And I had no idea what I was getting myself into at the time.

Looking back, the timing of founding Meat Bun, our video game-themed t-shirt line, makes sense. It started in Tokyo, following an afternoon pounding the pavement in Harajuku, a fashionable slice of Tokyo nestled between Shinjuku and Shibuya. The area attracts the fashion conscious, from outlandish cosplayers to street fashion freaks.

Harajuku is also home to one of our biggest influences, Beams T, a Japanese label that somehow manages to make the stereotypically uncool—including video games, anime and manga—cool. It was after shopping at Beams T, where I purchased an Every Extend Extra t-shirt, lamenting that we'd missed out the label's Dragon Quest anniversary line of tees and bemoaning the fact that shirts from The King of Games were hard to get in the U.S. that the idea of making our own clothes, video game-themed ones, started to gel.

It was just days before the Tokyo Game Show. Wedged between the t-shirt shopping and the promise of playing dozens of unreleased video games, the whole thing seemed like a good idea.

Our goal? To tap into the hard to define culture of video games, a medium which we had been passionate about for decades, and create something that was better than what we were being offered. And we weren't the only ones with that idea. Similarly passionate video game fans, those raised on 8- and 16-bit games were doing the same thing, like the people behind Panic, J!NX, Attract Mode, Starmen.net and its spin-off Fangamer and many others.

So, after foolishly deciding on the name Meat Bun—inspired by a life-giving pick up from Capcom's unpopular side-scrolling arcade beat 'em up Warriors of Fate—we set off to clothe gamers.

My partner in clothing is Scott Spatola, a lifelong gamer who originally introduced himself to me after learning that I'd brought a SNES and a copy of Street Fighter II to college, against my parents wishes. The aforementioned arm-twister, Scott has always been the motivator, a rabid fan of Spy Hunter, Ninja Warriors and Darkstalkers, and the other half of this full-time-feeling side project dubbed Meat Bun.

It always helps to have a friend like Scott, one who's organized enough to undertake the business side of the business—setting up the bank accounts, applying for federal tax IDs, legally incorporating the company. There are just shy of a million little things that crop up in the process of starting to run one's own business, from the minor—like running out of envelopes with 200 orders waiting to be fulfilled—to scary legal threats. What seems like a fun little lark isn't often as easy as originally planned.

"I always said that if anyone ever asked, I'd tell them that starting your own business is F-ing hard, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise," says Sean "Jinx" Gailey, the creative overlord at clothier and accessory maker J!NX. "Real blood, sweat and tears (also real) have gone into this business."

But J!NX has turned those hard-lost fluids into a successful brand and, perhaps more importantly, a full-time gig for its founders.

"Frankly, the biggest challenge was getting over the 'hump,' making that transition from working your day job to solely working on your own business," Gailey says. "Anyone who's working on their own business can relate to that. We didn't take a paycheck from J!NX for 5 years of business, during the 'this is our side business' days. That was rough."

J!NX has been in business since 1999, when Gailey started the company "as a three page website with six designs" running the label from his bedroom. We met Gailey at last year's Spike TV Video Game Awards, bending his ear about the J!NX empire, which, while different from what we had set out to do with Meat Bun, reflected a similar passion for video games and general nerdiness, coated with a cooler shell.

"I wanted to make clothing inspired by our lifestyle, one of video games, pen and paper gaming, geek culture, giant robots, comics and dragons," Gailey says of the origins of J!NX. The clothing company has grown from a bedroom doubling as headquarters to an operation employing 21 people, occupying 18,000 square feet of office and warehouse space and making merchandise for hugely popular games like World of Warcraft, Dungeons & Dragons, StarCraft, Aion and EVE Online.

And while not quite understated, for the most part, what J!NX does is offer something to the fan of, say, World of Warcraft that's designed with more of a wink and a nod.

From the barely referential designs from Katamari Damacy and Noby Noby Boy t-shirt maker Panic to the Earthbound obsessed crew at Fangamer—borne of Starmen.net—the subtle approach appears to be a common tactic. For our own part, ultra vague references to The House of the Dead, Ikaruga and Spy Hunter, seemed sometimes lost on the Meat Bun customer.

Reid Young of Fangamer says his company draws much of its inspiration from the Super Nintendo's role-playing game heyday for its similarly obscure designs.

"EarthBound and other SNES RPG's have definitely been our main inspiration," Young says, a fact reflected in the clothing label's EarthBound-heavy catalog. "1996 was pretty much the best summer ever — Chrono Trigger, EarthBound, and Super Mario RPG from morning to midnight. It's fun to relive those days and, hopefully, inspire new and old fans to do the same."

While the Fangamer store—"Something we hoped would bring in enough money to keep the lights on" over at Fangamer's community-driven side—is now the "main business focus," according to Young, employing three full-time Starmen.net veterans, running a clothing and merchandise label exceeded the EarthBound fan's expectations.

"I never anticipated the amount of work which goes into a single piece of merchandise," says Young. "It sounds easy to slap a design on a shirt, but the amount of time, money, and care that goes into the process is staggering."

Fan response, Young says, makes the grind of shipping thousands of Mother 3-inspired handbooks and t-shirts all worth it.

"Releasing a product, going to sleep, and waking up to find that everybody is as pumped about it as I am. It brings a little tear to my eye," he says.

That may be the most exhilarating part of trying to appeal to a gamer's fashion sense, finding something that people will buy and wear in public, unafraid to wear their love of video games on their sleeve, sometimes literally.

One person who's taking a different approach to the sometimes hazy cloud of "culture" that surrounds video games is Adam Robezzoli, founder of "video game culture shop" Attract Mode. It's an endeavor four years in the planning, one that includes fashion, art, print magazines and more.

Attract Mode's online store opened earlier this year, an effort that allows Robezzoli to "curate and produce unique art/goods related to video games, but also a way to fund pet projects like the artxgame collabs and the DATA BEEZ chip music concert." It also sells t-shirts, giving gamers more wearable options.

The online store offers a broader set of merchandise, however, from video game inspired t-shirts to zines from writer Matt "Fort90" Hawkins to Pac-Man oven mitts to CDs from chiptunes superstars YMCK, Anamanaguchi, Covox, et al.

Personally, when we started doing our own thing with Meat Bun, it was simply an extension of our gaming-related lives, much like what the founders of J!NX, Fangamer, Attract Mode and others have done—turned their passions into something tangible. And, yes, it's sometimes F-ing hard. But you have to wear something, right?

No, actually, I'm not. I've been playing Demon's Souls — a game even its developer admits isn't "a fun game." The action-adventure game casts you as a hero confronting where progress is hard-won, recovery supplies are limited and equipment can wear out. The twist is that when players die, they return as phantoms to navigate the same environments in a weakened state in the hopes of earning their bodies back — that's right, the game actually gets more challenging the more you fail.

And yet I love it.

I can't stop playing, and I can't really figure out why. Aren't games supposed to be accessible, and isn't frustration supposed to be a killjoy? What's the allure in this difficult game?

Expanded audiences and accessibility are major watchwords in the present era of gaming. Microsoft Game Studios' Bruce Philips recently unveiled research at Gamasutra showing that even among Xbox 360 games where completion rates are highest, most users only get about half the potential Gamerscore. And 30 percent of users don't finish some of the most popular and widely-played titles Philips studied. His theory – and that of numerous other designers crafting games designed to be appealing to wider audiences – is that frustration is what makes players give up.

But even though I'm definitely frustrated with Demon's Souls at times, I'd say I'm even more driven to succeed and to conquer than I've been in a long time. What gives?

"I do not think that games must be accessible to be appealing," Demon's Souls producer Takeshi Kajii told me in an interview. "If you make a game accessible it will expand the audience. However, if we were to make all games accessible, wouldn't you eventually get tired of the same thing?"

Kajii explained that in creating Demon's Souls the team sought to return to the core of what's fun about games, and relied on three tenets: challenge, discovery and accomplishment. "People commonly say Demon's Souls is hard because of this, but we never made the difficulty needlessly high for the sake of being hard, nor did we intend for it to be a selling point," he said.

Steep difficulty can be appealing. Take the case of indie action-adventure title Spelunky, where the sense of discovery and achievement is maximized by stiff odds. "I think that a tough challenge can make a game much more enjoyable," said creator Derek Yu. "Don't we feel the most fulfilled when we overcome something difficult? Without that feeling of getting better, a game turns into a chore - something that you do as a distraction rather than something you do for fulfillment."

The key to effective difficulty, as opposed to frustration that's just frustrating, is all in the implementation. "Doing something hard isn't fun in and of itself," said Yu. " It's not fun to sit in an empty room and try to balance a ball on your head for 10 hours straight. To make challenge effective, you have to provide an interesting game world and create deep mechanics that are entertaining to play with and very satisfying to master."

Nels Anderson, gameplay programmer at Hothead Games, also feels it's important to delineate between frustration and meaningful challenge. "Being frustrated usually means the player cannot determine a way to improve or progress," he said. "Part of the reason Demon's Souls works so well is because you understand why you failed."

Demon's Souls' Kajii says that failure needs to be an ever-present possibility if the player is to feel a sense of accomplishment. "We designed it so that players are likely to die if they aren't paying attention," he says. "By maintaining this intensity, players will be constantly nervous while playing, but [will feel] a tremendous sense of accomplishment is their reward for doing so."

Achievements are more valuable, then, when there's a lot at stake – and failure is less frustrating when it's clear to the player where they messed up. "Demon's Souls is a game where you ‘die a lot,' but as I've already said, it is geared so that you will acknowledge that it was your own fault," said Kajii. "Players will keep playing because they know they can get past a certain point by taking a different approach, using their imagination, and thinking about how to overcome obstacles."

In a game like Demon's Souls, then, a frustrating death is simply the game informing me that my strategy didn't work. The mechanics are such that I can't blame the game, and my failures never feel unfair. I can then tackle the exact same obstacle with a different approach, until I figure out a tactic that will help me succeed – and victory's all the sweeter thanks to all of my struggles on the way.

"Dying in a video game is like losing a tennis match, or getting rejected when you ask a girl out, or looking at a painting and not understanding its meaning. You'll always learn something and the next time will be better," said Yu. He says that if dying's fun, that makes it all the better – and Demon's Souls also features an interesting twist on death.

Enriched by its multiplayer element, the game allows players to see the bloodstains of other fallen heroes, and touch them to view how they died. Players can leave notes and messages for one another warning of tough spots up ahead, and can also recruit the phantoms of players that have died to help them handle challenges. Kajii says this system of strangers helping strangers came from a real-life experience of his, a time when his car was stuck on a snowy mountainside.

Numerous stranded drivers all banded together to push each of the cars in turn, but Kajji couldn't stay behind to thank his benefactors, lest he end up stranded again. "I wondered about things like whether the last person made it home, whether I'd ever meet the people who helped me again... Maybe if I'd met them somewhere else, I would've made friends with them... Many thoughts crossed my mind," he said. "This occurrence of helping complete strangers was strangely very memorable, and I kept thinking about it for a very long time.

"Demon's Souls is a game where you die many times, so I thought this idea of helping others would be a great fit. It's as simple as, ‘We all die so easily, so let's help each other out,'" he adds. "Unlike other RPGs, each player unfolds their own story, and each encounter with a phantom player expands and diversifies their experience."

Designers are right to be concerned with players finishing fewer titles, and they're right to offer low barriers to entry for expanded audiences – to a point. "I think in an attempt to avoid frustrating players, the baby often gets thrown out with the bathwater in terms of difficulty," said Hothead's Anderson. "It's a pretty common misconception that players want easier games."

He paraphrases some research from Jesper Juul of MIT's Gambit Game Lab: "Players are more critical of a game that's too easy than one that's too hard. The player can improve and make a difficult game fun, but short of handicapping oneself, there's no way to make a game that's too easy harder," Anderson continued. "However, as soon as players feel they don't have any way to improve, their assessment of difficulty turns much more negative."

Frequent death and frustration don't need to be viewed as engagement-breakers in games – as long as the deaths are meaningful and educational, and as long as the player's frustrated with themselves, not the game. The most important factor is clearly that players must be able to see what they can do differently to surmount a challenge.

The tactic that finally gets me over a bridge swarmed with archers, or through a narrow hallway packed with vicious wolves, might not be the same one that works for another player, but it's one I've developed on my own, through trial and error, experimenting with the environment and with my own abilities.

"This act of trial and error in a tense atmosphere is the heart of challenge and discovery, leading to the strong satisfaction of accomplishment," says Kajii. "I'd say Demon's Souls is not a ‘fun game,' but a ‘game to have fun with,'" says Kajii. "The goal is not to find a pre-defined answer — instead the answer is something created by the player on their own through their own play-styles."

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland blog, and freelances reviews and criticism to a variety of outlets. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

Players putting their money wheretheir mouths are, betting that they are better, betting that they will win and betting with money. "Let's face it," says 30-something Scott Popular, "money makes everything interesting."

Popular is a regular on the fighting tournament circuit and self-described tourney "hype man." His job, he says, is to "keep the hype" during tournaments, and he's dead right: money may not make things better, it may not make things more fun. But, that twenty or that fifty will, without a doubt, make things more interesting.

It doesn't matter where the tournament is, but you can bet, there are players there picking up extra cash. You might be the eighth best Melty Blood player, but the eighth best Melty Blood doesn't win anything besides the feeling of satisfaction. It's not like the tournament is a front, that's not the case at all. "You don't want these money matches near a proper tournament," says Popular. They get in the way, they're a distraction. Money matches are not why people enroll in fighting game tournaments — most don't even know about them. They're often in an invite hotel room or off in some corner or banquet room somewhere. But search the boards, the forums, and there are people trying to set something up, make something happen.

"While the large majority of players and spectators aren't involved in money matches," says Capcom's Seth Killian, "they can still be quite common on some games. Especially as you get towards the finals, or during a marquee matchup, you'll hear a lot of shouting about who likes which player, for how much money, and at what odds." Before Seth Killian was a manager at Capcom USA and before he had a Street Fighter boss named after him, Killian was making his mark on the fighting game circuit. "It's a friendly thing with no centralized system — just player to player bets," he explains.

Betting is done usually in "First to" sets: First to 7, first to 10, etc. The first player to win seven matches, or the first to win 10 matches, wins. "Common bets include: Who will win the set, an obvious bet, who will win the next match, or even who will land the first hit," says Killian. Players may put up the money themselves or might pool money as is often the case in region rivalries — the top West Coast player vs. the top East Coast player. Side bets can round out the action. First hit bets are for those there to gamble, who want that instant rush. Bets can get complicated and interesting by using characters that are typically considered "weak" (Gen, anyone?) to mix-mashing fighting styles (rushdown down attack player vs. run-away-run-down-the-clock player). If bets get too complex, then players and punters will divert their attention to a more straight-up match.

As video game tournaments become bigger and bigger, there's the inevitable push to legitimize tourneys as actual businesses. Gone are the days winners were handed paper bags with money symbols scrawled on them in fat, magic marker and stuffed with cold, hard cashola. Winners must fill out a myriad of sheets including tax forms for Uncle Sam. More reputable tournaments will pay up in a matter of weeks, while there are horror stories from the shadier events of it taking up to a year and a half to get the tournament winnings.

Make a name for yourself as a world class fighting game player, and you'll find yourself with players lining up to play you — for money. The challengers might think they can win, or they might view the experience of getting their ass kicked by a world class player as a postcard to themselves. It's not always the top players who draw the big money matches, but the middle level players that might make the most interesting match-ups. "Some of the bets can get quite large," says Killian. "At a tournament I was at just a few weeks ago, two players faced off in a 'first to 10 wins' match in MVC2 for $13,000."

But is this legal?

"Federal law does not have much interest in gambling," says I. Nelson Rose, an attorney and a senior professor at the Whittier Law School in California, "unless it is organized crime or the federal government has to get involved, as with interstate horse racing." One of the leading experts on gaming (here, gambling) law, Professor Rose is the author of the upcoming Internet Gaming Law. "There's too much social betting to begin with." Whether it's an office pool on the Oscars, a round of horse shoes or even Governors making friendly Super Bowl bets (which might even violate their state's laws!), social betting is so pervasive in society, that eradicating it would be a fool's errand on the part of the government. Instead, the federal government focuses its attention on those who can make money off of gambling, typically organized crime. "The enforcement of gambling laws," says Prof. Rose, "is low on the list of priority's of the federal government."

"If it is truly a game of skill," says Prof. Rose, "it is not gambling. And if participants are merely betting on themselves — more of an entry fee than a wager — it would not fall under any federal law." According to Prof. Rose, those "bets" players are putting on themselves could legally be considered "an entry fee." Side bets would not fall under federal law either as federal gambling laws do not apply to patrons of bookies. In short: Federal gambling law applies to those who are making money off the act of gambling and not simple wagering on games of skill.

It's the state laws where things get sticky. In the United States, gambling laws differ by individual states. Some states have old and outdated gambling laws on the books. Take California, which says it is illegal to bet on contests of "skill, speed and endurance". Other states, such as Arizona, are starting to even take measures to make wagering on games of skill difficult. States having measures on gambling is not unique. "All of the states have prohibitions on gambling," Prof. Rose points out, "but again, most exempt games which are predominantly skill." If video games are games of skill and not chance, then it could very well not fall under state law. Some states restrict even games of skill. The question is largely: Are fighting games in fact games of skill or chance? Play a couple rounds with guys like Daigo Umehara or Alex Valle and see how far luck gets you.

"The appeal for money matches is simple," says Popular. "It's cash in hand, right away." You play to win, bring your best game and "not some experimental bullshit tactics" says Popular. Once that is cash on the table — or more often than not, television set — it starts. And it ends when the fight is over. "You're not going to rage quit in a room with a people betting money," says Popular. "No way."

Rage quitting and the arcade tradition of fighting games are driving forces for the perceived needs for players to hash things out in person. "Money matches can also be a way to settle scores between players who have online drama," says Killian. Web start-up BringIt.com is offering an online matchmaking service that using a ranking-type system to match players of similar skill levels in money matches. Players pay beforehand via PayPal to reduce the risk of sudden quits or "connection problems".

The federal Wire Act prohibits anyone in the gambling business, Prof. Rose explains, from using interstate wire infrastructure to transmit info that can be used in placing bets on sporting events. BringIt.com side-steps that as competing in video games is, as previously defined, a game of skill. Players are not "betting", but rather putting money as an entry fee. BringIt.com makes its money on the match-making service it offers, by taking a 14 percent service fee on each match players accept or enter. "However, there are nine states within the U.S. where the participation in skill-based video game tournaments for cash prizes is not allowed," notes BringIt.com. "At this time, if you live in the following states, you may not play for cash prizes on BringIt: Arizona, Arkansas, Delaware, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Maryland, Montana, Tennessee, and Vermont."

But for some, the appeal of money matches isn't the money and isn't even the winning, but the millisecond before a decision is made, the gut reaction. Many of the top fighting game players do gamble on cards, craps and slots. Some of them are as good at gambling as gaming, good enough to earn hundreds of thousands of dollars. "To play fighting games is to gamble," says Killian. "These guys gamble with every move they make — the gambling sensibility is aligned perfectly with fighting games."

And those thinking of playing money matches at the next big fighting tourney, Killian offers this advice: "Capcom's position would certainly be to check your federal, state, and local laws regarding gambling, and to follow them."

[Pic]

Models and hipsters wander the streets mingling with star-truck tourists and Hollywood starlets. Restaurants and boutiques vie for curb-space among million-dollar apartments and two-by-two patches of grass and trees.

But last Thursday night the biggest crowds weren't those forming to catch a glimpse of Lindsay Lohan's private shopping spree, but the nearly thousand-person line that wrapped around three sides of a trendy block of nondescript buildings.

The line of people stopped in the middle of a sidewalk a good 200 feet from the object of everyone's attention; A small shoe store.

The excited crowds, dressed in t-shirts and some toting laptops, cameras and joysticks, weren't here to mingle, snap pictures or shop, they were here to play.

Inside the packed shoe-store, temporarily decorated with posters and art of winged super heroes and martial artists, people gathered in tight clusters around flat screen panels to get a chance to play game developer Capcom's latest fighting video game.

"The idea of fight club came straight from the down-and-dirty arcade roots of Capcom's fighting games," Capcom community manager and legendary Street Fighter pro Seth "S-Kill" Killian tells Kotaku. "Chris Kramer and I were really excited to get our community hands-on and playing the games, and to recreate that gritty, fun atmosphere of getting together for in-your-face competition."

Last week's impromptu Capcom Fight Club took over a two-floor shoe store. The top floor was packed with video game consoles, televisions, pizza and players. But a second line greeted those trying to make it down the stairs to the darkened basement.

Crowded between the plain plaster walls of the basement, packed from concrete floor to pipe-lined drop-ceiling, gamers gently pushed their way to the end of the single narrow room where a 20-something DJ spun records on two turn tables, her face blank as she stared at a laptop screen.

The crowds undulated toward her, staring over and past her head at a darkened big screen television, two white, over-sized joysticks pushed sitting on either side of it on translucent pillars.

This is why more than 500, perhaps a thousand people traveled to the shoe store last week, ignoring the famous, the rich and the beautiful, standing in line, then snaking through a sweat-drenched crowd of gamers in a packed basement: The chance to catch a glimpse of Super Street Fighter IV.

Due out early next year, the latest iteration in the wildly popular fighting franchise draws crowds where ever it goes.

"We've done Fight Clubs in LA, New York City, Vegas, San Francisco, now New York City again," Killian said. "Basically fight clubs are there for us to help (gamers) get hands on the game before it's released..."

Thursday night Killian made his way to the end of the basement every hour from 8 p.m. to midnight, turning on the big screen to hoots and hollars and then booting up a copy of Super Street Fighter IV.

"We have many happy press here tonight who wish they could play, but they cannot, Killian says into a microphone, the game playing behind him on the screen. "This is for you the community, so enjoy."

Less than eight people from the thousand or so who showed were able to get their hands on the unreleased game playing on the big screen, but no one complained. Instead they rooted for the randomly selected gamers, cheering and jeering during the impromptu match-ups each hour.

Between presentations games returned to the two dozen or so smaller flat screens mounted on the walls in the basement and upstairs, playing the already released Street Fighter IV and the soon to be released Tatsunoko Vs. Capcom, both fighting games.

But Fight Club isn't just about the virtual fights. Capcom makes sure that the irregular, underground events tap into the deeper elements of pop-culture and art that inspire many of their games and in turn inspire art.

"We hire local and notable artists for every event, and have worked with groups like IAM8BIT, Meatbun, Triumvir, and Jim Mahfood, just to name a few," Killian says. "Street Fighter in particular runs so deep in our culture that there's a great supply of amazing artists inspired by the games and characters.

"We cook up a 'you can only get it here' limited edition, unique t-shirt that we give away at every event, and in my opinion they're pretty rad."

The first Capcom Fight Club happened with almost no notice and no marketing.

"At the very first club we basically told nobody that wasn't in my phone, and we still had 300 Street Fighters showing up to a skid-row warehouse in downtown LA," Killian said. "The attendance has increased at pretty much every one since then, as word continues to spread."

Despite the almost exponential growth of the marketing parties, the Capcom Fight Clubs somehow manage to maintain their gritty, grassroots feel.

Graffiti of in-game characters decorated the walls of the shoe store in Soho, people quietly slipped in and out of the video game speakeasy with quiet affable patience and everyone waiting in that monstrous line got their chance on a game.

Arcades may have died in America, but the people who played in them still thrive, it's just that now they have to travel to find their community.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

In British Columbia, a college student flips open his laptop and fires up his PS3.

In San Antonio, a guy picks up another three memory cards on the way home from working at JC Penney.

These are the peculiar markers of the GameFAQ author, whose pursuit and completion of a video game guide - dozens of hours of uncompensated labor - seems to walk the fine line between video game obsession and expertise. It's a world in which 20,000 words can be considered small for a full walkthrough, and committing to write one means at least a week, and more likely two or three, devoting all of your spare time to playing, pausing, and taking notes. And it's a labor that, with rare exceptions, provides zero material reward.

"I've gotten one bounty, for The Lost and the Damned," Robert Allen Rusk says, almost with pride. He's talking about the gift cards that GameFAQs offers for being the first to produce a complete guide to a new game. Rusk picked up a $60 gift card for his work on Lost & Damned, which weighed in at 58,216 words - roughly 200 pages if it were a paperback novel. His work on Grand Theft Auto III, Grand Theft Auto IV and Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas were each more than twice as long.

"I haven't done anything with that gift card," Rusk said. "I may save that one for Christmas."

I talked to Rusk and others among the more accomplished writers - authors who have handled very large games, who have published sizeable guides or sizeable numbers of them, and authors who have been the first to produce walkthroughs for current, high-demand games. As someone who's reviewed video games, I've felt that the demand to produce credible, authoritative work definitely interferes with, and in some cases crowds out altogether, one's normal enjoyment of a game. But at least I get paid for that.

Not so with these writers. They get to pick their games, of course. They stop and start and battle procrastination and hustle against deadlines, often ones internally set. But in the end, they definitely started doing it because they loved a game, and they keep doing it because playing a game this comprehensively seems to wring every last atom of enjoyment out of the disc.

"It might not seem that fun because it takes a long time," concedes Tony, a 20 year-old at the University of British Columbia who asked to be quoted by his pen name, ChaosDemon. "But these [developers] put years and years into making the game - and you got more out of it, because you had to break it down, and know everything about it."

More Impressive Than Achievements

Among a gaming completionists' many badges of honor is the 100 percent achievement. No matter how many hours of your life you lost to the game, that gold (or platinum) trophy, that 1000 Gamerscore achievement, it's definitely respected as the mark of a serious gamer.

But they aren't the ones pausing a game to take notes on a laptop at every checkpoint, or draw out maps on doodle paper and then figure out how to get their point across in ASCII text. And then they aren't sitting down to write dozens of pages about it. There aren't any achievements for this sort of thing, and it's hard to get across why you're going for it.

"I've been embarrassed to tell people about it, to tell you the truth," says Paul Williams, 23, of Brisbane, Australia. "Telling someone I write 20-page strategy guides on how to beat these games is not the greatest thing for my ego. But my parents and my girlfriend know about it, and they're all very supportive. They know it's a hobby and it's not the most important thing in my life."

Williams was the first (and so far, only) writer to produce a walkthrough for Halo 3: ODST for GameFAQs, not that he's bragging about it. He found it to be almost a fluke experience, owed in part to ODST's notoriously short campaign mode that's drawn some complaints.

"I was surprised at how fast I was able to get something up," Williams told me. He's written guides for Fable II, Resident Evil 5, and a partially completed one for Gears of War 2. ODST was atypical, compared with his other efforts.

"When you start, you at first don't realize how much work it is," Williams said. "Halfway through, when you feel yourself getting close to just having had enough of it, you realize you've done all this work and you might as well stick to it."

No matter how passionate they were for a game, the writers I talked to admitted that burnout inevitably becomes an issue. "The first time through is always fun," said Barry Scott Will, 43, of Richmond, Va., an IT director for a church who just finished a Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 guide. "When I'm writing for a game, I play through it at least twice or sometimes three or four times. By that third or fourth time, it's just work."

Rusk, the Grand Theft Auto guru, was a game tester in the late 1980s for Broderbund Software, LucasArts, and later a studio in Colorado Springs. Guide writing offers flashbacks to those days, he says, and not necessarily in a good way. "Being forced to play constantly, you start hating the game," Rusk said. "There's a natural burnout writing a guide, you just want to get it out the door.

"But I don't lose my sense of enjoyment," he insisted. "The thing here is I love the games I work on. I love the Grand Theft Auto games. I love getting my hooks in and working on it."

Writing Walkthroughs For Minor Profit

ChaosDemon - aka Tony, the 20-year-old in British Columbia - wrote his first guide as an 11-year-old: It was for Pokémon Stadium 2 on the Nintendo 64. "Some days I wasted a whole day when I wasn't at school, just working on a guide," he says.

It didn't kill his grades, actually. "My English teacher didn't like me that much," he says, "but she commented 'Your writing is better than what I expected.' And it was probably because of the guide. You have to be very organized in your writing."

To say there's no benefit to the FAQ writer beyond a sense of satisfaction is false, of course. Some have found a writing voice, others a readership, and a few have turned their work into paying freelance gigs. Rusk collected $500 when his Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay guide was published in a 2004 strategy guide-compilation drawing on material from GameFAQs contributors. Williams, the Australian, was offered (and accepted) a gig writing an exclusive guide on Call of Duty: World at War for the Web site CheatPlanet.

Will, the father in Richmond, Va., has monetized his GameFAQs efforts further, building a site called papagamer.com where e-books employing the text of his GameFAQs guides are uploaded with graphics and other enhancements and sold for $5. Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2, which took him 10 days to complete, is the latest offering. Will sees his GameFAQs work as a kind of loss leader, providing free and comprehensive advice on a game with an upsell to a more robust, premium guide elsewhere. He says he's never made more than "a few hundred bucks a month," at what he does.

"It's not much more than a hobby that pays for itself," Will says. "In the past few months though, I've tried to boost my sales, so this is like a second job."

Will started his guide writing on Knights of the Old Republic II ("still a big fan of that game") to help gamers in BioWare's forums who kept showing up with the same questions. But as a father himself, he came to understand the real service of free guide writing - to the parents of frustrated kids, who can't be helped with a video game neither mom nor dad understands the way they would a bike or toy.

"I really get a feeling of accomplishment when I get emails from somebody who bought the game for their child, and the child gets frustrated, and that gets the parent frustrated, and they come online and get the help they need and everybody's happy," Will said. "And I've gotten emails from people in their seventies, playing games. I got one email from a man stationed on a ship in the U.S. Navy. He had one game he'd brought with him, and he wanted me to email my guide (Dungeon Siege II) to him."

Williams has seen this kind of gratitude, too: "I've gotten some seniors who wrote in to thank me for my Metal Gear Solid 4 guide. For my Wall-E guide, I get pretty frequent thank-yous from parents. It's cool. It's like, whoa, people actually appreciate this."

Drawing The Line

Not everything they play gets reviewed FAQ written about it. ChaosDemon, who put out a Batman: Arkham Asylum FAQ between summer school and the fall semester, wants to take his time with Uncharted 2. Williams, down in Australia, adores Japanese RPGs but won't touch them for FAQs. "I love those games, but I'll never write a guide," he said. "I hate to get interrupted when there's a big epic story unfolding." Plus, to comprehensively play a Final Fantasy or Star Ocean game - to anything close to 100 percent, "and write about it," would take, "years and years," he groans.

Rusk, the San Antonian who's hoarding memory units for The Ballad of Gay Tony, enjoys but won't review Lego Star Wars. Earlier this year he tried Watchmen: The End is Nigh and enjoyed it enough that the guide he wrote for it became "an intro to the Watchmen universe for newbies."

But the solid bet is, by the end of the year, they'll be writing something.

"I don't watch TV," Will said. "Instead of watching TV, I play video games. Some people watch a sitcom, a drama and the nightly news, I come home and play Marvel: Ultimate Alliance.

"When you get down to it," he says, "we're gonna play the video games anyway."

Note: Do you write walk-throughs? Try your hand at posting one here.

During the course of my tenure at Kotaku I've referenced my days in EverQuest on many occasions, but I've never elaborated on what went down back then. Recent events in my life have brought that period to the fore, and I've decided to share my experience with our readers.

In November of 2000, my life was going well. I had a lovely girlfriend, a serviceable vehicle, and a job that paid more than enough for me to survive while catering to my increasingly expensive video game habit. Within four months, it would all be gone.

Good Intentions

At the time I was sharing an apartment with a friend of mine named Dustin. Dustin was a great guy, but he spent his entire downtime sitting in front of his computer, playing a video game called EverQuest. I had encountered the game before, having participated in the beta for Sony Online Entertainment's massively popular multiplayer game, but once the game went live I lost interest. I just couldn't see myself paying a monthly fee just to play a computer game. Oh, how things have changed.

Having nothing much else to do at the time, I'd sit and watch Dustin play. He'd explain what his Monk character was doing in the game. I was a spectator as he progressed, learning to feign death, earning new weapons, and taking on greater challenges as he got closer and closer to the level cap.

So when I wasn't spending time with my girlfriend, Emily, I would watch Dustin play. Or I would tool around on various text-based MUSHes and MOOs online, role-playing with people all over the world. I'd been into science fiction, fantasy, and comic books since I was very young, so slipping into an imaginary world came easy to me. Perhaps a little too easy.

Towards the end of 2000, Emily and I broke up. The reasoning behind this is far too stupid to delve into…let's just say we were both young and a bit foolish.

I became depressed, and Dustin had just the thing to cheer me up.

The Scars of Velious expansion for EverQuest came out in December of 2000. My roommate, perhaps tired of my moping over my lost love, picked up a copy of the game for me as a Christmas present. I installed it, created a half-elven Bard, and soon our apartment had two guys in the living room at all hours of the day, faces bathed in the glow of monitors.

Within a week, the game that hadn't affected me at all nearly two years previously had become an important part of my life. Soon, it would become my life.

If I wasn't asleep or at work, I was playing EverQuest. The former was becoming a rarity. I would go into work, and I would still hear the sounds of EverQuest orcs in my head. All I had to do was close my eyes and I was speeding through the Greater Faydark zone, killing pixies and turning in quest items.

In January of 2001, a man with a tow truck came to my place of employment and took my car away. I had fallen behind on payments without realizing it, and Nissan had decided they wanted my Sentra back. My first thought as I watched the tow truck drive away was how many hours walking to and from work would take from my EverQuest time.

I worked at a company called FranchiseOpportunities.com, maintaining and creating websites, but increasingly my time there was spent either communicating with my EverQuest friends or browsing websites for tips on the best equipment and techniques for grinding experience points and gold. It was impossible for my co-workers not to notice. In February of 2001, Joseph Lunsford, the owner of the company, called me into his office.

"It wasn't an easy decision," Lunsford told me this month when I went to see him and talk to him about the person I used to be. "You were was amazingly bright. I was convinced there wasn't anything you couldn't do. You showed so much promise, but your interest in work just fell off. Projects started taking longer to get done, and it was obvious your head wasn't in it. You left me no choice."

I was in tears back then. I felt unbelievably pathetic. I had no car. I had no job. Joe had handed me my last paycheck and about $120 he had in his wallet, and sent me on my way. I took a taxi home, broke the news to my roommates (we had moved into a three-bedroom to split the bills three ways), went into my bedroom, started up EverQuest, and forgot about everything.

According to Dr. Hilarie Cash, the executive director of the reSTART internet and gaming addition recovery program and co-author of the book "Video Games & Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control," retreating inside a video game to avoid real world problems is a common cause of "video game addiction."

"I would definitely call it video game addiction, which is a subset of internet addiction. Many of the things [you] described to me are typical of a video game addict, particularly the way that real life shrinks away for the addict, living more and more in the virtual world."

And that's exactly what I was doing. I had been a confident and outgoing young man who enjoyed hanging out with my friends, spending hours chatting about absolutely nothing while smoking cigarettes and drinking countless cups of Waffle House Coffee. Now my social dealings involved helping online friends camp a rare monster spawn, or discussing class balance on my guild's chat channel.

Going outside was only necessary when I ran out of smokes or beverages. I lived off $.30 pot pies from Wal-Mart and cheap bags of rice. I was taking care of my most essential needs, but only barely. Often times I would fall asleep in my chair in front of my computer with EverQuest running, waking up hours later to start the cycle all over again.

Even now my memories of the period are a blur of Oasis runs, power leveling, and experience grinding. My mother remembers those days much more vividly.

"Mike was unavailable for most of that period," she recalled recently. "There was no way to contact him, except to do a 'drive by' preferably with a bag of groceries in the back seat. I remember trying to talk to him. Such a fine mind and wild sense of humor; all covered up and hidden deep inside again. He listened half-heartedly and was easy to anger. He was going down fast, even to the point of telling how it really was and not just what you wanted to hear."

Hearing her talk about it now, I can barely believe it had gotten so bad, but I tend to hold on to positive memories more than the negative ones. Like the day Emily came back.

Brief Hope

It was three months after I was fired that Emily decided to give us another chance. I wasn't the same man she had been with before. I was relatively skinny, and my hair had grown ridiculously long. As we lay curled up in bed one evening she commented on how my belly had disappeared, which tickled me to no end. It seems perverse to me now. It wasn't as if I had been dieting or exercising; I was taking pride in my own malnourishment.

My existence slowly started gaining some semblance of a real life again. Emily went out one afternoon and brought me a stack of job applications, which motivated me to go out, get my hair cut, and go to my first job interview at a Fast Signs down the street. Looking slightly more human and feeling more alive than I had in months, I got the job on the spot. It was amazing how fast things had turned around. Unfortunately, it wouldn't last.

In an odd twist, my EverQuest friends were now worried about me.

I hadn't been around, and they missed my sense of humor and my enthusiasm. My ability to twist four Bard songs at a time didn't hurt either. These people needed me. I was important to them, and I couldn't let them down. Looking back, I can't believe I missed the irony there.

So I started playing EverQuest again. At first it was only on the nights that Emily couldn't make it over, but soon I was back to my regular play schedule – every waking hour. I was regularly late to work, and called in sick at least once every two weeks so I could stay home and play.

Then came that fateful night.

The woman I had once told was the love of my life was sitting undressed in my bed not a foot away from my computer desk, begging me to join her, and I kept putting it off. I was so close to level 40 I could taste it. I was in the Dreadlands, kiting large enemies back and forth, killing them slowly with my Bard songs. I still remember the urgency I felt, along with the annoyance that this woman was trying to keep me from reaching my goal. Couldn't she understand how important this was to me?

She had certainly tried.

"Back then I just figured I was dating a gamer, and that's how it was going to be," she said to me recently. "I hadn't dated many guys at that point, and my older brother was the same way. He worked, came home, and played video games."

Eight years later it became obvious that my lack of attention toward her weighed far more heavily than either of us had suspected.

One morning in late September of 2001, I called my job and quit. Whatever justification I had for this at the time doesn't matter. The reason I quit was because I was tired of making excuses for being late, and I just wanted to play EverQuest.

Emily and I had grown further apart. During my time at Fast Signs I purchased an old car from my sister, only to discover I couldn't get insurance for it due to my driver's license being suspended over a previous ticket, ironically issued for driving without insurance. Rather than actively working to fix the problem, I slipped deeper into depression. I would let Emily take the car, driving it with a "TAG APPLIED FOR" plate on the back, but wouldn't go anywhere with her for fear of being pulled over and sent to jail. Instead, I would stay home and play EverQuest.

