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When Namco Bandai voiced their intentions to go in "guns blazing" and handle the upcoming sequel to their niche cult-hit as a "massive, massive" AAA release last week, it immediately put many of Demon's / Dark Souls fans like myself on notice in regards to its future. The escalating potential of the Dark Souls series ultimately succumbing to a similar fate as that of Resident Evil, Dead Space, and all the other misguided, bloated and grossly compromised AAA failures released over the last few years has become quite disconcerting for a good chunk of its modestly-sized yet fiercely dedicated fanbase.

In a recent post, Jim Sterling of The Escapist puts the legitimate fears of the game's fans and the broken mentality of AAA publishers into perspective quite well: click here for the video link.

There's not really much that I can add that wasn't pretty much covered in the vid. All I can say is that despite my mild amount of forced optimism, it's getting harder and harder to not see the writing on the wall. A part of me always knew the respectable success enjoyed by the series up to this point was like blood in the water, attracting industry sharks who would inevitably seek to devour everything that made these games what they were.. all for the faint chance of being the next mainstream approved clone of the current western-developed cashcows. 

Aside from their growing number of overhyped failures, there is one thing that I can say AAA publishers have consistently succeeded at these days: making it loud and clear to any niche title's fanbase that their loyal patronage will simply never be enough. They've firmly established that it's just more important to them to risk everything in an effort to appeal to larger audiences that'll never actually give a sh*t about their games, than it is maintaining the fixed audience that actually does. To them, why settle on the revenue their franchises can realistically produce, when they can shoot for a grander piece of the pie they can never truly have outside of their own personal delusions?

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"A Fitting is a Kinect-based art installation that explores the relationship between cultural and personal expectations of body image. The game is an interactive theatrical performance where the player takes the role of a young woman in front of a large mirror, with an audience watching her in its reflection. The audience and the game itself prompts the player to twist, contort and bend his/her body in order to progress. Doing so receives approval from the audience and game, but at the cost of the players discomfort."

Source:

http://www.adittami.com/projects/a-fitting

I came across this while reading an article submitted by the two women who are working on the project on e-feminist.com. The point of the project is to minimize the effect of image conciousness and objectification in popular media, including video games, on girls. 

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Case- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811119160

Harddrive- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822236244

Monitor- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16824236288

Graphics Card- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814121656

Power Supply- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817153106

RAM- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820231595

Motherboard- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131837

Processor- http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116504

Feel Free to run me through the gauntlet.. I'm hoping for this to go without any problems. Thanks.

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I'm determined not to upgrade until I've figured out just what PC hardware is needed to decently run next generation console ports. For now, I'll stick with the below:

Zotac GTX 275, 896 MB

Intel Core 2 Duo 8400 @ 3.6 GHz

4 GB DDR2-800 RAM

320 GB WD Internal HD SATA (with Windows XP Pro SP3)

320 GB WD Internal HD EIDE (with Windows Vista Enterprise)

2 TB Samsung Internal HD SATA

500 GB Seagate External HD

Logitech Dual Action controller

Xbox 360 controller

Madcatz Street Fighter IV Fightpad

hp w1907 19" monitor

Sharp Aquos 32" TV

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First of all, I want to thank Krystal for the respectful response to my piece, and for not tolerating comments in the blog from those who are more interested in directing personal attacks my way than in having a civil, open-minded conversation about this.

As for the nitty-gritty of my response, I want to start with something Krystal says at the end of her blog. "In no way would I ever defend it if I shared Carolyn's sentiments and thought that the game was even remotely disrespectful and offensive." That sounds like a reasonable position, but it's not really one I feel like I can afford to take if I want to be able to enjoy most video games, or even lots of movies and television. If I demanded moral perfection of the games I play, well, that would have prevented me from playing a great many of the games I love. Generally speaking, I think games could be so, so much better with regard to their treatment of women, cultural minorities, and LGBT people. But because I love games as much as I do, I'd much rather engage with games in these areas, thinking about and writing about the ways they could be better, than just throw my arms up in frustration and walk away. This is certainly the case with Persona 4. If you look through the comments on my feature, I think you'll see that a lot of people were clearly upset simply because I was criticizing Persona 4, a game that they hold dear. But here's the thing: I love it, too. I mean, I really love this game. I think it's one of the best games I've ever played. Even so, I'm not going to give it a free pass. I don't know if you've watched the first part of Feminist Frequency's Tropes vs. Women in Video Games series, but as the great Alyssa Rosenberg writes here:

