Do Metroids Like Tuna?

[this is when she is about to hit you]

My cat Zelda is kind of a hard-ass. She can be adorable as you please, but she's also pretty fickle and pugnacious. She plays rough.

A friend who stays at my place says to me this morning that if I was going to name my cat after a female video game character, I probably should have chosen one more heroic and less "rescue object."

"She's more like a fucking Metroid or something," he said.

He meant Samus. But he was weirdly more correct this way.

[Today's Good Song: 'Post-Acid', Wavves]

Refresh

E3 is well over, and in my Gamasutra analysis at the close of the show, I talked about what it was like to play with Kinect, among other things. In brief: Its target audience is "not us", and it'll work best for fitness games (which is what I asked EA Sports' Peter Moore about). Most importantly, after I saw "Project Natal" debut at E3 2009, I wrote an article for Kotaku highlighting how crucial I felt an object in hand is to gaming. My mind hasn't been changed.


Other thing: Nintendo finally had a great E3. Sony appeared confident. The game industry is going to get really exciting to watch over the next year or so -- both major platform holders are aiming for a mid-cycle "refresh", and we've very little visibility on how big the demand is for Move and Kinect. We also have very little visibility on how long it will take for me to stop typing "Natal."


So, what now? I sit and stare at the calendar and wait for Portal 2 and MGS: Rising to come out, I suppose. 31% of you said in the last SVGL poll that you expected that the biggest buzz out of E3 would come from a yet-unknown surprise announcement, but there were no surprises, really. Instead, the big focus was on new tech: 3D (including Nintendo's show-stopping 3DS) and motion controls.


The success of either motion control solution will depend on software and how consumers react to pricing, neither of which we can know yet. But based simply on what you saw out of E3, what're your sentiments? I've added a new poll to enable you to vote.


[Today's Good Song: 'Invisibility: Nonexistent', Kurt Vile]

E3 E3 E3 E3 E3 E3

Hi guys -- no time for updates, but hope you're sticking with me on Twitter for E3 stuff. Secondly, keep your eyes on Gamasutra's E3 page to see the coverage my colleagues and I are on about.

Who do you think 'won' the press conference war (yes, you know how much I hate this question, but let's pretend)? I feel Sony did a better showing than Microsoft, but Nintendo whupped 'em both. How about you?

Here We Go Again

Who's going to E3? I have no idea what kinda time I'll have to update while I'm out there... it's strange. Based on the kind of work I do, my schedule is usually the most packed during GDC. Since I'm a business and trend writer, I don't really do any consumer reportage like HANDS ON PREVIEWS and things like that (happy to leave it to the Destructoids and the Kotakus and the people who are great at it).

So I always go into E3 expecting not to get my ass kicked and I always do. So this year, I'm erring on the side of assuming I'll be busy or hung over all the time.

That being said, I hope to meet a lot of people out there, so if you are in the SVGL Army and you're going to be there, say hi to me and to each other. I got a lot of mails that I should have arranged a meetup of some kind, and I was so busy getting ready with scheduling and stuff for all the work we've gotta do that it never occurred to me. Maybe next year.

Anyway, I've added a new poll to see what you think the biggest deal out of next week's gonna be. Discuss and all that fun stuff!

[Today's Good Song: 'L. Mansion', Sic Alps]

Just A Little Drowsy

So, I've been trying to catch SVGL up on things that I've written but not really talked much about, and I was just going to let the Alan Wake discussion go, figuring it's too old and stuff. But I saw that Mitch Krpata talked about it kind of recently, which makes it okay by me.

His issue with Alan Wake reminds me a lot of my problem with Shadow Complex (your urgent salvation can wait while I search around for some more collectibles, dear!). But when I wrote about Alan Wake, I had a different kinda-issue with what was otherwise a pretty good game.

It may not be the 'greatest writing' of my career, but I think this article, on the attrition of Japanese survival horror in the face of Western design best practices, is maybe one of the more 'useful' things I've ever written. I'm still not especially convinced we can ever get the survival horror genre's heyday back -- if for no other reason than I've hopelessly idealized my teen gaming experiences, perma-preserved the glory of old franchises under the gloss of nostalgia, and jacked my expectations for future games beyond all meeting.

Actually, I thought Silent Hill: Shattered Memories was really good. And I think Alan Wake is pretty good. I wouldn't say I loved it; some parts of it impressed me greatly, and I didn't find it forgettable.