The last time I would see her — until 2009 —was two days after her birthday in early October. I had let her take the car to her party, but refused to go with her. She reacted by keeping my car for two days without contacting me. I responded by telling her to return the car and the keys and get out of my life. She did just that.

And I kept playing.

A New Beginning

December rolled around again, one year after I had taken my first steps into EverQuest's world of Norrath, and I had completely changed. I went from being a strong independent person to a gaunt, unshaven, unshowered recluse, completely withdrawn from the outside world.

My roommate, once one of my greatest friends, was threatening to throw me out of the apartment if I didn't find a job. But I had absolutely no motivation. The only time I left my dwelling was to scavenge for food at my parents' house, or to grab a quick shower, as our apartment's hot water had been turned off.

I remember feeling like a ghost, drifting through the waking world unnoticed. Luckily for me, my mother was looking out for me as best she could.

"He didn't look like Mike anymore," she remembers now. "He was scary and pitiful. I was afraid he was suicidal or dying of some mysterious disease. It broke my heart and I knew that coming home and taking the pressure off would be the best medicine for him."

And so on January 1st, 2002, at the age of 28, I moved back in with my parents. It wasn't an instant cure for my addiction – as soon as I convinced them to let me order DSL I was back online again – but something had changed. I started spending more time hanging out with my parents and less time sitting in my computer chair staring at little computer people doing little computer things. I had responsibilities. I had a support system. I had a stable platform to launch myself from instead of the quicksand I felt I had been standing in before.

Within two months I had found myself a job at a local gas station. Later that year I started speaking with Joe Lunsford again, proving myself through contract work until he decided to hire me on again in 2003. So I once again had a job, a girlfriend, and eventually my own apartment, sans roommates. That's where I was in 2006, when Brian Crecente contacted me and asked me if I wanted to write for Kotaku. That's where I am now.

It would be easy for me to pin my problems on EverQuest, and society in general would accept it without question. I could say I fell prey to an addictive video game that nearly ruined my life, but I would know that wasn't the case.

I hid. I ran from my problems, hiding away in a virtual fantasy world instead of confronting the issues that might have been easily resolved if I had addressed them directly. As far as I am concerned, the only thing Sony Online Entertainment is guilty of is creating a damn good hiding place. It was my responsibility to control how much I played, and the SOE spokesperson I contacted regarding my story agrees.

"EverQuest is a game," the Sony Online rep told me. "The majority of the hundreds of thousands of subscribers play the game in moderation enjoying the gameplay as well as the community interaction the game provides. As with any form of entertainment, it is the responsibility of each individual player to monitor his or her own playing habits and prioritize his or her time as necessary. It is not our place to monitor or limit how individuals spend their free time."

Dr. Hilarie Cash agrees as well, though she suspects that game developers are actively engaged in trying to make their games more addictive.

"Some blame can be laid at the feet of developers, making a conscious effort to make their games more addictive. It's analogous to the tobacco industry, trying to make tobacco more addictive. It works to their benefit. That having been said, it's up to the individual to take responsibility for how they play."

During our conversation, Dr. Cash also likened gaming to gambling. Some people can walk into a casino, lose $5, and call it quits. You have to know your own limits, and be conscious enough of them to know when you are in danger of going too far.

My own solution to my potential for MMO addiction is rather simple. I've managed to turn a habit that once interrupted my work into something I actively have to do for work. It's no longer escapism if I am doing my job. Perhaps I am fooling myself, but if I am going to be that gullible I might as well take advantage.

As for Emily, she's sitting behind me as I type this, playing Peggle. I'd ask her to come to bed, but I know how important getting to that next level can be.

"I threw it together in class," Le Clair told Kotaku during a phone interview this week. His creation, Rumble Massage, is no game. It's a program that makes an Xbox controller vibrate on command. It was launched in January through the Xbox Live Indie Games program, which enables amateur developers to sell peer-reviewed projects online through the Xbox 360.

Rumble Massage currently sells for $1. Earlier this year, a porn star reviewed it on the G4 network, an awkward detail Le Clair has shared with his mom. "Most people treat Rumble Massage like a joke, which it is," he said. "It's not a joke like it's stupid. It's a joke in that it's not serious."

Since Le Clair shook up the Xbox marketplace at the beginning of 2009, there have been five more massage programs. They've been made by developers in New York, Italy and France. They've been made by developers desperate to fund projects of which they can be more proud. They've even been made by at least one person with a real interest in massage.

The massage apps have also become loathed by a community of amateur game developers who feel the vibrational programs have distracted critical and consumer attention away from the actual video games that are developed and sold in the Indie Games marketplace on Xbox Live.

"I think they really hurt lots of developers who are trying to use the platform as it was intended," Indie Games developer Nick Gravelyn, told Kotaku. He's the 22-year-old Seattle-based creator of a couple of Indie games, including the recently-released Pixel Man. He soured on the massage apps once Le Clair's project spawned successors. "I've talked to people who have never been to the Indie Games section ever," he said. "When I asked why, there was a substantial number who respond with: 'It's all sex games and stupid apps.'"

The scorn from the XNA Indie Games community has registered with the massage-makers. Benedetta Sciacca, a 34-year-old artist who lives near the Mt. Etna volcano in Sicily with her husband and a kennel of pets. "I was not interested in fast money," she told Kotaku. She had tried to make her massage app the best-looking of the bunch and was hoping it could reach the same general audience she targeted with cocktail-making apps she's made for mobile phones and Xbox Live. Her program presents a series of Shiatsu massages illustrated in an Asian brushwork style. She based the massages on her research in Shiatsu and tested the single-player and couples massage with friends over a three week period.

When Sciacca uploaded the app for peer review, she heard the anger. "I'll do my best to fail this…if it get[s] into review," one XNA user wrote on her playtest thread. "Enough with the massage clones!" another wrote, "I'm sure you can make a game that is better and more original than that." She is set to release a game in a couple of weeks, she said.

Shiatsu Massage made it out of peer review and onto Xbox Live in June. It's been downloaded 90,000 times. It sells for $1 and, according to Sciacca, said it has sold through 5,000 copies. (Microsoft declined to confirm any download figures for Indie Games projects. A rep said that the company leaves it to the developers to share.)

The common take on all these massage apps is that they're sex toys. Sciacca excludes hers from that. "It is not intended to be a sexual toy," she said. "It is a real massager, tested to be effective and with instructions to use it properly."

Others encourage the sexual reference. The tongue-in-cheek YouTube commercial for Spectra Musical Massage, a massage/music-visualizer app made by Long Island-area Pow Studios, concludes with a woman putting an Xbox controller down her pants. That was "a way to acknowledge that, yeah, yeah… we know, we know," the program's lead developer, Betson Thomas, 24, told Kotaku.

It's easy to see why some would assume there's a sexual intent in these applications when one features a mode to enable Xbox Live users to rumble each other's controllers remotely. Such a mode is the stand-out feature in Remote Masseuse, the product of a 28-year-old developer who would provide only his or her Xbox Live username, Entrager. His was the second of the massage programs, developed before Rumble Massage and released just prior to Valentine's day. He said he's received "a surprising amount of positive feedback, with several couples e-mailing me to thank me for creating it."

Asked what me makes of the sex toy comments, he wrote to Kotaku, "I developed Remote Masseuse to be used however people wanted to use it. I think it makes a great cat toy. You set one controller next to your cat and make it vibrate with the other." Entrager said Remote Masseuse has netted him $15,000. He's made it for the iPhone as well.

Le Clair, the starter of this trend, said a sexual use of Rumble Massage was not intended back when he hatched the idea. "I didn't want to pander to that," he said. But he attributes the success of his program, downloaded as a free demo 300,000 times so far, to two things: 1) His decision to give almost all of its contents except for its highest vibration setting away for free and 2) "Obviously it has to be because of the whole vibrator thing."

Whatever made the massage apps popular fueled some of the later entries in the field. French Indie Game creator Pascal Ginda admits he simply needed the money he thought a massage app could provide. Petank Party, the first Indie game from his team at UFO Games, didn't make enough money to keep his group going, he said in an e-mail to Kotaku. "So we looked at the best selling apps and two massage games were in the top 10. After downloading them, we thought we could do better." He made and released one called A Perfect Massage (pictured at the top of this post). It has sold well enough to both enable his team to test a new engine and, Ginda said, to "take a big risk and make a bigger game." Ginda's honesty about cashing in has rankled some XNA Indie Game developers.

The massage makers, however, are not completely at odds with the game creators. Entrager, the Remote Masseuse developer, agrees with the likes of Nick Gravelyn that the apps have been too much of a distraction from real games. "I think Microsoft should provide a clear separation of the two so that people that want games can find only games and people that want apps can find apps," he said. Within the Indie Games section, the massage programs are included in an "other" section, along with virtual fish tanks and birthday-card-makers. That makes them still a sub-set of "games."

Gravelyn, the one non-massage developer interviewed for this story, admits the confusion has provided some motivation. He said he'd come to think that he'd either have to wait out the trend or "have something so cool that it beat out the massage game fad." His Pixel Man game has already sold well enough to make it into a Major Nelson top 10 list of weekly Indie Games sales and it's netted him more than $1,000, motivating the daytime contract developer with a decent profit and level of awareness for a game that took about a dozen hours to make.

So much for separation of massage app and games, though. The massage trend has spawned a new phenomenon: Developers are now including massage modes in games that might not appear to need them. Minneapolis-area stand-up comedian Pat Susmilch got together with friends this year to develop Cold War Commander, a simple side-scrolling action game requiring players to collect jellybeans and avoid Communists. "Towards the beginning of production for Cold War Commander, during a 'creativity session,' I jokingly said that our next game should just be something that maxes out the rumble so you can put it on yourself," he told Kotaku. "We all had a good laugh, because that was the dumbest thing ever … A month later Rumble Massage was released and we learned that lots of people were stupid enough to buy that. We included it in the game to both garner more sales and lift a middle finger to everyone who already bought Rumble Massage."

The ploy failed, and the game has sold just 120 copies so far. Public reaction has been muted. "I usually just get messages on my Live account saying that the game sucks and I should be ashamed of myself," Susmilch said, "Without any mention of the massager."

The 2009 surge in massage games may be subsiding, not just for those sticking the mode in a Cold War platformer.

The massage programs don't chart as highly as they did earlier this year, when they regularly clustered near the top of the best-sellers list for Indie Games. Pow Studios' Spectra Musical Massage, released in August, has been downloaded only 3,765 times and purchased 117 times — 83 times in the U.S., three times in Japan, once in Italy — according to its developer. That has profited Pow $200.

Thomas said his team didn't sign up for Indie Games to make massage apps, "but we felt it could help us gain some exposure." He said the app was "de-evolved" from a music-gaming project Pow still hopes to create. "Like everyone else, we were ... trying to figure out how to be successful in this environment." Pow's true focus is on a musical-based shooter the team is developing called Muzikaze.

That original massage-maker Le Clair is also looking forward to life beyond the trend. He promises he's done with the genre. In fact, he's using his earnings to pursue his dream. He and a couple of friends are moving to New York to set up a company called ZXB Games. He wants to make a modern-day pirate-hunting game and the cushion of cash made more comfortable by that well-massaged $60,000 means something important to Le Clair. "We can bootstrap it," he said.

To borrow a term from the massage world, that's one way to get a happy ending.

Some of the scariest experiences I've had in my life come from video games. I can remember running from the family computer room in tears after a wax skeleton in an Are You Afraid of the Dark game chased me through a basement.

My chest still gets tight whenever I hear a burst of radio static, thanks to Silent Hill.

And there is this one scene in Dead Space that gives me goose bumps whenever I think about it.

Horror in video games is more complex that what goes on in horror movies. True, the feeling of terror you're supposed to experience is similar. Scary video games and movies both rely heavily on pacing, shocking imagery and music. However, games are an interactive experience. There are consequences for the player that nobody in a darkened movie theater could relate to. Horror games need gameplay elements that don't distract you, level design that leads you into danger in ways you can't predict and art direction that plays with your head so that you buy into what you're experiencing instead of rationalizing it away as "just a game."

Scare Tactics: Dead Space

Here's how a game can use its gameplay, level design and art direction to utterly freak you out: see Dead Space. In this game, you're a space mechanic stranded on a ship overrun with creepy, crawly aliens. On a superficial level, it's no different than a zombie shoot-em-up game. However, there is so much going on at a deeper level in Dead Space that it creates a multifaceted horror experience.

For example, art director Ian Milham explains that the use of differed lighting over a setting that looks like the inside of a rib cage was a big part of making Dead Space scary. "In a horror game, when you're walking around, you walk slower than … in a shooter game," he says. "You look at the world a lot more intently because you don't know where [enemies] are and you get kind of spooked out. So the ribbed motif created hard scissor-lines in the background and moving shadows — there's a lot for the light to play across."

The effect creates the scene that gives me goosebumps. You're walking down a hall where all you see is harsh shadows. Then you round a corner and see a mutilated person banging their head against the wall. The light from a nearby doorway plays across the gray steel wall and the red, ragged flesh hanging from the man's torso. The image is so shocking that for a moment you don't realize what's happening to this person. Then he shifts backward and slams his head against the wall so hard his skull cracks and he falls down dead. His smashed head leaves a red smear on the gray wall.

That part of the game stuck with me almost more than the creepy aliens that still retain fragments of the human bodies they took over. It's beyond scary to me — it's flat-out disturbing.

"Scary is the result of lot of things," Milham says. "The first thing you've got to do is give the world and what happens in it consequence and reality and make it super-grounded. So … when you see something terrible, you really believe it in a way [that you don't normally believe with a video game]."

A big challenge the Dead Space team had to face was making you believe that you were powerless as the main character – even though you're able to make him run away from danger or shoot aliens with space weapons. "One of the things I said [to the design team] is ‘No Final Fantasy effects with weapons,'" says Milham. "If you're too fantastic with something, you don't really believe it. All the scary stuff just kind of goes away."

Head Games: Arkham Asylum

Here's another game that can freak you out, even though it's not a horror game: Batman: Arkham Asylum. In this game, you're following a story based on familiar characters from a comic book series with an established history. Batman seems nearly invulnerable because of his high-tech gadgets and rippling muscles. But then you encounter a character called the Scarecrow who employs mind tricks to weaken Batman. Okay, fine, that's canon — but the Scarecrow level design in Arkham Asylum isn't just playing with Batman's head. It's playing with yours.

"During the Scarecrow levels we wanted to provide a constant sense of tension and vulnerability, as if they're constantly just inches from the Scarecrow's grasp," explains Jamie Whitworth, designer on Arkham Asylum. "We compared this to common scenes in slasher flicks when the protagonist is attempting to hide from the villain whilst both characters are in the shot and would usually end in a panic stricken dash to safety."

But unlike a slasher flick where you're yelling at the dumb bimbo to run or call 9-1-1, you're the one responsible for getting Batman through the levels unscathed. You see him cough and know he's been Fear Gassed by Scarecrow. Then the lighting begins to change and the long corridor down which you're walking skews to one side. Little by little as you walk down the hall, the pieces of the realistic setting fall away to reveal things you know can't be true — like rain falling inside a building. But your eyes are still seeing them. The gameplay communicates to your hands that, yes, that is, in fact, a gap you can fall through in the floor. You believe the upsetting things you start to see: such as a weeping person who sometimes appears as Batman and sometimes appears as an Arkham patient, depending on the light.

"[D]ropping players directly into the surreal Scarecrow levels wouldn't have provided the necessary set up and it was easy to lose the sense of dread when these rooms were taken out of context," says Whitworth. "The hallucination sequences were used to chip away at the player's confidence and sense of reality so that they were on the edge before Scarecrow even shows up."

The overall effect is unnerving in a way that's similar to that hallway scene in Dead Space, if ultimately a lot less disturbing.

Lingering Fear

Horror in video games is both a tangible sensation and abstract emotion. Unlike a movie, which can only appeal to a limited spectrum of those senses at a time, the horror we experience in video games can come at us both from what we see and experience and what our minds supply us with as we play. When done right, it leaves a lasting impression on a player... like a scar on the mind you worry at whenever the lights go out.

That's probably the best tool developers have to work with when making their games scary: your own mind.

"A lot of the horror comes from not knowing what's coming next, that sort of endless tension," Milham says. "You set up rhythms where you do an obvious scare with obvious foreshadowing and then you do another. And then you do the foreshadowing and you don't [scare them], and you wait a couple beats longer just long enough for them to go ‘Oh you guys, you were going to scare me and then you didn't.' And then... OH MY GOD!"

PIC — Scarecrow
PIC — Batman
PIC — The Ring

As once singular experiences give way to more multiplayer, more cooperative gaming, we can't help but wonder: Is the single-player-only game in danger of becoming extinct? And if it is, who's really to blame?

The annual pre-holiday game release flood, now spilling into early 2010 thanks to numerous delays, is filled with marquee multiplayer-driven blockbusters—Modern Warfare 2, Left 4 Dead 2, Halo 3: ODST. It's also filled with brand new names, games from developers who have seemingly capitulated to the rising clamor for more multiplayer.

"[Multiplayer is] the most requested feature we get," says Todd Howard, executive producer of The Elder Scrolls series and Fallout 3 at Bethesda Softworks, so far resistant to the trend this generation. "So we do consider it every time... and every time it loses, but I suppose you never know."

Entering the multiplayer fray soon are titles like Uncharted 2: Among Thieves, Naughty Dog's sequel to its purely single-player PlayStation 3 debut. The list also includes BioShock 2, due much later, but also based on a title lauded for its story-driven solo experience and Brutal Legend, famed designer Tim Schafer's first stab at a multiplayer game.

Also due this November is the game that could outsell all of those highly anticipated releases, New Super Mario Bros. Wii, a four-player cooperative spin on the side-scrolling formula.

While the latest Nintendo platformer may not be the first game in the series to sport a multiplayer component—portable games Super Mario 64 DS and New Super Mario Bros. both featured wireless multiplayer modes in a much more limited capacity—rarely has a Mario Bros. game focused so heavily on cooperative play. Not since, well, the original Mario Bros.

There is some cause for concern for the solo-only player. Massively successful games like Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare and Valve's Left 4 Dead offered shorter campaign modes in favor of a more robust multiplayer feature set. And StarCraft fans may be more than perturbed about the late release of StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty, already sliced into three campaigns, largely due to delays with Battle.net, Blizzard's multiplayer service.

If more publishers and developers follow suit in shifting more focus to multiplayer, will the lone wolf suffer?

The addition of multiplayer to games that have relied on their single player strengths is done for a number of reasons, the most obvious of which is that the game buying public has simply come to expect it as a series sequelizes and evolves. It's an oft-demanded feature from the community, even in series that tend to be strictly single-player.

While Bethesda's epic role-playing games tend to be limited to solo adventures these days, the developer has flirted with multiplayer in the past, with Howard pointing to games like The Terminator: SkyNET. But he sees the tacking on of multiplayer as a potential distraction.

"With the big RPG stuff, I think adding multiplayer distracts your efforts to put the best massive single player experience you can out there," Howard says. "I'd rather use that development time to make the core experience of being a lone hero better."

That distraction was a common concern among PlayStation 3 owners when Naughty Dog and Sony lifted the veil off Uncharted 2: Among Thieves' multiplayer features. Fans lamented that co-op and deathmatch would ill-fit the game and, worse, could detract from the solo adventures of star Nathan Drake.

"Right at the start of the development of Uncharted 2, we decided that we wanted to create a multiplayer game," explains Richard Lemarchand, co-lead designer at developer Naughty Dog. "During production, the single player and multiplayer designers sat together in the same room, and the majority of the artists, animators and other team members that worked on the multiplayer levels worked on parts of the single player game as well. This meant that the quality bar of each part of the game was constantly being inspired and raised by the other parts of the production, and that everything came together with a really cohesive feel."

Fortunately for fans of the single-player Uncharted: Drake's Fortune campaign, Naughty Dog didn't sacrifice that portion of the game at expense of adding a handful of multiplayer modes. In fact, they offered a longer single-player mode

"We had lots of reasons to [add multiplayer] — we love multiplayer games and really liked the idea of Nathan Drake's play mechanics in that context, we wanted to develop ourselves technologically in an area that we hadn't touched for a few years, and, if we're totally honest, we thought that we might see some bonus sales as a result."

That's one of the other key reasons developers add multiplayer components to their games, to ensure that a consumer looking for something to play beyond the eight to twelve hours needed to complete a solo campaign will still see value in their purchase. It's a feature that publishers hope will dissuade consumers from renting or reselling their games.

Games like Bethesda's Fallout 3 and The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion help retain their value with much longer campaigns and a regular flow of single-player downloadable content, an alternate solution to the multiplayer extension.

"It comes down to doing whatever you need to do to keep people playing your game for months on end," says Cliff Bleszinski, game designer at Epic Games. "The guys at Bethesda realized this with Fallout and are doing what is essentially episodic content with their expansions. Make them keep the disc and keep the game on their mind. That's the goal."

Even without that after-market, post-campaign content—like Gears of War's regular stream of multiplayer map packs, a tactic that has worked well for the Halo and Call of Duty series—Bleszinksi still believes the single-player game can survive.

"It's still possible for an entirely single player game to do well," he contends. "Look at how Assassin's Creed cleaned up at retail. BioShock did well also, although they're adding a multiplayer component in the sequel."

While successful, the addition of multiplayer to the multi-million unit selling BioShock may be illustrative of the changing expectations of consumers. If there's little to do but replay a narrative-driven campaign, many gamers appear quite happy to resell their discs and move onto the next game.

"The best way to combat people trading in your game is to simply make it better in whatever way works for you," argues Todd Howard. "People trade in cars with poor value. Our DLC is a good way to add to the value of the base game and give folks yet another reason to keep playing."

Or consider Nintendo's solution — add a multiplayer component to just about everything, even if the game has a lone wolf history like Punch-Out!! or Super Mario.

The Wii's online multiplayer capabilities may not be as robust as those offered by Xbox Live, PlayStation Network, Steam or Battle.net, but multiplayer matches of two to four people on the same couch, each armed with a Wii Remote, may hold equal appeal to Nintendo's expanded audience. And if Nintendo is selling extra Wii Remotes, they're likely finding it appealing too.

The four-player New Super Mario Bros. Wii one-ups the traditional platformer experience, ensuring that players needn't wait their turn to play as Luigi or be relegated to the simplified co-op present in Super Mario Galaxy.

The success of Wii Sports, Wii Play and Nintendo's ensuing first party titles, with their local multiplayer appeal, may not be limited to just Wii games.

"It's interesting how many people have told us that they played Uncharted: Drake's Fortune with their spouse or another family member in the room, which perhaps marks the arrival of a new and different kind of multiplayer gaming!" notes Naughty Dog's Richard Lemarchand. "I'm partly joking, and partly serious –- as games hit higher bench-marks of quality as entertainment, I think we're going to see people finding new ways to enjoy them together in groups, whether it's SingStar parties or an evening in on the couch with some popcorn and Uncharted 2."

That said, Lemarchand says that, at least at Naughty Dog, storytelling is still important. "Even though multiplayer gaming has exploded in popularity in the last few years, and attracted a lot of business interest as a result, I think that single player gaming has a really healthy future."

• Kid And Play
  Gaming Before Chemo, A Child's Escape
  by Owen Good
• 
  
• Star Power
  Four Out Of Five Stars: How User Ratings Will Boost Your Xbox Experience
  by Blake Snow
• 
  
• $40 For That Old Thing?
  How Used Games Are Priced
  by Mike Fahey
• 
  
• Visit Scenic New Mombasa
  Halo 3 ODST Multiplayer Tour: Bungie Will Be Your Guide Today
  by Matt Cabral
• 
  
• Gimme A D!
  In Defence Of Sports Games
  by Luke Plunkett
• 
  
• Gaijin Works
  Want To Work In The Japanese Gaming Industry? Here's How
  by Brian Ashcraft
• 
  
• I Love Your Top!
  Kotaku's Fall Fashion Special
  by AJ Glasser
• 
  
• Breaking Up Is Hard To Do
  Pieces of You: Rebuilding Myself On Consoles
  by A.J. Glasser
• 
  
• Minority Report
  The Non-White Gamer's Experience
  by Owen Good
• 
  
• The Other Con
  Asia's Other Game Convention: Singapore Shines in September
  by N. Evan Van Zelfden
• 
  
• The Art & Science Of Short Shorts
  How To Dress A Tokyo Game Show Booth Lady
  by Brian Ashcraft
• 
  
• Missing In Action
  Where Are All The "Next Gen" Games?
  by Luke Plunkett
• 
  

REVIEWS

NCAA Football 10 Review: Be True to Your School
Space Invaders Infinity Gene Micro-Review: Evolve or Die
Fat Princess Micro-Review: Let Them Eat Cake
Fallout 3 Mothership Zeta Micro-Review: The Final Frontier
Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: My Life As A Darklord Micro-Review: A Horrifying Thought
Marvel vs. Capcom 2 Micro-Review: It's Gonna Take You For A...Yeah
The King of Fighters XII Review: Still Royalty?
SingStar Queen Review: Play The Game
G.I. Joe Review: Now We Know
Art Style: Precipice Micro-Review: But What If It's Art?
TMNT: Turtles in Time Re-Shelled Micro Review: "We're Really Hip"
Madden NFL 10 Review: Slow and Steady Wins the Game
Ashes Cricket 2009 Review: Middle Of The Order
Shadow Complex Review: Genre Upgrade
NFL 2010 Micro-Review: Season on the Shrink
Red Faction: Demons Of The Badland Micro-Review: British Girls On Mars Go Wild
Resident Evil 4 Mobile Edition Micro-Review: Learning to Read With Zombies
Batman: Arkham Asylum Review: The Dark Knight Is A Bright Light
Wolfenstein Review: Occult Following
Mass Effect: Pinnacle Station Micro-Review: A Curious Experiment
Trials HD Micro-review: Tribulations
Guitar Hero 5 Review: Do The Evolution
Defense Grid Micro-Review: Mmmmm... Raspberries
The Beatles: Rock Band Review: Blisters On My Fingers
Gamer Movie Review: More Second Life Than Counter-Strike
Professor Layton and the Diabolical Box Review: My Cup of Tea
Contra ReBirth Micro-Review: The ReBirth Of Challenge
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story Review: A Fawful Good Time
Scribblenauts Review: Embrace Your Inner Geek
Trine Micro-Review: The Fat Knight
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 2 Review: It Takes Two, Baby
WET Review: Swords, Guns and Flawed Fun
Persona PSP Review: This Time It's Persona
Mini Ninjas Review: Hitman: Lunch Money
Halo 3: ODST Review: The More Vulnerable Edition
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Smash-Up Review: Heroes And A Half-Smash-Bros.
Muramasa: The Demon Blade Review: Hot Springs Eternal
Need for Speed Shift Review: Switching Gears
PSPgo Review: A Peek Into the Future of Gaming
Zuma's Revenge Micro-Review: Bridging The Mom And Son Gap
Uncharted 2: Among Thieves Review: Fortune Shines on Drake
Madden iPhone Micro-Review: The Biggest Small-Time Football

PREVIEWS

Star Wars Battlefront: Elite Squadron Preview: To Fire The Ion Cannon
Guitar Hero 5 Wii's Roadie Battle Preview: Bring On the DS
Mario And Sonic at the Olympic Winter Games Preview: Luigi Controlled with a Rear End
Brütal Legend Multiplayer Preview: Mazel Tov, It's An RTS
The Beatles: Rock Band Preview: Story Mode, Beatles Beats & Beyond
Fairytale Fights Preview: The Brothers Grimm Never Looked So Gory
Wet Preview: It All Happened So Slowly
Battleswarm: Field of Honor Preview: Choose Your Genre
Sonic & Sega All-Stars Racing Preview: Better Than A Blue Shell
The Sky Crawlers: Innocent Aces Preview: Guileless, But Not Innocent
Ju-on: The Grudge Preview: Hide All But One Of Your Wiimotes
Valhalla Knights: Eldar Saga Preview: Making The Jump To Home Consoles
Red Faction: Guerrilla PC Preview: PC Gamers Get Best Version (If Their Rigs Can Handle It)
Order Of War Preview: Almost Everything Is In Order
Fighting Fantasy Follow-Up Preview: Fear My Stylus
Dreamkiller Preview: What Dreams May Die
No More Heroes 2: Desperate Struggle Preview: Sex Is Not The Motivation
Contra Rebirth Preview: Surprise, It's Tough!
Star Trek Online Preview: Boldly Going Places
Bit.Trip Void Preview: The Stick's Turn
South Park Let's Go Tower Defense Play! Preview: Yellow Snowballs Added
Axel & Pixel Preview: It Looks Like Nothing Else
Nostalgia Preview: The Winds Of Staying The Same
NHL 2K10 Preview: Zamboni Smackdown
Ratchet & Clank Future: A Crack In Time Preview: Floor Of The Year
The Warriors: Street Brawl Preview: Go Home To Play
Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising Multiplayer Preview: War Is Hell. And Mostly Colorless.
Army of Two: The 40th Day PSP Preview: A Fixed Perspective
Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier PSP Preview: A Blast From The Past
LittleBigPlanet PSP Preview: PSP Platforming At Its Cutest
Undead Knights Preview: Tag! You're A Zombie!
GTA IV: The Ballad of Gay Tony Preview: Crimes For The Crazy Rich
Tetris Preview: Adding and Subtracting From A Classic
Petz Preview: There's Some Strategy Here
LEGO Indiana Jones 2 Driving Segment Preview: Smash! Crash! Rehash!
Star Wars The Clone Wars: Republic Heroes Preview: Split Personality Gameplay
Wii Fit Plus Preview: One Fat Slice Of Cheese
DJ Hero Preview: Gonna Need A Bigger Lap
PixelJunk Shooter Impressions: An Improving Flow

LIVE

QuakeCon Coverage
Gamescom Coverage
Blizzcon Coverage
Penny Arcade Expo Coverage
Tokyo Game Show Coverage

COLUMNS

Well Played

• The Real Video Game Danger: They're Too Safe?
• QuakeCon Faces a Crossroads
• Video Gamers Get Their Woodstock
• A Reignited Console War Means A Happy Holiday For Gamers
• Could Gaming Soon Overshadow Music in Seattle?
• The Problem With Reality
• Bakugan: Contender to the Pokemon Throne?
• Tokyo Game Show Slump Casts Shadow Across Industry

Stick Jockey

• Sports Ads: Everything You Want in a Video Game - and Less
• Madden Launch Returns to Its Roots - for One Weekend Only?
• In a League of Your Own, Where Your Word is Law
• The Art of Calling an Unseen Game/a>
• In the Preseason, 2K Sports Reports First
• So I Went to a Fight, and a Video Game Broke Out ...
• Where Madden Plugs a Gap, Another Sees a Running Lane
• What Makes a "Real" Sport in an Unreal World?

Leigh Alexander

• Bang Bang, Is Creativity Dead?
• Why We Love To Hate Activision - And Might Be Wrong

tim rogers

• The Everything Disease: A Forensic Analysis of the Popularity of Pokemon
• Stop Telling Me What To Do!

COVER

• Designed by Michael McWhertor

It's something that's been gnawing at me for a while now, but as we approach Christmas 2009 – the fifth holiday season for the Xbox 360, and fourth for the PlayStation 3 and Nintendo Wii – that gnawing has turned into some serious, unchecked mastication.

After all, a new hardware generation is meant to usher in a new generation of games to go with it. And not just games that look prettier, or sound better; titles that give you something entirely new in terms of game design and mechanics, something that could only be done by taking advantage of the latest in console hardware.

Yet I think only a handful of games this console generation have done so. Which ones? Oh, I'm glad you asked. Games like:

Dead Rising – There has never been a game like Dead Rising. It's open-world in appearance, but the entire game is built around the concept of navigating an endless sea of zombies in numbers previous consoles simply couldn't get on-screen at once.

Oblivion/Fallout 3 – Two games, I know, but they do the same thing, so they go in the same listing. Nobody ever forgets that first time you leave the Imperial sewers/Vault 101 and take in the world around you, realising that Bethesda haven't crafted a level, they've built a seamless, living world well beyond the scale of previous titles like Morrowind.

Yes, they also appear on PC, but remember, these games were also built from the ground up with consoles in mind, rather than being crude ports.

Wii Sports/Wii Sports Resort – To this day, the only games that have truly delivered on the promise of the Wii Remote, integrating it so naturally within the gameplay experience that you can't imagine playing the games without it.

So as good as Modern Warfare is, as good as Mario Galaxy is, I don't call them truly "next gen" games. Why? Because they fail my "next gen" test, that's why.

Here's the test: If a game can be ported to a console in a previous generation and keep its core gameplay and overall design in place, it's not what I'm calling for the purposes of this piece a "next gen" game. Mario Galaxy was great, but really, it's a GameCube title with some star-shaking stuff thrown in. Modern Warfare? Amazing, but as the upcoming Wii port attests, it used the 360 and PS3 primarily for better graphics and sound. LittleBigPlanet? Another great game, but the PSP version shows the core experience could have been done on a PS2.

Other games I think fail this test are Halo 3, BioShock, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Uncharted, Metal Gear Solid 4…OK, pretty much everything. You get the idea. Sure, they're nice and shiny, and have lovely pre-rendered cutscenes, and there are advanced uses of physics and AI under the hood, and most important of all, advanced online connectivity, but all of those are just tweaks, improvements, icing on the cake, candy for the eyes. None of them fundamentally change the way you approach a game, or a genre.

Not like Mario Kart and F-Zero did with Parallax scrolling. Or Mario 64 with its use of 3D. Or Grand Theft Auto III with its living, breathing city. Those games re-wrote the book. You just couldn't do GTAIII on the PlayStation. Or Mario 64 on the SNES. They were true "next gen" games.

Now, I'm not saying all games NEED to be 100% innovative. That's an impossible requirement. Ridiculous, even. Not every single game idea is going to bust outside the box. I like my latest version of FIFA or Call of Duty as much as the next man, and the world will spin just fine with the majority of games simply plodding along, doing what the last one did, only slightly better. Still, a man can want, can't he?

So why do we have so few this time around? What's the problem? There's refinement under the hood. There's games that some, and especially the developers, may disagree with me on (GTAIV, for example, or Halo 3 and its extensive multiplayer modes). And there are some who could argue, with a fair point, that the same problem plagued the previous generation.

Certainly the cost of development can't help. Worlds are built with engines, and engines are built on rules. If you wanted to come up with something entirely new, you'd have to do it yourself, which for many developers and publishers in this current economic climate just isn't feasible.

It can also be argued that a single jump in the mid-90's – from the 16-bit era to the N64 and PS1 – will long be the most significant in gaming, taking us as it did from 2D to 3D, and that subsequent generations can't be relied upon to deliver the same level of innovation. Fair, to a point, but then there are still plenty of games like GTAIII that were able to innovate well past the 32-bit era.

One final possibility, however, is that there is innovation going on in today's games beyond the superficial. It's just, we can't see it. Chatting with Bethesda's Todd Howard on the subject, he put this idea forward:

"I think the visual component of it is the one that everyone notices first, and it's also the prime part that benefits from what the new hardware gives you" he says. "So it's just harder to see the innovations beyond that, but they're there. I'd guess there's just as much pure 'design innovation' with this generation as there has been in the last few."

"Look at the basis now for how games handle physics, difficulty, controls, save games, or simple load screens. I know it sounds silly, but I get excited by innovations in loading screens, because they're the worst part of a game. I'm interested in how games simply start."

Promising, yeah, but does that really hold water when compared to more fundamental changes? Not really. "There's been innovations in AI, but it certainly hasn't kept pace with the graphic fidelity, which yields this overall feeling of it going backwards" Howard adds. "The environments are so complex now in games, that building good AI just to manoeuvre them takes serious time. But that's not an innovation, that's simply the AI doing what it could do before in a game.

"My hope is, as we developers turn the corner on how to make the games simply 'work,' that we can innovate more on how the games respond to the player, whether that is the AI, or socially, or something else."

Maybe that explains it, and in 30 years, we'll look back on the current generation as one where developers were finding their feet, laying the groundwork for sprawling, innovating and revolutionary titles of the future.

Though always an industry mainstay, Activision didn't start to take its place front-and-center in the core audience's shooting gallery until years recent. It was theGuitar Hero and Call of Duty, franchises that became Activision's golden calves; early incarnations of those titles broke ground and dazzled audiences.

Then came the sequels, the sequels, and yet more sequels. As the publisher's stock soared (ticker: ATVI) its triumphant executive became a vocal and often controversial mainstay in the business press – and by extension, the gaming consumer press.

"Hating EA is so last year," CEO John Riccitiello told Kotaku at E3 in 2008, talking to us about what Electronic Arts had learned from its old ways of doing business – ways that look an awful lot like how Activision appears to conduct itself these days. All across the internet, it's clear: Gamers have crowned a new Evil Empire.

Who Is Bobby Kotick?

I, as a games biz reporter, have been given interview time with most major publishing execs more than once – most of them believe it's important to reach out to us from time to time as a way of reaching their consumers. I've never even been in the same room with Mr. Kotick. And while Activision is often responsive to media inquiries regarding its games, calls for comment on business articles or questions about the company itself – such as my request for info for this article – usually go unanswered.

But as an industry analyst, it's the job of Wedbush Morgan analyst Michael Pachter to check in regularly with top execs and get the info shareholders need to make investment decisions, so he's fairly familiar with the bombastic executive. "Bobby is friendly to a fault, funny, very smart, and quite engaging," says Pachter. "He is a bit flip, in an entertaining way, and I think it translates in print as cocky. I like him a lot, and think that his public persona has been twisted by the gaming media, making him into a ruthless factory head."

Kotick's "public persona" continues to raise eyebrows all on its own. Asked recently by an analyst on a quarterly conference call about the rising cost of packaged game software – bolstered, in no small part, by Activision's higher price points on peripheral-equipped games, Kotick said that "if it was left to me, I would raise [software] prices even further," and chuckled along with his execs.

Just a joke it may have been, but hardly a tasteful one in a recession, where cash-strapped consumers were likely to catch wind of his cavalier attitude. It's just one example why a wash of anti-ATVI sentiment pervades the comments sections and forums that impassioned gamers call home. Contrast that to Nintendo's stated promise to "keep people smiling," EA boss Riccitiello's common refrain that quality must precede profitability as a goal, and Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick's regular praise for his development talent on every quarterly investor call.

But Kotick's most recent round of cold talk was the most eyebrow-raising: he recently said his goal's always been to "take all the fun out making video games." As for the working environment at Activision? "I think we've definitely been able to instill in the culture the skepticism and pessimism and fear that you should have in an economy like we're in today."