"At the beginning of the video, Sarkeesian, explaining that This series will include critical analysis of many beloved games and characters, says something that everyone who loves a piece of culture ought to be required to recite five times every morning while looking in the mirror: Remember that its both possible and even necessary to simultaneously enjoy media while being critical of its more problematic or pernicious aspects. If that ability to hold two ideas in your head at the same time, to enjoy something while recognizing that it might have problems, is what the people who tried to harass Sarkeesian into silence are so afraid of, it only reinforces how intellectually cowardly and inept they are. The need for something to be immune from criticism isnt a sign that its perfect and everyone else is wrong: its a sign you cant defend the things you love. Thats a position any self-aware person ought to be embarrassed to defend."

I agree with this, that we need to be able to look at the things we admire and enjoy and accept that not all of them are  entirely above reproach. I can simultaneously adore Persona 4 (and I do) and feel that in certain ways, it could have been better. Krystal also states near the end of her response, "I don't think it was Atlus' intention to mock or shame homosexuals and transgender people." Well, maybe they did and maybe they didn't. This is beside the point. A work--be it a game, novel, film or what have you--can have meanings and messages that its creators did not intend it to have. Many feel that Kathryn Bigelow's film Zero Dark Thirty endorses torture. (This is not a view I share, but it works here as an example.) People who see this message in the film see it there regardless of Bigelow's assertions that the film does not endorse torture. Once a work of art is completed and is sent out into the world for the public to view and to contemplate, the artist(s) relinquish control over it. They cannot control how it will be interpreted by others, what meanings or values those who experience it might find within it.

Nothing makes you a better person quite like taking on the Aiya Rainy Day Mega Beef Bowl Challenge!

Similarly, I don't think it's especially relevant that, as Krystal says, "Japan's views of gender identity and sexuality are probably much different than they are in the US." That's certainly true, but I don't give what I see as problematic aspects of a game a pass simply because they come from another culture. If I feel a game or movie or TV show is sexist, for instance, I think that sexism is worth criticizing, regardless of where it comes from. "That's just how it is over there" is not, in my view, an excuse. Krystal goes on to say, "Couple that with the fact that video game stories still have a lot of growing to do as a whole." I certainly agree with that. It's because I feel so strongly that they can be better and because I want them to be better that I write things like this in the first place.

So, okay, let's talk about Kanji. With regard to my criticisms of Kanji's storyline, Krystal brings up the dungeons of other characters, saying, "the characters' personalities and actions do not PERFECTLY match with the personalities of their shadow selves." She gives a few examples to support this. 

"It's actually said in the game that the shadows are only one facet of the characters personality. Also, the shadows and the dungeons are very extreme manifestations of the characters' deepest troubles and fears. 

For example, Rise's strip club dungeon was the result of people not seeing the real her. Rise constantly had to be everyone's charming, cute, and most of all, perfect idol for the camera. Fed up with this fake personality she was forced to show, she left show business and went to live a normal life. But of course everyone still approached her, wanting to meet Rise the media darling, not the real her. Therefore, the whole "I'm going to strip and bare it all" was a very extreme way of saying she wanted to shed her generic idol shell and show the world the real her.

Yukiko's dungeon was a castle; her shadow wore princess' clothing, and constantly spoke of "scoring a hot stud." Her shadow, once provoked, manifested as a bird in a cage who summoned a prince to fight for her. This represented Yukiko's feelings of being trapped in a life she didn't want to pursue."

Krystal provides additional examples. too, before saying, "these are extreme and exaggerated manifestations." My feeling is that, yes, most characters' shadow worlds and shadow selves represent exaggerations of one aspect of the character's inner life, but that in Kanji's case, what we get is not an exaggeration, but a contradiction. I did not want or expect the real Kanji to be an uncontrollably lustful gay man like his repressed shadow self. Instead, I hoped that the dungeon would resolve itself with him facing his sexuality and folding it into his larger personality in a way that was healthy and socially acceptable, as others did with the aspects of their personalities embodied by their shadow selves.

We sure made a lot of happy memories together.

