Thursday Next

So what about the usual "Games = Art" suspects? Like Flower. How is that not art? Games may thrive on interaction, but not necessarily with other people. You have to interact with the medium. When you look at a book you have to read it. The words don't leap into your mind. You have to translate the words into images, sounds, smells, feelings. Books are hugely interactive in that respect. You compare them with sports, specifically with competitive sports and for a lot of games this is true. Sports games (obviously), FPS, RTS, basically any game with competitive online elements could be classed as not art, but just because a piece of art requires interaction does not make it "not art". Maurice Benayoun's The Tunnel under the Atlantic required that one person be at each end to "work" as the artist intended. Did the requirement for interaction render it not art somehow? Also, you seem to neglect art-sport duality. Dancing is I believe considered art, but what of competitive dance? Ballroom dancing where rules are strictly applied and followed? The art becomes a sport does it not? Suggesting that games are not art because they are niche is hardly fair either. Games are the biggest selling entertainment medium going, they are the opposite of niche. "Arty" games on the other hand are very much a "niche", but how does this differ from written media or cinema or music, where the massively popular content, Dan Brown, Wyan brothers, Hannah Montana is snubbed by those who consider the medium to be an artistic one and see no artistic value in what they are shown? I do agree with this bit though (with a minor amend):

Feels like it.

Is everything supposed to be spinning?

Flashing back to the Wolverine dude... I hate how you get two extremes of commenter on those it's either "No life", "Virgin" and "Too much time" comments or it's "This person should work for NASA", "This person will get a masters from MIT" or 2this person will be a billionaire someday". These things, where people build crazy stuff, they're "kinda cool" and "nice to have a hobby" they don't have to preclude or guarantee a successful, socially active life. Anyways... here is a mental McDonald's Advert.

I thought about it when I was writing my comment but decided to exclude it because the voice acting really wasn't that great. Some of it was but it was vey inconsistent. Jason. JASON! Jason. JASON! Jason. JASON! JASON! Jason. Granted, but that's an editorial / user decision. The actual delivery of the actual voice actors was (imo) very good. The fact that you can Press X To Jason umpteen billion times is not the VA's fault. If you repeated anything anyone says over and over it starts to sound odd.

Heavy Rain. You may not have liked the accents, and sometimes the limited choices in a conversation meant that you'd flip from neutral to hella pissed off in an instant. But the actual delivery of the voice actors was spot on.

From a publisher perspective, there's not a huge amount of difference between the two.

“You could allow a game to be torrented so long as you have some way of doing micro-transactions or in-game ads on the back of it. “In order to be able to properly leverage or harness piracy, you have to make sure that your business model caters to that. This is a day one decision.” I agree with this sentiment. It's why I approve of day 1 DLC (especially where it is included in the box as with Bioware titles), and Online Pass. Saying "Oh well, if the game is good all the pirates who were going to buy it will buy it and those that weren't are not lost sales." may well be a great philosophical position, but it won't pay the bills. On the other hand if the people who pirate have to pay for access to content that legitimate purchasers get for free, then that's all good in my book.

One, don't refer to "Kotaku" like it's a singular entity. It's a blog site consisting of individual opinions from writers, editors and guest authors. One article doesn't represent the views of everyone on the site. Hell, they can't even agree on their game of the year pick. Second, if you go back and look at their articles about Kinect you'll see that they never neglect to criticize the "Mii too!" nature of Kinect's games. On a side note, I did like that Lisa Foiles had the humility to make fun of herself in that article. Firstly, "one doesn't" or (preferably) "one does not" it's quite a strange juxtaposition to use the very formal address of "one" followed by a (grammatically incorrect) contraction like "don't". Especially when educating another on correct forms of address. Secondly, if you're going to write a list you might as well number all of them, not just the second one. Thirdly, while it has many authors the Editorial Direction of Kotaku is clearly applied from the top down, so I feel quite comfortable in tarring them all with the same brush. Fourthly, I'm not going back there. Ever. Fifthly, and finally, I did like how Lisa Foiles took the unusual step of mentioning her child "Stardom". Again. How unlike her. P.S. I'm only kidding, you can take offence if you want, but it's all in jest.

