimes on, launch day to be developers nickel-and-diming consumers, but the small reassurance was that no developer had yet crossed the line of making Day One DLC essential to the experience. And, sadly, Warner Bros. and Rocksteady seem to be the first to do so.

But wait, what's that? This DLC is free with the code that comes with the game? Not so if you're one of the legions of gamers like myself who buy pre-owned for most of their games. I love pre-owned games: the prices are excellent, and since I buy used games from Gamestop, are usually of good quality in relation to disc-condition and like qualities (Gamestop has something of a quality-control deal with pre-owned games, which isn't perfect, but usually works). This is the part where gamers beyond myself should sit up and take notice of the extremely unfair move Warner Bros. and Co. pulled with this game: as of now, outside of Gamestop, gamers who purchase used copies of Batman: Arkham City will have to pay an additional cost for 10% of their game. This is an extremely unfair policy for any gaming company to take, let alone one with such a huge release as Arkham City. It's even more absurd considering the vast amount of DLC characters (such as Nightwing and Robin) and bonus content tied to various pre-orders from companies like Best Buy that already exists.

I am simply one gamer in a set of circumstances that a majority of gamers likely do not find themselves in. PS3 and Wii owners have Internet built in. Most Xbox 360 gamers have the Xbox Live service. I do not at this time. Many gamers will likely buy Batman: Arkham City new. But for those gamers, like me, with limited cash and maybe even no Internet, this problem is simply unacceptable. As such, since Warner Bros. and Co. do not see fit to allow me 10% of the core experience on the disc and as part of my purchase, I demand a game that is 10% off in return. Seems only fair.

Below is the original trailer for the Catwoman content, now DLC.

(Please visit the site to view this media)

I'm afraid to inform you master that the odds of TOR failing are precisely 3,780 to one!

LittleBigDaddy — Sat, 06 Nov 2010 16:03:00 GMT

"The Old Republic will fail! It has no chance of succeeding!", cries rival game-developer Bigpoint.

Oh, really? I beg to differ.

This is something that I have pondered for a while now. Will TOR be good? Will it be great? Will it succeed with a pay-per-month plan? Will it finally tear a space for itself in this WoW/Runescape-dominated world?

You know what? I think it can. And here are my reasons why.

It is true that many of the MMO developers these days are going free-to-play. However, there are factors that set TOR apart from all the rest. The first is that many of the games going to free to play are either projects based around a new IP, fantasy setting, or a less-well represented IP. I would like to remind Hubertz that the #1 MMO on the market that isn't a free-to-play browser MMO (e.g., Runescape) is World of Warcraft, which just passed the 12,000,000 users mark. That is more unique users than any of his MMOs will likely ever see over their entire lifespan. And it costs around $15 a month to play, I think (I don't play WoW, so I may be wrong on that number). So, many of the fantasy MMOs are going free-to-play because they can't compete with the WoW juggernaut. The other games that are going free-to-play, new IPs (e.g., Champions Online) and less-well represented IPs, don't have the name-power or the attraction necessary to deter the hordes of WoW players for very long. No, the pay-per-month system will likely not be perfect, and it may very well affect TOR, who knows? However, this is Star Wars, the most popular science-fiction IP of all time (no, Avatar doesn't count, because its $2 billion revenue cannot possibly compare to Star Wars' 30+ years of raking in gajillions), and this is the Old Republic, the third game in one of the most critically-acclaimed and fan-popular series in Lucasarts' line-up. I hardly think that, with the brand-power (and development power: EA and Lucasarts are huge publishers with money to spend, and Bioware might very well be the most consistantly awesome game-developer in the Western hemisphere) that TOR brings to bear, they will hardly need to beg and plead for Star Wars, sci-fi, and MMO fans alike to flock to their banner.

Another factor that will lead to TOR's probably success is simple: there is, at this time, no dominant sci-fi MMO. The area is split between dozens of different options, but unlike WoW and Runescape, which dominate their respective arenas, there is no king of the sci-fi MMO realm. TOR brings everything to the table; innovation, name power, maybe even quality. That's a pretty appealing platform for TOR to elect itself the biggest name in sci-fi MMOs. It doesn't necessarily need to destroy WoW, which seems to be everybody's expectation when a new MMO releases. It just needs to capture the sci-fi fan, an element that hasn't really been drawn in quite as far as the fantasy fan has. The job listing for the post of King is open: TOR needs to step in and claim that post.

Are these reasons a Nostradamus quality look at the future of the game? Hardly. I cannot say whether TOR will fail or not. But I have good reasons to think it won't exactly whimper and die like APB. This is Star Wars: everything it does is big, flashy, and ultimately, millions of fans will devour it. If predecessor Clone Wars: Adventures (the kids MMO that I'm sure more than one guilty hardcore adult Star Wars fan subscribed to) is anything to go by, a pay-per-month plan is probably not going to slow TOR down that much, if at all.

You got Banned!

LittleBigDaddy — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 14:35:00 GMT

You Just Got Banned!

So What Are You Going To Do About It?

The crackdown on illegal gaming is shifting into gear lately. There was the RCMP beginning their campaign to crush illegal game piracy. And now this. I'm sure I am, like, the last one to know, but Microsoft is now bringing their own heat. In coincidence with the release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, Microsoft cracked down on its online Live service and banned somewhere around 600,000 Xbox 360s from accessing Xbox Live. And they were all, supposedly, modded. Read that story here 600,000!

If the link does not work, here is the full website. http://videogames.yahoo.com/events/plugged-in/wave-of-bans-hits-xbox-live/1372276

<--- You won't be seeing many of these babies playing online anymore.

And over 1,000,000 gamers were supposedly banned for pirated games. Read that story here. 1,000,000!

Again, here is the full link. http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gamesgear/0,39029441,49304244,00.htm

Provided the numbers feed each other, that is still one million gamers banned. A whole lot of people, obviously, and probably a sizeable chunk of Microsoft's clientele, which shows that Microsoft is very serious about this problem.

I personally support this decision to a point. I like the fact that true creativity will now be more protected from nasty pirates. But I also read in one of the above articles that supposedly innocent gamers were booted and could not get back on because Microsoft wouldn't accept their excuse. Whether those excuses were valid or not, I don't know. But Microsoft may drive some gamers off by their zero-tolerance stance.

So, what I'm basically asking is, what do you think? Are you dancing with victorious glee now that your favorite license is safer from piratical harm and that nasty cheater with the modded controller is gone? Or are you furious that Microsoft just kicked what must be a large portion of their gamers? (I believe about 1/6, as the count I found said around 6 million gamers total on the service.)