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Games Entertainment

Trigger Happy 153

Posted by JonKatz from the video-games-and-the-entertainent-revolution dept.
Over the next few years, says a new book, the sales of software and video game consoles could top $17 billion. Video games already generate more revenue than films. Video games are becoming one of the world's most popular entertainment forms, affecting TV, education, Hollywood, even the Pentagon and the way we view and conduct high-tech, game-like, remote-control military conflicts.

Here's some stats that may cause jaws to drop in classrooms or around dinner-party tables.

  • Total video game software and hardware sales in the United States reached $8.9 billion last year, versus $7.3 billion for movie box-office receipts. Of that, $6.6 billion of the videogame receipts were from software sales, retail and online.
  • Over the next three years, sales of game consoles and software in the U.S. are expected to generate more than $17 billion.
  • The average child in the U.S. plays video games 49 minutes a day -- but the average age of videogame players is now estimated to be twenty-eight.
  • Increasingly, adults -- evenly split between men and women -- choose video games over other forms of entertainment. In fact, according to The Wall Street Journal, Americans named video games as their favorite form of entertainment for the third year in a row in l999. Twice as many people nominated videogames as chose watching TV, three times as many preferred videogames to renting movies.

Some of you won't be shocked by these numbers (especially those who browse sites like myvideogames.com and mygamecritics.com), but the vast majority of non-tech, non-gaming people -- especially those who depend on mainstream media for technology news -- will be amazed. If the Net really turned kids' hearts dark, the streets would be awash in blood.

Videogames have created an ebullient universe all their own, inspiring and pressuring Hollywood and the music industry, increasingly shaping culture and creativitity and also, and -- according to a new book by British journalist Steven Poole -- affecting military training and war.

But most education and media institutions still refuse to take this new form of culture seriously, dismissing videogamers as either a trifling teen entertainment, or a corrosive influence on young minds. They also refuse to recognize that the compulsively entertaining and stimulating nature of games makes schools and other environs seem boring, even suffocating.

Steven Poole gets it right. In Trigger Happy: Video Games and the Entertainment Revolution, he writes, among other things, about the impact of the legendary Lara Croft, the pistol-toting, ponytailed, hotpants-and-shades digital star of the l996 game, "Tomb Raider." Lara has appeared on the cover of The Face and been the subject of countless magazine features in Europe. She's become such a recognizable icon that she now advertises other products, appearing in computer-generated TV commercials for Lucozade and Nike.

Eidos, the publisher of "Tomb Raider," has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide of the first three games in the series, and was named Britain's most successful company in any industry in l999. Add in estimated sales for the fourth installment, "Tomb Raider: The Last Revelation", and Lara, predicts Poole, is close to becoming a billion-dollar babe.

One of the world's first virtual celebrities, Croft is one of the initial video game characters to break out in so global and commercial a way, as synergistic marketing propels her way beyond the videogame culture.

Poole also takes note of growing evidence that videogames are breaking film's monopoly on the moving image. They've lovingly appropriated set-piece forms from the cinematic milieu of horror, action and science fiction, he writes, citing the enormous monster, the car chase, the space dogfight. Meanwhile, movies have stolen ever more brazenly from videogames' hyperkinetic grammar, exaggerated sound effects, and disregard for gravitational laws.

Poole believes that the The Matrix is one of the best and most successful examples of the two media in-breeding with one another. "In its exaggeratedly dynamic kung fu scenes, in which actors float through the air and smash each other through walls, The Matrix contains the most successful translations to date of certain videogame paradigms to the big screen." The film is also a reminder, Poole notes, that virtual reality is a very old idea, which the philosopher Descartes conceived of as a "malin genie" or evil demon. Just like the computers in The Matrix, it caused Descartes to have thoughts and perceptions he would normally have believed to be the signs of a real, external world. Poole also relates some Jackie Chan and Hong Kong guns'n'kung-fu films to video games, and vice versa.