Nah, I wasn't overly clear. You'll have to ask Nihil why a pad is better, unless of course he doesn't believe that pads are better and was just being contrary (hard to believe I know).

You're probably right but I'd still rather have someone that has the precision (if it's needed) than someone who's trying to aim with an analog stick *pictures someone with their tongue out gently nudging the analog stick to get it in the right position*. Oh no, you didn't! You best be trolling, boy! Think you read me out of context. I was surprised that Nihil would suggest that someone might prefer to use a pad where M&K were available. Hence "Choosing a pad over M&K?" Then stated that my not thinking of the Pad as a viable option was due to an abundance of common sense as opposed to a lack of imagination. EDIT: Some puzzles require precision and timing. While they are all possible with pads, to achieve the mindbendingly awesome speed runs seen in Portal, you're almost certainly gonna need M&K.

Pssst... You didn't hear it from me, but I've heard they're implementing USB gamepads that work with PCs. Just don't tip Kotaku or else everyone might find out. Didn't occur to me to do that, I can't imagine playing something FPS-ish with a controller when there's a Mouse and Keyboard option. Still don't think it's on the cards. You don't have much of an imagination. Choosing a pad over M&K? It's not a lack of imagination, it's just common sense.

Pssst... You didn't hear it from me, but I've heard they're implementing USB gamepads that work with PCs. Just don't tip Kotaku or else everyone might find out. Didn't occur to me to do that, I can't imagine playing something FPS-ish with a controller when there's a Mouse and Keyboard option. Still don't think it's on the cards.

I've not visited Kotaku for ages, but I'm still on their newsletter list, I was somewhat amused by their "Guess what, Kinect is actually kinda rubbish." article. No shit Kotaku, who would have thought that the game where pet a pretend tiger and the mini-games that came with the hardware would get boring huh? I can only assume that the money MS paid to Kotaku for their shameless shilling of the jumped up eye-toy has run out now.

Ummm... don't believe so. I'll let you know. There's a few little tricks to help communicate without voice, but conveying "When I jump from here to here, you need to put a portal there... 3, 2, 1...NOW!" with pointing and gestures and bouncing on the spot is only going to lead to frustration. EDIT: Split-screen on PC? Like with two mouses and two keyboardses? Probably not.

If you're gonna coop this. You must... must must must must must... must use voip. Or be psychic.

Also note that the Coalition didn't raise tuition fees. They just allowed Universities to do so. As for awesome opening ceremonies... let us not forget the amazing shows our favourite former colony put on: Bra-flipping-vo. Also, Dean, a more relevant protest (i.e. Students, fees, protests...) http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/education/2541075.stm On balance, this Coalition is not so bad thus far. They seem to be dealing with the economy ok, time will tell on that one and personally I'm not really feeling the effects of the economic downturn (one of the benefits of having paid all those tuition fees I guess). Fuel prices are a drag, but that's as much because the Opec cartel are fleecing the whole planet as it is because of fuel duty. I like the leadership of Clegg and Cameron, and I find Ed Miliband to be entirely unelectable (they should've gone with David) as Ed is pretty much a Union stooge and had no leadership presence.

One thing to add to this. It's really, really, REALLY important that games are recognised as art. The reason that some games get "banned" or softened in Germany is because games don't yet fall under the category of "art", or rather they don't by default. Once a medium is accepted as "Art" the barriers start to fall down, films are considered "Art", so "Inglourious Basterds" could be shown in Germany with all the Swastikas and such on show. Medal of Honor (the WWII ones) are not "Art" so they face a ban or the developer needs to produce a softened version. Not to mention that "Art" gets numerous tax breaks and help from many governments. So while this may be a purely mental exercise for many of you, it has some striking real world consequences for the industry as a whole. Personally, I believe that games area creative medium, the rules that make up the games are perhaps not art (though they could be), but the finished product is. To take the "Chess" analogy to it's logical conclusion: Are all chess sets art? Probably not. Are they capable of being art? Absolutely. The same goes for games. Not all games are art, but the medium, and the individual games are all certainly capable of being art.