The widely-publicized quote, delivered at an investor conference, was easy flamebait. Gamers' passionate nature and yen for controversy is part of what defines them as a community – and hating can be fun, as exemplified by this resulting parody song from IdleThumbs' Chris Remo, who says it's "based on the teachings of Kotick."

But what do Kotick's employees think, living in an environment of "pessimism, skepticism and fear"?

Nose To The Grindstone

"Kotick basically says that he was partially quoted out of context, and partially the humor of the situation at the time isn't conveyed in the quotations," says a level-headed employee of one of the publisher's internal studios, speaking under condition of anonymity. Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling also seemed to take it as a joke, if you recall his subtle riff on the snafu during a recent Modern Warfare 2 event.

Numerous Activision insiders who didn't want to be quoted said that Activision, as a corporate entity, treats them well – individual developers are more likely to encounter conflicts of studio bureaucracy on the development side rather than on the publisher-side, something of an unusual scheme of events in game development.

The high-pressure, goal-driven environment also means tensions across rival internal studios flare up more often, as we saw with the public spat between Infinity Ward's Robert Bowling and Activision producer Noah Heller, representing Treyarch's Call of Duty: World at War. Of course, the culture of achievement also means that prominent designers on projects like these drive very, very nice cars, we're told.

Our source has never himself met Kotick, but says he's heard little ill of him – he compares what he hears to "people who know Bush, where despite what you think about his policies, they all seem to think he's a cool guy to sit around and have a beer with."

The Bad Behavior

Industry sources say, though, that other gaming companies don't feel quite so positively toward Kotick – in particular, that such a cash-flush company is leaving it up to the others to shoulder the collective cost of piracy protection and first-amendment lobbying via their Entertainment Software Association dues. That is a point of contention.

Activision was the largest publisher to defect not only from last year's E3, but from the ESA – the trade body that represents the interests of all game developers. And while this year, the publisher returned to E3, it still won't rejoin the ESA: "We have our own issues that are not the industry's issues," Kotick has said.

But Activision is part of the industry – so as much smaller publishers manage their pricey ESA dues to support pro-industry lobbying and public awareness campaigns, Activision, one of the world's wealthiest, is sitting out its share. And that decision is viewed in a poor light by other companies.

Also worrying is Kotick's pattern of levying lawsuits against the defiant. Activision dropped gamer-darling Brütal Legend, from its publishing slate in the Vivendi merger because the eagerly-anticipated title, plus other Sierra games, "lacked the potential to be exploited every year on every platform," as Kotick said at the time.

But when EA picked up the game, Activision sued – a move an EA spokesperson now-famously likened to "a husband abandoning his family and then suing after his wife meets a better looking guy." ("Hey, if Activision liked it, then they should have put a ring on it," chimed in creator Tim Schafer.)

Under Kotick's stewardship, Activision seems to be developing a propensity for the sort of legal challenge that makes it look like a bully. There's also the imbroglio over turntable games, when Activision bought embattled developer 7 Studios — who'd been working on Scratch: The Ultimate DJ for Genius Products. Genius now alleges Activision levied its legal muscle and some "unsavory business practices" to delay a possible rival to its own turntable-equipped DJ Hero. Activision mantains its involvement with 7 Studios provides the developer with much-needed financing, and that Scratch had fallen behind in production well before its acquisition.

A Culture Of Cash

Pragmatic gamers may not like Activision or Kotick's ways, but will assert the man's just doing his job and doing it well: The games industry is still a business, after all. He has, at least on the books, earned some compliments – and mad money to go with them. The 46 year-old Kotick has helmed Activision since 1991, and in 2007, the NPD group pegged the publisher as the industry's biggest. Activision's 2008 saw four consecutive quarters of revenue growth – and that same year, Forbes says Kotick earned $15 million for his work. That's twice what EA's John Riccitiello made as head of Activision's nearest rival.

And when he's not running the game industry's newest and biggest Death Star, evidence suggests he might not be such a bad guy. He participates in charitable organizations as a member of the Board of Trustees for The Center for Early Education, chairs the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and is a member of the Board of Directors of the Tony Hawk Foundation – making his game franchise figurehead happy, sure, but the Foundation also puts skate parks in disadvantaged communities.

Nonetheless, Bobby Kotick doesn't seem to care what gamers think. Should he? Pachter points out that when "the old" EA was churning out content with less attention to quality, the resulting gamer backlash did, in his opinion, injure the company's bottom line.

"The argument about consumer fatigue and lower product quality is sound," Pachter concedes. "There is only so much innovation that can occur, and annual games are less likely to be innovative than bi-annual or tri-annual games." It's possible that Activision's business strategy and public persona may one day come home to roost, as it did for EA.

Until then, what can gamers do? Not buy Modern Warfare 2, the holiday season's most-desired title?

...Yeah, right.

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland blog, and freelances reviews and criticism to a variety of outlets. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

Every year there are two shows at the Tokyo Game Show: the games that are played and the clothes that are worn. While cosplayers have the market cornered on outrageous spectacle, it's the booth companions that often provide the most revealing look into a company's corporate culture.

"The traditional booth companion uniform — you know, the short skirts, the high heels, the vinyl — are designed to appeal to men," says Xbox Japan's Yuichiro Aoki. "Our uniforms are designed to appeal to women." That in turn, Aoki believes, will make the booth companions feel more comfortable. "We didn't want to force the girls to look sexy. We wanted their appeal to come out naturally. Maybe this is just my opinion, but I think that's when women look their most beautiful."

Booth uniforms tend to run on cycles for some companies, while others change it every year. Last year, Japanese newspapers reported that Microsoft would be revealing a new booth companion uniform. While the company has had varying degrees of success, Microsoft has been picked for best booth companion uniform by game magazine Famitsu year after year after year at TGS. Famitsu quoted one attendee as saying, "Microsoft's outfits didn't seem to reveal much at first, but look again, and..."

In uniform-crazy Japan, there was considerable buzz about what the new Microsoft 2008 uniform would look like. Xbox Japan marketing exec Jyoji Sakaguchi said, "Every year, our booth companion outfits get an extremely favorable reception, and they are very popular among women. This year, we're going to finally introduce a new design for the outfits. During the booth companion fitting, things like 'Wow, I want to wear this outside work!' were overheard about the cool costume."

The design process began in early fall, and a hand-made prototype was created before the show. After it was approved, Japanese craftspeople produced the finished product. This year, Microsoft once again rolled out last year's model.

Uniforms dominate the Japanese landscape. It's not only cops, firefighters and train station employees who wear standardized outfits, but elevator operators, office ladies and taxi drivers. While researching the book I am writing on Japanese schoolgirls, it's been surprising to see how the design of uniforms often dictate to young women where they want to go to junior high or high school — often as much or more than academic reputation!

"Often when booth companions from other companies are on their break, they say that they think the Xbox booth companion outfits are so cute," explains Aoki. A lot of the girls who apply to be booth companions say they did so because they like the uniform." Microsoft isn;t trying to lure other companies' booth companions. It's not like that at all.

At 32-years-old, Aoki is Microsoft's creative director for the Tokyo Game Show. Fashionably dressed in a black sweater, blue button-up and camo pants, he's got a clip board in his hand, ear piece in his ear. The first days are always the most nerve racking, he says. Besides handling the Xbox 360 TV and print ads in Japan, Aoki overseas the TGS booth lay-out, any graphic design work that needs doing as well as conceptualizing the look of the booth companions. "I was heavily involved in designing the uniforms," he says. "We wanted it to be modern and something that the girls could actually wear outside."

And the girls do want to wear it outside. "But Aoki-san won't give me a uniform to take home!" bubbles 23-year-old booth companion Megumi. "This uniform is so cute, and it's comfortable — it's actually wearable." This isn't the first time Megumi has worn the Xbox Japan TGS outfit — she was one of 10 or so booth companions involved in the design process, offering opinions on what kind of clothes she would want to wear. While other companies dictate TGS wear to companions from on high, Xbox Japan involved them from the start. A closer look shows how playful the uniform is with visual gags like "Information ?" written on the seat of the uniform's shorts.

Design-wise, Xbox Japan tried to message the freedom and customization that the Xbox 360 platform gives players. So while users can swap out hard drives or use different colored controllers, the booth companions can do likewise: Belts come in green and silver, and there are hats for companions who want to wear them. "I think the hats are so adorable," gushes Megumi. There are metal star pins that the girls can put where they like. "It's easier to stand in cowboy boots than in high heels all day," adds Megumi. The ability to swap out accessories gives the uniforms customized, while keeping a standardized look. Megumi's favorite thing about the uniform is that, around her neck, she wears an Xbox LIVE-type gamer card with her name and photo on it. "I think it's really cool," she says. "It personalizes the experience, for me."

Out of the approximately 120 girls that auditioned in late summer, only 40 or so made the grade. Those that did attended a lecture on manners to ensure they interact with customers in a polite and respectful fashion. Decorum and manners play a large part in Japanese culture — ditto for the Tokyo Game Show. As part of their training, the companions also took a five hour seminar about the Xbox brand and Xbox LIVE. To help facilitate the experience, the booth companions were broken down into groups lead by core staff. So someone like Megumi who has experience working with Xbox Japan would oversee and help train new girls. At the end of the show each day, all the girls lined up in front of the booth, posed for photos and then bowed in unison.

"We don't have a predetermined idea of what kind of girls we want," says Aoki. Uniforms run small, medium and large — but even then, it's possible for the girls to customize the outfit. Straps on the back of the suit make it possible for quick and easily tailoring: tighten the straps for those girls who want a tighter fit and loosen them for girls who need more room. The shorts can be rolled up and buttoned in place for those who want their legs to appear longer and can be rolled down to minimize unflattering thighs. Because the uniform is open in the chest, revealing a bikini-type top, it's also possible to accessorize with a stole-type scarf for those companions hesitant to walk around with their shirt open all day long. Xbox Japan and its design team have thought of everything that can make the companions more comfortable as they do their job.

"Because the girls are in shorts and wearing stockings," says Aoki, "they also don't have to worrying about the kinds of things girls in mini-skirts have to." Meaning? "They don't have to worry about people seeing their underpants and can just relax. Our goal is to make sure the girls feel comfortable with the uniforms and comfortable with the Xbox 360," Aoki says, "because honestly, that will motivate them during the show."

But in Singapore last week, Games Convention Asia drew 102,500 attendees during four days of business and public exhibition. That total number might not be as large: but consider if you will, the population of greater Tokyo is 12.7 million people while the entire population of island-nation Singapore is 4.7 million people.

Singapore seems to have an events culture where something is always going on. Inside the massive Suntec Centre you might find a food fair on one floor, shoe sales, and a games convention that posts highers number than Seattle's annual Penny Arcade Expo.

There's a crowd at the top of the escalators, and the first thing you hear is the whir of cameras as attendees snap photos of cosplayers. Stormtroopers are posing for photos, too, and inside you're handed an ice-cold bottle of Coke Zero as you browse the exhibits.

It's almost like a home and garden show, where you can buy games and merchandise in addition to previewing an upcoming game like Borderlands. Admission is free, and organizers say they learned to adapt the idea of Asian gameplay, because the local audience expected something to buy. Not just the experience, but also a game they can take home.

Electronic Arts has a booth, which sells The Beatles: Rock Band and the latest FIFA game, and Nintendo is represented by their local distributor. Sony exhibited in a previous year, but this year Sony and Nintendo are only participating in the business side of the show where developers and publishers have private meetings.

"Next year, we expect a little more, once the economy is picking up," says Jorg Zeissig, from Leipziger Messe International. LMI, incidentally, is the same company behind the popular Games Convention event from Leipzig. While that show is now overshadowed by Cologne's Gamescom, they have found some traction in Singapore

Christopher Thompson, general manager for Electronic Arts in Asia, says this has been a unique year for shows. Tokyo Game Show is about platforms, and Asia needs a neutral show. His point is proved by the variety of both platforms and business models represented on the show floor. According to Thompson, Singapore has "a good gaming culture," and is also a highly profitable market.

"It's not easy to compare them, because it's a totally different concept," Zeissig says, when asked compare Games Convention Asia and the Tokyo Game Show.

Tokyo is great in terms of media announcements from the Japanese publishers, and it's good to attract visitors from all over Japan, but basically the show is made for the Japanese market, believes Zeissig.

According to Zeissig, the goal of the show is to bring international business and trade visitors to Singapore, which is set up for opportunities between creative minds, developers, and publishers. Next year, he plans for more exhibitors and more content to be showcased and more announcements to be made on the show floor.

Games Convention Asia features an international developer conference, and partnered with the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences to host the first DICE Summit Asia, which drew inspirational speakers like Demigod designer Chris Taylor, and PaRappa the Rapper creator Masaya Matsuura.

"You do see diversity on the show floor, in the conference as well, that you don't see anywhere else at this point in the entire region," Zeissig notes. Not only is there Singaporean content, and participation from nearby Malaysia and Indonesia, but China, Korea, and Australia, as well.

Nabi Studios, a Singapore-based developer was showcasing Toribash, which will be released by Nintendo in the fourth-quarter of 2009. The game, subtitled "Violence Perfected," is a turn-based fighting game that has ragdoll robots trying to decapitate each other using rock-paper-scissors moves. Toribash started as a free-to-play PC, and expects further success on the WiiWare platform this Christmas.

Besides demos, local visitors get to participate in regional tournaments - this year saw the launch of the One Asia Cup. Sponsored by a powerful local publisher and operator, IAH Games, the tourney featured $100,000 in cash and prizes for players of EA Sports' FIFA Online 2 and drew teams from across Southeast Asia.

And it seems that, locally, cosplay is an important part of playing games - as one resident noted, there isn't much to do in Singapore, and this fosters creativity, offering an outlet to those who make their own costumes.

While the on-stage contest at the close of Games Convention Asia offered the winner a trip to Australia to compete in the grand finals of the Asia Pacific Cosplay Championship 2009, the high-energy emcee took the opportunity to evangelize his audience, urging mommy and daddy to support their children's interest in developing costumes.

The audience remained exceptionally well-behaved and polite, even with the raucous emcee singing the theme from Ghostbusters to a pair of shy female contests representing characters from the recent Atari game.

But the emotions surfaced when the audience started singing along to the Village People's YMCA, as sung by a cosplayer representing Major Armstrong from Square Enix's Fullmetal Alchemist adaptations.

If there's a lesson to be learned from Games Convention Asia, it's simply that gamers want to gather each year for an event that celebrates interactive entertainment. They don't need major announcements about hardware pricing, nor do they need to preview every title from next year's slate.

The game industry looks to E3 and TGS for big news. They look to PAX because it's highly anticipated by the fans. There's something significant at these shows.

And yet, Games Convention Asia suggests that, in the future, hundreds of thousands of gamers in the major cities of the world will be satisfied with an annual festival to celebrate games - even without significant announcements and revelations and celebrities. GCA showcases games as just a normal part of life

And the spreading normalization of games culture might be the most significant thing to come out of this Singapore show.

Drawing it out of him, Mills says it's because of the avatar's body language. And while Mills doesn't say that's really a white guy on his screen, palette-swapped to look like him, he's pretty clear this representation is not from his neighborhood.

"I can make him look like me, but have you noticed, when he's standing right there, the way he moves? It's ... weird," Mills said. "He puts his hand on his hip. He twirls his head. I've never seen people who act like that."

It's a little thing and the discussion moves on. But it is evocative of just how conscious one becomes of these differences, during a life spent playing as characters who look nothing like you.

And in matters ranging from avatar creation and character representation to the marketing and affordability of games, non-white gamers' experiences speak of a video games community that is, at best, insensitive to their membership in it, sometimes to the point of obliviousness.

Kotaku sought out several non-white gamers, some of whom also write about their experiences, to discuss what being an African-American or Hispanic gamer means. In an American games industry dominated, marketed to and consumed mostly by white males, discussions of race and class can quickly hit a wall, blocked by insistence that the subject is inappropriate for a pursuit that should be colorblind in basis. Ideally, yes, it should. But race matters — it always will — in a different way for video games.

Recognizably You

Rafael Sanchez is 23, lives in West Covina, Calif. and has enrolled in graduate school to get a master's degree in computer science. He wants to go to work in game development. If he does, Rafael would be among the 2.5 percent of developers who are Hispanic, according to an International Game Developers Association survey of its membership. A similar percentage of "recognizably Hispanic" characters can be found in video games, according to a study released recently.

Sanchez considers this matter from a game design perspective. "Looking at the casts of fighting games, it really is the only genre where you get a diverse cast," said Sanchez, who writes on the blog Latino Gamer. Many of them begin with a small cast, he said. "As each grows, the initial token, it's a black guy that's thrown in - Eddy Gordo in Tekken, or Zack in Dead or Alive. You usually see the black person first, because they make the most obvious contrast to the white characters on the roster.

Because a "recognizably Hispanic" man is difficult to reduce to visual cues such as black or white skin, "it's harder for [game developers] to think of how to include us," Sanchez says. "And when they do, they can't think of any way to do so other than stereotypes of Mexican wrestlers."

He doesn't say any of this bitterly. "I don't think there's anything malicious behind it; you write what you know," Sanchez explained. "If the game developers and writers are largely white people, I can't really expect them to understand my reality."

The same IGDA survey said its development community is 83 percent white. Blacks comprise 2 percent. Asians make up 7.5 percent, but in a sector with such a strong history across the Pacific, the issue of their representation is notably different from that of black and Latino characters.

Mills, the gamer from Georgia, is resigned to the reality that the characters he plays, reads in comic books and sees on television at best represent him in the values they carry, rather than what they look like. Mills' brother Reginald, nine years older, loved comic books, and parked Fergus in front of the television when the cartoons came on, indoctrinating him to Batman's continuity. Bruce Wayne's upbringing made him "almost like a role model."

"You become so used to it," Mills said. "You turn on the TV, the main character is white. Play a game, the main character is white…You don't think about the underlying meaning of it. It's just what's going on. People really do think of it as the norm; you make a character, he's going to be white."

Why should any of this matter? Dmitri Williams, an assistant professor at the University of Southern California's Annenberg School for Communication, who conducted the study of demographic representation in video games released last month, argues that they represent a market opportunity for publishers.

"If we could get past the issue of racism and think market dynamics, if I'm a young Latino kid, I'll probably be more interested in a game if it has Latino characters," Williams said. "The strong backlash people have is: This is a political correctness issue, and ‘I'm being told how to think and feel,' and ‘I'm being told I'm a racist.' None of that is necessary. You can just look at the numbers and see that some groups should be showing up, in games, in greater numbers."

He points to the cultural impact a generation earlier, when black characters began appearing on television in meaningful roles.

"Any time someone from an under-represented group made that first appearance, it was a big deal for that group," Williams said. "Bill Cosby starring in ‘I Spy' (in 1965), that was a real breakthrough role for African-American actors [on TV]. And it led to whites and African-Americans thinking of themselves in new ways. The simple presence of a group is important."

But if minority gamers represent a market opportunity, game publishers seem slow to pursue it. In fact, another aspect in which non-white gamers feel excluded is in the marketing. If games are pitched or made with their interests or lifestyles in mind, they feel it's usually the next sports title.

"I walk into a GameStop, and they probably think I'm there to buy NBA 2K9 or Madden," Mills said. For the record, his favorite game is Metal Gear Solid 4. He prefers action/adventure games.

Gary Swaby, 23, a Briton of black Caribbean ancestry, living in Luton, England, believes that marketing reinforces, more than anything else, the image of gaming as a predominantly, if not exclusively, white activity. "They're definitely trying to market to the masses, and the white families would be their biggest audience," Swaby said. "Most white people are probably in a better financial space than black families, or those of other cultures, and that would mean they're the market [publishers] are going after. I can't remember seeing a Wii commercial with a black family. Blacks are assumed to be poor. That's definitely an issue that can't be ignored." Swaby said he spends between 400 or 500 pounds ($660-$830) annually on games.

Sanchez, while not endorsing stereotype, does find some truth in his own experience as a Hispanic gamer with not much of a disposable income for games. "I walk into a GameStop, I go straight to the used PS2 rack," he says. With tuition for California State-Los Angeles coming due, the games he's writing about on his site, lately, are older, cheaper games. "If I'm talking to someone with more money, and I mention the last game I reviewed, he'll ask why I'm talking about that instead of some $50 or $60 game. I'm straightforward. These are the games I can afford right now.

"When someone has more money, they are able to be more lighthearted about these things," Sanchez continued. Those of us who can't afford the $50 as easily, we put a lot more thought into our purchases. Before I got my Wii, I had been thinking about it for months. [A friend] was very surprised by how much thought I had put into it."

What could be marketed more to Hispanic gamers? "Well, racing games," said Andreas Almodovar, 28, of Oldsmar, Fla. "We love getting into the car industry, love customizing our cars. I think the gaming industry, like [with] Midnight Club and Need for Speed, have tapped into something. I just wish they would take it a bit further."

The Importance of Being Louis

The Koalition, a site dedicated to the interests of the urban or hip-hop gamer, as they put it, was just cited as the best tech blog by the Black Weblog Awards. Swaby and Mills are contributors. A.B. Frasier, 23, of Newark N.J. is its managing editor, and he says the site was created in part to introduce and expose African-Americans to other types of games, since the community is largely seen as sticking with sports and shooter titles.

But his site's efforts can only go so far. "A lot of kids play games, and I could sit up here and try to introduce these games for the black community, but the truth is it still has to appeal to them. And I think a black character does that," Frasier said. "But it has to be done in a way that everybody can accept."

A good example? Frasier picks Louis from Left 4 Dead. Louis is a black protagonist and a playable character who participates in a way that is not conspicuously or stereotypically "black." He wears a tie. He looks like he stumbled out of the office to start blasting at zombies. Frasier says he even saw Left 4 Dead advertisements on hiphop sites, and says the game has very strong uptake in the black community.

"Valve really did a great job putting a black character in their game," Frasier said. "Not every black guy speaks like Cole Train [in the Gears of War series.]"

Hardwiring a minority character into a game, without stereotype, is a powerful statement, above any game that allows customizable avatars of any ethnicity. As Williams, the researcher, sums it up, "People are probably not going to opt in and say, ‘I've got my squad, but I really need a black guy. I really need a Hispanic guy on it.' They're probably going to create guys who look like themselves."

Game character diversity is not just an issue about the interests of non-whites but about the effect it has on white gamers. Williams brings up the subject of "mainstreaming," something highly debated in communication science. Basically, the theory holds that watching enough images starts to move one's perception toward what they see in the images. Williams, who has studied video games for 10 years and calls himself a hardcore gamer, did a study early in his career that showed that, after playing a game, people said they thought the game world they'd visited was more like their real world. "That's a cultivation effect, and it happens," Williams said. "There's no reason to think it wouldn't happen with race as well."

So the upshot there: The more a white gamer — or a gamer of any ethnicity, frankly — spends time in a homogeneous environment, the cues about race and ethnicity sent by games become even more important. Especially if they're the only or the predominant mass medium being consumed. "Imagine a Latino kid, who lives in an all-Latino neighborhood," Williams said. "If they were only exposed to images of white people through the media, those images will probably have a bigger impact. Contrast that with a Latino who lives in a diverse neighborhood who interacts with white kids all the time. The images from the games won't matter as much."

Walking in Someone's Shoes

Asked what they'd like to see most, all the non-white gamers I talked to have their preferences. Almodovar would love to see Hispanic characters in the Battlefield 2 series and why not? The U.S. military's Hispanic population has grown steadily over the past decade.

Frasier? "Why can't a guy like Hip Hop Gamer be in G4? One 30-minute show, would it really hurt that much?" Such programming would go a long ways to inclusion, he feels. Sanchez, a role-playing game enthusiast, "would love it if there was a Square-produced RPG that had a brown protagonist."

Swaby wants to know "why can't we make a game with a black character, and market it to everybody?" Of course, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas stands as the most notable effort in this regard. The game also is five years old.

But what they don't want more of is pretending that race somehow is not an issue, when it is one in every other mass medium in this multicultural society. The consumption of white-dominated mass media by a diverse consumer base is a legitimate, serious topic.

And if games belong to that equation when the discussion is about their artistic value, or their economic impact or cultural relevance, then they also belong in the discussion of the consumption of white-dominated, high-demand mass media by a broadly diverse consumer base. Holding up one's hand to declare it's not an issue will not make it go away.

"It's because a lot of people haven't been taught it's important," said Frasier, speaking of race and the history of race problems. "A lot of people playing games now are young, and brought up in areas where everybody gets along, so I don't think they see the problem. You have to live the life in the shoes of a person of color to understand where they are coming from."

For certain, he's lived enough lives in the shoes of a white character.

We tracked down gamer-made gamer apparel from all across the Internet, some with game publisher licenses and some without. Between our price listings and some choice advice from a few specialists, you'll pwn gamer fashion this fall.

Here's what our experts on gamer fashion have to say...

Meg Horner, private seller, aka sunshineravioli:
"I shoot for a pretty chill look— if you're not looking closely, they just look like any other knit hat. It's like wearing a secret on your head that only other gamers will understand."

Chris Birch, founder, Joystick Junkies:
"The main thing is our clothing has to be commercial, it's got to sell to people who want really cool t-shirts whether they ‘get it' or not, whether they recognize the inspiration for the design or not. The bonus is if you see one of our t-shirts and think ‘oh my god that's the quote from my favorite game'."

Tashica Taylor, private seller, aka urbanprincess:
"I try to make thinks that are fun and things I think people will love! If I won't wear it I won't make it and try to sell it to someone."

Note: The gallery is sorted by game, so some "saves" will still be pricey. Sorry, Atari fans!

I personally had a similar moment as a ten-year-old, playing Super Mario Bros. 3: I managed to use only my resourcefulness and a raccoon tail to score 99 extra lives on the second stage of the game, with the help of neither a pop-up tutorial nor the instruction manual. Twenty years later, games stop at every tiny opportunity to tell us what to do, how to do it, and sometimes even why we should do it.

Hello, it's me again. For the next .00000129% of your life, I am prepared to type many naive things on a variety of subjects, ultimately (hopefully) zeroing in on the topic of why I personally think that games talk directly to me too much. You see, someone has to say naive things — everyone else is always so serious. Well, I, for one, am not afraid of saying something stupid.

To start with, here is a list of things I hate:

1. Being asked if I have the hiccups when I clearly have the hiccups (aka "being asked what I'm doing when it is very obvious what I am doing")
2. Being told what to do
3. Being told how to do something that I don't want to do / am not currently doing (as a passive-aggressive means of asking me to do something)
4. Being "asked" to do something immediately after I start doing something (if I bring you a Coke Zero from my refrigerator, don't ask "Hey, could you get me a Coke Zero?" immediately before you take the Coke Zero out of my hand)
5. Being asked if I am okay because I drop a shampoo bottle in the shower, and from the kitchen it sounded like maybe I fell, or dropped something bigger than a shampoo bottle, or something
6. Being told / asked to do something immediately after I just finished doing it — right in front of the person / object asking me to do it

And the worst transgression of them all:

7. Being told how to do something that I am clearly doing magnificently.

Modern videogames tend to do all of the above things in infuriating ways. If you'd like, you can start imagining what some of those ways are. By the time I finally start talking about videogames, you should be all prepared to bring something essential to the discussion.

Now here is a short list of things I notice in my every day life.

1. The loudspeakers hovering near my apartment window, just out of reach, blasting advertisements for local businesses: one bike shop (there are six in my town), a jewelry store (which is not in my town), a cat food wholesale store (which sells the same cat food as the supermarket, just at higher mom-and-pop markup), a pachinko parlor (one of twelve in town) and a tiny bar (which seats only six patrons). I am actually 50% of the way finished writing a non-fiction novel about my smaller-than-life experience trying to get these (illegally placed, mafia-owned) loudspeakers removed from my city.

2. The closest excellent supermarket to my house has a downstairs area for the produce and frozen foods. Positioned just above the escalator and the stairs is a loudspeaker that could double as a hair-dryer. It informs you, as you rush down the escalator, thinking of pineapple, that you should not carry "guns or explosive devices" into the grocery store, nor should you leave your small children unattended.

3. Ticket machines in train stations in Japan begin talking to you immediately after your first button press, or immediately after you put money into the machine. If you put money into the machine, it hypothesizes that you might not know that you now have to press a button to choose the price of the ticket you want to buy. If you press the ticket price first, it hypothesizes that you might not know that you now have to put in the proper amount of money. In either situation, the machine immediately presumes that your action indicates you don't know something. I could use some computer programming language to make that last sentence sound decently more sophisticated, though in the interest of sounding down-to-earth, I will resist. For now, reflect on that bolded point: as money is the root of all evil, this is the root of all of the things that infuriate me and people like me (if they exist (please exist (so lonely))). Nothing can prepare my videogame-fed socially starved criminal tendencies, however, for what comes after I have successfully navigated the hyper-user-friendly ticket machine menus and successfully obtained my ticket (or charged my train pass). The ticket (or train pass) — and my change (if there is any) — pops out of the machine. I take the ticket, I take my change. The machine continues screaming: "Thank you very much. Please do not forget to take your money or your ticket. Thank you very much. Please do not forget to take your money or your ticket. Thank you very much. Please do not forget to take your money or your ticket." Yes, it says this three times, very slowly. It screams this with such volumetric excess that, usually, when I walk up to the machine to put my money in, I am able to catch the last two and a half repetitions of the previous customer's warning.

4. It is illegal to smoke cigarettes on the street in the Suginami ward of Tokyo. Look on the ground, and there are these big red signs: "IT IS ILLEGAL TO SMOKE ON THE STREET IN THE SUGINAMI WARD OF TOKYO". It has been illegal to smoke on the street in Suginami for as long as I have been living in Suginami, and that is a pretty decent length of time. Three years ago, they plastered brand-new, shiny, redder signs on the ground next to the "no smoking" signs. "AS OF SEPTEMBER 1st, 2006, YOU MUST NOT SMOKE ON THE STREET IN SUGINAMI WARD". The signs proclaimed that anyone smoking on the street would be fined 2,000 yen if caught. These signs disappeared in December of 2006. Just two weeks ago, new signs appeared. "AS OF OCTOBER 1st, 2009, YOU MUST NOT SMOKE ON THE STREET IN SUGINAMI WARD". These signs, also, announce that violators can and will be fined 2,000 yen if caught. A little asking around at the local government office reveals the knowledge-tidbit that the fine for smoking on the street is, in fact, 22,000 yen. I've never heard of anyone getting fined, and I don't think I ever will. Lately, small and bizarre groups of youths and senior citizens have been patrolling the streets of Shinjuku with hand-held ashtrays, encouraging smokers to put their cigarettes out and obey the law. I don't know if this works, either, though it highlights two things:

A. The citizens themselves, not the policy-makers, are the ones who tend to care most about the rules
B. Nobody likes doing anything anybody tells them to.

When JR outlawed smoking on train platforms in early 2009, did it stop people from smoking on the platforms? Only in the designated areas. Just two weeks ago I saw a man, dressed like a rebel rocker, get chewed out by station staff for smoking right there at the edge of the platform amid two dozen other rush hour commuters. The man threw his cigarette onto the tracks and miraculously lit up another one after getting on the train. People just stared at him like they were watching their own house burn down with their grandmother inside, asleep and dreaming of watermelons and kittens. That was the first time I'd ever seen that.

This highlights two final ideas, which we are going to, for argument's sake, consider the absolute, sad truth:

I. When you tell people not to do something, someone with an authority problem is going to jump at the chance to be a rebel
II. It only takes one jerk to prove any hypothesis absolutely false

Like, have you ever heard the rumor that you can drop cash on the street in Tokyo and the people are so honest that someone will find it, pick it up, and take it to the cops? Well, that's absolutely 100% not true, because I once found a plain envelope on the ground with "6,000 yen" written on it. Inside was 6,000 yen. I put it in my pocket and kept walking.

Sometimes I could swear that we are mere social millimeters from the government installing loudspeakers inside our houses, telling us to consider getting flu vaccines.

notice the sign over the escalator at the end of the video, which reads "ESCALATOR"

I consulted a psychiatric expert friend of mine just this afternoon. He looks a lot like me, and I can only see him when I position a mirror in front of my favorite chair. His chair looks a lot like my favorite chair. I talked to him about this dream I had wherein I opened a store where I only sold photographs I'd taken of myself with my iPhone camera. I asked him what he thought the dream meant. He said he didn't know. Then I asked him about videogames and the people who played them, and why he thought they had such a chronic problem with authority. He gave me an enlightening response.

Games, you see, are about having control.

Videogames, most often, present the player with a world with a single end goal of "winning". They are a perfect contrast to the real world, in which one makes one's own goals, where goals and desires are constantly shifting, and the only ending anyone ever sees involves the main character dying. News flash: most people in the world are not astronaut supervisors or rock-star-slash-helicopter-pilots. Most people never get an opportunity and/or have the balls to be the guy who shows up to his job in a big stuffy corporate office on his first day in a leather jacket and sunglasses, tell the boss "You codgers need to change your game!", and be the flip-flop-wearing CEO by Friday. Games like Dynasty Warriors give us a world with the invincibility code turned on: now we are the badass warrior capable of killing 300 guys before learning what a flesh wound is. We do — and this is a trite a thing as one can say — play games, sometimes, to escape the real world. People talk about that all the time. What I am proposing is that we play games precisely to avoid the parts of the world that tell us what to do, and when to do them, dangling "a more comfortable life" in front of our eyes all the while. Though that's not all: games also present us with things we can finish. Things we can see through to an intended end. And we want to see the end. And the makers want us to see the end. Hence their trying to help us.

We can distinguish mainly two types of games that tell us what to do: we have the type of game that tells us what to do because it is afraid that we have no capacity to figure it out ourselves, and that we will complain to our friends about the difficulty of the game, thus killing its favorable reputation, and we have the type of game that only tells us what to do constantly because its designers fabricated far too many things for us to do in the name of keeping the game's air of "sophistication". Both types of game are equally obnoxious. Some games actually blend these two types, and that's even more obnoxious. I'm going to try to articulate the finer points of these two transgressions; I will probably fail to precisely articulate all my points. So be it!

For two days every August, citizens of Koenji, Tokyo, Japan dance in the streets. They call this the Awa-Odori. It's a festival — of the night — celebrating a traditional Japanese dance. It's fantastic. After it's been going on for three hours, it starts to become near-unbearably noisy, though we'll conveniently ignore that. Participants in the festival tend to be your typical every day people. It's great. Observing the groups of sometimes 50 dancers yields many socio-musicological observations. For example, the theory that if you get together enough people with drums, it'll sound like the erratic rhythm is intentional.

What's most interesting is that this particular form of Japanese traditional music has evolved so that arrhythmia is, in and of itself, a key characteristic. The majority of Japanese folk music can be played with one position of one scale containing only five notes. Players of the shamisen (a three-stringed Japanese instrument) will only play three notes on one string, two notes on another string, and one note on the third string, for any given traditional song. Players of the shakuhachi (a Japanese flute) will also play only those five notes. In an awa-odori dance, the players (we don't call them "musicians", because music isn't the point of this dance (the point would be "atmosphere")) agree on a key and a rhythm. The multiple flute players play the same five notes over and over again, backward and forward, all slightly out of time with one another. What was, long ago, a mere symptom of the participants' lack of "formal music training" has now become a key of the "sound" of an awa-odori dance: the flutes are all slightly out of time with one another, relying only on the drums. The warbling we hear as the flutes interact with one another is pleasant and interesting. (Other genres of music that have evolved this way: rock and roll, etc.)

However. Please watch the following two videos:

Do you see what I see?

One "instrument" in an awa-odori ensemble is a hand-held cymbal-like bell. The man banging the bell is the most important member of an awa-odori troupe. He is the only one that needs perfect rhythm. He is the human metronome, guiding the enormous chorus of taiko drummers. More than just a metronome, however, he also has the role of conductor and of DJ. The rhythms he beats out on his metronome-bell are all unique to one particular pre-agreed drum beat. The flute-players need only remember which key goes with which drum beat. They, too, rely on the sound of the bell to tell them which pre-agreed melody is needed.

One must-mention characteristic of the bell is that it is very, very loud. It possesses a clinking, tinny tambre that is audible over even the pounding of drums and squealing of flutes. In rock and roll band terms we would say it "cuts through the mix".

As it is loud, and noisy, it is impossible to not hear when listening to an awa-odori troupe's musical performance.

As it is so present, it has gradually come to be considered an essential part of the sound. This is why, in one of these videos, we see a troupe with two bells, just being recklessly clanged and beaten within an inch of their lives. An awa-odori troupe only needs one bell, one conductor, one DJ. It doesn't necessarily need twenty drummers, either, where just five will do, though adding more drums can't hurt. Adding more bells, however, can. Some of the troupes I saw last week at the festival had a six-man bell section. That's ridiculous! The most interesting, entertaining, coherent, and exuberant of the troupes, however, only used one bell.

I find this to be a pretty perfect metaphor for games that lump in needless shit in the name of appearing more sophisticated.

I was a child once, and me and my friend Carl had Final Fantasy on the NES. You'd level your dudes up in that game for hours and hours just to save up the money to buy a Silver Sword so you could Do 100 Damage Every Hit. You'd level up forever before your dude had 100 HP.

Then there were pictures of Final Fantasy II in Nintendo Power. We didn't care, back then, that the game was actually called Final Fantasy IV in Japan: we didn't know we were missing two games; we were pumped. One of the first screenshots showed Rydia summoning a Titan. The kid in our class who had said he had Bart vs The Space Mutants and it was the best game ever, when clearly the game wasn't out yet saw the screenshot with the Titan and was like, "Dude, you can summon a Titan! You have to get this game and let me borrow it." All he had to do was read the caption with the words "you can summon a Titan", and he knew he needed the game. He had never seen a Titan, nor had he "summoned" anything in any other game, and it was enough for him. Let's ignore, for now, that summoning a Titan is just pretty wallpaper for a dull room called "attacking a monster", and get to the real issue: Carl pointed at a screenshot of a status menu, and exclaimed:

"Look! Cecil is on Level One and he already has two hundred hit points!!!!!!!"

Fast-forward nineteen years and hundreds of crushing disappointments (some small, some huge). I have grown up into a somewhat responsible adult with many quirky and lovable habits, a bizarre singing voice, and a renowned lyrical style. The global games industry has been married six times, and three of its ex-wives have not been found.

Yesterday, I saw this.

The purple border was my idea. Kotaku editors: please, if you leave one thing from this wall of words here, make it that purple border.

