• 15Apr 13

  The logic of female heroes in games

  So, recently the CEO of Epic games said that there wouldn't be a Gears of War game centred around a female hero, for various reasons. He cited the increased polygon count of the female form versus the male. That's a may be, I don't have the .src for Gears of War, but so long as the game engine can handle it I believe it makes sense to have a female hero. Ok,  so before we go any further let's deal with the elephant in the room, SEX. Sex is a big issue in the US, and how developers use it, most people would rather they didn't, can cause issues for the corporation. So long as the software doesn't step outside certain boundaries, as soon as the game is released and players see the content, those disappear. In the risk averse corporate environment, fears over depicting sexuality kills a great many games. Have we covered sex sufficiently? I hope so, because we're moving on. Female heroes have two benefits over male heroes, one women relate to them more readily, and second, males also are affected by having a female character. It varies with age of course, but with a female hero, a male will likely experience desire to protect her.

  • Posted Apr 15, 2013 7:12 pm GMT
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• 24Jan 13

  Valve, friend of Linux or foe?

  Unless you've been living in a cave, you've heard about the Steam box. The miraculous tablet sized, ok, more like a bag of coffee sized device that will be as powerful as the most powerful gaming rig of the most elite of PC Elitists in their most ivory of towers, and it will be completely modular, allowing it to keep pace with technological developments. If you've heard about the Steam box, chances are you've also heard it will run Linux, the open source operating system based on UNIX, and developed initially by Linus Torvalds. Until now Linux has only occupied a sliver of the desktop PC market, un-noticed by most consumers. Valve claims they decided to opt for Linux because of changes in policy at Microsoft. Whatever the fact is, a desktop computer built specifically to run Linux by default and sold to the public means more exposure for the OS. Is it time to uncork the champagne and drink a toast to the rise of Linux? Maybe not, there are many unanswered questions and cause for concern. Transitioning to Linux is not the easiest thing for a Windows user to do. Linux has an entirely different file system from windows. Then there is the terminal, Windows long ago did away with the need to invoke a terminal and use text commands, Linux still makes regular use of the terminal and text commands. A recent article from CVG confirmed what I'd already guessed, that Valve would make their own Linux distribution. Granted, the article was probably not written by a Linux user and details might have been lost in translation, but it makes some sense. Developing their own Linux distribution kills two metaphorical birds with one stone, it can be made simple enough for windows users to easily transition to, and it will sort one of the biggest issues with Linux from the corporate standpoint. Linux is open source, which means any user can ask for and has a right to the source code for any program they run, for individual users this is a very good thing, but to corporate users open source sounds like, zero copyright protection. That is to the corporate user a very bad thing, it screams zero profits. If Valve develops their own distro they can make it closed source and proprietary, rather than being bound by GNU or Open Source agreements. Valve would also be free to develop their own proprietary version of the Wine software, using the original package as a base, taking advantage of Open Source for corporate ends. Developing a Linux box with standardized hardware sorts a major stumbling block for Linux development, no longer would every implementation be unique, and that would be good for developers, but the uniqueness of each Linux box is part of what makes Linux special, it can be installed and run on a system with as little as 64 Mb of RAM, when Windows demands 2GiB at minimum just for the OS. For Valve, developing Linux is not completely a win win, there will have to be deals made and developers convinced and coders hired to make it all work, and that will take time and money. If it cuts the heart out of the Linux community, is the increased exposure of Linux worth the price? Linux could end up becoming in essence a Valve production par with Windows or Apple's Macintosh OS.

  • Posted Jan 24, 2013 1:14 pm GMT
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• 28Dec 12

  my Top Ten games of 2012 (Xbox 360)

  10: Saints Row the Third. Saints Row the Third is all about excess, anything the developers could stuff onto a disk, they did. If you've ever wanted to do it, you can do it in saints Row the third. Sadly, that's all there is here, once you get past the crazy there's not much else.

  9: XCOM: Enemy unknown. The game's main appeal is nostalgia, after that it has personalisation, after that it doesn't have much to offer.

  8: Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier. If you've played it, you understand. If you haven't played it, borrow it, or rent it.

  7: Borderands 2. A game you can pick up as an impulse purchase, and not be upset with. Unfortunately it does require a steady diet of DLC to keep it fresh for a long period.

  6: Far Cry 3.

  5: Mass Effect 3. Viewed on its own the game is full of flaws. When we look at it as part of a series, it comes out looking pretty good. It should have been a better game in its own right, but it wasn't. So it gets knocked down to average.

  4: Assassin's Creed 3. Who doesn't like being Captain of their own 18th Century sailing vessel?

  3: Dragon's Dogma. Good combat, and it manages to avoid "OP Mage syndrome." Too often in medieval RPG's the only truly viable class is the Mage. The rest are in the long run, pointless. If only it wasn't so repetitive, the menus ponderous, and the animations lackluster.

  2: The Witcher 2 Assassins of Kings. The biggest problem with this game is how massively long it takes to do almost anything, this is a game you have to start on Friday evening so that you can finish on Monday morning. Apart from that the game is very good.

  1: Spec Ops: The Line. Some mechanical glitches and limited replay value aside the game is 2012's Dead Space 2, a game that will stay with you for a while, it makes a lasting impression and not many games can do that.

  • Posted Dec 28, 2012 5:29 pm GMT
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