And now, Naoto. Krystal says that, In the west, we refer to (people like Naoto) as tomboys. But this isn't true. Naoto isn't a tomboy. Naoto has lived most of his life as a boy. Not only does he not correct others when they refer to him with male pronouns; he clearly has gone to a great deal of effort to encourage and support this perception. If Naoto were a real person at a real high school, this would mean doing things like using the boys' restroom, for instance. For someone like Naoto to be accepted as male for years and years of life would take tremendous effort and carry with it a certain amount of danger; this is not something that tomboys engage in.

Krystal says, "Also, Naoto's reason for wanting to craft herself as the hard-boiled detective did not only stem from her attachment to fictional characters. She is descended from a line of famous detectives and she intends to continue the tradition." As I said in my original feature, the idea of someone living in a gender other than the one they are assigned at birth because they hope to pursue a particular profession does not ring psychologically true. I have never heard of a young girl living as a boy for many years of her life, for instance, not because she truly identified as a boy but because she wanted to be a police officer when she grew up and thought that the male gender was more fitting for being a cop. Nor have I ever heard of a boy who lived as a girl not because he didn't identify as a boy but simply because he wanted to be a nurse when he grew up and all of his nursing role models were women. 

Some may say, "So what if it's unrealistic? You're talking about a game in which a bunch of high school students pass through television sets and save the world by fighting monsters on the other side." Well, I'd say that the one area in which Persona 4 does need to be believable is in the psychology of its characters. What really makes the game special, ultimately, isn't its battle system or its dungeons or any of those traditional RPG trappings. It's the richness and complexity of its characters and the ways in which they connect and relate to each other. If those characters start behaving in ways that we find inconsistent or false, it takes us out of our investment in their relationships with each other.

So, yes, I UNDERSTAND that, within the game, we're meant to buy that Naoto is a tomboy, that, as Krystal said, his "true intentions were to become a splendid and ideal detective, not a man." I'm simply saying that, given Naoto's behavior in life up to the point where he becomes involved in the story, living as a boy, being known as the detective prince, and so on, and given what we see in his shadow world, I don't personally buy the idea of Naoto as a tomboy. To me, it would have been much more believable and consistent with these things if Naoto were transgender.

The quaint and lovely town of Inaba. If you haven't visited it yet, you really should.

Finally, a word on why this matters so much to me. A thought experiment, if you will, and one that I hope you will take seriously and participate in with an open mind. 

Imagine that you live in a world where a group that you identify with is frequently marginalized and discriminated against. Let's call this group straight people. Now, straight people have made some progress in recent years. In some states, they have the right to get married, and there are an increasing number of straight role models in the media; famous writers, TV hosts, and so on. But in your beloved video games, straight people are all but nonexistent. Never the heroes. Only very rarely do straight people like you even show up as supporting characters. It's practically unheard of. 

Then, along comes this amazing role-playing game called Persona 4, with a rich cast of psychologically complex characters. You venture into a land that reflects one character's mind, and what you find there is a facet of that character expressing heterosexual desire. Wow! Understandably he has repressed it, you think, because straight people are often not treated very well in society, but there it is, a true part of him, yearning to get out. 

When you finally complete his dungeon, though, the game tells a different tale; he doesn't actually like girls, you see. It's just that he was so afraid of boys, because they'd been mean to him in the past. You thought you were finally about to see a well-developed straight character in a game, but alas, no. The game veers away from that possibility, and goes down a different road. 

Ultimately, the game does this not just once, but twice! 

In a world with so few straight characters in games, it's hard not to see Persona 4 twice come near the brink of giving us a straight character, and both times backing away, as really, really disappointing, especially since so many things about the game are so wonderful. To have a game come close to giving us straight characters and then in both cases run away from that, especially in a world where there are almost no straight characters in other games, sends a message about straight identities, whether the developers intended it to or not.

Maybe you can put yourself in that position via your imagination and maybe you can't. I've received a number of kind messages from LGBT readers telling me that they felt similarly about the message the game was sending and thanking me for the piece, though, and that is good enough for me.

Anyway, I'm gonna give the last word here to Yosuke. This is an idea that's at the heart of the game, and I think it's something that all of us, women and men, gay and straight, trans and cis, should strive to do.

Sounds good to me, Yosuke. Thanks for all the good times.

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I certainly enjoyed mine. My kids got a Wii U from Santa and they love. Real good, family fun!

So what are the biggest games everyone is anticipating the release of this 2013???