Get a stiff drink and watch that video. Feel free to stop it after two minutes.

Warning: if, in the comments, you try defend this, I will likely reply with something that appears polite and thoughtful, and then, later, when you're not looking, I will remove you from my Livejournal friends list, unless I notice that you have no other Livejournal friends, at which point I will feel socially responsible, sigh, and decide to keep pretending to enjoy your company.

In short: what the hell?

In long: what the fuck is going on, there? If you walked in on someone playing this game, what would you do? Would you ask, "Hey, what is this? It looks pretty cool!" Or would you stare at the screen for the duration of the "conflict" like an old spinster seeing pornography for the first time? That unique mixture of hatred and fascination — fascinatred!

Yesterday, I commented on that video, by the way, with "こういうのはもういいじゃないか", which roughly means "Haven't we had enough of this shit?" in some Asian language that might not be Chinese. My comment was thumbs-upped twice in the past twenty-four hours! Please, if you happen across my comment and you hear what I am saying, thumbs it up. Japanese game companies are scared as hell of people disliking their shit. Remember when Square-Enix said Dragon Quest IX would be an action game, and five people went ballistic on the internet, posting 300 persons' worth of hate? They changed that game right back around! Also — completing this tangent, here — did you know that the people making Sonic the Hedgehog games at Sega in Japan have no idea that people think their games suck? That's a fact. Anyway. Digressing is fun!

Now, the big question: how many dozens of story-point-connected battles do I have to sit through before the game designers have drip-fed me every pop-up tutorial message explaining every tiny incoherent thing that is going on in that action scene there?

Answer: probably a lot! I reckon you'd have to play that game for fifteen hours before it stopped telling you what to do. It seems, to me, that the people designing RPGs in Japan know that their audience consists almost entirely of the types of people who would otherwise and elsewhere have actually applied to medical school because they thought the doctors on "ER" sounded "cool" when they yelled out names of medicines and dosage amounts while sprinting down a hospital hall alongside a gurney on which a man lay with a sucking chest wound.

Nintendo has stated that their chief goal in marketing the Wii was to "win back" the gamers who "gave up" on games after Super Mario Bros. Nintendo stated this many times between detailing the nature of the "Revolution" controller at a press conference at Tokyo Game Show and announcing the first games for the console.

The above paragraph, my inner Expert Scientist tells me, is More Than Enough Text to set off militant Nintendo fans. Disclaimer: I am not dissing Nintendo in the slightest. (Not yet, anyway.) If you are going to immediately jump in my face and comment about how Nintendo made "lots of money" with the Wii and "broke sales records", you're missing something: the very fact that anyone was able to "break" said "sales records" is indicative of the fact that they could have been broken even harder, making even more money. If everyone at Nintendo thought the way internet console fanboys did, we'd still be playing 2D Zelda games! (Come to think of it, that would be grrrrrr-eat.)

What is "wrong" with modern Nintendo is not that their AAA games constantly tell the player what to do, and when, it's that they are more often that not built from the ground up to be enjoyable by everyone, even people who have

1. Lost the instruction manual
2. Hyper-volatile short-term memories

Case in point: there is a stage that requires (I think) 45 stars to unlock in Super Mario Galaxy, with a big lake surrounding a mountain. 45 stars (again, I am not sure of the exact number) is well more than half of the way into the game. Anyway, Mario can't get any peace and quiet in general in Super Mario Galaxy. Every stage has a host of talking animals on hand to present you with not-so-subtle hints re: your objectives and how you're supposed to accomplish them, whether you ask for these hints or not. This stage in question, however, is a particularly obnoxious offender. You get in the water, right, and you're swimming, right? It's a hell of a long distance to swim. The far shore is way out there. Anyway, you get about halfway there, and a penguin glides by in the water, literally unavoidable. When he gets close enough to you, a huge text box pops out flagrantly onto the screen:

"PRESS THE A BUTTON TO SWIM!"

Am I not already swimming? Is this not a violation of my Holy Commandment #7: Thou shalt not tell me how to do something when I am already doing it with great verve and gusto?

Well, not quite — there is a chance that the player is not pressing the A button to swim. See, in Super Mario Galaxy, it's possible to swim very, very slowly by simply tilting the analog stick. So it's further possible that the "uneducated", "casual", goldfish-brained, instruction-manual-losing player might not be swimming full speed.

Here's what goes on in the mind of a player who is not swimming full speed, and does not know how to swim full speed:

1. "Man, this sure is taking a long time."
2. "Maybe that penguin was lying to me when he said I had to swim all the way to the far shore."
3. "For God's sake, why does it have to be so far?"

How do we solve this? By telling every player, regardless of his current course of action, that he can press the A button to swim faster (even if he is swimming as fast as he can)? That would be the Nintendo way. I'll give you a minute to think of some better ways. Go ahead. It'll feel good. You'll feel smarter than Nintendo game designers?

Did you solve the riddle? The better solutions would involve:

1. Making Mario swim fast all the time, when you just press the analog stick
2. Making the far shore much closer

Solution #1 would sacrifice some of the game's illusion of "depth".

Solution #2 would sacrifice some of the game's illusion of "scale".

Keep in mind that, when we use the word "illusion", we're not being snippy — games are, in and of themselves, not real. It's all illusions. Just that some illusions are better than others.

Dig deeper into Super Mario Galaxy — a game that is, for all intents and purposes, everything good and bad about modern game design mixed together on a silver-plated platter like so much curry and saffron rice — and we find some delectably irreconcilable examples wherein the level design and game design has allowed the "'win back' the gamers who walked away" motive to seep in all the way to the core. My favorite example would be a particular stage about halfway through the game wherein Mario arrives on a rabbit- and bee-inhabited planetoid. I will now describe the very first "challenge" for this planetoid. Disclaimer: if you happen to like Super Mario Galaxy, that's okay! I like it, too! A lot, even! That doesn't stop the criticism train from rollin', however.

The name of the challenge is "The rabbits are looking for something" (translated from Japanese; I don't know what it's called in English).

Mario arrives on the planetoid. Immediately after his feet touch the ground, a bee throws a text bubble in our faces. He says:

"The rabbits on this planet are looking for something. I wonder what it is?"

Let the record show: we have mentioned the rabbits, and that they are looking for something, twice before the first microsecond of play. The only line of non-tutorial-related script to grace our consciousness is a rhetorical question: "I wonder what it is?"

Ahead of us is a path. Giant boulders are rolling down the path. All we have to do to avoid the boulders is not walk on the path. Directly we see, to our left, a bee, a rabbit, and three posts sticking up out of the ground. (This sounds like the beginning of a bad joke.) The bee sidles in to inform us that this here rabbit is very carefully searching for something. We talk to the rabbit. He says "Where, oh where, is the STAR CHIP?" Except instead of using the words "Star Chip", the dialogue box includes a star chip icon.

Before the dialogue box fades, the camera swings back and pulls up, to reveal that a star chip — looking identical to the star chip icon in the dialogue box — is hovering above the three posts.

The use of an icon to illustrate the star chip in the dialogue box is of key importance: it is the game designers acknowledging that

1. Maybe the player can't read
2. Maybe the player can read, and just doesn't know / remember what a "star chip" is

#1 is born of a subconscious presupposition that the rest of the dialogue in the box is insubstantial, so long as the player is able to make a connection between the "real" star chip floating in the sky and the abstract representation of the star chip within the dialogue box.

#2 is born of a subconscious presupposition that the player hasn't lost the game disc in addition to the instruction manual, the game box, the controller, or the console, or else that he would never recognize a floating, rotating, sparkling item, revealed by a slow camera tilt, as something that he needs to obtain in order to proceed.

Even on a fundamental level, something is wrong, here. We won't snipe at it further. Instead, we will address the problem of "solving" this "puzzle":

What do you do to get the star chip? You try jumping. Mario can't jump high enough.

Well, the solution is obvious, if you've gotten this far in the game. By "obvious" I mean it's something that an absolute newcomer to games would never understand in a million microseconds.

Three posts stick up out of the ground. Mario is capable of performing a hip drop if you press the trigger while jumping. This hip drop is capable of pounding pegs into the ground. The ability to pound pegs into the ground is ingrained in the seasoned player's brain as "something Mario can do".

You pound all three pegs into the ground. Immediately, after the third one is pounded into the ground, a rotating star-like thing appears roughly in between the three pegs.

A seasoned player knows that if he stands in the star thing and shakes the controller Mario will launch high into the air.

You stand in it, and shake the controller. Mario launches into the air, and grabs the star chip.

You go on your way. A bee floats around near the path. He confronts you: "That rabbit over there seems to be looking for something! I wonder what it is?" The camera pans to show a rabbit under a waterfall.

You go to the rabbit under a waterfall. You talk to him. "I can just smell the STAR CHIP! It's got to be around here somewhere!" The camera then pans to show a crate.

The player will know, thanks to the tutorials the game has presented from its outset, that shaking the remote will make Mario do a spin attack. This spin attack can break boxes. Mario walks over to the box, spins. It breaks. The star chip is, of course, inside.

In both of these cases, the player is "rewarded" for remembering what he can do in a given situation (if pegs, stomp pegs; if box, break box; if star-gate-thing, shake remote to fly), and his reward for doing what he can do is something that the game has contrived us to need. They sometimes call this "lock and key" design, though being that in Super Mario Galaxy's case the "keys" in this example are mere sequences of button presses and not items that need to be collected or challenges that need to be surmounted, I feel safe declaring it as a particularly heinous example. Add to this the fact that the rewards are pieces of a thing that, when combined, gives you a thing that lets you perform a simple action to access another area wherein you must collect another thing — and it just gets ridiculous. It's McGuffins on top of McGuffins.

Furthermore, after setting up the story that the rabbits are the protectors of the stars, trying to assemble the stars to assist the Space Princess, after establishing within this very stage that the rabbits have come to this planet looking for something, when it comes right down to the final showdown, when you collect all the star chips and warp to the next planetoid, you find a rabbit who claims to have the star piece. He then says, let's play a game — catch me if you can?

Why has the game gone through the painstaking process of detailing its story if it's only now going to present these benevolent rabbits, protectors of the stars, as playing a stupid little game with the item they are sworn to assemble? (Am I missing something?) Also, how did this rabbit get to this planetoid? The other rabbits were searching for the star chips, presumably so they could make it to this planetoid and get the star piece. Why did this rabbit not need the star chips? Is he an evil rabbit? How does that work?

So now, the game's pretzeled internal logic is making us think too much about the story. We are snapped out of the should-be-blissfull gaming experience. This is, quite frankly, weird. It's a buzz-kill! A hard-off! Chasing the rabbit around the little planetoid is joyful, frictive, fun. However, the designers saw fit to attach a local (level-specific) narrative and a global narrative, which makes us think too much about the whole experience. Shigeru Miyamoto himself said that he was opposed to Super Mario Galaxy having a "story". He just wanted it to be about Mario, in space, jumping on shit! Instead, the game is an interactive instruction manual.

If I were an even bigger jerk than I really am I could pretend to insist that Super Mario Galaxy is Nintendo's attempt at a Federico Fellini "8 1/2"-style "experience about itself". I'm not going to do that!

The Zelda games are notorious (in some circles) for their constant hand-holding. Ocarina of Time might even have been the game to introduce the gaming world to the idea of an omnipresent sidekick who explains anything and everything to you. Zelda games appear duty-bound to always be considering the possibility that the player has lost the instruction manual and that he has ignored all the in-game tutorials. Still, the games carry on heedlessly telling the player, every time he picks up a key, that "This is a Magic Key! It can be used to open a door! You can only use it once." Do we need this, every time we get a key? Seeing as the number of keys we're carrying at any given time is displayed on the screen at all times, shouldn't it be common sense that keys are something we will need more than one of, and shouldn't it logically follow after that that if we can have more than one of them, then we probably should be able to use them only once each? Every time you open a treasure chest containing a blue rupee, the game pauses to inform you, "This is a blue rupee! It's worth five rupees!"

Remember Four Swords Adventures for the GameCube? Yeah, that was about as much fun as getting together with your friends at the local dive, getting plastered, and then doing your taxes. Parts of the games were competitive, parts were cooperative; game-design-wise, it was really shimmering and sparkly and precious. Then there were parts where you were madly dashing to Get The Money, and then you'd touch a blue "force" (they weren't rupees) and the game would freeze to tell you you'd just picked up a blue force, which is worth five force. Literally, every time you picked one up off the ground, they'd do this to you, because they figured that the game was predominantly multiplayer, meaning that someone in any given multiplayer game was probably roped in by at least one more-game-inclined friend.

Zelda games are also guilty of the "You Can Summon a Titan!" syndrome — putting pretty wallpaper on mundane actions. In Fina Fantasy, summoning monsters is wallpaper for choosing "attack". In Zelda, using bombs to blow open walls, or using a hookshot to grapple across a gap are mere wallpapers for the act of moving from point A to point B. The very first Zelda was more or less focused on the thrill of finding and then subsequently penetrating to the core of a dungeon. Later entries place focus on getting The Necessary Item and then remembering the spot where you're supposed to use it.

Zelda games are generous gaming experiences, I'll give them that. They are full of neat set pieces and sometimes the dungeons have really ingenious gimmicks. However, Zelda games are also very popular, and very highly reviewed on Metacritic. So you get big games publishers always thinking about the specter of Zelda.

One great recent example is the game Dead Space. I personally didn't like the game. That's neither here nor there. Here's what I'm talking about: game companies say they genuinely want innovation, they want something new. However, they don't want to make a game that's not about Guy With Gun shooting Freak Bastards, because that's the Genre That Sells. So they decide to funnel the required "innovation" into something more mechanical, something in the way the game handles. I tend to not have a damn problem in the world with this thinking, most of the time — it's what brings us Gears of War, a (don't laugh) near-perfect video game when it comes to the game design / level design elements. However, as Dead Space shows us, sometimes this train of thought barrels down the wrong tunnel.

I can imagine the planning meetings for Dead Space. They must have written on the white board (warning: conjecture ahead)

Hero —> has gun; aliens —> must be killed.

Head shots —> industry standard —> chance for innovation?

So one guy says, "Well, if shooting the enemies in the head isn't the way to go, what does the player have to do?"

"How about he shoots the enemies somewhere other than the head?"

"Bingo!"

"Remember that scene in 'Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country', where Captain Kirk kicks that alien in the knee and the alien falls over and he says 'I didn't kick him that hard' and that alien woman says 'Not all species keep their testicles in the same place?'"

"That was bad ass; Kirk is such a dude!"

"How about you have to shoot these guys in the kneecaps to kill them?!?!"

"Bingo!"

So they set this up, and Producer Guy is in the room a couple weeks later.

"Look at this. You shoot the alien monster freak in the kneecap to kill him!"

"Hmm. Interesting. We can make this into a . . . . . . . . . feature."

Weeks later, the producer is back.

"This breaks with industry standard — and that's innovation, as far as we are concerned. However, the general gaming populace is not quite as open-minded or intelligent as us corporate executives. If they were, they'd be rich, and we'd be living in their mothers' basements! So we need to make the whole kneecap thing a lot easier to swallow."

"How do you suggest we do this?"

"Well, we reckon, you've got kneecaps in there; you might as well throw in elbows, too."

"Okay. That makes sense."

"And then we figure, if you've got knees and elbows, you might as well include shoulders and ankles."

"I follow you."

"And then, while you've got all those parts of all those limbs, why wouldn't you want to multiply the fun — and the thrills — some more?"

"Just what is it you are suggesting?"

"I am suggesting that you give the enemies somewhere between sixteen and forty-two superfluous appendages growing out of all parts of their bodies."

"Whoa! Whoa! You just blew my mind clear into the next room!"

A week later, the producer comes in, sees the mocked-up prototype, and says:

"Okay, this is good. In a perfect world, people would see that an alien has forty-five limbs and go, 'If I were asked to make a list of the "special features" of this creature standing before me, I'd probably put "lots of limbs" at the top'. However, I still can't seem to find Scotch-tape-scented cologne anywhere, so this world is pretty far from perfect. We need to tutorialize this."

"Whatever you say, Uncle Pennybags!"

"There are five ways we can do this —

"1. We can put it in the instruction manual. 'Shoot the enemies in their limbs!'

"2. We can take a hint from BioShock, and make the hint something visible within the game-world (maybe write 'SHOOT THEIR LIMBS' on a wall — in blood!)

"3. We can take a hint from Ocarina of Time, and have a character in the game tell you over the radio that you should shoot the enemies in the limbs — nevermind that this character doesn't have a gun and is currently trapped in the safe part of the space station.

"4. We can make it a 'feature' and advertise it on the back of the box. We can push to have reviewers — those malleable saps — refer to the game's genre as 'dismemberment action'. We can call the demo 'dismemberment demo'.

"5. We can do all of these things.

"All of us producers sat around and discussed this very thoughtfully, and we figured that the only way to truly hammer this idea home — the only way to keep the parents of a thousand underaged gamers from suing us for blowing their kids' minds — is to go with option #5."

The game is released. It sells moderately well. It gets good enough review scores. There you go.

So here's what Nintendo's hypothesis must look like: Super Mario Bros. was undoubtedly a cultural phenomenon. People played it, told their friends, bought their own Famicoms and NESes, and cherished the game for years to come.

Games started to get more complicated.

No games met Super Mario Bros.'s fantastic sales numbers. This could have been because

1. Games weren't "new" anymore
2. Games were "too complicated"
3. No other games matched Super Mario Bros.'s sheer hilarious virtuosity as an entertainment experience

I am a pessimist and a harsh critic by nature; however, I would gladly bet on #3.

Nintendo watched its audience dwindle away for the better part of twenty years. Their strategy for "winning back" the gamers who "walked away" was to make simple, paste-like games such as Wii Sports, where all you had to do was shake the controller to either win or nearly win. The game filled in all the details for you.

Super Mario Galaxy arrived as the sequel to a Mario game that had failed to set the world on fire. Someone high up at Nintendo interpreted Super Mario Sunshine's failure to make the front page of the Wall Street Journal under the headline "Greatest Thing Ever Released" as a result of the game not constantly telling the player what to do. Clearly, it was just a visibility issue: around the time Super Mario Bros. 3 was released in 1989, the world moved on, and games didn't present anything nearly as interesting for a while, hence the declining sales.

It was Brain Training that brought videogames back to the forefront of pop culture. People were suddenly aware that games existed again. Someone coined the term "casual games". Now deep into the age of the internet, with twenty years' more marketing experience pooled in the collective conscious, Nintendo were able to keep hold of their visibility longer. They sold many games of varying degrees of complexity for the DS; they launched the Wii. Eventually, there was Super Mario Galaxy.

The producers must have shit a dozen aluminum bricks and quickly ordered the interns to spray-paint them silver in the process of contemplating a maximum-penetration strategy for Super Mario Galaxy. Eventually, the best they could do was to make the game appear "sophisticated", to mint as many new trademarkable characters as possible, and then litter the game with hand-holding tips so that each and every player can get to the end of the experience, to see what happens, in the end, to every one of these now-registered-trademarked characters.

We've probably all been over this before: when you buy a ticket to a movie, you are guaranteed a "complete" experience. When you buy a videogame, if you can't get past level one, you just paid five times the price of a movie ticket for an incomplete experience. So, in other words, games are risky endeavors, at least when it comes to the stage where you're asking people to pay money to play them.

Why not make a game that's all about the atmosphere, so that merely standing still in the game world is a "complete experience"? I must admit that I am a very harsh critic of BioShock, because I find that much of the actual experience of playing the damned thing is cluttered with so many proverbial tiny keys and tiny locks. However, it gets the atmosphere thing better than right. It gets it all the way right. Right at the beginning of the game, we arrive on some kind of underwater pier, with abandoned luggage and dropped signboards everywhere: "We're not your property", the signs say. We feel like a detective, piecing together clues. Be you a seasoned hardcore gamer or a casual newcomer, as long as you can use the analog stick to look around, you will get something out of the experience. Nevermind that BioShock has a persistently chatty Tutorial Character assisting your silent protagonist at all times, and that the game dares to make Tutorial Man a character with deep importance in the story at some point: for those first few pieces, it's really a glimpse at a fantastically realized world.

Did BioShock need all that . . . shit in it, though? According to the marketing men, most likely, it did.

Game companies employ algorithms correlating Metacritic rankings to sales numbers for every recently released game, and then feature-snipe those games, picking out the features that are name-checked most often in the pullout quotes from all the aggregated reviews. What they don't realize is that those games they are feature-sniping originally feature-sniped other games — maybe based on Metacritic readings, or maybe based on the games designers' personal taste and preference in games. If you go back far enough, way back before Metacritic or even Wikipedia or Gamespot existed, you will find that the great games relied exclusively on the taste and preference of their game designers. In other words, right here, in this paragraph, we stand on the cusp of mathematically proving that you don't need Metacritic to make a great game. Before you try to talk sense into me, let me tell you that I have seen people feature-hunting on Metacritic, and heard stuffed-up businessmen literally say things like "Five out of seven reviews cited 'sensation of speed' as a reason why Burnout Paradise was a good game". Duh! It's got fuckin' cars in it! Anyway, you can see how games pick up dozens and dozens of clashing features, necessitating wall-to-wall tutorials in the process.

What is with this drop-dead conviction, however, that games need to be "complicated" in order to be seen as "sophisticated"? And what's with the belief that a game has to be "sophisticated" to sell millions of copies?

Halo is as simple a game as exists. Point the gun, shoot, hide behind something if you're being shot at. A Google search result for "Halo repetitive" yields about 300,000 results. And the games sell ten million copies.

Dragon Quest sells many millions of copies in Japan, with battle systems infinitely simpler than the cluttered nonsense of other RPGs. For over twenty years, Dragon Quest games have sold millions of copies despite their battle systems never involving pseudo-real-time elements, never contriving a "system" with a terrible descriptive acronym to advertise on the back of the box.

Do you remember when you a kid, and you rented Metroid for two days and you got nowhere in it? You just died hundreds of times. Hell if the music and setting didn't creep you out. Years later, when they announced Super Metriod for the SNES, you told you friend, "Dude, I totally played the first Metroid. It was badass." In short, kids — kids, the ultimate newcomers to videogaming — are capable of loving and beholding as legend a game that they don't even know how to play properly, just because it feels and sounds right.

That's not the point, though.

Hopefully, by now, I have established that I don't like people telling me what to do. Even more, I don't like machines telling me what to do. We face an epidemic of games telling gamers what to do. I have hopefully established that the problem has many confounding and perhaps not-fully-comprehensible origins. Our time is being wasted! We know and accept that video games are evil and a waste of time. However, we can't stop playing them. At the very least, game developers, could you stop wasting our time within our waste of time? You know what I'm talking about — that three-minute, unskippable gratuitous video at the beginning of Wii Sports Resort that explains how to click a piece of plastic onto your Wiimote. Well, more specifically, it tells you how to take the Wiimote condom off, how to slip on the new MotionPlus condom, and then how to take the batteries out if the batteries run out (and you bet your ass they will). At the risk of sounding elitist, the only people who actually need this tutorial wear football helmets in the shower. For those people, the cushioned cover on the Wiimote is already a moot point.

Then there are the tutorials that pop up if, say, you're drunk, and you've just thrown three straight frisbees out of bounds in frisbee golf. Then there's the fact that, during the frisbee-selection phase of frisbee golf (protip: always pick the "recommended" frisbee), a big ugly eyesore of a diagram sits in the upper-right corner of the screen, depicting a hand holding a Wiimote, with a strap firmly fastened around the wrist. That is some serious McDonald's "THIS COFFEE IS HOT" bullshit, right there. Again, the only people this applies to wear football helmets to bed. I am a real adult; I happen to sleep without even a fur hat on. The amount of time wasted by frisbee-golfers who do not realize the game has shunted them into free-play tutorial mode, or by any of the 3 million customers who purchased Wii Sports Resort as they sit through that three-minute opening video — that's a lot of electricity being sucked, that's a lot of rainforest acres burning to the fucking ground. If the rain forest is going to burn as an indirect result of the things I do while eating pizza and drinking Coke Zero, for the love of God, at least let that thing I be doing be something like shooting alien brutes in the chest, arm, shoulder, or head.

While typing this, I remembered an example of a machine that tells me what to do — the elliptical trainer at my gym. It has a display that tells me my current heart rate, the length of time I've been running, the distance I've run, and how many calories, roughly, I've burned. Every minute, on the minute, the screen blanks out and a message slowly scrolls across:

"GRIP THE HANDLEBARS TO DISPLAY YOUR HEART RATE"

The message crawls so molasses-slowly that, when the screen at last flops back to useful status display, fifteen seconds have passed. This irritates me to no end. Wow. This is a better example than any of the other examples I've given.

So anyway. I've assembled a little list of things that games could do to make it so that I, their loyal customer and proponent of aesthetic cleanliness in all entertainment media, wouldn't feel patronized.

1. LET ME TURN THE TUTORIALS OFF. I am God. Damned. Tired. of starting a PlayStation 3 game, getting up to get a bottle of water, and coming back to see that the game has not loaded up to the title screen. Instead, it's frozen on the "THIS GAME SAVES DATA AUTOMATICALLY TO THE HARD DRIVE. PLEASE DO NOT EJECT THE GAME DISC OR UNPLUG THE CONSOLE WHILE THE HDD ACCESS INDICATOR LIGHT IS FLASHING." The word "OK". Is highlighted. You have to press a button to acknowledge that this is, indeed, OK with you.

Can't we just bury an option somewhere in the labyrinthine system settings menus: "I know that I must not remove a game disc or unplug the console while the HDD access indicator light is flashing; I understand that doing either of these things might result in lost or damaged data, and I fully accept the consequences if I should do either of these things — which I won't"?

Or, more to the point: when the Xbox 360 was first released, many gamers were surprised to find the console asking them, at initial configuration, what their preferred analog input method was for shooting games — normal or inverted. Why can't one of the system options control whether the player wants to see tutorials or not?

Or at the very least include the option somewhere in every game. For example, Dragon Quest IX, a game I love like a little sister, has one terrifying flaw: no matter what level you are on, a little icon sits on the touch screen at all times. It is shaped like an X button, with a little quill pen icon touching it. Beneath the X button and quill pen is the word "MENU". Oh. So you touch there to open the menu. Huh. And if you're not using the stylus, you can press the . . . X button! You can drag and move this little icon around the screen, though you can't get rid of it. At the very least, can't we make it something more abstract, something that looks like it belongs more on the screen? The game is proud of its obnoxious pixie character — why not make it a tiny sprite of the pixie girl? She could even be leaving a fairy-dust-trail. The kids would love that. Also, many other in-game functions can't be performed with the touch screen (like opening the game statistics menu). Why should the menu be any different?

2. BE MORE CLEVER ABOUT THE TUTORIALS. Let's say we have a game about zombies. Okay, zombies are boring. Let's say they are werewolves. No, let's say they are resurrected Roman Legionnaires afflicted with lycanthropy. Let's say your character is in a church. Thunder roars outside. "It is the full moon", the priest says. "They are coming". He hands you a pistol. "Get out the back door while you still can". The camera pulls over, showing us a back door. Our character is already stepping toward it when we resume control. We step out the back door.

We're on a staircase. The camera pulls away from us, zooms forward to the bottom of the staircase. A Werewolf Legionnaire shambles slowly up the steps. Okay, let's just admit that it's a zombie. (Werewolf Legionnaires will have to wait for another game :-/) The zombie shambles up the first step. Maybe there are 32 steps. The camera flies back, reverting to the in-game over-the-shoulder view you're probably already used to.

Let's say you've played a lot of shooting games. You immediately whip the right analog stick around and shoot the zombie in the head. He dies. You walk down the stairs and continue the game.

Let's say you haven't played any shooting games. You take a step forward, onto the first step down. Or you stand there doing nothing, and the zombie steps up. The zombie steps into an invisible "trigger volume".

He triggers the event of a tutorial: text pops up on the screen: "Use the right analog stick to aim". You aim and shoot. Maybe you catch him in the arm, or the chest. Unfortunately, our game is one where headshots are the only way to kill an enemy.

You keep shooting at him, hitting him in the chest. He keeps advancing up the stairs.

As you shoot him in the chest, his head starts to expand. Eventually, it is sixteen times its original size. It is also red, glowing, pulsating. This is a subtle tutorial capsulized in a visual cue: try shooting him in the head now, and he explodes! Whoa! Yeah! So if I shoot guys in the chest, I can pump up their heads, and turn them into moving bombs!

Let's say, if the zombie reaches step #16, it triggers another tutorial, a much less subtle one: the priest bursts out of the door aiming a handgun at a zombie. He yells at you: "Shoot him in the head, you fool!"

There you have it — nothing like a mild insult to drive a point home.

3. MAKE SIMPLER GAMES. Again, not stupid games, or unsophisticated games. Just make games that are fun and simple, which use level design to convey the game designers' intellectual depth and visual elements that convey the game's narrative scope. Halo is simple — it's all about driving vehicles and shooting dudes. It's simple pleasures. Modern Warfare is as simple an FPS as they come as far as mechanics are concerned, and it couldn't possibly be a more spectacular game. These are games they take a simple idea and turn it into fantastic, million-selling games. And what about something like ICO, or Shadow of the Colossus? Sure, the latter has an on-screen icon that tells us if our character is holding his sword or his bow and arrow, even though we can just look at the character and see which one he's holding. (Someone on the team was probably solely in charge of "on-screen interface", and they didn't want him to feel left out.) Very simple games! They do a little bit of tutorializing, to be sure, though that's nothing idea #2 couldn't fix.

Look at games like Portal, or Out of This World — the latter of which is the best game of all-time (as far as I'm concerned). These are games that take one enthralling mechanic and utilize the structure of an entire game to realize its every relevant permutation. Maybe, if you feel like you have to put thirty-two guns with four alternate firing modes each into your game, maybe, if you feel like a particular thirty-foot hallway in a dungeon is "boring" so maybe you should put a spike pit and then a hookshot panel on the other side, forcing the player to see the hookshot panel and go "Oh. Hookshot." and then open his menu and equip the hookshot so he can swing across the pit — maybe this means that nothing in your game is any fun. Try and think about fun, not about the back of the box. We have a saying in the underground rock and roll scene: don't make T-shirts before you make songs (for fuck's sake). (The "for fuck's sake" is silent.)

Then there are games like Super Mario Bros. 3, where some of the things you can do with your limited move-set of running and jumping are so perfectly nuanced that they are unnecessary in the natural course of the game — like jumping on infinitely-spawning enemies and hovering using the button-mashing hover ability so that you can keep stomping them to infinity, earning extra lives. These kinds of things are wholly optional, and make you feel great to figure out. Games seldom do these sorts of things anymore — we have executive producers wanting to turn anything and everything into a "feature". If the Super Mario Galaxy team made Super Mario Bros. 3, there'd probably be a little rabbit sitting by the goomba pipe in 1-2 telling us "I wonder what happens if you use a RACCOON TAIL to HOVER and stomp a bunch of goombas in a row? . . . I bet you can get A LOT OF EXTRA LIVES."

4. BRING BACK THE INSTRUCTION MANUAL. When I was a kid, and I had much, much, much less money, buying a game was a cherished event. Whenever I got a new RPG, I had a silent tradition: I would read the instruction manual while eating a large bowl of Corn Pops. I loved doing this. I have some real great memories of this tradition, like that time I got Final Fantasy: Mystic Quest for ten dollars, brand new, and my big brother started a quest, naming the hero after himself, while I was still in the dining room eating my Pops. (I had no friends aside from Final Fantasy, my big brother, and Corn Pops.)

As many sources report these days with ample amounts of disbelief, the median age of the gamer is a little bit higher than seven and a half years — it's twenty-six. These are college graduates. They have jobs. They no longer ritualize the purchasing of each game, so they probably don't eat Corn Pops while reading the instruction manuals.

Wait — taking a paragraph break right here to shout-out to Corn Pops again! I haven't had them in years! I wonder if they're still as delicious as I remember, because I remember them as being mighty damn delicious!

So, yes. Instruction manuals are an after-thought. Why? Have you seen Wii Sports Resort's "manual"? It's a big poster-thing. I guess they're more worried about making the manual look like a toy of some sort, to keep people from tossing it in the trash along with, you know, all the other little trash-like flyers Nintendo stuffs into their games these days. Still, as far as a manual goes, it's not helpful. Give us something helpful.

On the Wii Sports Resort title screen, right there in the upper right corner, flashing huge, is a clickable icon: "Click here to watch the Wii MotionPlus tutorial video". That — along with the title of the game and "press A+B" — is the only text on the screen. How awkward. Why not make that say "Please read the manual, okay?"

5. SEPARATION OF TUTORIAL AND GAME. Or, how about you make that clickable icon on the Wii Sports Resort title screen "Click here to practice the games"? Make the tutorial something accessible from the title screen. That's how Metal Gear Solid does it — lord knows those games have plenty of other infuriating things to talk about while you're trying to enjoy the actual game.

You might say that this would be irrelevant in the context of playing the game in a party setting, with people who've never played it before. Wow! I wonder what kind of parties you hang out at — the kind where everyone is dead sober and obsessed with winning? You must have some great birthdays, Poindexter!

Okay, maybe that was mean — I'm sure your name isn't really Poindexter. Let's agree, then, that they could make tutorials available on the screen that asks you to confirm and start the game. Games are 16:9 widescreen these days; that's a lot of screen real estate — enough to put an ever-present diagram telling me to make sure the Wiimote is strapped to my wrist — let's devote a little of that to "These Miis have never played this event before. Would you like to play a tutorial round?"

You know, instead of just pushing me straight into the tutorial mode because my Mii has not participated in Frisbee golf since the last time I turned my Wii off.

6. THAT THING NINTENDO IS DOING. You know, that pop-up tutorial thing. You press a button, and suddenly the game grafts a FAQ and a guidebook right there onto the screen. A Japanese game-designer friend of mine calls this idea "manuke moodo". "Moron Mode". There you have it. So long as it's a button I am never required to press, so long as there's not, like, some stupid owl or penguin or puffin or scarlet ibis screeching onto the screen every thirty-five damn seconds crowing in my face with a text box saying "Press the PLUS BUTTON to access MORON MODE, if you NEED HELP!" — so long as no NPCs in town jump up and say "Hey, if you need help, try pressing the PLUS BUTTON" — we'll all be fine and dandy.

I was washing my hands meticulously in a well-kept public toilet the other day, and around the thirty-third time I applied the soap, I noticed something peculiar: a loudspeaker perched right above the mirrors, pointing right out the door. It was blaring, at a psychosis-inducing volume: "THIS IS THE MEN'S REST ROOM. THIS IS THE MEN'S RESTROOM." I swear it just kept saying it, back to back, wall to wall, for five straight minutes. It took me a minute to realize this was for the benefit of blind people.

Tokyo is a relatively blind-friendly city. If you've ever been here, you've no doubt noticed the bright yellow raised sections of sidewalks. These are to assist cane-carrying blind people in navigating the city. People in general do lots of walking here. Blind people, naturally, do lots of walking as well.

One out of maybe every four crosswalks in Tokyo is equipped with a button that, when pressed, will cause a musical jingle to play out of a loudspeaker mounted near a traffic crossing. I always get irked out of my skull about these buttons, because some impatient guy is always standing there, jamming his finger on it, smoking a cigarette like it went out of style yesterday, huffing and puffing, wondering why the light doesn't change. The sign over the button says, in bold letters: "FOR BLIND PEDESTRIANS". It should also say "Will not make the light change faster, jackass."

At any rate: how do blind people know these exist? Well — they're blind. That they are out of their house without the assistance of a sighted relative indicates that they are somewhat used to being blind. Part of being used to being blind is being knowledgeable about one's surroundings. If you're blind, you have a friend or a family member guide you around town, and say, "there's a crosswalk here". "Does it have a crossing button?" "No, it doesn't." "Okay." "Here's another intersection." "Does it have a button?" "It does." "Where is it?" "It's right here."

I got an excellent idea, while writing this: why not install little radio signal emitters in crossing lights, so that blind people can clip a little receiver on their belt? When a light is green, they'll hear a chime of sorts. When they're near a restroom, they'll hear a friendly, soft voice explaining: "The men's room is on the right. The women's room is on the left".

Maybe they could do this for sight-enabled idiots, too. The government could announce a new initiative. They could say they're handing out radio devices with earpieces so that pedestrians can hear warnings on train platforms telling them not to get stuck in the door, in toilets telling them not to fall in, in their own bathtub, telling them not to bring a toaster, in McDonald's telling them not to spill their coffee, or on the supermarket escalator, telling them not to bring guns or knives.

One tidbit: every time you order a pizza from Dominos.jp, they send you an email coupon for 15% off your next pizza. Why not just make the prices of the pizza 15% cheaper across the board? Answer: because, sometimes, people get lazy, and they don't bother to redeem the coupon.

So we come back to the signs in Suginami, warning smokers that, starting October 1st, they will be fined for smoking on the street. Why are these signs placed right next to the ten-years-old signs informing smokers that it's not legal to smoke on the street? If the common consensus is that the smokers are ignoring these signs, why not put the "starting October 1st you will be fined" signs in some place other than right beside the signs that the smokers are apparently ignoring? The answer to this question is perhaps infinitely more deceptive than it might first appear. Any attempts to answer it would shake the very foundations of the institution of common sense.

—-

If you managed to read all the way to the end of this and feel as though you learned something, you are probably smarter than me.

I would like to continue to ask you for suggestions for future articles. (I'd be lying if I said that no one emailed me last time with the suggestion that my next article "not exist".)

We will meet again — at Tokyo Game Show! See you at the Kotaku party (winking smiley face)

PS: If you are a bored, talented, good-humored programmer or 2D artist who wants to work (for stunningly low pay) on an independent game, please email me at 108 at actionbutton dot net! I'm sure we can get our game some press on Kotaku.com — I know a couple of people there.

tim rogers types an average of 220 words per minute, and is the editor-in-chief of action button dot net; friend his band on myspace!

Bumbershoot, Settle's annual international music and arts festival, has been drawing a crowd to the Seattle Center since 1971 when 125,000 visitors showed. This year attendance appears to be down, though final numbers aren't yet available. Last year it was down as well, from 150,000 to 142,000.

But downtown, at the Washington State Convention and Trade Center, the annual Penny Arcade Expo, a celebration of all things video games, is having another type of problem: They keep running out of room.

In just three years since moving to the trade center from Bellevue, the expo is already seemingly outgrowing it. While final attendance numbers are not yet available, passes for the show completely sold out days before it kicked off. It was a first in the show's history and that despite expanding this year to fill all 130,000 square feet of the convention center.