You're getting bogged down in the semantics of what the word "colour" means to the profession. I'm not talking about "colour" I'm talking about "Colour". May I present Ethan and Myself. Also known as "the average Joe." To the average Joe, there are two types of film colourisation. "Black & White" and "Colour". Yes, I get that "Black" and "White" are "Colours" but you must know what the average Joe means by "Black & White" and "Colour". "Colour" is not essential to a film. I can watch Iron Man on a Black & White TV and it will display just fine. 3D is the same. I prefer watching films in "Colour" because that is how I see the world. I also like to watch films in stereoscopic 3D because evolution blessed me with a nice set of predatory eyes and it's great to put them to use. You saying that all films are in colour therefore colour is essential is like me saying that all films are in 3D so 3D is essential. All films try to give the impression of depth, whether that is done with lighting, perspective or stereoscopic trickery. EDIT: Put my emphasis in the wrong place and also... Ethan, hope I'm not putting words in your mouth. Or on your fingers. Or whatever the internet equivalent is. P.S. Relevant to the topic. This is what I mean about simplification and misinformation. You've misinterpreted a simplification as being "wrong" when in fact we're just not using the terminology you would.

Uh... No. His argument is neither null nor void. All I said was that colour is a tool like 3D. Some people use colour well, some people use it badly just like 3D. Either way, films can, did and do exist in black and white just as they will continue to exist in 2D. What I'm saying is "Colour is as essential as 3D". In fact I'd go further and say that "3D is as essential as colour, which is as essential as film."

Why in slow motion? Isn't the point of 120hz to watch speedy things go speedy?

I think Crytek's biggest mistake in the Multiplayer mode is to have locked away different game modes until you've ranked up. I get that they want you to have the basics down first, but having to wait till you and all your friends are at X level before playing Capture the Flag is monumentally retarded. I'm not a fan of team death match, even less so of death match. I much prefer objective based play, so at the moment I'm being punished until I can get to a mode I want to play (and that's with the Nano Edition XP boost that puts me straight in at level 5).

I played PS3. By console standards, it's a schmorgers(sp?) board of customisation. As for "your" weapons being everywhere, well, this fight is on home turf. Of course CELL are going to have the same weapons.

Was it good? Also, I just finished AC:B. I think it was mostly a waste of time and didn't really further the story much. I still really like AC but this game was more of a cash in than an addition to the series. I'm starting in on Alpha Protocol now. So far I like it. Yip. A lot of games say "You can run and gun or you can sneak about." But this is one of the few games where I felt that was true. Stealth or Armour lead you down two very different ways to play, and the TAC Map highlights them for you. The AI is D-U-M-B. Or rather, the path-finding sucks. Never seen so many troops bumping in to each other. The game uses verticality really well. As long as there has been a jump button in FPS's people have been trying to get on top of stuff. Crysis does it very well, the clambering is cool, makes you feel like a big ol' gorilla. I love that you can customise your weapons and fine-tune your suit on the fly. It makes the entire game feel more "tactical" and less "Here's a silenced rifle, this is the part of the game where you can be sneaky. Here is a shotgun, this is the run'n'gun section." I never played Crysis or Warhead, but the game does a decent job of filling in some of the backstory, though I imagine it is much more rewarding for knowing all the details. Multiplayer is great fun. I rarely feel like my deaths were cheap, often I'll die because I went from stealth mode, started shooting and forgot to activate armour mode, making my aim shoddy and my body squishy (and dead). That you have to actually go and collect dogtags (by walking over your vanquished enemy) means snipers (who have a massive advantage by virtue of the Stealth mode) are not able to dominate with killstreak rewards. Unfortunately there is an upgrade that automatically collects dogtags, so eventually that will change.

Wouldn't they just get invented by someone else?