Trigger Happy has also caught the evolution of plot and character as they relate to video games. Poole describes the use of the Marvin Minsky's AI theories in "Outcast," one game he deems especially important because it has taken the use of NPC's (non-playable characters) to sophisticated new levels. "Outcast" has tackled one of gaming's toughest challenges: How can you make computer-generated characters behave in a convincingly lifelike fashion? "Outcast's" Gaia computational engine uses Minsky's concept of "agents," mental homunculi with specialized jobs: one agent represents hunger; another represents curiosity; another, fear. Put enough agents together and you have a crude model of consciousness.

As Poole's book makes clear, the psychology of videogames is unique. No other medium is as interactive, or offers as many satisfying opportunities to win and keep on winning. Currently, he says, the third-person game -- Tomb Raider, Metal Gear Solid or Zelda 64 -- has the edge over the first-person game like Quake III, which has a viewpoint that makes the player feel as if he or she were inside the digital environment.

Video games, says Poole, will never be as good as films at telling stories visually, or as good as books at weaving "cerebral tapestries" of ideas and human lives. "But video games are already extremely good at providing an exhilarating blast of the animal emotions. Fear and triumph -- that is why you play a videogame at the moment." Modern videogames are fun, a means of leisure and relaxation.

But that's not all they are. One of Poole's more interesting chapters comes towards the end, when he looks at the impact of video games on U.S. military training and the increasingly popular American idea -- displayed both during the Gulf War and in Bosnia -- that war can be fought on high-tech, video game-like terms without any real human sacrifice, the high-tech, "risk-averse, "politically palatable war. This is a dangerous notion, since it involves the use of military conflict without political risk, a radically new kind of idea. Military aircraft and tanks used by NATO now have weapons of such range that it isn't at all usual to make direct visual identification of a target; instead, icons are tracked on computerized displays and weapons are locked automatically. Since attacks in Desert Storm and Serbia were fought at the greatest distance possible to insure that there were no American casualities, there were numerous reports of ineffective bombing runs and of friendly fire. Allies tanks were destroyed, hospitals and at least one embassy was bombed. Relying on pixels rather than eyes is dangerous, claims Poole, because computers can malfunction, and pixels can lie.

This link between video game culture and war is, says Poole, reflecting a common (but rarely heard in the U.S.) European perspective, a "lethal failure of imagination. And it is in this way that I do think videogames must have a type of moral responsibility. Of course, we cannot blame videogames for the deaths of Serbian civilians, yet video game-seeded technologies have contributed to the potentially alienating culture of simulation that allowed them to be killed so easily, so cleanly. I think the duty of video games, therefore, is an imaginative one -- an aesthetic one."

In Poole's view, videogames are nothing less than a TV screen reclaimed for individual control. He's eloquent about their possibilities. "If television replaced the log fire or the wireless as a focus of domestic attention, the videogame re-engineers TV's relentless blaze as a colorful zone of play, a new world to explore, a rich and strange place to pit your wits against the dazzling inventions of others," he writes. " The pixels dance to your tune. You're not watching, you're doing. And when videogames are at their best, what you're doing is something vastly more creatively challenging than watching a docusoap or a quiz show. Your reasoning, reflexes and imagination are tested to exhilarating limits. That hunk of molded plastic, that Play Station or Dreamcast, is a magic box that allows you to play with fire."
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Trigger Happy More

Trigger Happy

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  • BASIC (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I guess it'a now official. Games companies are now the ones responsible for turning the minds of young people everywhere into lumps of consumer mater. T.V doesn't cut it any more, kids want to actually interact with the death and destruction that Hollywood has been feeding them. It's almoast as if they want to be mindless drones.

    Maybe computer companies should look at bringing back the old "home computer" markets of the 80's. With consoles and Windows boxes these days, all kids have to do is switch it on and start blasting away. They arn't learning anything about computers, they don't need too.

    With home computers, especially the 8 bits, kids would be confronted by the delights of BASIC. Even if a small percentage of them bothered to learn what it was all about, they still learnt something. I'm guessing this is the way most Slashdoters got into computing.