More remarkable is the show's growth since its inception in 2004, which brought 3,300 to Bellevue, Washington's convention center. Last year's attendance was nearly 60,000. This year is most certainly much more.

With the show quickly outgrowing its venue, the Penny Arcade Expo organizers announced last year that a second show, PAX East Coast, would be held in Boston in March, 2010. For the Seattle show next year, the organizers hope to take over the four-story annex located across the street from the center.

While Bumbershoot's crowds spent the weekend enjoying back-to-back bands and reveling in traditional culture, Penny Arcade Expo goers thrived on a different sort of culture, one driven by video games.

While on its surface PAX may seem to be a convention built on the popularity of the Penny Arcade web comic and its two creators, the engine that really drives the Penny Arcade Expo is a deep love of not just video games, but gaming pop-culture.

Video games are certainly a large part of the show, but there's also the concerts, the costumes, the board games and more than anything else, the people.

This year's show included performances by an eclectic mix of musicians. Perhaps not as well-known in mainstream circles, bands like Freezepop, Anamanaguchi, Metal Metroid and MC Frontalot have a strong following among gamers, and that's an expanding audience.

There were also more than 100 exhibitors on hand to show of their wares, both soft and hard, to the throngs of gamers and back-to-back panels on everything from the psychiatric effect of video games on children to a comparative survey of the history of sex in video games.

And the show's creators, comic writer Jerry Holkins and illustrator Mike Krahulik, were on hand to meet fans, create some of their comics and MC the event.

In may not be fair to draw larger conclusions from the drop in Bumbershoot's attendance and the unbounded growth of the Penny Arcade Expo. But perhaps the two venues and their popularity offer some insight into the changing Zeitgeist of today's generation.

As gaming grows in popularity and its reach extends, no longer just pulling from today's culture, but often driving it, the Bumbershoots, the Woodstocks, the Lallapaloozas may eventually give way to Germany's GamesCom, Japan's Tokyo Game Show and Seattle's Penny Arcade Expo.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

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Are video games creatively narrow, or rich? Epic Games' Cliff Bleszinski calls this "the most loaded question I've been asked in five years."

Amid much discussion on whether games will one day be perceived as relevant art, one thing's clear –it's on today's leading creators to break the cycle of sameness. What do games need to truly diversify?

If many of us gamers had our way, we'd play games and little else. For others, as much as we prize our favorite pastime, we've often lamented the same-ness of the experiences on offer – often, the biggest blockbusters are derivative of one another, cycling us through near-indistinguishable experiences again and again.

Industry veteran and Zoonami CEO Martin Hollis, most recently creator of quirky Wii Ware title Bonsai Barber, agrees that the thematic range of games isn't very broad. "Pauline Kael famously criticized films as being only about violence and romance: ‘Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang'," he says of the great film critic. "Games are virtually all about violence, or at least conquest and dominance. So we can say games are all ‘Bang Bang, Bang Bang.'"

Raven Software's Manveer Heir has firsthand experience with the "Bang Bang, Bang Bang" – and agrees with the general idea that a lack of creative range is constricting games.

"There are some outliers, but we continuously make the same games about the same things," says Heir, who worked on this summer's Wolfenstein sequel. "The only things that change are our mechanics. We regularly have white male generic space marine characters as protagonists. Our NPCs are often cookie cutter and stereotypical. We use the same backdrops of post-nuclear apocalypse or colonizing Mars, or crazy fantasy worlds."

The Sameness Cycle

Among gamers, Double Fine president Tim Schafer has attained the sort of hero status reserved for the coolest kid in school thanks to his consistent originality. He has a theory on why this same-ness keeps happening.

"There is a cycle in game development," he says. " People making games usually make games that appeal to themselves, and choose from a narrow set of inspirations — Star Wars, Aliens, Blade Runner, Tolkien, World War II, super-hero comics, and a few more.

"Then, those games appeal to a certain set of fans, and some of those fans will eventually grow up to make games themselves, and those games end up looking like the previous generation, because they were made to please a similar bunch of people. That loop just repeats and stays the same size forever."

"I think any medium that only looks to itself for inspiration is limiting its scope of possibility," says writer Marianne Krawczyk, who counts the God of War franchise among her projects. "It's been a mantra of mine for a while now that we need to look outside of games (and movies and TV, for that matter) and start letting other art forms and other kinds of experiences influence development."

For example, artist David Hellman drew from the art of French Post-Impressionist Paul Cézanne for the painterly style used in Braid. Although that decision came primarily from Hellman's own tastes, he finds a parallel between Cézanne's creative goals and those of the game: "Braid is about worlds of subjective perception and also about ideas and laws," muses the artist. "Cézanne married impressionism's transient play of color and light with a powerful geometric order."

"Games are very inspiring to me, but only for gameplay, not subject matter," says Schafer. I will experience something awesome in a game, and I will think, ‘That was awesome.' But then, I'll think, ‘Why was that awesome?' And try to deconstruct the experience down to its essence to find out why it works."

Schafer says he got the idea for cult hit Grim Fandango from reading Mexican folk tales; Psychonauts was inspired by a class he took on dream psychology; Brütal Legend came from heavy metal album covers, and Full Throttle took its cue from something as simple as the story of his friend's summer vacation.

"You never know where inspiration is going to come from," says Schafer. "I think the secret is just to make sure you are exposed to a variety of inspiring influences all the time… I trekked around Nepal once, but that didn't give me as many game ideas as just reading one book on Mexican folklore did."

Risky Business

"Creative people need to look at all avenues of creative expression," agrees Krawczyk, who says she's fascinated by the Bigfoot legend, of all things. And one doesn't even need to be an expert in their external hobbies and interests to draw inspiration from them – Krawczyk has had little success learning guitar, attempting surfing or trying to draw, but she keeps at it anyway.

"I allow myself to fail miserably, which opens up a kind of creative freedom that translates into the work I do care about," she says. "If you are open to failure, at least in the beginning, you'll take risks and eventually get something that is better than if you had played it safe."

Risk-taking is a key element – Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello called Brütal Legend a "significant creative risk" — just before the publisher announced it'd be the one to rescue the title from its post Acti-Blizzard limbo. Fervent gamers now look forward to its breath of fresh air.

"We need more games that are willing to go out on a limb and try something new," says Raven's Heir. "And we need them to be smaller-budget games that are very successful at first, so that large companies will take the risks down the road."

The Emerging Market

Trying innovative, smaller-budget titles with a creative bent is the tack that Zoonami's Hollis has chosen. He's been focused primarily on Bonsai Barber of late, but he's also so humble that perhaps few gamers know that during his career, he was one of Rare's earliest programmers and directed and produced not only critically-acclaimed Perfect Dark, but widely-beloved Goldeneye 007, a dorm room mainstay for a generation of gamers.

He says he's often inspired by his own "failed" prototypes, but as for friendly plant-hairstyling Bonsai Barber's influences: "Henri Rousseau, thematic influence from Magritte, a structural influence from Friends, a game design influence from Animal Crossing, and there is also something ideological within the game," he says. When it comes to the industry's influences, "I hope no one looks only at games!" says Hollis. "That is going to lead to stagnant creations. You can't breathe the same air forever."

And yet the pattern of the video game industry tells us otherwise. Derivative games sell, sequels are the watchword for the holidays, and the audience's appetite for war campaigns and space marines seems never to wane. What's wrong with more of the same, if that's what people seem to want?

Power Fantasies Sell

Keeping to the familiar can cap games' commercial potential. While core audiences may not mind the same-old, the gaming audience is growing, andthose narrow tropes aren't appealing to anyone new. "You can see from the best-selling titles on the Wii that those games aren't generally the ones that make huge headway into the market," Heir points out. "Our narrow focus on male power fantasies is going to hurt us in the long run."

Epic's Gears of War has become the poster title for that much-maligned "male power fantasy." The original game and its sequel have moved more than 11 million units to date, numbers that challenge the assertion that musclemen chainsawing aliens in a sci-fi warzone is a concept with limited appeal.

As progenitor, Gears-head Cliff Bleszinski has become a polarizing figure over the years among those who'd like to name the franchise – and Bleszinksi, by association – as simple pap for meatheads. His influences? "A childhood filled with Transformers, GI Joe, Thundercats, Inhumanoids, MASK, and mountains upon mountains of sugar cereal," he says.

But Bleszinksi, too, describes non-traditional influences as playing a primary role in his work. "I believe it's crucial for developers to maintain a competitive edge by playing the games that their peers create," he says. "However, over the years I've found that real life experience can not only inspire the creative process, but also be a wonderful way to decompress from the stress of development."

He "decompresses" through hobbies like jungle ATV rides and trying out zero gravity on parabolic plane flights. Bleszinski enjoys activities as energetic as the style of gameplay he favors in design, demonstrating that life experience drives developers' work. "Pursuing new experiences and enjoying the art of fun can translate into understanding how to have a better sense of speed, momentum, adrenaline rushes, or overall satisfaction," he explains. "You're channeling that experience back into the sofa when you build a game."

But Is It All Talk?

People like Krawczyk, Hollis, Hellman and Heir aren't the only intelligent, creative professionals working in game development. Not every other developer takes their cues solely from shallow, limiting archetypes. And yet the epic games to which so many developers and publishers devote the largest share of their budgets make only occasional progress toward breaking the tiresome loop Schafer describes. ICO, Shadow of the Colossus, BioShock and Portal make strong arguments against shallowness and sameness – but how long are gamers going to milk those?

"I think we can use games to reflect society, hold a mirror up and show people how we are as a culture in a way other mediums can't do," says Heir. What, then, does a Wolfenstein re-up say about us as a culture – that we'll never get tired of shooting Nazis?

Multitudes of annual trade events convene developers for discussion on meaningful narratives and immersive art, and yet creative people still do uncreative work. Developers bemoan male power fantasies and yet more games with "war", "dragon" and "star" in the title, and yet they keep signing up to make them. The commercial nature of the games biz may constrain the risk inherent in breaking new ground, but that's not a sufficient excuse – all art is commercial.

Consumer demand has the largest influence over the games that hit the market. So, if games are limited, it also suggests that the legions of fervent gamers, bloggers and enthusiast writers who devote endless words to their desire for culturally significant games are simply paying lip service to an ideal they won't back up with their wallets. Either that, or this most vocal vertex is a segment of the market too small to matter.

The same games keep getting made largely because that's all the core audience is interested in. So maybe it's gamers, not game developers, who need to get a life.

And even when games great and small take big risks on new ideas, many will still fail to rock the boat. But there's a glimmer of hope: it only takes one to break the derivative loop, says Schafer. "If you throw a wild card into the cycle — like Grand Theft Auto did with urban crime — then that game reaches a new set of fans, previously unserved. Then some of them grow up to join the industry, and maybe expand it with their own wild card ideas."

"So, if the games industry is going to keep growing, it has to pull in influences outside those currently explored in games," he adds. "Life is very broad, and games so far have only sampled a narrow slice of it."

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland blog, and freelances reviews and criticism to a variety of outlets. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

Heck, I dunno. I don't work in the game industry, but rather, cover the game industry. If you want to ask me about that, do it. Fire away! I'm all ears and one open email account. Everyone else, read this.

I asked four Westerners who have worked in the game industry here in Japan for advice about working in The Land of the Rising Sun. They possess a range of skills that range from localization to writing to management to programming. But, most importantly, they have experience — and they were generous enough to share that with not only me, but you. How kind.

If you've ever thought about working in Japan, there are some pearls in here. Even if you have no interest in making games, but perhaps, just perhaps, you are thinking about moving to another country (not necessarily Japan, even!), there are, likewise, helpful tips that can start you on your journey.

And now we start on ours...

Former Tecmo/Team NINJA assassin and Tomonobu Itagaki aide-de-camp Andrew Szymanski is credited with everything from designer to director on nine titles in the Ninja Gaiden and Dead or Alive franchises. Now a freelance design and production consultant for the game industry in Tokyo, he brings his 6+ years of experience to bear in guiding Japanese developers and publishers to success in overseas markets. Andrew can be contacted at: andrewszymanskiATmac.com

His advice:

Be Memorable

Game developers are a unique group of people. While it goes without saying that being memorable is important to landing any position, it is particularly essential in this field. When you get far enough into any interview process, you're going to come face-to-face with a studio manager or executive producer, and you'll have to make an impression that will make them want to spend more time with you and hear more of what you have to say.

While in college here in Tokyo I applied to Tecmo during the peak of the Japanese recruiting season and attended the corporate hiring seminar. I was one American in a blue shirt amongst a sea of 200 or 300 Japanese applicants in dark suits. During a break, I went up to the company president and said, point-blank, "I want to make games in Japan." Two perfunctory interviews later, I was in. To my knowledge, I am one of the few (if not the only) examples of someone getting a job in the industry through the traditional recruiting methods.

That may not be an option for many, but there is always a way to get yourself noticed. Make a statement with fashion (without being inappropriate, of course), tell an amusing story, or recount a memorable life experience. Something that still comes up to this day amongst the teams I've worked with is the fact that, on my application, I had written that when I was a child I wrapped a black rag on my head, made shuriken out of cardboard, and ran around the house playing ninja. Find a way to tie an indelible part of yourself to the job, and they'll be sure to remember you. 


Be Indispensable

I can't stress this one enough - you have to bring something to the table that only you can.

It may have been the case that, 5-10 years ago, simply being bilingual and having an interest in games could land you a cushy job here. Now, while language ability is still important (and you'll be expected to have a respectable command of written and spoken Japanese), it's crucial that you have fundamental skills and abilities that developers want. Even if you don't have prior experience in the industry, find a way to show what you can offer in a way that's simple and easy to grasp.

Like to draw? Bring a sketchbook portfolio or 3D render. Developers always want good artists. Want to be a designer? Show them some sample concepts and game ideas, or do a "what-if" scenario with their intellectual property: "This is my version of a Lost Planet RTS." Have a management background? Discuss some thoughts you had about effectively managing schedules or budgets.

Even if some of your offerings are a little off-base, you will have shown that you can grow inside the team to fill a necessary role, not just be the go-to guy for English e-mail exchanges or developer blogs. And, if you can prove that you have knowledge, drive, language ability, and growth potential, then you will be an impressive candidate in this world of global markets and overseas outsourcing.

Once you get the job, make sure you continue to grow and stay indispensable. As you show that you can perform duties that no one else can and have carved out a unique niche for yourself, your "indispensability factor" will grow, leading to more authority and responsibility inside of the team. 


Be Flexible

I've been fortunate enough to play key roles in over ten AAA titles, but I've also been on projects that were stalled, rejected, or canceled. Go into it with your eyes open, and know that, no matter how skilled you are, you won't be lead designer or producer on a multi-million dollar project your first time out.

Maybe your first job will be second- or third-string designer on a DS title, or artist on an XBLA or PSN game. Embrace these duties. Working on a smaller team can be incredibly rewarding, and you'll find more satisfaction in saying "I designed this entire game mechanic" or "I modeled this entire level background" than you will in saying "I came up with hit point values for the enemies" or "I modeled the trees in this level," which is what may happen when first working on a huge team.

Many people in the industry here never work on a "true" AAA title, but that doesn't mean that they don't create great games and have a blast doing it.

Even if you do reach the plateau where team sizes are in excess of 100 people, you still have to be flexible.

I've had countless ideas shot down, entire game concepts denied, and months of work put into design documents vanish at the blink of an eye because of changes in a title's focus. Remember, games are a business, and you might have the best idea or greatest character design in the world but if the market doesn't like it, it's not going in.

It's not always about creating what you think is the "best" game (or even what you would necessarily choose to play). It's about making something that will sell, and sell well. I can't count the times that a junior team member has complained that management "doesn't get it" and swears that the game would be 100 times better if only their idea had made it in. It is the creative director's job (or producer's, in some teams here) to establish a clear direction for the title with management and make sure that all game content meshes with that direction.

The larger the team, the more individual compromises will need to be made. Learn to take it in stride and you'll begin to see the big picture. 


Be Tough

This one is deceptively simple but harder in practice. You've got to strengthen yourself both physically and mentally to endure the rigors of a career in game development here in Japan, where the language contains a word meaning "to die from overwork" and many normal salarymen don't even get home until close to midnight.

All development teams around the world experience what is known as "crunch time:" the period right before a title is released to certification where everybody on the team is in a mad scramble to finalize all of the content and iron out the last few pesky bugs.

Some Japanese developers, however, seem to have made it a goal to elevate the ridiculousness of crunch into an art form. Obviously it varies from team to team and title to title, but I've had crunches on two-year titles that have lasted six months. That's six months of having no social life and no free time, limited time with loved ones, and long periods in which you forget what the inside of your apartment looks like because you've slept at the office for five nights in a row.

While I certainly don't condone this practice — in fact I've made it a goal to alleviate it as much as possible — there is just no way around it on Japanese teams and you'll have to accept it as a fact of life. Learn to adapt: make your colleagues your best friends (they should be anyway), because they'll be the only company you have on many a long night spent testing or debugging. Practice living your entire life (food, work, and sleep) at your desk for a month and you'll be on your way.

Learn to be thick-skinned mentally as well. At first you will be demoralized because of perceived failures and because your ideas or designs were rejected.

Know that this happens to everybody, and don't take it personally. Japanese developers, for the most part, take a very strict and regimented approach to dealing with other team members. It's not because they are not kind (you will grow to learn that they are) or are out to get you, rather it is part of a long-standing tradition in production industries to codify relationships in a master-apprentice context.

So when the lead designer takes the paper containing what you believe is your best game mechanic ever and throws it into the trash (yes, I am speaking from personal experience here) or the art director has you redo a render for the 100th time because the sheen on the shoelace holes of a character's sneaker are not perfect, know that they do these things because they truly believe that you will learn and become better as a result. Hang in there and you may gain a wonderful mentor with whom the bond of friendship and camaraderie is not easily broken. 


Be Patient

Last, but certainly not least, is patience. You must realize that things won't always move as quickly as you'd like them to. This advice works on both a micro and a macro level.

On a smaller scale, you will no doubt wonder why your feedback is not carrying as much impact as you would like it to, particularly when you are new to a team or the project is in its infancy. You may feel (with good reason) that you have great ideas and designs and they are being brushed aside with nary a second glance.

I've talked already about becoming indispensable to a team, carving out a niche for yourself, and earning the trust and respect of team members. All of these things take time. To quote a Japanese figure of speech, most developers here prefer relationships that are "narrow and deep" rather those that are "wide and shallow." In other words, they intend to connect with fewer individuals on average, but when they do, those connections are profoundly strong.

If you persevere in your duties, remain dedicated, take criticism whether you feel it's deserved or not, and show everyone that you are a harmonious member of the team, you should find that your feedback and ideas will gradually carry more weight with those around you.

On a larger scale, realize that you may not initially advance in your career as much as you might hope from project to project. Japanese companies are notoriously difficult to move up in, and it will take a mountain of hard work and a great track record to convince team leaders that you are ready for an official promotion.

You will, of course, be asked to take on more and more responsibility without an change in title or increase in salary, and you must learn to work through these hurdles, just as you must overcome the "glass ceiling" that still hampers foreign developers at some companies.

You may feel that your contribution to a title was astronomical and that you fully deserve more say in the creative process, but don't be surprised if you find yourself in a similar position when the next project rolls around.

Just know this: if you have chosen the right team to work for, I will guarantee that someone is silently watching and observing your endeavors. You may not get much feedback or indication of an impending expansion to your role in the team, but it will come in due time and it will feel great because you will know you have truly earned it.

With a diverse background in languages, design and entertainment, the Welsh-born Dewi Tanner arrived at NanaOn-Sha in 2007 with a remit to aid in the company's rapid internationalization. After ensuring the smooth release of the games Musika and Major Minor's Majestic March through overseas publishers, Tanner took on the role of Director of Development where he now overseas all aspects of games development; from concept prototyping through to funding, management and PR.

His advice:

Be realistic about your expectations

Recently, Japanese companies have been laying off a lot of staff, so why would they take you on?

Try and make a list of what would make you an appealing candidate, and also be aware of your unappealing aspects. Despite many companies recently pedaling a rhetoric focused on globalization and driving overseas sales, there is barely any evidence here of an increase in foreigner employment. For many hiring managers, an application from a foreigner is synonymous with hassle, so the more of these issues that you can remove the better.

An example of some classic hassle issues include...

*You are not in Japan and you want them to support your visa application: Unless you are an experienced, skilled and/or bilingual developer, don't even think that some Japanese game company will sponsor your visa application. Also don't come here job-hunting on a tourist visa. A much better route is to come here on a teaching visa, as English conversation schools are happy to dole out visas. Once you are in Japan and settled you can then start looking. The closer you live to downtown Tokyo the better!

*You speak little or no Japanese, although you plan to become fluent: The games industry is a professional industry with lots of money at stake. Very few Japanese speak competent English, or have the desire to learn.

Put these two factors together and you can see that there are huge miscommunication risks. Trust me, unless you can understand at least 90% of whats going on, they will occur.

About two years' experience of working in an all-Japanese environment is ideal. Lacking that, a level two certificate in the Japanese Proficiency test and some travel experience in Japan will help.

Apply Like a Pro

Sending an email in English with your resume attached (even if it's translated) attached will probably get you ignored. A succinct resume, standard format employment history (there are templates for this) and covering email all in decent keigo definitely helps.

Be humble, mature and willing to learn

Applying for a job in Japan is almost as drawn out and frustrating as actually working here. Japanese business culture and western business culture clash badly in many areas. Despite your best intentions to "modernize" Japan, things aren't going to change here anytime soon. So, a lot of the time you'll have to grin and bear it. Try to keep your passion on a leash and know when to bite your tongue. Patience, respect and a reluctance to complain are valued over more western business virtues such as passion, never-say-die and individualism. If you can develop an internal buffer to deal with these contrasting styles then it will hold you in great stead when dealing with Japanese companies in the future. Better yet if you have this diplomatic skill already!

Target your applications like a veteran sniper

By all means look at the websites of game companies and apply for the positions that seem to match your skills. Some of them will even explicitly mention English fluency as a requirement. Tweak your resume and covering email showing your suitability for the position, the things you have done to make hiring you easy (you live in Tokyo, have a full working visa, speak Japanese, etc.), and also why you respect that company. Also, don't be afraid to send direct applications to smaller companies, even if they aren't advertising. You will find that they are much more willing to take risks than the bigger companies, who often have foreign staff forced upon them from their foreign branches.

It's not what you know, it's who you know

Personal recommendations go a long way here. Try to meet Japanese developers at GDC and try to keep in touch. Introduce yourself to speakers after their session has finished, and after exchanging business cards send a simple follow up email a few days later. Things are a whole lot easier when you know someone on the inside.

Before going to Platinum Games, Jean Pierre Kellams cut his teeth at Capcom, where he worked on the localization of titles like God Hand, Monster Hunter and Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney: Justice for All. Kellams also did early story work and script drafts for Bionic Commando. In October 2007, Kellams joined Platinum Games, where he has worked on the localization of Bayonetta, as well as additional writing/editing on MadWorld.

His advice:

Japan(ese) Is Not Optional

Be in Japan. Speak Japanese. If you plan on getting your foot in the door, you need to create an environment where you can make contact and interact with a Japanese company on their terms. Speaking Japanese and already being in the country helps that immensely.

Work Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger

For a Japanese company to hire you, especially if you are living outside of Japan, they have to go through hell. Getting a job at a developer can encompass multiple interviews and tests, and then comes getting the visa. If you don't already have one, it takes months of paper work, a certificate saying you are eligible to get a visa, and then actually getting the visa itself.

With that in mind, you need to be realistic as to what you are asking a company to do. For a company to go through all that extra effort for you, you have to be a markedly better hire than someone they could hire more easily. Japanese people are crazy-dedicated and equally talented. You may have a leg up because your cultural background gives you a different insight into things aesthetically, technically, and linguistically; however, you need to complement that with skills equal to or better than a similar Japanese applicant. Ultimately, it needs to be worthwhile for the company to take on the added work and risk of hiring you.

(The exceptions to this are highly skilled programmers. A lot of research and new techniques are developed in the West, so it seems Japanese companies are more open to hiring top-flight western programmers despite any minuses. The pay scales are different, so I don't know how much success the Japanese industry as a whole is having attracting top foreign coding talent, but Japanese companies are probably on the lookout for more skilled, experienced programmers than any other field.)

Life Isn't What You Expect It Will Be

Living in Japan requires that one bit of tacit knowledge to be remembered at all times. No matter what your passport says, no matter how much you know about the people, the country, or the language, you will never be Japanese. A trip to the bookstore will not have very many books in your native language, if at all. A trip to the store will always have that awkward moment when the clerk wonders if they can communicate with you (or, if you look Asian and can't speak Japanese, the awkward moment when they realize they can't). Your differences will be the starting point of conversations in the office, whether you feel you are different or not.

This isn't a bad thing. In many ways, it can lead to an invigorating rush of new experiences. Yet, it can also become mentally tiring. If you can't deal with being away from home in every sense of the word, you probably won't be able to handle things here.

Otaku Need Not Apply

Many people think that being as Japanese as possible is going to help them get a job here. It is not.

No matter how much you love anime, j-pop, Japanese film, etc., there is a Japanese person who knows more about it than you. It is just common sense. They grew up surrounded by the stuff, absorbing the cultural influences of their parents and grandparents as well.

If your main selling point to a company is how you are going to bridge cultures and knowledge, bringing something new to a room full of people with similar backgrounds, you aren't going to do it by having a voluminous knowledge of Naruto, or presenting a portfolio filled with anime-style designs. You are going to do it by knowing how audiences connect with things differently based on their backgrounds, or having a portfolio that shows varied influences and range. 


Embrace Difference, Strive For Sameness

You will be expected to be different, but also the same. You may be allowed some leeway because of your different background, but in general, what is expected of Japanese employees will be expected of you. A maze of etiquette and rules that can sometimes seem "wrong" will need to become "right." Things like the order you pass out papers in a meeting, to the amount of documentation required to buy supplies, or even the manner in which you apologize (never explain why something went south unless asked directly, just apologize) will all need to be tailored to the cultural expectations of your superiors.

However, you must also embrace difference. You are not Japanese, and that is what they want from you. Don't be afraid to state your opinion as a different viewpoint. Just don't act like you are speaking for the entire rest of the planet. They knew you were not Japanese when you were hired, so make sure to retain elements of your cultural identity.

Dylan Cuthbert is the founder of Kyoto-based developer Q-Games, best known for its PSN PixelJunk games. Cuthbert began working in the game industry in 1989, when he joined Argonaut Software. He would later work in Kyoto, Japan on titles like Starfox and Starfox II. During the 1990s, Cuthbert was a lead programmer at both Sony Computer Entertainment of America and Sony Computer Entertainment in Japan. While at Sony, Cuthbert designed Ape Escape for the PS2.

His advice:

Kick Back With The Locals

Go out of your way to hang out with the Japanese staff. Go drinking with them. Go for dinner with them. Make them your best friends. This is one of the most important tips. Too many gaijin come over and then stick to gaijin friends which just creates a divide, especially in mutual understanding.

Learn Japanese!

There is no excuse, and there are tons of aides on the internet, a lot of which are free. It's so easy nowadays to learn Japanese compared to back in the pre-web days.

Speak Japanese!

Whenever possible, speak Japanese and then speak it more. Go get drunk and you'll find yourself able to speak it fluently!

Have an Open Mind

Japanese culture is very different to the West, and in lots of small little ways that might not be that obvious at first. People say that the Japanese don't say anything directly, but in a casual games development environment this simply isn't true (that is only relevant to business discussions). The Japanese language is the master of being absolutely direct, quite often just one word in Japanese expresses a sentiment that takes a whole sentence to express in English.

Don't Constantly Compare

Never complain that anything should be more like the West, a lot of gaijin fall into this trap. Japan has lots of cool things and is an amazing unique culture because it isn't more like the West. Always remember that balance. I would say the same thing to people from Japan going to live and work in America and lamenting that it should be more like Japan. Each culture and country to his own, we don't a homogenous worldwide society, that would be boring.

Print this out. Bookmark it. Memorize it. Save it.

These are tips to maybe help you get your foot in the door, or maybe help you through your day once your foot is in the door, so you can pry the damn thing open and not have it hit on your ass.

Working is hard. Working abroad is harder. There's a different language to grapple with and a different culture. But for those who make the plunge and who stick it out and stay for the long haul, there is personal satisfaction in pushing oneself in new directions.

Those who do decide to work abroad (in the game industry or elsewhere), more than anything, you won't learn more about Japan, but rather, your home country. And yourself.

We get it. A lot of you hate sports games. Hate Madden, hate FIFA, hate NBA2K, hate Pro Evo (Wii Sports doesn't count; it's a party game). Hate them so much you even go and upset the people responsible for making them.

"For many on the Madden NFL team it can be a source of frustration" says Phil Frazier, senior producer at EA Tiburon (ie the Madden guys). "Just about everyone on our team are hardcore. We have many that continue to play World of Warcraft, many that attend midnight sales for games like Call of Duty, and many that play the card game versions of Magic the Gathering or Bloodbowl. The fact that the ‘hardcore' group doesn't give sports games a fair shake can be frustrating."

But have you ever taken a step back and wondered why you hate them? We do, especially since some of us are die-hard sports game fans. And for the most part, it baffles me. So I went and spoke with a couple of the guys at EA Sports, and decided to play devil's advocate for a day in defence of sports games.

We've gone back through old posts and read many of your complaints. Heck, they're the same complaints we often have with sports games. That an annual update promotes lazy development, that people are being charged $50 for what amounts to a roster update, etc etc.

Some of those points are valid, particularly the roster updates. But others? "In my opinion, an uninformed, non first-person shooter fan could make a similar argument about games in that genre" says Frazier. "I've heard sports game fans say, "It's just new guns and maps, but the gameplay itself is the same."

Ask yourself this: How different were Call of Duty, Call of Duty 2 and Call of Duty 3 at the end of the day? They were released on (roughly) an annual cycle, all featured the same factions, the same war, the same control scheme, and the same display.

Sure, even the most generic shooter sequels often at least feature new maps, giving them a fresher appearance than another football game on another football field. But his basic point is a valid one.

Then you've got to consider why an annual update for a sports game is so wrong. After all, it's a sports game, and sports run in seasons. Clear, truncated episodes, with a beginning and end, each of which tells a story and creates villains and heroes.

"Yearly cycles make a lot of sense for sports games" says Dave Littman, the producer of EA's NHL series. "After all, professional sports do the same thing. You pay a lot of money for season tickets before the season starts. You go to all of the home games and cheer for your team until the season ends. Then...you do it all again the next year".

Another, seemingly more reasonable complaint from people who despise sports games is that, well, they just don't like sports. And on the one hand, that's cool. Not everybody is going to like everything.

But on the other...what about the emotional rewards on offer in a sports game? "Sports games provide personal access to the emotion of sports and many of these emotions are the exact feelings you get when playing other genres of games", says Frazier, digging a little past the context of the Madden series and into the gameplay itself.

"The satisfaction of a head shot in an FPS is very similar to a big play in football. Being the point leader after a battle in an FPS feels very much like winning a game of football. Making the tough decision about going with a frost or fire spec in WoW feels very much like the choice of signing the hot new rookie quarterback or the speedy running back, as it greatly impacts the way you'll play the game."

Moving beyond the innate "experience" you feel playing a sports game – and I think Frazier is right on the money with that – there's also the mechanics of a sports game to consider.

For example: Let's look past the fact you're playing a sports game for a second. Like any other video game, the "sports" setting of a sports game is just context. Window dressing, giving a purpose to a game that under the hood – where the 1s and 0s live - is there to test your strategy and reflexes via a series of challenges.

Like Mario. He's a plumber, but in Mario, you're not plumbing. You don't care he's a plumber. You care about the timing of your jump, the brilliance of the level design, the challenges inherent in progressing from beginning to end without dying or running out of time.

Now take that line of thought and apply it to sports games.

A centrepiece of both Pro Evolution Soccer and FIFA in recent years has been a game mode where you create a single player, then assume the role of that player (and that player alone) during games, guiding them through their career, from benchwarmer to superstar.

You pick his name. His height. His facial features. Which position he favours. Then you assign him attributes from a pool of points, which will determine how well he performs at various tasks. Once created, your skills as the person controlling the action will cause those attributes to improve to over time, in turn making him a better player.

Sound like an RPG?

Most major sports games these days, from Madden to NBA games, feature "manager" modes, where you assume the role of the head of a team. So not only are you controlling the action on game day, you're responsible for training regimes, sponsorship deals, the buying and selling (or drafting) of new players, that kind of thing.

Taking place off the field, these modes normally involve the distribution of allocated or earned resources across a variety of fields. The attention you pay to those fields can determine whether, in the larger scale of things, your team is successful. The process is often number-based (i.e. you're spending money). It's also usually abstract, in that the moves are represented not by literal handshakes and glasses of champagne, but by little more than text bubbles and positive or negative outcomes.

Sound like a strategy game?

One final example is online play. Those who take their Madden or FIFA online gaming seriously will, as I've described above, soon look past the "context" of the fact they're playing a sports game. They're not actually playing sport. They're playing a video game, and a video game has its own sets of rules and exploits which can be learned, mastered and then applied. Strategies, timing, specific characters or teams that are better than others…

Sound like a fighting game?

So if, like Frazier says, the emotions in a spots game match those found in other games so closely and if, like I've shown above, the mechanics in a sports game can match those found in other games so closely…why the hate?

Is it because you can't relate to an NFL or a Premier League or an NHL team as well as you can ancient Romans, aliens or vampires? That you prefer learning the move-set of a large-breasted Chinese girl to that of a pro sporting team?

If so, that's fine!

I'm not saying you have to like sports, or sports games for that matter. Some people hate sports. Others just won't find the kind of action on offer to their liking. That's cool. I'm not trying to force anybody to play or enjoy something they don't want to.

All I'm trying to do is show you that many of the criticisms of the sports game genre are unfounded, and that if you're willing to give them a chance (as opposed to spitting hatred upon them at every mention), you may actually find something you can relate to. Maybe even enjoy.

Nearly a quarter of a million people, almost half from other countries, crowded into the expansive Koelnmesse last week for Gamescom, a soon-to-be annual celebration of video games in Germany.

The 245,000 visitors to a city of about 1 million spent much of the event's five days checking out more than 150 video games and 458 companies from 31 countries.

"We are very proud of the premiere of gamescom," said Olaf Wolters, managing director of the organization running the event. "It fulfilled all our objectives right away and is the largest game trade fair in the world. Computer and video games are so attractive that our industry is breaking all records despite the economic crisis."

The show took over a massive 1.3 million square-feet of the convention center, dividing up the video game publishers over four indoor warehouse spaces. Inside these halls, publishers turned the areas for their video games into amusement-like attractions.

Sony decorated one of their areas with fake grass and lounge chairs, and another with fake snow and gaming chairs designed to look like snowmobiles. In another section an Audi TT was connected to hydraulics and a Playstation 3 so gamers could climb inside and play Gran Turismo 5 in a moving car. Every few hours a different section of the booth was overrun with traceurs, a half dozen men scrambling up, over and around the booth's two-story tall walls.

Activision set up a full half-pipe vert ramp in another hall and brought famous skateboard Tony Hawk in to perform tricks in front of a live audience to promote their upcoming Tony Hawk: Ride game.

Sega had gamers climb into a bigger than life snow globe to try out their upcoming Winter games title, while Capcom allowed gamers to suit up and ride a 180 KMH vertical airstream to promote their upcoming jetpack shooter, Dark Void.

And every booth seemed to have a stage of one sort or another, from EA's massive Beatles set up for The Beatles Rock Band to DJ Rapstar's, Guitar Hero and DJ Hero's mammoth performance stages.

And in the middle of it all were those quarter of a million fans, there not just to play games but to celebrate the culture of gaming. Some came dressed in ornate costumes as their favorite video game characters, other came as part of fan groups, like the Gran Turismo Driving Club.

It's this broader look at video gaming that helps to separate Gamescom, formerly an event held in Leipzig, Germany, from the U.S.'s Electronic Entertainment Expo and Japan's Tokyo Gaming Show.

At Gamescom, unlike those other shows, the video games don't take center stage, the people do. How else can one explain the free areas set up to entertain the public with everything but video games?

The Outdoor Event area took over a fairly large parking lot, transforming it into, among other things, a sand-filled beach complete with volleyball court and live DJ, an ATV area loaded with woodchips and dirt, a parcour obstacle course and an area where people could watch riders perform stunts on motorcycles.

The convention even hosted it's own camping area, about a ten minutes walk from the show, where people could set up tents by the Rhine River and hang-out during the nights of the show.

The days of Gamescom were filled with milling crowds of friendly gamers from young children, to grandparents. The nights with long talks of gaming, music and sports.

The show feels like the beginning of something bigger, a celebration of a growing culture, one that embraces video games but isn't necessarily defined by them.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

Taking in the pretty scenery is no small feat when you're hoofin' it at top speed — often lugging an over-sized flag — while some meat bag is trying to find a home for his armor-piercing slugs in the back of your skull. I was reminded of this burden during a recent visit to Bungie's Kirkland, Wa. studio, where I was to spend some quality time with Halo 3 ODST's three new multiplayer maps: Heretic, Citadel and Longshore.

Any hopes of leisurely touring these maps as I would a destination on my 1000-places-to-see-before-I-die list were squashed when I realized X-Play's own Mr. Sark was in attendance. I wouldn't be able to stop and smell the Warthog exhaust with G4's resident competitive online gaming expert on my tail.

Afraid I'd spend the majority of the day with my Spartan armor parallel to the floor, I asked if Bungie would accommodate a more informative sightseeing tour of the new maps before I locked, loaded, and taxed my trigger finger. Not only did Bungie kindly oblige, they sat me down with senior designer Lars Bakken who, like an enthusiastic tour guide — minus the microphone, lame jokes, and double-decker open-air bus —offered the following travel tips and information for those planning their Halo 3: ODST multi-player destination vacation.

Destination: Heretic

History:
"Heretic is a remake of Midship from Halo 2, which is something fans have been asking for since Halo 3 launched. We looked at what maps we wanted to make for Halo 3 DLC, and we knew there was a hole in our small free-for-all style maps — symmetrical spaces good for two-on-two, three-on-three, eight-person max matches."

Must-see attractions:
"We increased the visual fidelity and added some flair, like a complete Covenant armada that's actually cruising through space outside the ship you're on. This addition gives more of a feeling that your ship is cruising through space... it doesn't add to the gameplay at all, but it is pretty cool."