I did write this article recently about why it wasn't that scary, though. Read that for my whole thoughts on the game.

Okay, I was scared sometimes. But there were enough holes in it that kept it from really grabbing me. What'd you guys think?

[Today's Good Song: 'You Cried Me', Jookabox (check Rafa Toro's sweet and cute-scary vid for it, too.)]

Caution

No. I don't have Peace Walker because I am too poor to replace my PSP. I don't know when that will change. If you think this is driving me fucking batshit right now, you're right.

WITH THAT IN MIND, THE NEXT PERSON WHO ASKS ME IF I'M PLAYING IT, IF I LIKE IT, WHETHER I WILL PLAY IT WITH THEM AND WHEN I'M GOING TO WRITE ABOUT IT MAY BE SUBJECT TO DISMEMBERMENT. Stop tweeting me emailing me commenting me and Formspringing me about it.

And if you SPOIL it or talk to me about how good it is or what you're doing in it you are DEFINITELY SUBJECT TO DISMEMBERMENT.

Violations of this rule will not be cute, funny, snarky or endearing. They will make me hate you. Seriously, this state of affairs is RIDICULOUS.

THANK YOU.

Lexicon

If I had to choose one failing in my work, it'd be my tendency to choose vague language. It's certainly not the only shortcoming I'm working on, but I think I have such a relationship to the sight, taste and impression of certain words that I lose sight of the fact they might not be ideal for communicating concretely with my audience.

If that's my weakness, then I'm in the right field. In games journalism, vague words like "gameplay" and "mechanic" are commonplace, generally meaningless adjectives like "compelling" are abused to excess, and we use genre descriptors even though our genres have evolved so as to make delineations confusing at best, useless at worst.

This makes it increasingly difficult to talk about games with one another, let alone with non-gamers. When I edit my own work, I slice out entire paragraphs that portray vague sentiment, but tell readers nothing. And when I try to talk about games with my friends, I sound like a babbling idiot.

Thus, my latest Kotaku feature was born. Yeah, yeah, this is the one from like two weeks ago, but I'm getting caught up all in here, alright? If you haven't seen it yet, have a read! It's on how, as someone who purports to have built her career around ambassadorship for meaning in games, I feel I'm falling short. I also try to illustrate why it's important we all do better.

The funniest part is the commenters. Many respond to my frustration at being unable to explain games to non-gamers in a way that explains why the games are good -- by offering their own equally obtuse and inadequate explanations and presuming they suffice. The takeaway from that, for me, is that we're so entrenched in our personal relationships with games and our insular culture; we're so dependent on shorthand that's understandable to only us that we can't even see it.

[Today's Good Song: 'Chinatown', Wild Nothing]

Good Hearts

So, following the whole 'Hey Baby Game' thing, I wanted to point out that there are other much more heartening ways games are being used to shed light on social issues. I recently had the privilege of being invited to judge a unique contest: the annual "Life. Love. Game Design Contest," held by Jennifer Ann's Group.

Jennifer Ann's Group is a nonprofit organization focused on teen violence education and prevention, and each year it challenges designers of all stripes to submit games about teen dating violence -- with the caveat that the games themselves must not be violent.

The game that won, Grace's Diary, was pretty effective, and the art was just awesome (if you liked Hotel Dusk, do check it out, along with the other winners!). I really learned a lot from my experience judging, and so I did an interview with the founder of Jennifer Ann's Group, Drew Crecente (yes, brother to Brian!) on the contest and how games are uniquely suited to social issue education.

Check out the article, and please consider making a donation to this excellent cause.

[Today's Good Song: 'Over The Balcony', Quiet Loudly]

All I Wanna Do Is Take Your Money

I don't like M.I.A. Her music is okay; certainly not as exciting as she's given credit for, although I like some of it. However, I couldn't pin down why I didn't like her until I read this Times profile of her by Lynn Hirschberg. This is the best piece of writing I've read in some time, and this because of the way it impresses on me an opinion of an individual and suggests I should share it.

It's opinion writing of the best kind, and I'll admit I don't know whether the article has crystallized for me why I don't like M.I.A, or has persuaded me of reasons not to like M.I.A. Doesn't matter.

At times like this, I deeply resent the game industry (and also at times like this).