    With no ROM BASIC, just stick the CD in & power on, consoles are not offering anything to our youth. It doesn't paint a very bright future for computer science. :/

  • More than films (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Somebody needs to change that opening statement about video games grossing more than films.

    This statement is incorrect - the article clearly shows comparing sales of video games versus box office ticket sales. Hardly a comparable figure.

    Why not try versus film sales (video/dvd)... Maybe add rental and box-office to it for a bigger picture.

  • So... (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward
    What do you look like?
  • Far more people are killed in the name of religion than because of some video game. And the killing is still happening now. Look at the middle east. Maybe we ought to ban religion or at the very least restrict access to churches to people 18 and over.
  • I think people's right to life matters a bit more than exercising some extreme liberty and making someone who has 'guts to stand up and kill for what they believe in', 'happy'. How about having the guts to loving life even when things get ugly? How about having the guts to find a solution instead of murder?

    Sorry to rant. When I hear stuff that promotes a strange, idiosyncratic law as a right over the far more important right to life I get mad.

    Though, perhaps I've bitten.

    thenerd.

  • TMNT (Score:1)

    by Lewie ( 3743 )
    Lara Croft? Come on, what about all of the original Nintendo characters? Mario, TMNT, etc?
  • You notice the 12 year olds more for the same reason that you notice and remember the car that cut you off this morning on the way to work. You'll remember that jerk in the red mustang far longer than the other thousand cars you passed on the way in.

    I've played a number of MMRPGs, and there are a lot of the jokers that you are talking about, though I don't believe they are in any way the majority. They just tend to make the most noise and so are more memorable, like Pat Robertson or Rush Limbaugh.

  • I'm actually beginning to think that Rob keeps Jon writing articles just so he can piss off all the childish people here. I can just picture him now, sitting at a desk reading some angry email demanding this or that feature in Slashdot, then yelling down the hall: "Hey, Jon! Write up something about society, willya?"
  • It's ironic that in this discussion about video games growing influence that a movie could make such an powerful impact. Watch John Sayle's "Men With Guns" You'll have to find a good video store as it is not in wide release and is not available on dvd. In the central american based movie noone has access to guns. The individuals with guns are capable of being terrorists able to hold EVERYONE hostage without a fight. That is a type of oppression that no U.S. citizen could tolerate. Its also nice to get perspective about poverty. If you think poverty is serious in the U.S. just look at these poor people.
  • Oh, I don't hate Katz, though I do think his writing could be better. And I usually don't read his articles. But when I saw that he was going to be speaking, I thought others might be interested.

    As for why other people dislike Katz, a search through the /. archives will give you a better answer than I can give. In most Katz articles there's a highly rated anti-Katz rant.

    --

  • Hollywood movies these days just suck so much, its not surprising at all that people find video games more entertaining. Please, people are getting tired of the same old predictable formulaic stories with the same old stereotypical, one-dimensional cardboard cut-out characters. Or are they?

  • Well if that is the way you look at it, your entire life is a waste of time, so why don't we all put a bullet in our heads and call it a lifetime? Doing something you enjoy and recieve entertainment from is never a waste time, of course do all things in moderation. Using your hypothesis above one can consider movies, books, sex, friendships and any other for of recreation a waste of time. Man you must live a pretty dull life.
  • "Meanwhile, movies have stolen ever more brazenly from videogames' hyperkinetic grammar, exaggerated sound effects, and disregard for gravitational laws."

    Poole got that right. Have noticed how many sound effects from Doom are used in movies. The biggest on was the last installment of the hellraiser series Bloodlines. All the ships operating sound effects where taken from Doom. The sound of the doors opening, the sounds of getting a stimpack etc. etc. have all been used in several different movies.
  • It goes back all the way to the start of writing, possibly beyond that. Go back and read your Aristotle and Plato. They constantly argued whether or not the new invention of writing was going to ruin the world. Since this new media set down in stone (clay or wax actuuly, but you get the idea here...) what you said so that everybody who wanted to could read it and critize it without you being there to defend your words, Aristotle said that society would crumble. He also critized writing as being the causation of weak minds, since students no longer memorized their speaches, being able to instead read them from a written souce.
  • Sometimes you've got to wonder why computer gaming is considered a waste of time, and TV isn't.
  • "usher in a new paradigm of creative interactivity and illustrative expression that trashes all the stale old educational and institutional models."