For first time visitors:
"It's small, but there's really good routes that you can run, so you'll get in a nice groove. And even though you can't always see where the enemies are, a quick glance will give you a good idea as to where they're hiding. In terms of spatial recognition, it's very easy to know where most of the other players are most of the time."

For seasoned travelers:
"This one's a nod to the pro community. We tried to keep it as faithful as possible to the Halo 2 version. I can't say it's pixel-perfect, as it is a different engine and you've got different properties for the Spartan multiplayer character, but it's as close as possible to a complete recreation."

Souvenir shopping:
"Those familiar with Midship will know exactly where every weapon is... we didn't change any of those things."

Destination: Citadel

History:
"This one fits into the idea that we needed another smaller, symmetrical arena-style map that'd be great for two-on-two, three-on-three, eight-person max matches. The cool thing about this map is that it's actually inspired by a campaign space from Halo 3. It's forerunner architecture, which obviously has its own unique look to it."

Must-see attractions:
"Even though the map itself is symmetrical and very similar on both sides, one of the sides is enclosed and the other is open...we did things to make the two sides feel different. The colors are different. One side is darkened by panels in all the windows, and the other side has really bright sunlight coming in."

For first-time visitors:
"There's a lot of really cool ways to get around the environment: shortcuts, jumping through windows, hidden areas. We also added a central platform, where a rocket launcher sits. Citadel is very good for Team Slayer, Oddball, CTF, King of the Hill, and Multi-Flag."

For seasoned travelers:
"The cool thing about Heretic's center platform is that there's two bays on either side of it, separated by a big open space. It's actually possible to jump from the platform to either of these bays. A lot of people won't be able to do this at first, but I think the pro players will be able to pick it up immediately."

Souvenir shopping:
"Citadel's got some great power weapons: a sniper rifle, the rocket launcher on the platform, shotguns, battle rifles, and carbines."

Destination: Longshore

History:
"With Longshore we wanted a larger, asymmetrical map, something along the lines of High Ground or Last Resort. The artists were really able to try something different here, too: Go into an area they hadn't gone to before, the abandoned docks of New Mombasa."

Must-see attractions:
"There's a dynamic element — a telescoping bridge — that gives you another way into the defender building. It's usually not extended, but it can be activated by going into the defender base and hitting a switch. When activated, it gives the attacker a direct route to the flag, so they can essentially drop down on top of the defenders. "

For first time visitors:
"It's a pretty big map with three very distinct sections: an attacker building, a defender building, and a central wall separating them. The defenders can't quite see every way the attackers can enter — side routes, catwalks, stairs, the bridge, covered approaches — but the defenders do have the high ground and lots of great defensive positions, so it's nicely balanced. Longshore is a good map for 1 Flag and even big Team Slayer games."

For seasoned travelers:
"Utilizing the telescoping bridge is great in theory, but the defenders know the attackers are going to go for it, so if they can't defend the switch they know there's a good possibility that the attackers will use the bridge...and it makes for a really good grenade-trap tunnel."

Souvenir shopping:
"The covered approach, underneath the docks, has some active camo and a shotgun."

The idea to research the subject of how game resellers priced their titles came after a visit to a local GameStop store. Browsing the used PlayStation 2 section, I came across used copies of Tecmo's Fatal Frame trilogy, which I had long wanted in my collection. I quickly snagged all three, only to be taken aback by the prices.

Though I was standing in front of two bins filled with $.99 to $9.99 PS2 titles, these three games were marked $39.99 apiece. I still walked away with Fatal Frame 2 and 3, both of which were in pristine shape, but it left me curious as to how, out of all the PlayStation 2 titles, GameStop decided to mark these three in particular at price approaching the original manufacturer's suggested retail prices.

I decided to contact various retail and online video game resellers to help shed a little light onto the process behind pricing used titles.

GameStop was not available to comment on this story.

A Secret To Everyone

Upon making my initial inquiries, I found myself repeatedly running into a stumbling block: Secrecy.

Used games are big business. At the core of this business is a simple economic concept -– buy low, sell high. When a new game is released, the price is generally fixed. The profit margin -– the difference between what the retailer pays and what the customer pays -– is relatively low. With a used title, retailers can essentially dictate their own profit margin, as long as customers perceive the value of buying and selling used merchandise at the set prices.

Since new prices are relatively fixed when a game is released, the pricing of used titles is an important weapon in the video game retailer's arsenal. Madden 10 might be the same price everywhere new, but if a customer can get a used copy at one store $5 cheaper than at another, that could be the impetus that drives that customer to return.

With so much riding on used sales, it really isn't a wonder that many companies weren't willing to share such sensitive data with the press. It's not that they don't want the consumer to know as much as they don't want to give the competition a leg up.

Despite this, several retailers did take the time to explain how their specific processes work.

Supply and Demand: It's the Law

Marc Mondhaschen, Director of Used Games at specialty retailer Game Crazy, explained a fundamental economic process behind the pricing of used games.

"Pricing in terms of trade value is all a supply and demand equation," he said. "There are games that are hard to find that don't sell very well, and there are games that are easy to find that sell extremely well."

It's a process you can see in practice at any retail location that deals in used titles, especially around this time of year, when Madden 10 has just hit store shelves. You'll find large numbers of Madden 09 marked down substantially, due to the fact that customers are trading in copies of the game to help finance the latest version. No one wants Madden 09 anymore.

In comparison, look at a game like 2007's Halo 3, which is still one of the most played titles on Xbox Live nearly two years after its release. Being a definitive game on the platform, and one that players are normally reluctant to part with, a used copy is priced at most retailers some $15-20 more than Madden 09.

It's these same supply and demand principles that affect a game's price based on rarity. When Game Crazy sees that a used title is selling out immediately and not many copies are coming in, the price goes up, however some retailers do take at least a cursory look at market-wide rarity when pricing hard-to–find titles.

"The secondary market (eBay) does factor in, just as an idea of what things are going for," explained Daniel Magano, a representative from online retailer e-Starland who spoke to Kotaku regarding his company's used game pricing. "But the main factor is the supply and demand – what we are able to get in."

Algorithms: By the Numbers

It sounds simple, but there's some powerful technology behind many of today's used game retailers' pricing strategies. One word the gets tossed about a great deal is algorithm – a step-by-step mathematical problem-solving procedure, or in layman's terms, number crunching. In the used games business, this means complicated computer software that tracks the various factors involved in order to produce a price for both trade-ins and used sales that makes sense.

Of the companies I spoke to, each had their own proprietary software that aids in setting used game prices. In the case of Wal-Mart's trade-in kiosks, a representative from kiosk operator e-Play explained that their software runs as often as once a day, transmitting new pricing information to participating Wal-Mart locations on a regular basis.

According to a Best Buy PR representative, e-Play is the company behind its trade-in kiosks as well. "Our vendor, ePlay, has set up a formula for trade-in at our kiosks. We also do online trade-in where we have developed a similar formula depending on game and quality of the product."

e-Starland's software is even more impressive, constantly calculating new prices based on the information provided by their website, right down to what product pages customers are visiting.

"We have proprietary software that gauges demand based on a number of factors, based on how many people are looking at the product or are on the "Notify Me" list, and whether we can get in the game. Our prices change all the time…it's something we look at constantly," Magano explains." You can look at our website one minute, and then ten minutes later everything has changed. It's pretty much real-time, dynamic changes."

The Competition

With the ability to price more freely and the potential for used games to drive both sales and repeat business, it's no wonder that video game retailers are keeping a keen eye on the competition when it comes to setting used game prices.

"We have a 'More for Trades" guarantee, so we have to track what the bad guys (the competition) are pricing their stuff at from a trade perspective," Mondhaschen of Game Crazy said. "That will drive used pricing as well. If we see the bad guys are priced over us on any given trade value, we'll make sure we're trailing either at or over."

According to Mondhaschen, Game Crazy has a team dedicated to keeping track of the competition's prices, but the size of said team and how exactly they operate is a trade secret he could not share.

Competition can also affect used game prices in unexpected ways, as evidenced by the recent showdown in Utah, in which electronics retailer Best Buy began testing a program to price matched new games according to GameStop and Game Crazy's used prices. GameStop responded by significantly slashing used prices at their West Jordan store in what seemed like an attempt to make Best Buy's offer backfire.

This demonstrates yet another economic truth – competition is good for the consumer. When retailers fight, they're fighting for your dollar, and they aren't above letting you keep a few extra bucks in exchange for your patronage.

Finding The Final Fatal Frame

Despite the secretive nature of pricing used games, I did come away with a better understanding of the process than I started with, along with some advice on how to find the best prices on used titles.

Game Crazy's Mondhaschen offers up this tidbit of wisdom: "If you want to buy a used game, the best way is to wait as long as you can stand to, as prices fall over time." It may seem obvious, but it's a good point. If you don't feel a mere $5 is enough of a discount on a used copy of a new release, then wait.

And my personal advice? Shop around. If a price seems too high at one retailer, then check out several before making your purchase. After leaving the $40 copy of the original Fatal Frame at GameStop, I came home and checked out prices at various stores online. Here are the prices I found for a used copy of Fatal Frame for the PlayStation 2.

GameStop: $39.99
Amazon: $29.97
eStarland: $38.21
eBay: $32.98

As you can see, prices vary wildly, with a spread of over $10. That can make a big difference for the budget-conscious gamer. So where did I buy my used copy? I didn't. Amazon.com had new sealed copies on sale last week for $19.99 apiece, so instead of paying $40 for a disc in a blank case, I got a brand new copy for half the price.

Don't assume that "used" means "less expensive." Intricate algorithms, sales tracking, market analyzing, and super-secret procedures might be well-suited to determining used game prices, but it takes a savvy consumer to discover where the real bargains lie.

This is what a console identity crisis looks like. It's not the same as having to return a sweater or divide up a DVD collection. It's not as easy to overcome as creating a new Second Life account or changing servers in World of Warcraft where all you need is an internet connection. A console is its own ecosystem. It keeps track of everything you've played, encourages you to show off the games you've played and it has an online network of people built into it. Who you are on PSN and LIVE sticks with you in a way that a PC-based identity doesn't. So when the console goes away – part of you does, too.

My ex and I shared an identity across the Xbox 360, the PlayStation 3 and the Wii. We shared an Xbox LIVE account so we'd only have to pay for one Gold membership and have a more impressive Gamerscore. I decorated our house in PlayStation Home and contributed to the Trophy count on PlaySation Network. We also designed Miis for each other on the Wii as a bonding exercise. We invested in those virtual representations of our gamer identity the same way we invested in our relationship. You could view those LIVE or PSN accounts to see the games we played. While it probably looked weird for Killzone 2 to appear right next to Valkyria Chronicles, it was a representation of how we gamed together.

Now the relationship is gone. In the "dividing of the stuff" breakup ritual, he came away with the Xbox 360 and the PlayStation 3 while I took home the Wii (do not ask who got the short end of the stick).The pieces of us embedded in those consoles still remain, but I've got to recover what I can with the identity-building tools that consoles give me.

You can't go Home again… or can you?

Of all the console identities I've lost, the gamer I was on PS3 will probably be the easiest to rebuild. That's due mostly to Home – a virtual reality that allows me the most flexibility to express myself beyond the list of games I've played and Trophies I've won.

The first form of expression is the avatar – something you only see on the PS3 when you're in Home. You can change your avatar's appearance and gender on the fly, so depending on which one of us "drove" while playing Home, our avatar would be a smartly dressed guy or a Goth-ish girl. As with most avatars in online environments, you can customize your avatar's appearance to look as much like (or totally unlike) you as you choose. The second form of expression is where you take your avatar in the virtual world, how you choose to talk to people with the chat option or by choosing to dance like a moron in a corner.

The real identity building, though, takes place in your virtual living space. Signing up for Home from your PS3 automatically gives you a living space in Home to decorate. You can display pictures from your hard drive or show off stuff you win or buy in Home as decorations in your virtual apartment. My ex and I had the lake house in Home. If I wanted, I could have a space identical to the one we shared, since you can't edit buildings. But it really wouldn't be what we had because your Home account is bound to your PSN ID. Even if I re-beat every single game and win back all the Trophies we had, the pictures on my hard drive would be mine and I could use the decorations to create a new self in Home that's totally unlike who I was.

"This is something that's been a part of Home since day one," says Jack Buser, director of PlayStation Home at Sony. "In the real world when you go out in public, you express yourself by how you act, the things you talk about and how you dress. But people don't really know who you are — really, really — until they go back to your pad."

Buser's advice to me for me was to keep checking back into Home for new content and rewards. Naturally, he'd say that because he wants to sell his product, but Buser made a bigger point about looking forward to the future instead of living in the past.

"What you see in Home… those things are not static," he says. "[Home]'s constantly evolving, constantly changing. Your experience in Home today is going to be quite different from your experience in Home a month from now — six months from now — a year from now."

And by then I may have finally re-beat all the PS3 games on my list.

Living An Xbox LIVE

Who I was on Xbox LIVE will be much harder to recreate. LIVE is more static than PSN because there isn't a virtual world layered into it for me to build a self in. All I get is my avatar, my Achievement list, my games library, themes and friends list as ways in which I can be me. So if I'm going to pad out my Gamerscore with games like Avatar The Last Airbender: The Burning Earth, everyone on my friends list will know how lame I am. I can't hide it behind a well-dressed avatar with a sweet virtual pad or blame it on my boyfriend.

Worse, now that Xbox LIVE has rolled out its new features like "Gold member for xx years," I'm really suffering a loss of self. My Achievement list and games library look pathetically small for someone who works at Kotaku. All of my friends have to re-friend my new account and make the difficult decision about whether or not to un-friend my old shared account. Worst of all, I have to play through a ton of games all over again and re-buy any downloadable games because that info is bound to the old LIVE account and how else am I going to establish myself as an authority on Japanese role-playing games if I don't have record of beating all the big ones like Eternal Sonata, Tales of Vesperia and Lost Odyssey?

Heather Snavely, director of Global Xbox consumer communications, may wind up in the same boat as me someday. She doesn't share an Xbox LIVE ID with her husband, but she does allow her two children to play online with her account. "I want their gamer points," she laughs.

"A lot of families and couples do have one account, so they're sharing that experience," Snavely says. "But it never crossed my mind to share with my husband. I'm an only child, so I'm like ‘Well, this is mine.' I have to be able to change [my avatar's] clothes. I'm very protective."

So what happens when her children grow up and want their own accounts?

"I don't know," she says. "That's a tricky one. It's like a rite of passage [to have your own account]."

Snavely acknowledged that there is a possibility Microsoft would create family plans for Xbox Live in the future, similar to cell phone plans. This would make it easier to transfer Achievements or data to a new account when a child goes off to college and gets their own Xbox 360 or something. But as of now, Microsoft has nothing like that in the works. Instead, they're focusing on features that let you express yourself even more thoroughly.

For example, aside from the Gold member veteran status that you can now see, Xbox Live is instituting a user rating system for downloadable games. Snavely says this expression of opinion creates a personal history unlike anything you've been able to do with LIVE before – and it will make you less inclined to share your account with others, even if you do want extra Achievements, because you want to own your opinion about the games you play.

Her advice to me and gamers in my situation is, "In the future, always have your own [account]. Think of yourself and the Achievements you want to build because once it's gone, it's gone. Customize and create the person you want to be online and own it."

Finding Mii Again

On the Wii, I haven't deleted my ex's Mii. But I did get rid of the fugly eyebrows he put on my Mii and changed the color of my shirt. These acts of expression are tiny in comparison to what I could do in Home and on LIVE, but it's still a way to own my identity on that console.

What I've learned from my console identity crisis is this: Identity – both in real life and online – is about making choices. The choices we make for ourselves on console are more permanent than we realize. Maybe we take things like Gamertag recovery and guest accounts for granted. Maybe we don't think about identity when we let our lovers, friends or family members borrow our profiles for just one game. But choosing to share defines us, too.

I don't regret being who I was when I shared console identities with my ex, even if I'm not thrilled about beating Tales of Vesperia for the fourth time. I look forward to re-beating all the old games so I can start playing new ones and so I can make new choices that redefine me as a gamer. The Trophies and Achievements I rack up in the meantime will tell you who I was. The new personal expression features that evolve on PSN and LIVE will determine what kind of gamer I become.

But no other update is more important in helping you play more games than the easy-to-overlook user ratings, or as Microsoft calls them, Community Ratings.

"We're excited to bring this new functionality to Xbox," says Ben Smith, program manager of Xbox Live. "Now that all game content can be rated with a five-star system based on the collective vote of users, you can easily find great games and demos that you may have missed by sorting the 'Top Rated' section of the Games Marketplace."

For example, I'm a noob when it comes to knowing the best indie games to play. Upon browsing the "Top Rated" of both the Indie Games and Xbox Live Arcade sections, however, I quickly become informed, thanks to helpful Xbox owners willing to star their favorite games. At the time of writing, I see that CarneyVale Showtime, Miner Dig Deep, and Kodu Game Lab sit at the top-two of which I've never heard of (and I get paid to keep up with this stuff.)

Castle Crashers, Portal: Still Alive, and Battlefield 1943 currently lead the Arcade Section-the latter I'm also unfamiliar with. Out of said titles, Miner Dig Deep appeals the most to me, so I download. Easily worth the $2.

But what about bigger games and add-on stuff? User ratings help there too. "Every piece of content on Games Marketplace can now be rated using the 5-star system," says Smith. That includes Demos, Arcade and Indie Games, Videos, Games on Demand, and Add-ons among others. Additionally, disc-based games can also be rated.

The bigger categories provide fewer surprises. Bioshock, Halo, and Mass Effect-games which most handsome readers have already beaten-predictably lead the top rated Games on Demand section. Rock Band tracks dominate the top rated add-on content. And Xbox owners still love to watch Orange Box and Halo 3 videos-the latter of which makes sense, as Marketplace sorts it as the "best-selling" of any Xbox game.

But with a little digging, you'll soon reveal and handful of similarly rated games you may have snoozed on. And who doesn't like discovering new games, even if you're late to the party?

What's more, user ratings are often more reliable than collective critical ratings, provided you have feedback numbering in the hundreds. As my demanding statistics professor once taught, a sample of 200 to 300 votes can accurately judge quality on behalf of the entire population, give or take a few rare exceptions.

The top rated Fallout 3, for example, has already been stared a whopping 40,000 times. Even Metacritic averages can't compete with that, making the Xbox community a more dependable critic, not to mention more convenient since the scores are baked into your console now.

Granted, user ratings are nothing new. Amazon has been doing them for years. But this is the first time they've come to aid of console players looking to separate the chaff from the wheat. Wii owners might quickly counter with, "Hey, we have recommendations too!" But that system is cluttered, tedious to sort, and in no way easy to read like the universally accepted stars found on Xbox. Conversely, PlayStation 3 has no rating system.

It's unclear how the rating system might evolve over time. For example, will Xbox owners be able to see friend ratings with similar tastes as opposed to the entire community? And Microsoft won't say how current ratings are calculated (all-time, last month previous year, etc). But when coupled with both Top Downloads (formerly Most Popular) and Best-Selling categories, Community Ratings are a powerful and pragmatic way to "zero in on great game content"-like the gamer gift that keeps on giving.

Microsoft is certainly hip to the idea. "There is something very social about being able to tell people what you like or see what other people recommended," Smith concludes. "User Ratings will help Xbox Live members find great games and fantastic add-ons more easily than they could previously-and that's what it's all about: making it quicker to have fun."

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Blake Snow writes about video games and technology from Crecente's neighboring state of Utah. His curious work has appeared on MSNBC, the Wall Street Journal, and GamePro among others.

On September 4, 2008, they found out he had a tumor in his brain. He was in the intensive care unit, often screaming in pain, until September 13, when he was transferred up to Unit 35. That stay lasted until September 18. He had the PICC line, a catheter he carries inside of him, inserted then. Every time he comes back here, they plug it into something. Sometimes it's an IV on a wheeled stand, dripping saline. Other times, it's feeding him chemicals - poison, fundamentally.

His dad, wearing jeans and a weather-beaten NBA Live 2003 t-shirt, pushes this rack, hand on his 7-year-old son's shoulder. They are here, in Portland, Oregon, at The Children's Hospital at Legacy Emanuel, to begin another battery of chemotherapy. This time will be the "B" treatment in the cycle; it makes the hair fall out. And worse. The pair enter a cheerfully painted room and sit down at a long counter.

They pick up Xbox controllers.

Lego Star Wars fills the room with its cartoon explosions, jingling studs, babbling minifigs. It's 2:20 p.m., August 4, 2009, and Joe Evans is, in this moment and for however long it lasts, having a normal childhood.

"We just hear the happiness," Joe's mom, Susan, 47, says as Joe and his 10-year-old brother, Will, tear through Lego Star Wars and Mario Kart on the GameCube. "It's a chance to have peace of mind, and for the little guy, it takes away, maybe, that knowledge of the poison going through him."

More Than A Gift Of Games

Joe, his family, and the hospital are themselves one amongst the community served by Child's Play which, in its three year existence, has emerged as something of the gamers' charity. Despite living a lifestyle often associated, by non-gamers, with basement-cloistered self-absorption, gamers have pitched in to the more than $1.4 $3 million donated since Child's Play's establishment in 2003. More than $18,000 worth of video games, consoles and peripherals have come to Emanuel Children's Hospital since 2006.

But the story doesn't stop with the numbers, even though so often it does, typically during a routine mention of a fund drive, often during the holidays. The games serve a therapeutic need that professional staff describe as increasingly critical. The charity is a pipeline of donations that keep games free from the critical-needs scrum of a hospital foundation's funding process. The experience is more than entertainment or diversion for the patient - it provides a family activity, a way for children to support and be with siblings in circumstances frightening to them as well.

And though Joe Evans is just one gamer, and Emanuel Children's is just one hospital, in many respects their story is representative of the more than 60 hospitals in the Child's Play network, and of the thousands of patients who have received donations of video games and consoles over the past decade whatever their source. The contribution may be a single $50 title, but the gift is actually something else.

"It gives them a time to just be a kid, which is really hard to do, sometimes," said Jen Usinger, a child life specialist in Emanuel's Child Life Program. "An awful lot of their time here, they're being poked and prodded, they go through surgery, or they're sick and feeling horrible, and to get a moment and play video games, and just be a kid, is huge."

Game Crazy Wednesdays And A Special Wii

In a sadly ironic way, perhaps nothing certifies video games as a childhood more than the Star Lounge of Emanuel Children's Hospital, where the lives children lead during their stays are far from normal. Here they enjoy "Game Crazy" every Wednesday night, playing Mario Kart or Super Smash Bros. Brawl on the big screen TV. That said, their gaming experience here is, likewise, not anything they'd typically find at home. In a room looking high over the Columbia River and downtown Portland, kids can come here if they want, whenever they want, as late as 10 pm. The relaxed decoration and furniture arrangements, chill-out color schemes and a mini-theater with rolling easy-chair seating, do their best to wash that realization away. Because outside, the reminders of what they can't do are plentiful.

"The boredom of being in here, and tied to that IV, with the PICC line in, is something not a lot of people can understand," said Joe's father, Pat, 47. The family is from nearby in Portland. "Especially in the summer. There's no swimming, there's no camping, none of the things the family usually does. You can't have a lot of people around because of the fact his white-blood cell count [which affects his immune system] is low."

With the purchase of a Wii for Christmas 2008 ("I just couldn't say no," Pat said) video games are now a significant part of the family's life away from the hospital, moreso when Joe's in it. The Evanses have eight children (two adult) and four systems - Wii, Xbox, PlayStation and GameCube - and Christmas 2007 delivered three more Nintendo DSes, one of which Joe brings to the hospital. And during that first stay in September 2008, games became a talisman of life before the diagnosis.

"In the ICU, they had this roll-around cart with systems, and you could pick games to play from it," Pat Evans said. "Even though there could only be two people in his room at once with him, I'd leave and bring one of the boys in, and they'd play.

"When we came into the regular ward, here, it was just him and his brothers, and first thing, they wheeled him down here (to the games lounge), with his IV in," Pat says of his son, a typically shy youngster around others, but boisterous in the company of his family. "Maybe it only lasted half an hour, but it was a big deal."

Video games represent such normalcy for kids that, Usinger says, when they don't want to play them while at the hospital, parents get concerned. But more typically, Usinger said, a parent's instinct is to believe that a sick or injured child should be bedridden and spending all of that time recuperating, not playing.

Helping Kids Cope

"Sometimes kids need to be kids, so that their body can heal and function as normal," Usinger said. "If we didn't have video games here, we'd be at a huge loss, especially with kids who are older or of middle school age. It's important that we meet them where they are in life."

Usinger, who has been with Emanuel's Child Life program for all of her career going back to 2001, and is both a psychologist and trained specialist in her field, puts her job in the big picture. "I help kids cope with being in the hospital," she says, "and it's a pretty big umbrella."

Never in her studies at Eastern Oregon University did video games come up. Mostly it was the psychology of a child being examined, injected or treated for the long term, and how to help him or her cope with it - a difficult enough preparation for an adult patient, let alone someone younger than 10. But Usinger recognizes the usefulness of familiarity, whatever it is.

"This is what kids do. This is what teenagers do with their sedentary time," Usinger said. "They watch TV. They play video games." Rare is the patient who does not play video games, she says - and in that case, the games the hospital does provide become a novelty, almost a bonus, in a long-term stay.

"In the beginning, we had about five Game Boys that patients could check out, and we had a couple Nintendo 64s for in-room use," she said. "Over time, from 2001 to now, there's been a huge change in the use of video games, across the board. It's essential to have them now. It's a rarity that I'd have a teen who wants to play a board game."

The Star Lounge itself demonstrates the lengths the hospital goes to indulge its patients' interests and hobbies, on their level. This is where console gaming happens, where DVD parties take place, where group play on the Wii is organized. Wednesday from 6:30 to 8 p.m., the Wii is hooked to the lounge's 60-inch HD television set.

It's, of course, an extremely popular console, so its usage is normally during group occasions. There are only 14 Miis on the console, eight boys and six girls. Putting a Mii on the console is unusual; it's only put in a child's room if they've spent a prolonged amount of time there or otherwise can't play in the Star Lounge. Or sometimes, they may have it for special occasions - such as an end-of-chemo party.

Help For The Hospital

Emanuel Children's Hospital got its Wii in 2006, shortly after its launch, and shortly after the hospital joined the Child's Play network, in time for the holiday surge in donations.

Child's Play, among benefactors, is perhaps uniquely attuned to its beneficiaries' needs. Both Usinger and Lynn Hallbacka, the Development Officer for the Emanuel Children's Hospital Foundation, praise the fund for delivering titles that aren't merely functional and age-appropriate, they're current, and ones their patients want to play. It's not to say that the hospital's foundation wouldn't have the money to make such purchases for itself. But having such things placed in the care of a third party — donors who know what they're doing and give every year — frees the hospital to focus its attention on larger goals.

"Because our fund-raising department is not terribly large, if we did not have this relationship, I don't think we'd be making a specific effort to solicit games," said Hallbacka, who specified the Children's Hospital foundation's two major fundraising pitches as "hard dollars, and stuffed animals."

Furthermore, the influx of Child's Play donations keeps video games and entertainment outside of Emanuel Children's Hospital's budgetary process. Like many hospitals, Emanuel Children's is part of a larger system, and every year, all constituents submit grant proposals, which are prioritized and turned in for approval to an overall controlling board. This year, Legacy Emanuel is in the process of building a new, $250 million children's hospital building, the top priority across the entire system. It's hardly the time to be writing proposals for video games, which, no matter how small the dollar amount, could be trivialized or lost in the shuffle of the grant process.

"Given all of these other priorities, maybe these games would not be at the top of the list," Hallbacka said.

The price tag and priority of normalcy is hard to quantify, much less put up for board review. These games might provide bursts of it, everyday experiences in an otherwise traumatic chapter of life for child, mother and father.

But as grateful as she is for them, in the end Susan Evans hopes Joe's time here becomes as nondescript and memoryless as the times we've all had playing games growing up. Because, really, among us who can remember exactly what we were playing when Mom or Dad told us to put down the controller and called us in for dinner, or to scrub up, set the table, or stop tormenting our brothers or sisters.

Or before the doctor came back into the room. Or the nurse fixed up the tubes. Or the poison flowed and brought on the sickness. In a mind so young, maybe these, too, can someday be taken as just interruptions of life that might have cut short, but weren't the context for, the time spent being a kid.

"Hopefully," Susan Evans says, "this will all be faded memories when he's older."

Today, we're going to discuss everything, and we're also going to discuss what I like to call the Worst Marketing Ploy Ever Conceived.

Hello. I'm tim rogers. For the next six and a half hours, I'll be your guide to a near-incomprehensible wall of text in which I mention Pokemon two or three times. If you need to get a drink before we start, I'd recommend something hard.

TOKYO, JAPAN, AUGUST 2009—Summer has summed, and the train of time has slid out of the tunnel of July and into the rolling fields of August. It's usually the custom that everyone in Tokyo refers to the month of June as "the rainy season", though such a name is really unnecessary. In Tokyo, you see, it simply rains a lot. One of my ongoing theories is that the more people you pack into a greater megalopolitan area, the more nervous they are when it comes to talking about anything interesting. The minute the clock rolls over to midnight on June 21st, everyone is talking about how hot it is, whether it is, in fact, hot or not. This year — and last year — the summer has been ominously mild, and Tokyo citizens have communicated the perfunctory "it's so hot, isn't it?" with a visible degree of shame. This summer, at least, it has rained consistently. A rare day or two a week it rains all day, or profusely for an hour or two. The rest of the days, it's a sick, weak, obnoxious little ankle-biting gremlin of a rain, all day. It's safe to say that, for many citizens, the word "summer" doesn't remain on the tip of the tongue 24/7.

As a self-made, well-off human being of perhaps-peculiar persuasions, I enjoy five wonderful hobbies during the summer months:

1. Riding trains
2. Riding air-conditioned trains
3. Sitting while riding air-conditioned trains
4. Sitting at the end of a bench on an air-conditioned train (so I can lean my head against the side)
5. Drinking a Coca-Cola Zero while sitting at the end of a bench on an air-conditioned train

This summer is strange, because it is not so hot outside as to make hobby #2 quite as exciting as usual. However, I still jump at every opportunity to ride a train across town, because I have Dragon Quest IX on my Nintendo DS, and that's better than nothing.

"Summer" generally means different things to different people, though for Japanese people, it tends to most often mean "the month of August" and "a week's vacation in the month of August". They say that something called the "Bon Festival", which, in addition to unfortunately not having anything to do with Bon Scott, the now-deceased former frontman of AC/DC, is also sometimes called "Obon". Obon is a rough sketch of a traditional Buddhist festival structured around the idea of paying respect to one's dead ancestors. Traditionally, people use this festival as a reason to travel to whatever country town holds the cemetery where their grand- or great-grandparents' ashes are interred. They pay their respects at the cemetery, then spend time with their relatives. As far as reasons for a holiday go, it's not terrible at all.

In recent times, the Bon Festival has, like most other world holidays, experienced a secularization. The solemn semi-religious observation is not so much the point of the festival anymore; in much of the population, the phrase "Bon Festival" is synonymous with "a week's paid vacation".

For whatever the reason, "Golden Week" is the "Japanese" "Holiday" that most people outside Japan seem to know anything about. What is Golden Week, though? It's a couple of scattered days off, usually in the middle of a week. Sometimes, infuriatingly, two of the days fall on a Saturday and a Sunday. We've had maybe three years in a row where, despite it being Golden Week, everyone has had to work on Tuesday and Wednesday. In this case, companies permit employees to use up a few of their vacation days to transform Golden Monday and Thursday into an actual Golden Week.

Why is Golden Week the poster boy for Japanese holidays? This is an important question. The answer would have something to do with how Golden Week means absolutely nothing. I once looked up the reasons behind the Golden Week holidays, though I won't bore you with an explanation. All I'll say is that I have never met another person who had any clue as to the significance of any of the Golden Week holidays.

Another important fact: "Golden Week" is not a translation of a Japanese-language phrase. They call it "Golden Week", in English. Posters advertising sales commemorating Golden Week will sometimes only show the letters "GW".

In short, Golden Week, which comes in May, is not the "real" Japanese holiday. Obon is. However, Obon, like all great religious-themed periods of celebration, is vague and undefined. The festival traditionally calls for three days of solemn observation, though the ancient Buddhists didn't include a formula for figuring out exactly when those three days should be every year. For the most part, the entire month of August is open to Obon celebrations, though Japanese offices are certain to give employees only one full week off — and even then, they'll only call it "summer vacation". I've worked for companies where the summer vacation was the first week of August, the second week of August, or the third week of August. I've never worked for a company where the summer vacation was the fourth week of August, though I'm not sure I really need to. A coworker at a previous job of mine once said that his wife was going to Hawaii for summer vacation, and when I asked if he was going with her, he said that he couldn't, because her summer vacation week was different from his. Generally, however, it would seem that the summer vacation week for schools and most companies happens to be the first week of August.

And much like Christmas, originally about the birth of a religious savior-figure named Jesus, is now about buying things for people and hoping that they buy more things for you, much how Easter, originally about the death of a religious savior-figure named Jesus, is now about receiving rabbit- or egg-shaped chocolates, now and forever Obon is about collecting all of the Pokemon.

WE ARE TALKING ABOUT VIDEOGAMES NOW

Every year, in the first week of August, Nintendo, The Pokemon Company, and Japan Rail East hold a promotional event called the "Pokemon Stamp Rally". This has been going on for maybe ten years. The nature and scope of this promotional event is mind-blowing. And if we've consumed the right amount of Brain Lube, the things it implies are even more amazing and depressing.

Here's the short of it: outside the turnstile at every one of the 95 JR train stations in the central Tokyo metropolitan area is a table upon which rests a rubber stamp. A train station employee stands watch over the rubber stamp, so that no one might steal it. Believe you me, people want to steal that stamp. Standing close by the desk, on either side, are train station employees wielding megaphones and screaming very loudly at everyone, like they've all done something wrong. The stamp design is unique to each station, with a common theme: each stamp bears the name of the train station, the JR logo, and the picture and name of one of 95 Pokemon hand-picked by Real Marketing Geniuses to represent that particular station.

The goal of the Pokemon Stamp Rally is to learn various mental impulses befitting a professional kleptomaniac. More specifically, the goal is to visit as many stations as possible, filling a book with stamps. The front page of the promotional pamphlet says:

"Alright! Let's go on a journey — through time and space! There are 95 Pokemon stamps! Let's get all of them!"

The phrase "all of them" is not spelled in kanji.

There's no mistaking it: though the promotional pamphlet includes spaces for six stamps, if you child's reading comprehension is high enough that he could, say, play and enjoy the Pokemon games, then — well, he is also very conditioned to follow directions to the letter, so he will see these instructions and immediately request that you fill this book with six stamps and then report to one of the "goal stations" (Tokyo, Shinagawa, Shinjuku, Ueno, Ikebukuro, or Matsudo) to obtain the official booklet containing spaces for 95 stamps. Exhibit A: There's no business as serious as kid business. (This point is going to be very important in the Third Movement of this essay.)

The front page of the pamphlet is careful to lay out the rules directly beneath the instructions: the promotion will be held from Saturday, July 25th, 2009 to Sunday, August 9th, 2009, with stamps available from 9:30AM to 4PM. They used to put the stamps out earlier, and leave them out later, though that started interfering with rush hour traffic. Just because this is "generally" a vacation week doesn't mean that there aren't more than enough work-busy people to fill rush hour trains. It could also be that all parties involved underestimated the popularity of this promotion.

Disclaimer: I possess something of a dislike for children. This is okay — it's okay to dislike children so long as you disliked yourself while you were a child, as I did. Though disliking children has its shortcomings, it has also allowed me to progress in some ways — neither wanting nor needing to get married has allowed me to concentrate on my work. I have fought hard for a financial super-stability which allows me to make my own schedule, and seldom board a train (on business or on pleasure) prior to noon-thirty. I enjoy my home; I use it to work and to entertain myself and guests. I have no delusions of grandeur; I know I am not a unique snowflake. Every time I get on a train, I see five or six other dudes more or less just like me — free men in great clothes, on their way to make more money in an afternoon than their suit-wearing self-loathing siblings make in . . . let's say two weeks. Apparently JR, The Pokemon Company, and Nintendo don't really care for our little train bubble. They burst it with vigor every year.

Let me tell you: this Pokemon Stamp Rally thing is nuts. I was on the Chuo Line train out of Koenji yesterday at two in the afternoon, and there must have been a hundred kids packed into each car, all of them with Pikachu sun visors. The Pikachu sun visor is a free gift, given along with the 95-stamp booklet, at 7-Eleven. I have not held one in my own hands, though I imagine that the words "YOU MUST WEAR THIS FOR THE DURATION OF YOUR PROMOTIONAL EVENT EXPERIENCE" are written on it, in crayon, in the kind of block hiragana that you'd see advertising the nutritional benefits on a macaroni package.

I have observed both the train-side and station-side rituals associated with the Pokemon Stamp Rally — for several years. Here's a blow-by-blow:

We start on a train. Kids — some adult-knee-height, some adult-waist-height — stand restlessly before the train doors as it barrels out over the urban landscape. Nearby, their parents stand, eyes fixed sharply on the spaces between their respective children's shoulders. In my experience, I've never seen a child and parent having a conversation during one of these ordeals, though that might just be something resembling tremendous luck. The children breathe all over the glass. The train announcer proclaims that the train is pulling into the next stop. The children breathe more heavily. The train stops. The children waiting at the doors gaze weirdly out at a crowd of children that might, on another day, only be their reflection. The doors open. Every child on the train rushes out. The children on the other side of the doors rush into the train. The parents step out gingerly behind their children. The children, despite their rush, soon find themselves stopped in the middle of the train platform. They look left and right. They see a big yellow sign: "THE STAMP IS THIS WAY". They charge toward the exits. Their parents stroll behind, careful to not let their children out of their sight.

Now we're at the turnstile: the kids burst through, using 700-yen all-day unlimited travel tickets. As per the rules laid out of the instruction pamphlet, they line up politely at the stamp table. There, the station employee makes sure there's no funny business. They receive the stamp, slam the book shut, and turn around, where their parents hover like ghosts. Usually, the parents exit the turnstile — again, using a 700-yen all-day unlimited travel ticket — though sometimes they are able to watch their children safely from within the station. Their children, without even feigning to greet their parents, rush back through the turnstile and back up the stairs or escalator to the train platform. They wait for the next train going in the same direction they were headed. They wait on the platform, lined up politely as per the instructions written on the back of their quest booklet. The train stops. Hundreds of children wait by the doors. The doors open. The children waiting on the platform rush into the train. They stand close by the doors until the train slows to a stop at the next station.