My games are:

Rome: Total War

Sim City

The Elder Scrolls Online (Don't think it's happening this year, but that's what is said)

Dark Souls II

ArmA III

Europa Universalis IV

MechWarrior Tactics

Neverwinter

Star Wars 1313

Shadowrun Returns

Shadowrun Online

and finally all Nintendo 1st Party Titles.....Metroid, Zelda etc. that may or may not be coming this year. I'm an older guy (for gaming / closer to 40 than 30) and these games take me back to my youth!

Quite the list!! I have high hopes for these titles. Here's looking at a great gaming year!

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As far as I'm concerned, there is no way that I can erase my account. Unfortunate, but fine. I'll always cherish all of the friends that I have made on Gamespot over the years, and wish you all the best. I leave you all with one of my favorite quotes,

"The great moments of your life won't necessarily be the things you do, they'll also be the things that happen to you. Now, I'm not saying you can't take action to affect the outcome of your life, you have to take action, and you will. But never forget that on any day, you can step out the front door and your whole life can change forever. You see, the universe has a plan kids, and that plan is always in motion. A butterfly flaps its wings, and it starts to rain. It's a scary thought but it's also kind of wonderful. All these little parts of the machine constantly working, making sure that you end up exactly where you're supposed to be, exactly when you're supposed to be there. The right place at the right time." - Ted (How I Met Your Mother)

God bless, and lead extraordinary lives!

-Daniel

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-Recently bought a PS3 (got fed up with all the broken 360s)

-Just finished Uncharted this morning (amazing game)

-Interned this summer in SLC

-Getting ready to start my 5th year at Georgia Tech

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Finally, I mustered up my courage and decided to give it a shot. So, on May 27, 2006, I posted my very first video blog on GameSpot. The result? A nervous little man talking about the Surrounding Force union (remember unions?), thoughts about Guitar Hero (the first one), Tournament TV (remember that?), my clan in Unreal Tournament 2004 (best online multiplayer shooter of all time) and the WWE. It still boggles my mind that the video got 587 views, especially with such bad video quality.

Nonetheless, here it is in all it's glory (or lack thereof).

[ Watch Video ]

Join me tomorrow for part 3, where I take a look at the videos that got the most views here on GameSpot.

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For me, it is lack of content interesting to me. I don't really need to keep up on the latest gaming news. I have twitter and RSS feeds for that. I still like to track my collection here, but it is very manual. Sites like 360voice and GamerDNA do a better job of auto-collecting stats and games I play. The forums seem dead as well. For me, I just haven't had the energy to put into the site like I used to.

How about my friends or random followers? Is this site still hopping and I'm missing the point? Are you finding what you need here, or going elsewhere for content? Looking for answers.

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Best Action-Adventure Game: Star Wars: 1313 (PC)
Best Shooter: Crysis 3 (PC, PS3, 360)
Best Platforming Game: Deadlight (360)
Best Fighting Game: PlayStation All-Stars: Battle Royale (PS3, PS Vita)
Best MMO: Defiance (PC, PS3, 360)
Best Strategy Game: Company of Heroes 2 (PC)
Best Racing Game: Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed (PC, PS3, 360, Wii U, PS Vita, 3DS)
Best Role-Playing Game: South Park: The Stick of Truth (PC, PS3, 360)
Best Free-to-Play Game: PlanetSide 2 (PC)
Best Family Game: LEGO The Lord of the Rings (PC, PS3, 360, Wii, PS Vita, 3DS, DS)
Best New IP: Sacrilegium (PC)
Most Innovative: Unreal Engine 4
Biggest Surprise: Watch Dogs (PC)
Biggest Disappointment: Wii U
Game of the Show: Watch Dogs (PC)

Feel free to voice your opinion here or at OCC.

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Category: Travel

So, my trip overseas went well. We based ourselves in Mae Sot, Thailand, but also got to stay overnight in both Umpiem Mai and Nu Po refugee camps. We were very impressed with the people and their unwavering spirit - even under the most dire of circumstances. Our charity went over there with a specific purpose but we came away wanting to do more. However, events today have put into jeopardy my charity and Im now looking at what else I can do to help. I may have to step up to the mantle - we'll see. Within a week or so Ill start posting some images online, and Ill link to them.

So anyway - my first ever charity mission overseas went really well and its put me in the mood for much, much more.

Cheers,

Saga.

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