    LOL. This one is worth all the mod points that it has been given.
  • (Pre-AOL)Time/Warner and Ray "The Czar" Kassar did: (See link.) [digiserve.com]

  • Finally, I disagree that in the US comics are just "teenage power fantasies".
    Sorry, I meant mainstream comics.

    There is a lot of good work out there, but it is a pretty small sub-culture.

  • Umm, yeah. Playing Quake and Diablo and being surprised at the demographic playing with you... if realization hasn't hit you over the head after you've written it and read it here, reread. Repeat until results occur.

    (laugh) I know, I know... but you'd be suprised how many girls actually are playing Diablo II. I did overstate it a little bit in the first message, though I think it is just because those annoying kids make the most noise. I regularly find myself partying up with other girls - and not because I go looking for them, but because they're the ones that are actually enjoyable to ally with. They work together, share items, are generous, and the like.

    Other than maybe one or two people, every person I've played with for any length of time has been a girl. And like I said, not because I choose it that way because of gender, but because of how they play.
    ---
  • There are worse things than TV, some of it is educational and stimulating, discovery channel etc.

    TV is neither inherantly good or evil, it depends whats on it.
  • Ahhh ... but have you ever been moved by a game? And I don't mean moved to tears of frustration. Every medium has its strengths and its weaknesses. One HUGE strength that gaming has over movies is, of course, the interactivity. Go see an Ahnuld Schwartzenberger film and you get to see some middle-aged Austrian guy run around killing people. Play a round of UNREAL and you get the supreme thrill of doing the running and killing yourself.

    Am I the only one who's noticing that action movies just aren't as much fun as they used to be?

  • There is no right to life. Never has been. From caveman days, to the Norman invasion, to Stalin's purges, to Chinese labor camps - the only way you get to keep life is if you can defend it.

    Not all ways of defending your life require direct, violent action. Some require money, others require submission, yet others require a bit of luck. But make no mistake: without personal armament, your "right to life" is subject to violation at any time, by anyone who chooses.

    Sorry to disillusion you. You can return to your government cheese now.

  • Really? All he did was summarize Steven Poole's work. Could have just left a link.

    Typical Katz Slop.

  • As an owner of a red Mustang (98 GT) I resent that.

    Now, if you meant the jerk in the red Cobra I'd have to agree ;-)
  • The game companies are taking over


    ;-)

    Capt. Ron

  • Come to think of it, take a look at my sig for some more of my experience with jocks' responsibility. I mean, he was a cool coach, but...

    -----------------------

  • Video games are becoming one of the world's most popular entertainment forms, affecting TV, education, Hollywood, even the Pentagon and the way we view and conduct high-tech, game-like, remote-control military conflicts.

    The first thing this made me thing of was the movie Toys [imdb.com] with Robin Williams. Remember when the evil military uncle is training hordes of elementary school kids to play war video games, which will be really controlling robot weapons on a real field of battle?

    Even the thought of something like this puts a chill down my spine. (And I even happen to fall into the archetype of the "average" video game player...)

    I guess the real question is, would something like this be worth the opportunity to prevent the loss of lives in military conflicts, or will it dehumanize war so much that we have no ethical or moral opposition to it? Food for thought...

  • I hate to say it, but a lot of those guys are adults. I know, because I am one. Im 24 years old and when I'm playing a game online I don't have a problem with letting my emotions take over and I act somewhat like a jackass. "Oh yeah take that b*tch!" and "OWNED" are some of my favorite phrases.