The typical distance between train stations takes two minutes to traverse. The typical wait for trains is anywhere from two to five minutes. When you consider that there are 95 train stations, this adds up to roughly around eight hours of work. Since the "rally" is only open for six and a half hours a day, it is nearly impossible to finish all 95 stamps in one day.

Some observations:

1. Very, very seldom is a child accompanied by both parents. In my sample-taking I have noted that five out of ten times a child is accompanied by his father, three times by his mother, and two out of ten times by both parents.

2. The rules on the pamphlet say that each kid is allowed one stamp book, though I have noticed a nearly-disturbing number of incidences in which a parent holds a dozen or more stamp booklets in his or her arms, standing off to the side of the Rally Counter. Usually, the child is in on the scam — he comes back from the counter, trades his booklet for another one, and calmly gets back in line.

This begs the question: what is this all for? What do kids get out of this?

One thing you might want to know is that Japanese businesses tend to be criminally stingy. I once remember a flier for a pizza place that advertised a "special" wherein if you ordered 5,000 yen's worth of pizza, they'd give you pickles for just 300 yen (they're usually 500 yen). There's a bike shop near my house, for example, that offers to give you a five-percent discount on the impounding fee on a single bike if you purchase two or more bikes from them in one transaction. Out of curiosity, I asked if, in order for the deal to be valid, one would have to bring the bike to be impounded to the shop at the precise moment of the purchase of the other two bikes. "Of course", the guy replied.

So it goes without saying that the prize for spending eight to nine hours riding trains while standing up is not something spectacular: it's a little talking plush Pichu. A whopping 50 customers will receive some other Pokemon — one that looks like Voltron had sex with a giraffe.

Weirdly, the official web guide labels the "prizes" for filling out six stamps to be a "Memorial Stamp Book for 95 Stamps", a "Memorial Cover for 95-stamp Stamp Book", and "Pikachu Sun Visor".

According to the Stamp Rally official website, only 300,000 of each of these "prizes" will be available to participants in this year's rally. That would explain the rush to get it done as soon as possible. The Pokemon stamps will remain at stations until August 16th. During this time, participants are free to fill up their 95-stamp books and score a chance at winning the little plush talking Pichu. A hundred lucky winners will also receive little toys of the Pikachu jet and the Pikachu bullet train.

The pamphlet contains dense, word-filled advertisements for the two new upcoming Pokemon games — the Gold and Silver remakes coming in September for the DS — as well as the usual hype for the All Nippon Airways Pokemon jet and the JR East Pikachu Bullet Train. The marketing is sly and so simple it's somewhat scary: "Hey kids! Let's go on a trip — with Pokemon!"

Wow! So, hypothetical situation: a kid is going to see this, that there's an airplane with Pikachu painted on the side, and say "MOM. DAD. WE MUST BOARD THE PIKACHU JET / BULLET TRAIN AND FLY / RIDE SOMEWHERE RIGHT NOW." Are mom and dad going to just throw their hands up and go, "Nintendo! They got us again!" and spend a couple thousand dollars to fly their kid around Japan just because the jet and/or bullet train has a picture of Pikachu on it?

This is a serious question. I am only 10% joking (maybe).

Here's what I think of this: the picture of Pikachu is on the outside of the jet. Does it have Pikachu painted all over the inside? I am checking my internet sources: answer: no. However, according to the pamphlet here, "Customers ordering a drink on board the Pikachu Bullet Train will receive said drink in a commemorative Plastic Pikachu Cup (extra fee required)". The picture of Pikachu on the cup looks like just any other picture of Pikachu, really.

This is a "long-running", "successful" marketing campaign in Japan for mainly two reasons:

1. It has been going on for ten years.
2. Pokemon has continued to build in popularity in those ten years.

Anyone in the audience who already has a PhD in economics will find what I'm about to say incredibly naive. Should you decide to continue reading, Professor, I'll be sure to pepper my description with silly metaphors for your benefit.

Japanese businesses seem to believe that every single element of a thing is necessary for its success. If a thing is popular or successful, they will not dare remove an element of it or anything surrounding it. Many times, they fail to acknowledge any inherent appeal that would earn customer loyalty. In the case of Pokemon, we have a game that is — if truth be told — incredibly well put-together. The developers of the Pokemon game work hard to evolve the series and increase its appeal to gamers of nearly all ages, and they do a spectacular job of consistently turning out better and better products. Their artists turn out classic new character designs with remarkable frequency. Though elements like trading card games, animated motion pictures, comic books, and a successful television series have certainly helped to increase the reach and status of the brand, it goes nearly without saying that the game is obviously more than at the center of everything. The game is about 99% (or more) of everything. Would the TV show have been successful at all if it weren't for the game? At the center of the Pokemon brand are the rock-solid, well-made games, and the appealing character designs.

Pokemon is an undeniably successful and admirably broad-entried multimedia franchise, all things considered. In order to fall in love with Pokemon, all you need is to be six years old, have a friend who plays the games and shows you what's cool about it, or see a big, puffy, delicious plush Pikachu on a shelf at a toy store and whisper "I want to go to there". There's a chance that great games and colorful puffy plushes are all that Nintendo needs to keep Pokemon alive. That said, if I were employed on the marketing team, you could bet your ass I would make sure they kept churning out movies and TV shows. Having a competently-directed TV series is the difference between having a hugely popular brand and a mega-hugely-popular brand. It's a no-brainer.

It's here that we come to something I like to call "The Everything Disease". Explaining what I mean in layman's terms would take approximately half of forever, so try this parable:

About a year ago, I decided to start building muscle, so as to be more identifiable by pedestrians and police officers as a member of the male gender.

In order to make sure that I waste as little time as possible, I did research on the internet. I assembled a quite-pricy shopping-cartful of supplements.

My research demonstrated that not everyone who had used every supplement I had ordered had experienced what bodybuilders call "results".

Some people claimed that supplement A produced results, while supplement B did not, and supplement C produced "big" results. Some people claimed that A produced big results, C produced no results, and B produced some results. The only thing that was certain was that no one experienced results on all three supplements.

What I did was order A, B, and C, and take them all. Theoretically, there was nothing to stop all of them from working at once.

At the end of three months, I had experienced "results". How was I to know what supplement was chiefly to blame for these results, and which ones I would be best not spending my money on?

The only "reasonable" course of action, in modern Japanese business school terms, was to declare that "everything" caused my results, to not read the labels on the supplements to figure out what they do, and to go on taking all three supplements while eating precisely the same foods at precisely the same time every day, ignoring the possibilitity that a different lifestyle configuration could produce even greater results.

This should, ideally, sound incredibly naive. So let's get even more naive:

You are perhaps familiar with pachinko — Japan's premier form of gambling. Customers pay around one yen per little silver ball, and then go nuts, smoking and staring at the cascade of shiny things for hours on end, in hopes of winning a little medal that they can then exchange at a counter around the corner for an envelope of cash.

Pachinko parlors are relentlessly noisy. The players themselves are dead silent. The noise is a combination of metal balls clattering in giant plastic machines and eclectic, psychotic music screaming over the PA system at jet-engine volumes. The musical soundtrack of a typical pachinko parlor consists of, on the average, one "song" which is somewhere between 30 and 45 seconds in length.

Another hallmark of a pachinko parlor is that they tend to either place a boombox outside or else have PA speakers at street level, providing passersby with an obnoxious sample of the music. Why do they do this? No one I have ever asked — and I have asked a lot of people, including pachinko parlor managers, all in the name of research — has ever provided me with any answer at all, much less a satisfactory one. Some pachinko parlors even employ a woman to stand next to the boombox, with a microphone in her hand, repeating the same two or three words: "Pachinko!" "Hello!" "Please!"

You need only dip your toes in the cesspool of Japanese marketing to obtain this deadly impression: Risk Assessment Constitutes a Risk.

There exists a chance — however tiny — that, if the proprietors of a pachinko parlor were to turn off the speakers blaring their music onto the street, they would experience lower profits that day than the day before. Pachinko is a business that lives on the edge as it is — customers have roughly a 51% chance of winning money, if they're good at the game — they can't afford to take a risk. Paying a girl to stand outside is a risk, in a way, because no one knows if she's really pulling her weight and helping the business. However, a one-day trial of removing the music to assess the risk might lower profits for that day, meaning that the risk assessment is a risk in and of itself. So they don't do it.

In perhaps more sane, grounded, realistic, real-world terms, if Nintendo stopped putting Pikachu on the side of a jet, the Pokemon series might collapse overnight.

Question: Why did Nintendo ever put Pikachu on the side of a jet?

Answer: because they already had a hit game series, a hit movie series, a successful toy line, a trading card game, and a TV series. If you're not "moving up", you're not moving up. Few industries in the world are as serious and world-spanning as aviation: airplanes serve a purpose in the adult world that television or videogames could never, by nature, serve. Videogames, used correctly, are purely recreational. On the other hand, there is no "right" way to use an airplane. (Unless you're the pilot.) Associating with the airline industry is a trumpet declaring that your product or brand has truly made it, is truly world-class.

Isn't it silly, though? What does Pikachu have to do with airplanes? What does the airline industry stand to gain from having Pikachu on a jet? More kids tugging at their daddies' khakis, asking to go on a trip somewhere?

If Nintendo were to stop putting Pikachu on a bullet train, the worst thing that could happen would be that someone would say, "Hey, whatever happened to that bullet train with Pikachu on it? Maybe Nintendo / Pokemon / Pikachu have fallen out of favor with the population". Maybe then one of the people having this incredibly unnatural conversation would look up Pokemon on Wikipedia on their iPhone and see that it is still alive and well.

On the other hand, what if some serial killer were to start murdering people, and imprinting Pokemon Stamp Rally stamps on their cheeks? The cops would look at their Stamp Rally map and be like, "The next murder will be Zubat — in Sugamo!" It'd be all over the news. Then Nintendo would issue a no-comment that speaks a thousand words — of their sympathy for the victims' families, of their firm belief that their series is about critical thinking and maturity, about nothing that has anything to do with this murderer.

There's a phrase that goes "there's no such thing as bad publicity". Maybe not — though in my experience, there's no publicity better than that which isn't planned.

The goals of the Pokemon marketing campaign, as far as I can tell, are

1. To get kids to ask their parents to buy them Pokemon games

2. To get parents to realize "this Pokemon is a big deal", and then buy it for their children

The plushies, movies and television series promote goal #1; the airplanes and bullet trains promote goal #2.

Goal #2, when carried out, gives us Pokemon-addicted kids, who then start asking their parents to buy them more Pokemon games, or even video games in general.

One thing very much to Nintendo's advantage is that their audience is constantly refreshing. If the typical Pokemon player is between five and twelve (so they say), and most kids hooked at nine will still be playing at eighteen (not yet completely proven), then they are exceedingly lucky that kids are turning five years old all the time. Also, children require a parent's supervision to see a movie in a theater, so that means more ticket sales.

A brief history of kleptomania (in video games):

Why did Japanese video games come to be so much about Getting Everything? This is an interesting question with a half-interesting answer. I've worked in the "Japanese games industry" for a while now, and have had the pleasure of discussing all facets of game development with many people behind games that I appreciate. I won't name any names, though some people have given me some amazing insight.

Way back in the 1980s, Nintendo was trying hard to outlaw game rental in Japan. They managed to succeed. What stingy consumers started doing was buying games, clearing them, and then selling them back to used shops as soon as they could. Sometimes, an interesting-looking game would come out, and a potential buyer would decide to wait for a used copy. (Maybe this sounds familiar.) A used copy doesn't amount to any money for the developer or publisher — just for the shop.

So what game developers started doing was

1. Making games needlessly difficult
2. Padding games with artificial barriers such as level-grinding, side quests, etc

It's no tinfoil-hat theory that many of the conventions of the Japanese RPG were born out of publisher mandates such as "keep people from selling the game back in the first two weeks". Dragon Quest drew customers in with neat box art by a hot artist, and kept them around with its artificial barriers. Dragon Quest was a miracle, because its writing and flow kept players at least engaged. The world would see many players reject other RPGs like so many bad kidney transplants — maybe the characters weren't appealing, or the act of grinding just wasn't fun.

At their best, early Japanese RPGs left the player feeling some sort of sentimental "ownership" over the world within the game. Shigeru Miyamoto had once said that games should be like "playgrounds" that you "want to go back to". You wouldn't sell such a playground to the bookstore on the corner for two dollars, would you?

In the first decade of the RPG, a certain sub-class of individuals were born who genuinely enjoyed the finest logistics of the format. This is how we got Pokemon, which turned into obviously the biggest thing ever, by capitalizing on the child's need to collect anything and everything by tying said need to interesting monsters in an idiosyncratic World of Fun. Upping the ante and increasing the success of Pokemon has been simple math ever since — just keep stacking up the monsters, removing as little as possible. That the series is appealing to adults as well is no huge surprise, seeing as it is made by adults.

The social question:

Shigeru Miyamoto, though he did not create Pokemon, apparently was responsible for championing the multiplayer focus. This got kids to enjoy competing with one another's hand-picked lineups of carefully trained monsters. This is what made the game a hit among grade schoolers and a dirty secret for adults.

It's been said, many times, in many ways, that Pokemon appeals to the summer-vacation-loving Japanese instinct to raise beetles and pit them against one another in "combat". Who knows if ths is true. I hold this suspicion-like belief that the Japanese urges to work hard and support one's family grew out of the thrill of saving up to buy a Copper Sword in Dragon Quest, though maybe I'm wrong about that (lol).

When Pokemon at last took over the entire world, even His Holiness The Pope saw fit to talk about it. He dared not speak out against it; seeing as it didn't encourage any belief in "magic", it was fit for kids to play, and even taught teamwork and critical thinking.

Turn on an episode of the TV show, and you'll see the hero profusely thanking an old man: "Thank you so much, sir! I don't know what I would have done if you hadn't told me that water Pokemon are strong against earth Pokemon!"

On the one hand, we have a show teaching kids to respect their elders; on the other hand, the so-called "critical thinking" skills it improves are rooted firmly in the logic of the game world.

What good is this doing the world, really? Well, hell, it probably doesn't matter — it's making a conglomerate of people and their immediate families very wealthy and healthy.

Back to the stamp rally:

I once worked with a guy who took his kid on the Pokemon Stamp Rally. This was a couple of years ago. He was asleep at his desk at lunch on Monday. "I took my son on this Pokemon Stamp Rally thing this weekend", he explained. We were working the first week of August; his wife had the first week off, so she was taking the kid around to the stations he'd missed. He told me they'd gotten forty stations in one day before he'd had enough.

"Man, wasn't it, you know, boring?"

"Well, I don't get much of a chance to spend time with my kid these days."

His kid was six.

"Well, why don't you, like, take him out and learn to throw a baseball? Or take him to a baseball game? Or go to the pool?"

"Well, he . . . said he wanted to do this Pokemon thing."

I wanted to say something, though I couldn't think of anything that didn't sound mean or unforgiving. "Maybe you should have done something earlier to impress your child with the glory of going to a ball game", etc. My coworker went on.

"Plus, it's, you know, good for the kid to get out of the house. He can, uhh, learn something."

As I stood at Otsuka Station last Sunday watching kids racing to get their stamps and then racing back to the train, I thought about this guy. What are these kids learning? Just fifty meters from the place the Pokemon Stamp Rally Official Rally Counter is located, you can find a block of shops advertising oral sex for anywhere from 4,000 to 10,000 yen. The kids are learning the names of train stations, and their relative locations, though what do they learn beyond that? Rather than learn to associate Harajuku with excellent hair salons and/or a flagship Adidas sportswear store, they are learning that it's where you get a Geodude stamp. And then, on the other side of this perhaps-many-sided coin, there's me, looking at this map, realizing that I know nothing about Hachioji aside from the fact that it's where you can get the Mewtwo stamp.

In search of a devil's advocate, I engaged a regularly confrontational friend in conversation. "They're kids, man. God, you can be so petty." I tried to get this friend to discuss the ramifications of marketing with me, and he wouldn't have any of it. "I don't see what's wrong with Pikachu being on the side of a jet. Man, just let people do their jobs." I tried to explain how creepy it was that Pikachu and jets had nothing to do with each other, that, as it was their coexistence was like two plastic-coated mattresses slowly rubbing against each other in a vacuum. "Look, man, those marketing people have to do something. If they don't, how are they going to feel good about themselves?"

I suppose he's right. I suppose everyone is right. Me, though, I can't help thinking of that One Guy in every office, who does absolutely nothing year-round, just keeps a spreadsheet open on his desktop, tweaking his mouse scroll wheel a little bit up and then a little bit down every thirteen seconds. Then, there's a big party at a terrible loud restaurant, and some executives are in attendance. Everyone sits down, and this guy — this nothing-doer — grabs the menu up, stands up halfway, counts heads loudly, then yells "Who doesn't want a beer?" Two people raise their hands. "That's forty-four beers, then! Also, we'll have, some, uhh, some edamame beans, some fried squid ring-things, some, of this fried cartilage, and, uhh, forty-six yakitori sticks!" The executive in attendance nods. He's definitely not going to fire this man before the beers arrive, and by the time he's had that first delicious sip, he'll have forgotten about wondering what this man does all day. The next day, the earnest man who sits next to the nothing-doer, in the middle of the meeting, says "So kids like collecting Pokemon, and creepy men like amassing encyclopedic knowledge about train stations. Both are hobbies that contain elements of kleptomania. Why not combine them in a gaudy promotional campaign that helps no one, and hurts no one!" "I don't like the sound of 'non profit'", says one stone-faced executive. "I don't dislike the sound of 'no-loss'". And there you have it. Because, like many other things, "Why not?"

Time flows on, and here we are, alive, In The World, and the boomboxes outside the pachinko parlors get louder with every passing day. A friend in real estate once told me: "The percentage of buildings that, at some point, become pachinko parlors and then change again into something other than a pachinko parlor is downright microscopic."

So I typed all this up, and then entered "Pokemon Stamp Rally 2009" into Yahoo Auctions. Here's what came up. Yes, that is a 2009 Pokemon Stamp Rally book with all the stamps filled out. A quick look at the seller's profile reveals that they are selling two such books. Keep in mind that participants in the "rally" stand to win a "prize" for filling out all the stamps. Why they would to pay money for the book and not the prize is a notion that is lost on me personally; however, that notion evokes a deep catharsis: despite my initial disgust, I am filled to the swelling point with a deep (and unwanted) understanding. On the other hand, I have this feeling that some jerkoff saw this stamp rally thing and saw an opportunity to fill out a dozen stamp books and sell them for $40 each to the kinds of kids who hold their parents at knife-point until they get their Christmas presents on the day after Thanksgiving. Remember last year, when Namco was selling level-ups for their game Tales of Vesperia via Xbox Live? It's like that — only in real life. (And with Pokemon.) Either we give up now, or it's going to already be too late in about ten minutes.

—-

Thank you for reading this. If you feel like you got something out of it, that's fantastic.

I am supposed to be writing something about anything every month; this month, I chose to write about everything. In the comments on this article, feel free to recommend topics or themes for me to write about in the future.

• Original Exergaming
  Backyard Adaptations Of Video Game Classics
  by Brian Crecente
• 
  
• Book 'Em, Halo
  Kotaku's 2009 Summer Reading List
  by Mike Fahey
• 
  
• Beat The Heat
  Kotaku's 2009 Summer Playing List
  by Owen Good
• 
  
• Gee, Thanks
  Thanks, Hollywood, For These "Summer Blockbusters"
  by Luke Plunkett
• 
  
• Space Marines Forever
  And Now For The Games Inspired By Summer Blockbusters...
  by Luke Plunkett
• 
  
• Film Rejects School
  Turning Summer Movies Into Games: Dos and Don'ts
  by Michael McWhertor
• 
  
• Movies In Development
  They Remember Jedi, Jaws and Indiana Jones
  by Stephen Totilo
• 
  
• Sandy Tokens
  When The Best Part of The Beach Is The Arcade
  by A.J. Glasser
• 
  
• Sweat 'Til You Bleed It Dry
  Have We Reached Exercise Game Saturation?
  by Brian Ashcraft
• 
  
• Tales From The Deep End
  Sink Or Swim? The Game Designer's Conundrum
  by Stephen Totilo
• 
  
• Learn To Play A Fake Guitar, Already
  When A Real Band Tried Rock Band...
  by Leigh Alexander
• 
  
• The Game Name Game
  How To Name A Video Game Studio - And Hopefully Get It Right
  by Michael McWhertor
• 
  
• Where Is The LOL?
  Why It's Hard To Make Today's Games Funny
  by Mike Fahey
• 
  
• A Slime Appears
  You Too Can Experience The Dragon Quest IX Launch!
  by Tim Rogers
• 
  
• Master Chief's Destiny
  Jackson Explains How Fate Killed Halo And Gave Birth To District 9
  by John Gaudiosi

REVIEWS

• Gunstar Heroes Micro-Review: The Perfect Shot
• Mecho Wars Micro-Review: Landians Versus Wingians... Really?
• Battlefield Heroes Review: The Great (Cartoon) War
• Transformers: Revenge Of The Fallen Review: Clench The Difference
• Call of Juarez: Bound in Blood Review: A Fistful of Accolades
• Doom Resurrection Micro-Review: What In The Sam Hell
• Kodu Game Lab Micro-Review: Baby's First Game Development Kit
• BlazBlue: Calamity Trigger Review: Rebel Yell
• Rolando 2 Micro Review: Rolando Keeps On Rolling
• Waterway Micro-Review: A Little Wet Behind The Ears
• Droplitz Micro-Review: Dripping With Strategy
• Battlefield 1943 Review: Battling In The Pacific
• The Secret Of Monkey Island SE Micro-Review: Still Fights Like A Cow
• Bit Boy Micro-Review: Stuck In The Past
• Wii Sports Resort Review: More Motion in the Ocean
• Little King's Story Review: So Creative, So Hostile
• Gears of War 2: Dark Corners Micro-Review: Putting the Stealth in Curb Stomps
• Streets of Rage Micro Review: Ragin' Hard
• Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince Review: Almost Half-Good
• Madballs in...Babo:Invasion Micro-Review: Drives You Mad, Busts Your Balls
• 'Splosion Man Micro-Review: An Exploding Barrel Of Monkeys

PREVIEWS

• Bit.Trip: Core Preview: Thumb-Aching Good Fun
• Death To Spies 2: Moment of Truth Preview: SMERSH is a fun word to say
• Red Steel 2 Preview: Whack-tastic Fun
• Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes Preview: The Might Of Mana… and Puzzles
• Rabbids Go Home Preview: Rabbids Go In Your Wiimote
• TMNT Smash-Up Preview: Will The Real April O'Neil Please Stand Up?
• Shaun White Snowboarding World Stage Preview: Snow In Summer
• C.O.P. The Recruit Preview: If Only Becoming A Police Officer Were So Easy
• Academy of Champions Preview: It's Harry Potter But With Soccer And Sam Fisher
• Aion Preview: Onward Towards Ascension
• Brutal Legend Preview: The Game That Ripped My Jeans Leg
• Half-Minute Hero Preview: Don't Blink And Miss It
• Fighting Fantasy DS Preview: Choose Your Own Adventure Makes A Comeback
• Dragon Age: Origins Preview: About Those Xbox 360 Controls...
• Shadow Complex Preview: To Get Past Metroid
• Wizard of Oz Preview: Partying Up With The Tin Man
• IL-2 Sturmovik: Birds of Prey Preview: If You Think Planes Are Beautiful
• Champions Online Combat Preview: Challenge Accepted
• Dead Space Extraction Preview: What The Wii Can Do
• Gangstar Preview: Very Much Like GTA On An iPhone
• Singularity Preview: I Love The Power Glove
• Borderlands Preview: It Shoots Rockets!
• Dragon Age: Origins Xbox 360 Hands-On: Have You Considered The PC Version?
• Jak & Daxter: The Lost Frontier Preview: Air Combat, Of Course
• A Boy And His Blob Preview: You Will Fail
• Cursed Mountain Preview: Save Me, Science, Save Me

WELL PLAYED

• My Pirate, My Friend
• Novel, Write Thyself
• Tapping Into the Power of Collective Gaming
• Video Games Inescapable At Comic-Con
• Libraries Got Game

COVER

• Designed by Michael McWhertor

The buzz grew as fans, and Hollywood, questioned Jackson's choice of first-time director Neill Blomkamp to helm the big-budget project. But that ultimately became a moot point. As the movie budget escalated and the demands by Microsoft increased, not even a pair of giant Hollywood studios could afford to foot the bill for the big screen version of Halo. But fate stepped in and Jackson ended up creating an original sci-fi film with District 9.

Gamers will get to see a sci-fi collaboration between producer Jackson and co-writer/director Blomkamp this summer with Tristar Pictures' District 9. Rather than basing the film on a hit game, the duo created an original alien story and filmed it documentary-style. Jackson was on hand at Comic-Con to screen the film and talk about how Halo begat District 9.

Jackson and Blomkamp were going to bring Microsoft's Halo videogame franchise to the big screen, but when Hollywood bailed on Microsoft's demands, the duo ended up creating District 9, which opens August 14.

"Well, I believe in fate. And a lot of times in my career I've just let fate decide what happens," said Jackson. "I don't try to influence things too much. ‘Cause I kind of believe in some weird force that's out there, sort of deciding what happens in your life. And I just look back on it and think, well fate made a decision that it wasn't gonna be Halo that we made, it was gonna be District 9. 'Cause it literally happened within 24 hours. I mean, we woke up one morning thinking we were making Halo. That day we got the news that the studios, Fox and Universal, didn't want to make the film anymore."

When asked exactly what happened with the Halo film, Jackson replied, "It wasn't like the studios didn't want to make it with us, they just didn't want to make Halo anymore because they were arguing amongst themselves and with Microsoft and the rights and the deals and everything else. It was all these little politics that were kicking in."

District 9 is set in South Africa and focuses on a quarantined area where aliens have been kept for 30 years. The film literally took shape the same day that Jackson's Halo was scrapped.

"During the course of that day, 'cause we were all in New Zealand together…Neill had been working on Halo for five or six months, we decided to take control of our own lives a little bit and we thought, ‘Well, let's make an original movie. Let's keep it low budget. Let's try to finance it independently so we don't have to get involved with studio politics,'" explained Jackson. "It's sort of, do something that we can control without putting ourselves into a Halo situation again. And that's what happened. And so by the end of that day, we had lost Halo but we had started District 9."
Jackson is best known to fans for adapting the Lord of the Rings trilogy to films. He's currently producing Guillermo del Toro's Hobbit film adaptations. Jackson, who is an avid gamer, equates books and videogame adaptations on the same level.

"If it's a book or a videogame, even though you've had the experience of reading or playing that story, it's affected you, and now you can imagine it as a film," said Jackson.
"I also see the role of video games as one that will continue to command respect and attention due to the improved graphics, forms of narrative, interactive capabilities, and ways of immersion."

Jackson, who has worked with Ubisoft on the King Kong videogame and currently has a deal with Microsoft to create original games through WETA Interactive, believes that intrinsically, most videogames, and virtually all movies, do one basic thing: tell stories.

As game technology improves, Jackson believes games will become even more cinematic experiences. One result of HD graphics and advances in sound will be the sharing of digital assets between game developers and filmmakers, which will create more authentic representations of movie-based games.

One of the big themes at Comic-Con this year was the explosion of 3-D films, including the new TRON and Avatar movies. Jackson is interested in embarking in the third dimension with future projects.

"I personally love 3-D," said Jackson. "I love the fact that it's become a much more gentle experience than it used to be. It always had this kind of eye strain and lack of quality associated with it. It was sort of gimmicky and difficult. But now it's technically become easier and it's also much more…it doesn't give you bad headaches anymore. And I think 3-D is just another really great tool to help an audience step into the movie."

"When I'm a filmmaker, I try to make movies that invite the audience to step into the film and to become part of the world of the film, if I can," added Jackson. "Rather than be an audience, I try to take that barrier away so you're not just sitting watching something like a sports event on a TV screen. You're actually participating. I try to shoot my scenes in a way and move the camera around in a way that sort of invites you into the movie to some degree. And 3-D is just a tool that makes that easier. It makes it more vibrant. I haven't shot a feature in 3-D yet, but I'm certainly looking forward to doing that."

Fans can see Jackson's latest directing venture, The Lovely Bones starring Mark Wahlberg, on the big screen December 11.

Half a dozen comics and two new cartoons based on video games were announced at the show and plenty of comic books were unveiled as video games. The convention itself was host to more than 40 panels about video games.

Often these crossovers serve as a sort of table setter for an upcoming game, helping to set the stage, build up the characters and explore the world of a video game before it gets into the hands of gamers.

Before the original Sci-Fi role-playing game Mass Effect hit two years ago, Del Rey published the novel Mass Effect: Revelation. The prequel, penned by the game developer's head writer, took place 35 years before the game.

This time around, the next Mass Effect game will be heralded by a comic book, not a novel. Mass Effect: Redemption is being written by Mac Walters, the person responsible for Mass Effect 2 script, and Walters promises it will change the way gamers look at the upcoming Xbox 360 sequel.

Upcoming Playstation 3 and Xbox 360 game Singularity is also getting a prequel in the form of a graphic novel. And long-lived franchise Prince of Persia is getting a graphic novel prequel for the upcoming movie based on the video games.

The shift from books to comic books to tell a story set in a video game universe shouldn't be that surprising. Comic books, like video games, use both narrative art and dialog to tell a story. The two also have a very similar audience which could explain the virtual explosion of crossover titles in recent months.

While Dead Space Extraction will explore the world of the upcoming Wii-exclusive, it won't be a prequel, according to Steve Papoutsis, executive producer of Dead Space Extraction.

"There is so much more to the Dead Space universe than we could ever fit into one game and we're excited to be working with Image Comics again to extend the story in Dead Space Extraction," he said. "(Illustrator) Ben (Templesmith) and (writer) Antony (Johnston) did such a tremendous job with the original comic, we can't wait for fans to get their hands on this special issue."

Other comic crossovers seem to be more about marketing than expanding the story. For instance, at last week's convention Capcom gave away copies of a Spyborgs comic to promote the upcoming Wii game. And Sony Computer Entertainment announced a comic based on their popular God of War franchise.

The six-issues series, set to be released on a monthly schedule leading into the release of God of War III, was announced alongside a novel based on the game and a collectible copy of the anti-hero's weapon: The Blades of Chaos.

Crossovers aren't relegated to the pages of comics either, there were also two new cartoons announced at the show.

Halo Legends will be a set of animated shorts based on Microsoft and Bungie's popular first-person shooter for the Xbox 360. The seven shorts will explore some of the fictional history of the game's universe.

Dante's Inferno, an action game based on the epic Italian poem, is also getting the cartoon treatment. The collection of six shorts, each created by a different studio and director, will show some of the untold moments of the video game on a DVD set to ship around the same time as the game.

Comic books and animated movies based on video games aren't a new phenomenon. Gears of War, Resident Evil, World of Warcraft, even Sonic, all have their own comic books. But the past 18 months or so has seen a surge of interest in the pop-culture crossovers.

Perhaps that's because of the increasingly mainstream role that comics and their offshoots are taking in pop culture. Once relegated to children, comics are now recognized as an important form of expression, something that can deal with big issues and reach a broad audience.

Well Played is a weekly news and opinion column about the big stories of the week in the gaming industry and its bigger impact on things to come. Feel free to join in the discussion.

You may have also heard someone or another say that, in Japan, Dragon Quest game are released on Saturdays instead of the typical Thursday game release date because would skip work or school, and entire institutions of business or education would implode and suddenly no one would know or do anything anymore. Some people say the Japanese government intervened when the exciting, white-hot role-playing game series simply got too awesome, and some politician presented some bill that eventually became a law, cementing the Saturday release date. Who knows whether this is true or not!

One thing that is for sure, however, is that today sure is Saturday. And they sure did release a Dragon Quest game today.

I was in a rock and roll venue until after five in the morning. I won't say what I was doing! (This accounts for the terrible scratchy quality of my voice in the videos, which, when combined with its natural weaselly tone, adds up to something pretty excruciating. I'm not going to lie: in the name of entertainment, I had screamed like a girl without a microphone for about thirty continuous seconds.) I exchanged my tight jeans for a pair of loose Adidas basketball shorts and took the first train out to Akihabara. A few schlubs were lined up in front of the Sofmap, and maybe five dozen were lined up at the Yodobashi Camera super store. The management of the Yodobashi super store, which is about as big as fourteen stacked football fields, mistook the size of the building for the length of the line, and had something like three dozen grimacing rent-a-cops on crowd control duty. They almost outnumbered the people in line.

At this point I decided to go back to Shibuya, where a bunch of the guys behind the game were slated to be posing for a "photo op" with the first eager customers.

The Tsutaya shop where the launch-celebrating photo op took place sits opposite Shibuya Station, on the busiest pedestrian crossing in the world. The Tsutaya is also home to the World's Busiest Starbucks, which is so busy that they don't have time to allow customers to order any drink size other than a Tall. (For the price of a Grande.)

We arrived in Shibuya just as the loudspeakers perched about the intersection blared the Dragon Quest opening fanfare. They'd been counting down the minutes to the release of the game. At 7am, all three of the great big video screens at Hachiko crossing lit up, showing the nuclear-apocalypse-worth of early-morning weekend pedestrians the news: Dragon Quest IX had arrived. The trailer segued quickly into a tutorial, explaining to players what is different about this particular Dragon Quest. Basically, they explained the character customization and the multiplayer aspect in the most baby-talking terminology.

I stood outside the Tsutaya for a few minutes. The crowd mostly looked like the type of people who would wake up before six in the morning in hopes of shaking hands with the creator of a game series. Which is to say, they just looked like normal people. You can't tell, sometimes.

Shibuya on a Friday night is a haven of drunkards; on Saturday morning it is a hive of the hung-over. While I was filming the people in line and trying not to be too rude, some man in terrible pants (gray plaid, cut just above the ankles, suspenders, yellow T-shirt, stupid little hat) came by and started breakdancing on the sidewalk. He wasn't hung-over, he was spilled-over: he had not slept at all. I thought his little breakdance was his attempt at being funny or entertaining, though once the camera was turned off he came up and started talking to me. It turned out he was full of the shit of the world: he had had it up to here with all these squares. "This is what Japan is turning into", he said. "A bunch of people who wake up at an ungodly hour on a Saturday morning to buy a videogame". I told him the game was an RPG they could play with their friends. He asked if I was one of them. I told him, well, I'm not in line, am I?

People purchasing the game received a Slime-shaped paper fan with a number on it. A man stepping out of the Tsutaya with a fan marked "29" got accosted by some NHK reporters. They asked him the fluff piece equivalent of softball questions. "Do you like Dragon Quest?" "How long have you been playing Dragon Quest?" A real journalist would ask why he felt it necessary to have to shake Yuji Horii's hand in addition to purchasing Dragon Quest IX.

You know why we don't see lines for games, anymore? Because people preorder them. You can preorder any game at any 7-Eleven in Japan — and there are a lot of 7-Elevens in Japan — and then you can just go down and pick the game up on release day. You probably won't even need to walk more than five minutes. What possesses someone to get on a train?

The numbered fan?

When we left Akihabara — at around 6:30 — only the Sofmap and the Yodobashi had any customers lined up outside at all. Every store had a sign saying they would open at 7am to sell the game. So the numbered fans at Tsutaya, apparently meant to indicate that the owner of that particular fan was the #__ person to purchase Dragon Quest IX are probably kind of meaningless. I'm willing to bet that someone was able to beeline for the register outside a shop in Akihabara — or the Bic Camera down the street from Tsutaya — and buy the game while Tsutaya customer #1 was still thinking about shaking Yuji Horii's hand.

We have had maybe three months in a row where it has rained at least twenty minutes a day. The weather widget on my iPhone has shown consistent six-day forecasts of lightning-bolt-clouds for more than six weeks. I haven't been struck by lightning yet. Today was a beautiful day. Mild, pleasant weather. Japanese retail outlets hand out paper fans constantly during the summer because the most popular topic of conversation in the summer is "it's hot!" By printing advertisements on fans, which people use to fan themselves so that they don't look like some psychopath impervious to heat when all their friends are cyclically chatting about the weather, said retail outlets conceivably drive up incidental revenues by appealing to passers-by.

#1 It was not hot today. It won't be hot tomorrow, either.

#2 By making the fans individually numbered, and thus something of a collector's item, you're only ensuring that the customers will never use them to flap themselves — or risk devaluing their future eBay auction sale — or advertise your product.

Good work, genius marketers!

That said, I did see no less than ten human beings step out of Tsutaya with a bags full of Dragon Quest (one of them, even, had The Works — a red DSi, the Slime Stand, everything) and, on their way to the edge of the intersection to rush back to the station and then home, stop and turn around, stunned, shocked, surprised, attracted by a large television screen showing the tutorial / introduction video for Dragon Quest IX. One man stood there, with the game in his hand, watching that video for five whole minutes.

So, yeah, there's that. Proof that marketing might just work most effectively when it comes to reinforcing someone's self-esteem after they drop $60 on a one-inch square piece of plastic.

I wanted to buy Dragon Quest IX, and not just stare at people in a line, so I walked around the corner to the Bic Camera. Bic Camera, like all the other shops in the area, wouldn't open until 11am, though they had a table set up out front with hundreds of copies of the game — and not a single customer. This is interesting. Maybe. People would much rather wait in line for something than not wait in line for the exact same thing. Why? You know the thought experiment about what happens if you place a donkey perfectly equidistant from two absolutely identical bales of hay? He starves to death! Bic Camera and Tsutaya were not identical bales of hay. At the end of the day, however, they tasted the same. (From the Tsutaya exit, I could just barely see Dragon Quest series producer Yuji Horii standing inside, numerous flashbulbs going off like popcorn all around him. I recalled that time I saw him smoking a cigarette outside of Tokyo Game Show, and I said hello to him, and he did an amazing job of pretending that he didn't think I was a psycho.)

This is what I found most interesting, however.

At Tsutaya, the lines were absolutely well-behaved. At Bic Camera, there was no line.

At Tsutaya, the crowd control guys calmly, quietly stood holding sign boards: "This is the line to purchase Dragon Quest IX".

