Bullet Points @ timlongo.com

A friend of mine at Crystal (Jason Botta) sent me this pretty compelling article from the New York Times about games as art, one of my favorite subjects. This post isn’t meant for me to try to do any convincing (which is ultimately a futile effort Roger Ebert), I’m preaching to the choir anyway I hope. I’m just sharing a pretty mainstream opinion on the subject. He picks on Halo 3, which I won’t turn down, but he uses it as a nice comparison to what could be.

Quote:

• “Thirty-five years after Pong, fans and critics still debate whether video games can legitimately be called art. Certainly, whatever artistic potential that games have, few, if any, have fulfilled it. Halo 3 hasn’t changed that.”

  “Games boast ever richer and more realistic graphics, but this has actually inhibited their artistic growth. The ability to convincingly render any scene or environment has seduced game designers into thinking of visual features as the essence of the gaming experience.”

Click here for the article.

The only thing that I wish he had tried harder on is to site something other than Bioshock as an example of a game that was close to getting it right. He claims the medium still lacks those early “masterpieces” that the film industry created and attempts to make the point that we are close enough to that industry that our rate of growth will be the same and thus we still have plenty of time to “grow-up.” Well, I sure hope he was speaking from an informed place by playing Shadow of the Colossus, Ico, and Okami at the very least. Then I’d trust him to be able to make claims like that. If I ever have the energy for it I’ve threatened to post about Shadow and Ico and I will support my own claims that they are, in my opinion, two of our first works of art. Image that, according to this guy we might be about 20 years ahead of film if you agree with me on that.

P.S. Leave Shakespeare out of this mister.

Continuing the category of “The Lens” in which I share some thoughts on what it is like to watch and play video games with my daughter, Lia. She is now almost five years old and we took a bit of a break with video games just because we’ve been gone and busy with other things. After a break, even though it was only a few months, there was a noticeable difference in her interest in questions regarding the game rules. This process is still proving to be very valuable and extremely fun for me to see how she reacts and evolves as a gamer. Nothing like using your own daughter as an experiment subject!

Catz DS
This is a pet simulator where she had to adopt a kitten and take care of it and raise it to good health on the Nintendo DS. She had a great time with the adoption process, naming the kitten, picking the breed and in general being introduced the the kittens available. There is a very simple mini-game that results in calculating her starting money, but she of course could care less about that. It’s funny how easy it is to pick out gameplay that is so clearly for older gamers when you see it through the eyes of someone so young. Here are some more specific bullets:

• She really wanted to adopt more than one cat.
• There was a lot of petting and touching of the kitten. The DS functionality was a hit in that way.
• It was fairly easy for her to use the stylus. Nintendo wins there too.
• She had a hard time with the concept of tapping versus scratching. She would always fall back into scratching the screen for some reason.
• She was not interested in game rules at all. The simulation aspects were all she really wanted to interact with.
• When the rules of the world aren’t clear or are abstracted she obviously had a hard time understanding what she could and could not do.
• There is a sort of inherent problem with games stepping into the simulation space but not being able to fully realize a simulated world. Because some simple simulations were present, she just assumed all the other aspects of a simulated real world were there too, and they weren’t.
• She really wants the cats to play together (only one per house though).
• Once I introduced her to the microphone feature the first thing she said to her kitten was “I love you.”
• As usual, bugs that look like slapstick are hilarious to her. The cats sometimes roll in their food bowls accidentally as a bug, but she thinks they are doing it intentionally. Good laughs there.

Animal Crossing: Wild World DS
We played a bit of AC on DS as well. A few new observations there:

• While wandering around she kept asking if we could camp. Again, as mentioned above under Catz, she assumes there is more simulations going on than there is because the game takes a tiny step into the simulations space and never really sets the limits in a strong way.
• When we were in the museum looking at the fossils, she asked if we could make the dinosaurs come back to life.
• In the DS version you can change your hairstyle. She couldn’t be more excited about that feature.
• Virtual star gazing is damn boring.

Viva Pinata 360
For those who don’t know, Viva Pinata is a pretty cute game where the player is a gardener who tries to lure living pinatas to there garden by planting certain things and building the animals houses and such. I guess the goal is to build the biggest garden with the most pinatas as possible.

• She loves to build houses for the pinatas. It is by far her biggest request.
• She is not so sure about the pinatas eating each other, which is required for some of them to become residents of the garden. Animal Crossing does a good job of not crossing this line for the younger crowd.
• The game rules are too complex and deep for her. There is a definite “achiever” layer to this game that really will only appeal to adult gamers. Which is very odd if they were trying to hit the AC crowd.
• She loves to go inside the houses and watch the animals sleeping. I think they is the main reason she likes to build the houses in the first place. This matches what she does with her playtime and her own stuffed animals.
• Growing the garden is a key feature for her. She is very interested in this out of the game world as well, so this concept for kids may have been a win for Rare (the developer).
• The catchy opening jingle and movie is resonating with her almost as much as something like the opening of Sesame Street or something similar. So good job there Rare.

In general I’m noticing more depth to her questioning, which is no surprise seeing that she is getting older and older and now that she is in school she is stimulated in new ways. If anyone knows of some other good games she may like let me know!