    No I don't act that way in real life, not even close. I'm not going to try explain why I do this (I'm really not sure) , but I've been to enough lan parties to know that this sort of thing is pretty typical regardless of age.

    Quite frankly, I think it's a guy thing.

    Although I have never said rude things to a female in game, and generally speaking I dont think people in my crowd who would. I suspect that most of that -is- coming from the younger crowd.
  • As a matter of fact, I have played FF. I got locked into a luxury hotel to play FFVIII all weekend for a newspaper article. It was so shatteringly banal and boring that I nearly poked my own eyes out with a broken miniature of whisky. Thank you for your interest. Steven Poole, Author, Trigger Happy
  • Actually, what I say in the book is "pixels *can* lie" (emphasis added), which I mean as shorthand for "technology (and the people using it) can fuck up".
    You say military tech is "designed to be as near to failure-proof as possible". Sure. But if you're trying to argue that it *never fails*, then that's clearly nonsense. Missiles misfire and hit the wrong target all the time.
    Steven Poole
  • Thanks for the comments. I'd just like to point out that it is a *deliberate* strategy to illustrate my arguments using as few and as widely recognisable games as possible, for the simple reason that a reader who is not herself expert in the field doesn't need to be confused by a million different obscure game titles if something she already knows, like Tomb Raider, will do just as well in the explanatory context. Steven Poole.
  • >"The missile hit the target it was told to, but >the target was actually a friendly, therefore it's >a failure of the missile" seems a strange >conclusion.

    Yes it is, but it's not mine. I'm talking missiles veering totally off target and hitting, say, a hospital at random because the navigation system crashed. Of course this doesn't happen "all the time", but it seems to me you can never totally eradicate errors like this. Of course, you can't eradicate human error either.

    The original point in the book is that if human operators are now making decisions based on mediated pixel displays rather than meat-based eyeballing, that's just another thing added to the process that might go wrong. The information has to go through more tubes, therefore there's a stronger chance of it getting frazzled.

    BTW I don't blame Word for my spelling mistakes (cos I don't make any ;-) but I do blame it for tricking me into typing double spaces because it can't display them at a fixed width when I have text zoom on.

    Steven
  • If all this is true, then why is it still considered so dorky to be playing video games. I was thinking of starting a club here at school for counterstrike, but I am not sure that my reputation could handle being in such a club... I wish playing video games was equivelant to playing football... and being in a clan equivelant to playing for a semi-pro team... Oh well... Probably not happen in my lifetime.


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • If i wanted it to make sense i wouldn't have used x86 assembler. Thanks for trying, but you LOSE


    mov ax, 13h
    int 10h
  • ok, i shall explain :)

    i too, was a skeptic at first. But really, it's just like sim city in the regard that it has no real point except the objective of getting better and more stuff (like building more junk to get a bigger pop in simcity). What makes the Sims more fun than simcity is the human element. I've never been the mayor of a metropolis, but i have been a guy trying to get the girl next door to have sex with me.

    so anyway, you combine the fun creative elements of simcity (which now that i think of it is prolly why that game is fun.... just like playing in the dirt with a toy bulldozer), and add some human emotion.

    I know a lot of people who think the game is stupid... but none of them are people who have actually played it.

    ---

  • Video games, says Poole, will never be as good as films at telling stories visually, or as good as books at weaving "cerebral tapestries" of ideas and human lives. "But video games are already extremely good at providing an exhilarating blast of the animal emotions. Fear and triumph -- that is why you play a videogame at the moment." Modern videogames are fun, a means of leisure and relaxation.

    Actually, I would have to disagree with is on many points. I think a lot of story based games like RPGS do a good job of telling the story in such a way that one gets to be *in* the story

    And what about EverCrack^H^H^H^H^HQuest? I actually know a guy who flunked out of school because he was playing it too much. I've seen quite a few people for which it became the new 'real life'

    And man oh man, when the massively multiplayer Sims is released, I don't expect to see daylight for quite a while ;)

    Another example of the convergence is in those sports games - golfing alongside Tiger Woods on your PC as he played on TV... pretty nice. How long before that sort of gameplay comes to Monday Night Football?