At Bic Camera, where there was no line (and nary a customer in sight), the employees charged with crowd control duty held megaphones, and screamed: "This is the line to purchase Dragon Quest IX! Please proceed inside in an orderly fashion! Do not push! This is the line to purchase Dragon Quest IX!"

So here's the scenario:

The duty of a crowd-controller is to make sure the crowd is orderly and calm and quiet.

In the presence of an orderly, calm, and quiet crowd, the crowd-controller is either "not needed" or "doing his job".

In the case of no crowd at all, the crowd-controller can't do his job, because there's no job.

Assuring that the crowd stays orderly is a task accomplished by means of (among other things) barking into a megaphone and being surly.

It is possible that the crowd will naturally be calm and ordered without the need of barking and surliness.

However, what does one do about a crowd that doesn't exist?

Oh! I'm sorry, we've veered into my thesis concentration! We're not even talking about Dragon Quest IX anymore!

So at Bic Camera, they had a table loaded down with empty Dragon Quest IX cases. A sheet of paper that someone with a mother and a father took the time to laminate, these words were printed:

"THESE BOXES ARE EMPTY. DO NOT TAKE THEM UP TO THE REGISTER (LOCATED BEHIND YOU). SIMPLY SAY THAT YOU WOULD LIKE A COPY OF DRAGON QUEST IX."

I thought this was priceless, to be honest. It moved me, a little bit, all over the place. It was especially endearing given that the display with the empty boxes and the laminated sheet of paper stood in front of a closed metal shutter, and that there was kind of plenty of room next to the register for these empty boxes. I guess putting them too close to the register would make the customers feel like they were buying something, and Bic Camera's management had made a snap decision against being pushy. Someone should have informed the guys with the megaphones!

Inside the shackled-up vestibule stood maybe twenty guys in Bic Camera vests, at karate ready stance.

So, right there, next to the register, they had a big endcap (that's a retail term (long before I was driving this Ferrari and banging supermodels, I too worked in retail)) loaded with accessories and what have you. The accessories included the aforementioned Slime DS stand (squishy, with a speaker inside it!), more tacky brittle plastic DS cases than you can shake a copper sword at, and . . . and . . . wireless routers and Nintendo Wi-Fi adapters? I thought the game wasn't compatible with online play? They really were pushing all things wireless-paraphernalia-related. It was a little weird. I took a photo.

Then I bought Dragon Quest IX.

Eventually, we decided to go somewhere and get some breakfast. We ended up somewhere terrible, and on the way walked past Sakuraya (a third-string electronics shop). Located just six seconds' walking distance from Tsutaya, Sakuraya simultaneously possessed the most impressive absence of Dragon Quest IX buyers and the fattest, loudest, most plentiful number of employees working crowd control. I stood and stared at them for maybe two minutes. While I was doing this, the fattest, baldest of all the Sakuraya employees rolled a decent-sized speaker out of the store, plugged it into some phantom audio source, and there it was: 8-bit Dragon Quest music, filling the street, shaking the windows.

"WE HAVE DRAGON QUEST IX! WE HAVE DRAGON QUEST IX! WE HAVE DRAGON QUEST IX!"

There must be a law against using the words "please buy".

If my digital camera batteries hadn't died, I would have loved to show you what happened in the terrible restaurant we ended up in. A table of six club-going late-twenty-somethings were Still Drunk and lolling it up over glasses of complimentary water. They were noisier than the political vans patrolling my neighborhood these days. You want to know what they were doing? I wish there was some easier way to get you to believe this. They were playing Rock Paper Scissors, just going around in circles, and laughing hysterically at the girl who just couldn't seem to get a break. She kept using scissors, and everyone kept noticing, and telling her not to use scissors! "I'm not going to stop using scissors because you tell me to! How do I know you won't all start using paper?" They shot her down for literally an hour, as I just sat there feeling the world implode. It seems that

#1 They knew her better than she knew herself

#2 No one knows anything, not anymore!

This is the world we live in! You, and me, and everybody! It's not pretty! In fact, sometimes, it's pretty fucking sick!

I wanted to tell them, hey, with this game right here in this magic paper sack, you can get basically the same thrill, without even needing to talk to your friends. Then, maybe-unfortunately, I realized that this time around, Dragon Quest IX is about community. It's about being like Monster Hunter. It's going to give people something to do at ungodly times of day.

Maybe this table of humans had walked out of a bar at four in the morning and come to this restaurant to wait out the first train. Well, the first train had come four hours ago, at this point. They hardly had an excuse. It couldn't be that they had an appointment early in the morning — they were too drunk! They were too happy.

On the train home, the television commercial for Dragon Quest IX — starring idol-group SMAP, as all new Dragon Quest commercials tend to — played on a tight loop, over and over again, on all the TV monitors. The other monitor reported that there had been "an accident involving a person" (that's what they call a suicide) on the Seibu Ikebukuro Line.

Anyway, here I am at home, and I have Dragon Quest IX. I guess this is maybe the happiest day of my life. What do I know! I'm going to go to sleep, and dream about having Dragon Quest IX all to myself! I am planning this dream right here and right now so that I might wake up — and it will already have come true! This is how we get a day off to an excellent start!

To any of my friends and relatives reading this: I probably won't be going outside for about six months, at the least.

Tim Rogers writes for ActionButton.net. Check out more of his YouTube videos here.

Comedy isn't easy, especially in the medium of the video game. Injecting humor is more than simply having a character say something funny. It takes precise timing, a certain amount of skill, and a strong knowledge of your audience.

What separates games from movies or books is the gameplay, and developers have to take that gameplay into consideration. They aren't simply riffing to a bunch of people sitting in a darkened bar. They're trying to entertain someone who just finished slaughtering enemy forces or solving a difficult puzzle. That requires someone possessing not only a strong grasp of humor, but an understanding of how games and gamers tick.

It's a task that is proving more difficult as video games evolve.

During the 80's and early 90's, humor flourished in the game industry, due in large part to the adventure game genre. Simple point-and-click mechanics and largely dialogue-drive gameplay gave adventure game legends like Roberta Williams (King's Quest), Al Lowe (Leisure Suit Larry), and the LucasArts' Monkey Island triple-threat of Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and Dave Grossman ample opportunity to plunge players into hilarious circumstances.

Grossman's still at it, working on the resurgence of the classic adventure game in the form of Telltale Games' episodic Tales of Monkey Island for the Nintendo Wii and PC. He tells Kotaku that there's chances for humor in games to develop in some fascinating ways.

"As the games get smarter and start paying attention to more things about what the player is actually doing, using that ability not just to create challenges but to create humorous moments will be pretty cool. Eventually I expect to be out of a job over that."

But to get there, games will have to continue to surmount some challenges that the advance of technology has introduced, challenges that have sometimes made it tough to make new games funny games.

As technology improved, things began to get more serious. With the rise of 3D technology a strong focus was put on making games look good, delivering a more realistic — and often darker — experience to the player. Cartoonish comedic games became more of a novelty than the norm. Few titles, such as Rare's Conker's Bad Fur Day for the Nintendo 64, fully embraced humor.

The CD-ROM format, which allowed developers to add more voices to their creations, gave birth to games like Gex and Blasto for the PlayStation, both of which relied on repetitive celebrity wisecracks to keep players entertained. The humorous, cartoonish adventure games, once a haven for comedy, gave way to more mature adventure titles like Myst and The 7th Guest, both showcases for the emerging tech.

The cutscene also matured during the 90's, evolving from brief animated segments meant to give players a rest between rounds of Pac-Man to fully-voiced, CGI rendered movies. Even today, many games use the cutscene to present humorous occurrences, keeping the story and the gameplay separated.

What are the issues keeping today's games from embracing comedy?

Freedom plays a huge role. When a game takes a player from point A to point B, as in Valve's Portal, the game's writer basically knows where the player will be at any given time, and can react accordingly. The more freedom a player has to determine how they play, the more difficult it is to fire off a punchline at the right moment. A sandbox game like Grand Theft Auto, in which the developer has no way of predicting how the player progresses, turns to unconvential methods to deliver humor outside of gameplay, such as radio chatter and mock television programs.

Another big issue with today's game is the length. Writer/director Harold Ramis recently touched on the issue during an interview with GamesRadar around the release of Atari's Ghostbusters: The Video Game.

"To make a game so funny with so many comic alternatives, that would be like writing three hit movies. The scripts are impossibly long. That would be a considerable investment. And I was thinking if you wrote that much comedy, chances are you would put it in a feature film."

So is it more difficult for humor to thrive in today's games? Monkey Island co-creator Dave Grossman doesn't think so. He believes that the type of game you create doesn't dictate if you can successfully integrate comedy...only how.

"I don't know if it's easier to do in the adventure game format than it is in a lot of others. Really, the kind of humor that you do is dictated by what kind of game you're making."

Grossman explains that comedy doesn't always come from the mouths of video game characters. A game doesn't have to have an amusing script in order to be considered funny. In fact, changing trends in the video game industry have led to rise of new types of gaming comedy.

He brings up the example of the recent tower defense variant, Plants Vs. Zombies.

"The gameplay is real simple...there's nothing super elaborate about it, but as soon as I hear the first zombie going "urrrrr" I start to chuckle. There's a moment when you've built up all of these plants making "poot poot" noises and suddenly a giant wave of zombies comes in going. "arrghharghhargghh". It's the sheer pandemonium that's just hilarious."

It's the absurdity of games like Plants Vs. Zombies that sets them apart. Games that take traditional game play mechanics and place them in a completely ridiculous setting. The growing popularity of independent games and accessible distribution channels like Steam are fostering a rise in absurd, surreal titles, and the attention such games get could get more traditional console publishers to take chances on titles they might have once laughed aside.

Grossman inadvertently touches on another emerging aspect of comedic gaming, physical comedy. Where previous attempts at motion control had failed, the Nintendo Wii seemed to hit at exactly the right time, capturing the hearts of gamers tired of standard game controls and the attention of the non-gaming public, intrigued by the idea of a playing games in a more active fashion.

Any activity that requires people to physically perform is rife with comedic possibilities. Grossman recently found himself performing physical comedy while playing Ubisoft's Rayman's Raving Rabbids for the Wii.

"Just the fact that I am throwing a cow in the game is funny. The little action-y things I am doing...you'd think, "But how can they be funny?" but it's just the way that they're presented that make it hilarious."

Sony and Microsoft have their own alternative control systems on the way. Both Sony's motion controller wands and Microsoft's Project Natal are bringing with the potential to make otherwise stoic and reserved players look completely ridiculous. Now, that's funny.

As for the fate of tradition forms of video game comedy, the advance of technology doesn't have to be a hindrance. Any comedian can tell you how important observation is to good humor. Many games use primitive player observation to interject quips and snide remarks reacting to the player's actions. Simple things, like running out of ammunition, or turning the wrong way in a racing title; the games see what the player is doing and could react accordingly.

Building on the same sort of technology, developers would not only be able to deliver more accurate and situation-appropriate humor to the player, but also tailor the humor to the player's demeanor. That idea Grossman saw as something of a threat? It's in development — at least in a horror game:

Konami's Silent Hill: Shattered Memories for the Wii watches everything the player does, from specific actions to how long the player has particular objects in their view, using that information to build a profile that affects how the game plays out for each person.

That level of observation could easily be taken from the horror genre and applied to something a bit lighter. A funny game, crafted just for you.

Names carry weight. They give a group of people and the products they create an identity. For companies like Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Sega and others, those names are associated with memories, even if those words have little meaning.

Sega, for example, is simply a portmanteau of the words "service" and "games." Nintendo, officially, a direct translation from the Japanese to mean "leave luck to heaven." And Sony, well, that's a fabricated word, a twist on the Latin word "sonus" and the familiar "sonny."

But how did video game developers decide upon the likes of Insomniac, Naughty Dog, Harmonix, and the recently re-christened Visceral Games? And what the heck is a Capybara, anyway? We asked game development studio founders to explain themselves.

The studio that started us wondering just how one settles on an identity was the young Capybara Games, a Toronto-based independent group of initially a dozen game developers. The team most recently had a double showing at E3 2009, with Critter Crunch for the PlayStation Network and Might & Magic Clash of Heroes for the Nintendo DS.

The studio is named for the world's largest rodent, the capybara, a relative of the guinea pig that can weigh more than 200 pounds. How exactly does one decide to identify oneself with a giant South American mammal?

"Unfortunately, with 12 very different opinions on what makes a cool name, coming to a unanimous decision was impossible," Nathan Vella, Capybara co-founder and Art Director said. "We bitched at each other for far too long before deciding on a fair and democratic process. Names of varying quality, from ‘surprisingly awesome' to ‘literally the worst name ever' were tossed out by members of the group, and each person chose their Top 3 from the pool."

No one, however, decided the name "Capybara" was "surprisingly awesome."

"In the end, Capybara was unanimously everyone's second or third choice… and so it won the name election," Vella said. "It was the name everyone thought was 'ok' but didn't really want to win. That's democracy for you... you're not picking the best, you're picking the least-worst."

There was an unintended metaphor in Capybara's "least-worst" choice, Vella says.

"At this point we had not yet realized the irony or accuracy that we were naming our 'guinea pig' of a company after the world's largest guinea pig. In hindsight we totally should have caught on to that earlier."

The developer informally calls itself Capy, as seen in its logo. But it employs a "modern day mustache hero" known as Hank Hudson as its official mascot, not a capybara—though Vella jokes it has flirted with taking an Argentinean agency up on its offer to open a capybara farm.

Another developer that didn't go with its first choice for a studio name was Resistance and Ratchet & Clank developers Insomniac Games.

Before the Burbank, California area developer shipped its first game—the first-person shooter Disruptor for the original PlayStation—it went by a trio of other names: Planet X Software, Outzone Software and Xtreme Software. That last name almost stuck, as the company had already incorporated itself as Xtreme prior to announcing Disruptor. Then it found out someone else, a database company, was already using it.

"We only had a few weeks to come up with something new," says Ted Price, president of what we now call Insomniac Games. "So we hung a whiteboard in the office and began writing down everything we could think of. There must have been 200 names on the list."

Some of the rejects? Ragnarok, Black Sun, Ice-9 Games and Blue Moon Turtle.

"Seriously, Blue Moon Turtle," Price admitted. "However, every name we liked was already being used by someone else. We actually got permission from Kurt Vonnegut's estate to use Ice-9 but someone else was already using it without permission."

Faced with the prospect of launching Disruptor anonymously, a last minute suggestion arrived—Insomniac.

"It was one of those rare moments when everyone looked at each other and said 'Yeah, that works,'" according to Price. "It definitely described us at the time. We sure weren't sleeping much."

From our discussions with game development studio founders, it seems like the best piece of advice they can impart about naming one's studio is to check early (and often) to see if someone else is using your descriptor of choice.

Such is the case with Harmonix, creators of Guitar Hero, Rock Band and, when it first formed, "music software technology."

Eran Egozy, Harmonix co-founder and Chief Technical Officer, says that he and general manager Alex Rigopulos debated over a key aspect of the developer's name, whether to spell it Harmonics or Harmonix.

"The 'ix' ending won," Egozy says. "Hey, it was the mid-90s." To be clear, the company's full name is, in Egozy's words, the "somewhat awkward" Harmonix Music Systems.

"Unfortunately, we did not check to see that harmonix.com was already taken when we named the company," Egozy says. "So our domain name is harmonixmusic.com. If we had checked, maybe the company would be called something else now."

One video game maker that did get an opportunity to change its identity was Dead Space and Dante's Inferno developer Visceral Games, once known by the more sterile EA Redwood Shores or, unfortunately and informally, EARS.

Glen Schofield, general manager of the newly re-branded Visceral Games explains.

"There were a bunch of names we threw away," he says, culling hundreds of ideas and concepts solicited from Redwood Shores team members. "I got tons of great ones but I really wanted a name that had a real meaning for our studio. Visceral just worked perfect as it is a term we use all the time to describe the feeling we want in our combat. It captured our more mature or action type games we make."

The developer's very web site is behind an age-gate, highlighting its mature focus.

The name change had support from the top, with president of EA Games label Frank Gibeau and CEO John Riccitiello supporting a more autonomous model, already seen at individually named EA developers like Criterion, BioWare and Pandemic.

"They welcomed the idea of studios having a distinct identity," Schofield says. "Once I mentioned it to Frank he kept asking me when we were announcing the name. He wanted it changed right away, it was pretty funny. But obviously once you have a name you then have months of creative and legal wrangling before you can go live with it."

Visceral's coming out party, as it were, was a little different from start up studios who sometimes choose their names under the gun. It had time to plan, hire an outside brand agency, and build a style guide for the new identity. Then it went public with a studio-wide meeting, press release, site launch and a tasty visceral treat.

"We painted the walls and hung up mounted artwork from our games," Schofield says. "We had posters, decals and a shirt for everyone. There was even a huge Visceral skull cake waiting. It's the only time we've ever had to have a cake maker sign an NDA!"

And that was that. "When the meeting was over the entire place was now changed and we were ready to move on as Visceral Games."

That sense of identity is something that Uncharted developers Naughty Dog share, with employees (positively) referred to as "the Dogs." The explanation for that choice is much simpler than some of the other stories we'd heard.

The company, formerly known as JAM—hey, it was the mid-80s—when it shipped its first game Ski Crazed for the Apple II, was changed to Naughty Dog the next decade. Founders Jason Rubin and Andy Gavin were "dog lovers," with Rubin often taking his puppy to work.

That continues today, with current co-presidents Evan Wells and Christophe Balestra giving their dogs a second home at the Naughty Dog offices.

And the names of their dogs? Pogo and Trumpet. How those names came to be, we'll just have to wonder.

[Photo Credit]

While video game publishers aren't quite as afraid to release new titles during the summer months as they used to be, there is still a dry period between the last games of spring and the beginning of the fall holiday season. Just because there aren't quite as many games to play doesn't mean you can't still immerse yourself in your favorite titles. We've compiled a list of quality reading materials to keep you steeped in game culture throughout the hot days of summer and beyond.

Fiction
What makes a great work of video game fiction? Strong writing helps, but it's the more supportive nature of gaming fiction that makes a title stand out. The author must not only tell a compelling tale, but tell it in such a way that, when the reader returns to the game, they find the nature of their relationship to the title has changed. Whether it enhances familiarity with one of the title's characters, or deepens our understanding of the game world, video game fiction excels when it changes the way we experience what we play.

Here is a list of some titles that excel at adding depth to the games they are inspired by, as well as a few that have inspired games on their own.

The Divine Comedy Author: Dante Alighieri Publisher: Various First Publication: 1300's Thanks to Electronic Arts there is a 14,000 line poem on Kotaku's Summer Reading List. If you are going to play and hopefully enjoy the loose video game adaptation of Dante's Inferno, you may as well familiarize yourself with the source material. It may be a dense, allegorical vision of the Christian life and afterlife, but it's also considered to be one of the greatest works of world literature, and being able to discuss such things really impresses the opposite sex at fancy dinner parties.

Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne Author: David Gaider Publisher: Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC Pub. Date: March 2009 Who better to pen a prequel novel to an upcoming role-playing game than the lead writer for the game itself? David Gaider of BioWare has lent his writing talents to such classic games as Baldur's Gate 2: Shadows of Amn and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, and his work translates quite well onto the printed page, as evidenced by his first novel, Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne. The book tells the story of a Maric, the son of the Rebel Queen, seeking to reclaim the throne of Ferelden following his mother's murder. The story is compelling and entertaining, setting the tone for the upcoming game quite nicely. I really appreciate it when the lore comes before the game, letting the player step into the action feeling as if they have a deeper understanding of the world they are about to experience.

Ender's Game Author: Orson Scott Card Publisher: Various First Publication: 1985 What's a science fiction novel from 1985 doing on Kotaku's Summer Reading list? Aside from the fact that Chair Entertainment is working on a downloadable title based on the novel, Ender's Game is one of the ultimate video game-themed novels of all time. The story centers on Ender Wiggins, a young boy who is part of a class of students at Earth's Battle School, where they train gifted children to take command positions in humanity's war against the alien Formics. The children are trained using simulators - high tech video games that place them in the midst of virtual battles, commanding fleets in what could be the ultimate real-time strategy game. Woven into the science fiction plot is a poignant coming-of-age tale, making Ender's Game a book that delivers on multiple levels. If you've not read it you should, and if you have read it, shush.

Gears Of War: Aspho Fields Author: Karen Traviss Publisher: Random House Publishing Group Pub. Date: October 2008 Author Karen Traviss was at her best when she wrote the Star Wars: Republic Commando novels, and now she takes that same understanding of both combat and camaraderie and applies it to the Gears of War universe, telling the story of Marcus Fenix and Dominic Santiago in a way that the games never could. Her book takes them from childhood to the battle of Aspho Fields, where they must face a dark secret about Dominic's brother Carlos. Traviss seems to understand the bonding of brothers in battle better than most male writers who tackle the same sort of subject matter, making for an entertaining read no matter how you feel about the series itself. Traviss revisits Gears in late July, picking up where the second game left off with Gears of War: Jacinto's Remnant.

Halo: Contact Harvest Author: Joseph Staten Publisher: Doherty, Tom Associates, LLC Pub. Date: October 2007 Wait, isn't the latest Halo novel The Cole Protocol? Yes it was, and that's why I am recommending Halo: Contact Harvest. If you want a novel that tells a compelling story set during the early days of the war between humanity and the Covenant, you'd be better off avoiding Tobias S. Buckell's The Cole Protocol and reading or re-reading Contact Harvest. As Staten did with Sergeant Johnson in Contact Harvest, Buckell tries to develop Captain Jacob Keyes in The Cole Protocol. Wile he succeeds in telling a multi-layered story with well-developed characters, they aren't likable characters that you'd want to know the story behind. On top of that, I'm not even that hardcore a Halo fan and I noted several inconsistencies between the game and the book. In Contact Harvest, Bungie writer Joseph Staten takes a character that isn't more than a caricature in the game and develops him in a way that changes how you'll view his appearances in the Halo series.

Halo: Uprising Author: Brian Michael Bendis Artist: Alex Maleev Publisher: Marvel Enterprises, Inc. Pub. Date: June 2009 While I hate to use the phrase "must-have", this hardcover collection of the four issues of Marvel's Halo: Uprising comic book series is indeed just that, bridging the gap between Halo 2 and Halo 3 with a compelling story and some fantastic artwork.

Hellgate: London Trilogy - Exodus / Goetia / Covenant Author: Mel Odom Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group Pub. Date: June 2007 - August 2008 Simon Cross never believed in demons. Despite the fact that his father raised him in a hidden underground commune belonging to the Templar, an organization training in secrecy to defend mankind against a prophesied invasion from the infernal, Simon lacked the faith of his fellows. He left the commune in hopes of finding a normal life. But when the gates of hell do open, Cross finds himself drawn back to London to lead a desperate battle to save humanity. Mel Odom treats Hellgate so much better than the game deserves to be treated. If the game contained just a small portion of the personality Odom gives his characters it would still be operational in North America today. The third book is a bit of a letdown, feeling rushed, possibly due to the game's impending failure, but getting there is one hell of a ride. Forget the bad game. This is a series of good books.

Mass Effect: Revelation / Ascension Author: Drew Karpyshyn Publisher: Random House Publishing Group Pub. Date: May 2007, July 2008 The Mass Effect novels, Crecente's contribution to the Kotaku Summer Reading List, are more prequel than companion. They add to the already-rich lore of the Mass Effect universe. With BioWare's own resident novelist and lead writer for Mass Effect Drew Karpyshyn penning the stories, you can expect a level of detail that no outside author could hope to deliver.

Metal Gear Solid Author: Raymond Benson Publisher: Random House Publishing Group Pub. Date: May 2008 Given that the author has written James Bond novels, one has to overlook Raymond Benson's Bondification of Solid Snake in this adaptation of the first Metal Gear Solid game. The book follows the plot of the game closely, adding little details that should please fans of the series. It fleshes out some of the character's motivations quite nicely. The only issue is the characterization of Snake himself...which one has to admit wasn't all that deep in the game. Benson takes a few liberties with the character, giving him Bond-like quips that don't quite jibe with Snake as we know him today. Still a good read, and with Benson busy penning the novelization of the game's follow-up, Sons of Liberty, we might as well get used to his writing style.

Nova: StarCraft Ghost Author: Keith R.A. DeCandido with an introduction by Chris Metzen Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group Pub. Date: November 2006 The tragic and often heart-wrenching story of Nova, Emperor Arcturus Mengst's most deadly Ghost operative. When her parents are murdered by a rebel militia, young Nova lashes out with her devastating powers, killing hundreds in the blink of an eye. She finds herself alone in the streets of Tarsonis, pursued by a special agent tasked with hunting her down. Definitely a book that deserves to be read. DeCandido's portrayal of Nova's plight touches all the right chords, and the tragedy of the situation is made all the more poignant by the fact that this is a novel based on a game we may never see.

Prince of Persia: The Graphic Novel Author: A.B. Sina with Art by LeUyen Pham and Alex Puviland Publisher: First Second Pub. Date: September 2008 The Prince of Persia isn't a person, but rather an ideal or spirit that certain Persian princes embody. This is the theme that poet A.B. Sina presents in this lovely graphic novel inspired by the video game series. The book follows the story of two princes, separated by time but entwined by fate, with Sina's words texturing the canvas on which artists Pham and Puviland practice their craft. A bit hard to follow at first, once the separate story threads are braided together the tale truly takes off. As an added bonus, Prince of Persia creator Jordan Mechner provides a brief history of the game series in the volume, neatly counterbalancing the more artistic take on the legend.

Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy Author: S.D. Perry Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group Pub. Date: October 1998 This one goes way back, but when I asked for staff recommendations for the list, Resident Evil: The Umbrella Conspiracy was the first thing out of AJ's mouth, and so here it is. She claims the first book is the best in the series, with the quality slowly dwindling thereafter. That's a bit odd, because I remember reading an Aliens series by S.D. Perry that followed that exact same pattern - a strong start followed by diminishing returns.

StarCraft: Dark Templar Series - Firstborn / Shadow Hunters / Twilight Author: Christie Golden Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group Pub. Date: May 2007 - June 2009 Archaeologist Jake Ramsey, hired to explore an unearthed Xel'Naga temple, finds himself bonded to the spirit of a long-dead Protoss mystic. Driven by the mystic's memories, Jake sets off on a journey that spans the universe. The three book series sees its protagonist pursued by the Zerg, hounded by a powerful Dark Aarchon, and taking a good, hard look at humanity's role in the universe. Author Christie Golden has penned a large number of licensed novels in her time, and there's a good reason she is constantly tapped for said duty. While other adaptation authors simply familiarize themselves with their subject matter, Golden seems to fall in love with each universe she visits, and that love shines through on every page.

Star Wars: The Force Unleashed Author: Sean Williams Publisher: Random House Publishing Group Pub. Date: August 2008 Sean Williams takes the already-compelling tale of Darth Vader's secret apprentice and fleshes it out in vibrant detail, creating an excellent companion piece to the video game. It's a great example of a novelization that adds a layer of depth to the source material.

Warhammer Online: Age Of Reckoning: Empire In Chaos Author: Anthony Reynolds Publisher: Games Workshop Pub. Date: August 2008 The battle between the Empire and the forces of Chaos escalates in this solid companion to the massively multiplayer online roleplaying game. It's basically a classic fantasy tale - a band of characters from different backgrounds find themselves thrust together against a backdrop of war. You've got your innocent maiden who finds herself in possession of tremendous power; your tough-as-nails anti-hero; an enigmatic elf struggling to overcome the language barrier; and a dwarf who takes the grumpy dwarf routine to a new level. A bit formulaic, but a solid read.

World of Warcraft: Arthas: Rise of the Lich King Author: Christie Golden Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group Pub. Date: April 2009 Yes, it's another Blizzard book by Christie Golden, but as I mentioned previously, there is a reason she is tapped to pen some of the most important stories in video game fiction. The story of Arthas' transformation from paladin of the Silver Hand to evil lord of the undead is one of the most classically tragic tales in Azeroth. Golden handles the details with an expert pen, building up Arthas Menethil's world and then slowly tearing it apart.

Non-Fiction
While some of prefer their video game reading to tend to the fantastic, others prefer to take time during the summer months to brush up on their facts, get a little bit of back story, or wax philosophical on their favorite titles in preparation for the busy fall forum flaming season. Here's a handful of more-grounded gaming reads.

Arcade Mania: The Turbo-charged World of Japan's Game Centers Author: Brian Ashcraft Publisher: Kodansha International Pub. Date: January 2009 Didn't think I'd miss this one, did you? Written by our own Brian Ashcraft, Arcade Mania takes us deep inside the arcades of Japan, exploring not only the games themselves, but the colorful people who play them, presenting both history and culture in equal servings. I enjoyed the quirky page layouts almost as much as I enjoyed the actual words, and while I would have preferred a bit more lead in and lead out, all in all it's one heck of a good read.

Guinness World Records Gamers' Edition 2009 Compiled by Guinness World Records Publisher: Guinness World Records Limited Pub. Date: February 2009 Because we have to use the bathroom in the summer as well.

Grand Theft Childhood: The Surprising Truth About Violent Video Games - And What Parents Can Do Authors: Lawrence Kutner, Cheryl K. Olson Publisher: Simon & Schuster Adult Publishing Group Pub. Date: April 2008 You've probably seen quotes from the husband-and-wife writing team and references to this book on Kotaku before, and you'll more than likely see them again. The pair studied some of the habits and behaviors of some 1,300 middle-school gamers in Pennsylvania and South Carolina, and their findings are some of the most balanced ones I've seen. Many violent video game studies feel like they have an agenda, be it to condemn video games or exonerate them. Grand Theft Childhood moves the focus away from that debate and directs parents' attention where it should be anyway - their own children.

High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games, Second Edition Authors: Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson Publisher: McGraw-Hill Osborne Media Pub. Date: 2nd Edition, December 2003 This one was Ashcraft's suggestion, but I couldn't agree more that High Score! deserves a place on any video game reader's list. DeMaria and Wilson take on the history of the video game industry, from its humble beginnings as dots moving on a screen to the coming of the PlayStation 2 and original Xbox. They break things down by company, era, and geographical region, making it the perfect book to just open up to any random page and begin reading, or as Ashcraft puts it, "Great to pick up and put down whenever you are on the throne."

The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy Editor: Luke Cuddy Publisher: Open Court Publishing Company Pub. Date: November 2008 If you think far too much about the Legend of Zelda series, then here is a book for you. The Legend of Zelda and Philosophy is a series of essays that explores topics both confined to the game, as in Rachel Robison's "Shape Shifting and Time Traveling: Link's Identity Issues", to more all-encompassing philosophical fare, which we see in Paul Brown's "Hyrule's Green and Pleasant Land: The Minish Cap as Utopian Ideal". It's equal bits absurd and insightful.

This first edition of the Kotaku Summer Reading List presents a rather broad range of titles, from fantasy and science fiction to philosophy and scientific study. Hopefully you'll find something worth a sunny afternoon read somewhere amongst the selection. Of course, this certainly isn't the end of this list. You are all part of Kotaku as well, so now that we've shared some of our favorites, it's your turn to share some of your own. After all, the only thing better than reading a good book is sharing a good book.

We've heard a million times about how the cultural presence of games is growing exponentially thanks to the watershed of Nintendo's motion control, burgeoning casual audiences and IP that now more neatly spans the world of film, games and books than it has in the past.

At that same E3 event, renowned film director Steven Spielberg referred to the controller as the last hurdle to overcome in the quest to make video games approachable to everyone. With all this talk about new audiences and the tech designed to serve them it's easy to get excited.

It's also easy to feel a little lost in the shuffle. For gamers who've been there since before anyone cared about making games "for everyone," having that object in our hands was more than a way to access the game world – it was half the appeal. Anyone who's ever pulled off a chain of combos in a console fighter can tell you about the joy of expertise and control.

More than that, the controller is a cultural object that has for decades defined a pastime – there are those who know how to use it and those who don't, and being one of the skilled has always been a way for gamers to self-identify. Who would we be without it?

What's So Wrong With Some Barriers?

As creative director and co-founder of New York game development studio Area/Code (best known for Parking Wars), Frank Lantz's work focuses on using social media and connectivity to bring games and game-like entertainment to entirely new audiences. But he still sees the value in keeping some barriers intact.

"Sorry to sound elitist, but I like that not everybody understands how to play games, and I doubt that I'm alone," says Lantz, who's also director of New York University's Game Center. "That games require effort and a particular kind of tricky literacy is one of the things that makes them cool. Would pianos be better if everyone could play them? Would punk rock sound better if your grandparents liked it?"

Gamers may suffer some kind of identity crisis as the familiar markers of their beloved niche evolve – or disappear entirely. The solution to that one's easy: Get over it. Like it or not, it's clear that gaming's not a "niche" anymore, and its shape will change.

The more pressing issue is whether or not controller-less gaming will truly make the medium richer. Making something "more accessible" doesn't necessarily make it better.
"It's not about reinventing the wheel," Spielberg said of Natal at E3. "It's about no wheel at all." But the wheel remains an object essential to mobility no matter how transportation advances – even airplanes have them.

Objects In Hand Can Help Gameplay

Designer and Savannah College of Art and Design professor Brenda Brathwaite's been said to have more continuous years working in the game industry than almost any other developer, and her concept of game design has evolved to encompass both digital and non-digital play. In addition to designing games and teaching others to do the same, Brathwaite works on tabletop and board game projects, where physical game pieces are a crucial component.

For her, it's all part of the same world. "Baseball, the Olympics, Ticket to Ride and Bionic Commando are all games, and they share certain core characteristics, one of which is the ‘controller,' the way in which the players interact with the rules to produce the play," she says.

Her latest project, Train, is aimed at provoking players to think about the Holocaust. Players lead grim, gray boxcars full of little yellow pawns. The draw cards along the way that release some of the figurines or slow the train ride.

Only when the first train reaches the "goal" do players learn that their final destination has been the Auschwitz concentration camp. When Brathwaite unveiled it at this year's Triangle Game Conference, audiences were awed, and some were even moved to tears.

The train's tracks are laid out on glass panes that intentionally recall Krystallnacht, and the game's rules are written on an SS typewriter — the interactions between player and objects are part of what inspire Brathwaite as a designer, and part of what makes Train so impactful to players, she says. Brathwaite meticulously and thoughtfully considered each and every object in Train, and how each could support the game experience.
"We often talk as game developers about creating situations where the player has to make truly meaningful choices," she says. "I wondered: What would happen if I put that much attention into each component of the games themselves?"

Reducing the physical interface, then, might mean less immersion for games.

Is The ‘Invisible Controller' A Fantasy?

The argument in favor of controlling a game with your body is that it'll make the experience more like interacting in a lifelike way – but Lantz suggests this idea might be as much of a fantasy as "total" virtual reality.

"Games are experiences that are stylized, constrained, constructed," says Lantz. "They'll always be some aspect of the interaction that needs to be learned that the player needs to become literate with." For example, the experience of playing Wii Tennis may be just enough like real tennis that the player is more aware they're playing a video game – not less.

The idea of a perfect, "invisible" controller, then, is just as much a fantasy as the "seamless" simulation – and Lantz believes these two fantasies are interrelated, potential components of the same unrealistic goal.

"People associate these two things because of the power of the fantasy of some perfect, seamless, idealized game that's ‘just like life' — as if there could be such a thing, as if it would even be useful if there were," says Lantz. "By the way, something that no one mentions is that one of the reasons that the Wiimote is so intuitive is that people know how to play tennis!"

At some point, a Wii Tennis player must have had someone show them how to hold a real racket, or have had the experience of viewing tennis matches in order to understand the way racket and ball are intended to interact. A tennis racket is already a perfect controller for an existing game – without it, Wii Tennis wouldn't be "intuitive" at all, Lantz says. Does that mean motion controls are limited to only translating things people already have an idea of how to do? If so, that's quite a limitation.

The ‘Immersive Fallacy'

Lantz and a community of professors, veteran designers and authors like Eric Zimmerman and Katie Salen have defined this principle as the "immersive fallacy" – it may seem like the logical next step toward immersion to make the controller first more like a real object, and then to make it disappear, but that progression actually restricts games, not expands them.

Maxis' Chris Hecker agrees with the immersive fallacy principle –a game controller as "abstract interface" can act as a proxy for almost any kind of action. "Our brains do an amazing job of mapping the abstract degrees of freedom of the controller to the verbs in the game," Hecker says. "By contrast, if you make a plastic guitar controller, it will only ever be used for guitar games." (Note: Although it is true that non-music applications for guitar peripherals are rare, an exception is 2008 IGF finalist Fret Nice, which was recently picked up for XBLA and PSN by Tecmo and is a 2D platformer playable with a guitar controller.)

With no controller at all, the game designer has two choices: simulate the exact actions, or represent complex verbs through short-cut, symbolic motions that will by nature become complex enough a language that it would have been simpler to use a controller to begin with, says Hecker.

"Would ICO be better if you had to stand up and yell and hold out your arm all the time?" he asks. "Going the other direction… is raise-your-left-hand-and-shake-it any more meaningful or accessible than push-the-triangle-button?"

Lots To Gain

Despite a need to be wary of hype, developers still have good reason to be excited about the possibilities in new control schemes. Lantz hopes that the physical interaction will help the game experience itself come to the forefront, instead of being overshadowed by talk about hardware and devices.

"If you think about the quintessential image of GTA IV, it's basically a screenshot," says Lantz. "But if you think about the quintessential image of Rock Band or Wii Sports, it's an image of people in a room doing something. The real human bodies of the players are part of the game! It's wonderful!"

And new technology always means exciting new ways to look at game design and player behavior. Designers like Brathwaite who value the tangible, like Hecker who's pleased with the possibilities in the abstract, and like Lantz, who loves modern controllers, can enjoy what Lantz calls "new opportunities to solve interesting problems and experiment with new game structures and new kinds of experiences."

That means that, for the moment, a big appeal for developers in controller-less input schemes might be their novelty. Gesture-based gaming, living room peripherals and other non-traditional control developments may have done a great deal to expand the audience and introduce new types of gaming experiences – but perhaps a "novelty" won't supplant our familiar controllers in the end.

After all, the wheel is not in need of reinvention. And if it ain't broke, why fix it – or throw it away?

[Image of Brenda Brathwaite's Train with credit to Geoffrey on Flickr.]

[Leigh Alexander is news director for Gamasutra, author of the Sexy Videogameland blog, and freelances reviews and criticism to a variety of outlets. Her monthly column at Kotaku deals with cultural issues surrounding games and gamers. She can be reached at leighalexander1 AT gmail DOT com.]

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