The laurels of victory

Whether it's a Pinewood Derby “Participant” trophy, an oversized novelty check, or a  towering  gem-studded throne wrought from the very bones of your slaughtered enemies, everyone enjoys having something to commemorate their achievements and successes. I myself take great pride – or would if I could figure out where I've gort it stored- in the mug I won in a Star Trek trivia contest because I AND I ALONE knew the names of both of Worf's brothers.

(Nobody ever remembers Nikolai Rozhenko, poor Next Generation 7th season filler episode bastard. He's the Marlon Jackson of the 24th century.)

However, in the aftermath of the recent cracking and exposure of the Playstation 3's root key, there are now reports that someone has created a program allowing the user to claim the PlayStation Trophies for some PS3 games without actually playing them. This is a very small problem in the greater scheme of things, but it still irritates me. I earned my Battlefield: Bad Company trophy for shooting down an enemy helicopter with the JDAM laser designator, dammit. Earned it with my own blood and sweat and freakish good luck when I'd run out of rockets to fire at the damn thing and had decided to just screw around while I waited for it to kill me. I'd hate to see that cheapened.

Still, if you've always longed for a taste of the sort of glory and admiration that has been hitherto enjoyed only by the elite few who actually have the skill and dedication to seize Army of Two: The 40th Day's coveted “win three consecutive rounds of rock-paper-scissors” trophy, I suppose this is your chance.

Study published on human rights in video games, Solid Snake scheduled to testify at interminable length before UN General Assembly

Here's a rather odd story: two Swiss organizations, children's right's group Pro Juventute and an international criminal justice organization called TRIAL have released a study on portrayal of war crimes and human rights violations in various games, including Army of Two, Battlefield: Bad Company, Metal Gear Solid 4, and Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare. You can read the report here (PDF).

The people doing the study are clearly hampered by their limited understanding of both gaming in general and the particular games being examined, but I actually think this is an intriguing idea. It could be quite interesting to see more games where things like rules of engagement, international law, the effects of collateral damage, and so on play a prominent role in how the game is played. Among other things, it might provide the opportunity for all sorts of interesting player dilemmas; more interesting than the usual "saint or sociopath" decisions that games promising "moral choices" have usually offered, at any rate.

That said, I just hope that the mainstream media doesn't take an interest in how video games handle issues like international law and war crimes, given how it usually deals with alleged links between games and violence. Attributing every violent crime committed by a minor to the possibility that he may at some point have been within the same county as a copy of Grand Theft Auto is bad enough. I don't want to open the paper and see the headline:

Rogue Russian general launches nuclear strike on United States
30 million dead in bloodiest day in human history; General Ivan Vasiliev reputed to be fanatical Russian nationalist, Civilization IV player

That would probably be bad for the industry.

A chilling vision of things to come

In my intro post to this blog, I promised/threatened that I would occasionally include some actual serious commentary on video games to balance out the pointlessly obscure references, sniggering 3rd-grade humor, cruel mockery, and outright lying that usually fill this space.

To that end, I’ll be doing a series of occasional posts on games I’ve recently completed. I don’t expect them to be systematic or objective enough to be considered “reviews” in any proper sense; it’ll just be whatever thoughts about the game come to mind. So, when I do a post on Battlefield: Bad Company and interrupt my discussion of the various multiplayer modes to go on an 8,000 word rant about how the four soldiers who serve as the protagonists in the single player campaign are consistently referred to as a “squad” even though in the U.S. Army the four-man unit portrayed in the game is more properly called a “fireteam” and a squad is actually comprised of two such fireteams and seeing the terminology wrong just makes me SO INCREDIBLY ANGRY, don’t say you weren’t warned..

I have a bit of a backlog of older games I still want to play, and I’m generally not in a huge hurry to get games as soon as they come out unless there’s some sort of really cool preorder incentive (e.g. many of Atlus’ games) or I’m worried about having trouble finding a copy later (again, Atlus). So, when I start talking about this cool game I just beat called Keith Courage in Alpha Zones and post my treatise on what it might mean for the future of the Turbografx-16… Well, again, you knew what you were getting into.

My first post in this vein will be about Shin Megami Tensei: Persona 4 from Atlus. Gird your loins while you still can.