Let's pretend I was skilled enough a writer to do a piece like Hirschberg's. I couldn't in this business. Because game developers aren't vocal enough about who they are. If they have creative identities (many don't), they don't express them. But even if I could grasp at a couple people who would be nuanced enough "personalities" worth covering -- the Housers, Infinity Ward, Bobby Kotick -- there's no way in hell I could get close enough to them to do a piece like this. The PR machine wouldn't let me.

Because video games still refuse to be part of the entertainment industry in any way besides the dull commercial. Because the video game industry is still culturally irrelevant.

I feel like I've been banging on about impediments to gaming's cultural relevance my entire career. I need to take periodic breaks so that I don't become fatigued and cynical (too late, maybe). However, this article does a lovable job of summing up why it's still embarrassing to be a gamer, or to put it more kindly (since none of you are actually embarrassed), issues that are still holding the industry back.

[Today's Good Song: 'Paper Planes', M.I.A]

You Look Nice, Miss

Hokay, I'm gonna get semi-personal for a minute.

I am a young woman living in an urban area. As such, I have special considerations that men, or women living in more rural or more gentrified areas, may not. To put it succinctly, I can't walk to the train without someone catcalling me, smacking their lips at me, or blowing their car horn at me.

Even when there's no auditory cues, there are sometimes visual ones. I'm still sometimes aware in my periphery of people leering at me as I pass by. This background din is annoying; I deal with it by wearing headphones so I can't hear it, and sunglasses so that I feel safe from unwanted eye contact.

You could say this happens because I'm a good looking young woman, and I should "take it as a compliment." It's not a compliment, and it has little to do with how I look, as it happens to a lot of girls I know.

I resent that I have to take different routes home than the direct ones, to avoid the blocks where I know there are a lot of workers or neighborhood guys hanging out on the sidewalk as if the girls walking by were some kind of show for their entertainment. I resent that I can't wear a cute dress without it being perceived as an invitation for comments from strangers. I'm just trying to go jogging outdoors and people are saying things as I pass them that make me horrendously body-conscious when I just want to work out. I've sometimes chosen my clothes based on where I'm going and the sort of areas I plan to walk through on my way. That sucks.

At best, it's a little bit irritating, part and parcel of living in a big city. At worst, it makes me unsafe. I don't walk alone at night in residential areas, ever. I've had cars follow me. A comment or solicitation that's just gross and annoying yelled out of a car window on a busy street by day becomes frightening and sinister on an empty block at night. It really sucks.

Anyway, the point of all that is as a preface to something that does, in fact, have to do with gaming.

My friend Erin Robinson, who recently released the wonderful Puzzle Bots with Wadjet Eye Games (on a happy note, check it out, it's adorable!) recently visited me here in Brooklyn, and she was fairly astonished by the culture of street harassment that is so commonplace here. While we were walking to the train, she seemed surprised that I easily ignored or blocked out so many muttered comments, car horns and "hey ladies" that were aimed at us on our way; she was surprised that this was common enough to be something one just gets used to.

Actually, we'd been talking about games, of course -- she's a designer, and so she'd asked me what kind of game I would make if by some miracle I developed an interest in development. I jokingly said I'd probably come up with some kind of revenge simulator that let you shoot scumbag catcallers.

Lo and behold, somebody made one.

It's crude and it's terrible -- the person who sent it to me called it "more of a game experience and conversation catalyst than a game." But boy, does it look like my neighborhood, right down to the water towers on the rooftops and the ice cream truck jingle that's so ubiquitous around here in the summer (the season when you feel like you're making yourself vulnerable just by wearing warm-weather clothes). The things they say are pretty realistic -- and appear on the tombstones that pop up once you kill a strolling aggressor.

I think you all will find it disturbing to play. The sad thing is how I fear many guys out there will respond.

I just know that there are plenty of you reading this thinking that these male neighbors of mine are "just going about it the wrong way," and that there's a "nice way" to bother a woman walking alone or out shopping.

Plenty of people do do it "the nice way" -- they patiently and politely insist on just talking to me for a minute, or they just want to step into my path to tell me my eyes are nice. And can't I take a compliment?

To that, I say, why don't I have the right to go to my corner store and home again without feeling obligated to be friendly to strangers on the sidewalk just because the strangers are physically attracted to me? Do I owe them something? Yes, it's rather nice that the workers in my bodega all want to shake my hand and ask me all about how I'm doing and what I'm up to every time I go in in the morning, it's so good that they're friendly, but maybe I just want to buy a damn pack of cigarettes without having to explain what I'm all dressed up for.

Maybe I don't like that I have to walk several blocks to a faraway store for feminine products or other personal things because I don't feel comfortable asking my "friends" to get them for me from where they're kept behind the counter.

The worst is so many guys on the street are jerks that I often feel like I have to force a smile and a polite attitude for people who are "just paying me a compliment" or are being nice about it. Over time, little incidents like that -- when I indulge conversation with men because they're "just trying to be nice" even though I don't feel like talking, or when I smile when I don't really want to smile -- start to make me feel as personally violated as the harsher transgressions that are easier to ignore.

No, wait, here's the worst. The worst is that there are entire demographics of people out there who would dismiss my complaints -- oh, poor you, you get attention because people think you're pretty, they say. Again, I don't think this has anything to do with how I look (although I had a friend tell me recently she fantasizes about disfiguring herself so that she never has to worry about this happening), because it's not like I'm a model or something.

It's latent misogyny that happens in big cities; it takes my power away. It makes me an object in front of people I don't even know, and that's not okay whether they're nice about it or not. It is nothing less than a slow-burning chronic trauma.

My favorite catcall in the 'Hey Baby Game'? "Smile for me, baby." It fills me with rage that a stranger on the street feels at liberty to demand that I smile. I smile when I feel like it, and I sure as shit don't want to do it for you, buddy.

So someone's made a game that's an outlet for that rage, that wants us to discuss that rage. Discuss. And be civil -- do not make me close the comments, please.

(Yeah, I didn't even want to really go here, but a couple of commenters on RPS need a little bit of education on what sexism is.)

[UPDATE: From Gillen. Excerpt: "If you’re a man, and you’ve acted like this, the woman you do it to, beneath the polite smile she has to offer, has probably fantasised about you dying." Thank you very much.]

PSP-Tan

SVGL's newest layout features PSP-Tan. As you might know, I pretty much love console-tans. Why PSP-tan? Well, because she's so cute. She's like the little girl in school trying to figure out who she is. Gotta give Sony credit for trying, of course -- I recently did an interview with hardware marketing manager John Koller on that new $9.99 PSP game program.

You've heard about it? They'll offer a collection of PSP-3000 games -- both first and third-party -- for $9.99 each as a way of targeting younger consumers. 2K has decided to help out by offering Manhunt 2. Seriously! Well, no, that's not true. The second reason they've priced them so low is to discourage piracy, which Sony maintains is one of the main things killing the platform. The thinking is someone would rather pay ten bucks than go through the trouble of stealing them.

I don't actually have a PSP right now. But naturally that's going to change in a little bit -- GUESS WHY?!

Bonus Material: The PSP-tan header image is available as an adorable wallpaper here.

[Today's Good Song: '57821', Janelle Monae & Deep Cotton]

Twitterpated

You've heard people say it a million times -- you know, the whole, "well, I'm busy with my real adult life now, so I don't have time for full-length, immersive games; I need things that are deep in brief sessions, I want to be able to jump in and jump out via social media," yak yak yak.

I don't feel that way about video games -- if I can't get hooked into a "worth hours and hours of my time" experience, I don't really bother, with a few exceptions. I do, however, feel that way about blogging. SVGL's never been my job (actually, it kinda worries me when people I meet don't know that) -- rather, it's been primarily a way to communicate with you guys (yes, you!) , or a way to jot down less formal thoughts that weren't fitting into my "work"per se.

But now I've got Twitter and Formspring, and I'm having conversations with you guys all day every day on games, so it's hard to get motivated to write blog posts, especially when I have so much going on in my work life and personal life. Social media's changed the way we use the internet, and I'm no exception.

But that doesn't mean SVGL's not my first and best home, and still massively important to me. I'll be trying to catch us up over the next few days -- have an awful lot to show and share with you! Meanwhile, I encourage you to follow SVGL's little world via social channels if you need hold-overs between blog posts. Yeah?

Speaking of social media, here's a boring article I wrote about the changing landscape around virtual currency. You probably don't care about this stuff, but some people do.

[Today's Good Song: 'Clips', Ava Luna]