    And as AI progresses, we could begin to see games that develop a plot by themselves based on a player's actions, ala a virutal soap opera. Given enough understanding of a world, and some basic motivators (greed, lust, et all) such a game would even be possible with today's technology.

    So anyway, it's not just animal emotions. I think games can invoke a wide array of real human emotion as well.

    ---

  • In the 1980s, the US Army developed linked tank trainers in the United States and Germany, so that tankers in Germany could fight mock battles against tankers in the US. The reason for immersive video game-like tools such as this in a training environment is that it saves money, saves equipment, and often saves lives.

    As for the use of video game-like technologies for things such as heads-up displays and the like, AC got it right. These tools offer essentially "tuned" sensory input which gets past the limitations of the human body and brain, and allows tank commanders, aircraft pilots and the like to view the battle with more scope and clarity.

    Having been an infantry officer, I remember being someone disgusted by the image of PGMs hitting buildings in Iraq during Desert Storm. We all sat in front of our TVs and watched the flickering green camera image as the missile closed in on the building. It was just like a video game.

    But it is important to remember that war is not just a video game. That little crosshair on your screen is targeting human beings, and even with the most precise weapons, war is messy and innocents get killed.

  • Are you saying watching a lot of movies is better than playing a lot of computer games?
  • I agree.

    I would say Mario is the most recognizable and popular video game character of all time.

    Remember Super Mario Bros.? The Super Mario Super Show? The cereal? The Movie? Action Figures? Come on...

    And the TMNT had all that, 2 more movies, and a bigger line of toys....
  • or are less and less people reading/posting to Katz articles now
  • I've read a lot of articles about the worth/unworth of playing games. Why must they be so homogenous? Why always the first-person and the third-person shooters? What about the muds, Civilization, and my two favorites for many years, Netrek [netrek.org] and Core War [koth.org]. Those games are a diverse set that look nothing like each other. Don't just say "games are great" or "games are mind-numbing." It's like saying "books are bad" because you didn't like the last one that you read. Please consider that a computer is a programmable machine that can perform more than one kind of task.
  • Ever notice that women (despite Laura Croft) never get into, well no, obsessed with, video games? You gotta wonder why conformance with that stereotype is so dominant. I'm sure there are exceptions, haven't met any.
    My regret is that the stragic games of my youth are dead, replaced by the flashier tactical shooting games. I guess Avalon-Hill never saw animation coming.
  • If Nader actually had a chance to win, I'd never vote for him. I think you exaggerate slightly when you say "green party == communist party", but only slightly. Yet I will vote for Nader. A vote for Nader is a vote against the current political status quo. Nader has no chance to win, but he has a chance to do well enough to act as a wake-up call to those who have bought and paid for our current political masters. Besides, Nader does hold some geek friendly positions on issues such as the drug war, privacy, and campaing finance reform.

    --
    Pax
    This post brought to you by the letters K and B, and the number 420.
  • A loss of hand-eye coordination? and I thought all those video games were supposed to such good training sims that they teach kids how to aim guns better...
  • Wow I remember doing teh same types of things. My parents were both kinda tecnophobic and no matter how hard i tried i could not convince them that when i went on the internet (with a local number) and went to some australian website that i wasn't making a long distance call. They refused to let me connect at all, and I really loved those Renegade BBSs too. I had to run a really long phone cord out my bedroom door and down teh steps to teh phone when they were gone. And then I'd race to get it all out of site at the first sign they were coming home. Until one day I wasn't quite fast enough.... It still took me many months to convice them to let me call BBSs (the BBSs i used provided telnet gateways to teh net), but they are still don't like the net very much, I don't quite understand it.
  • I can't help but see video games as a sort of step up from the TV trained people have become common place, at least in the US. Sure, you can still be a couch potato if you're playing video games, but at least you're doing something that tends to require a bit more brainpower than just watching a screen flickering at the command of someone miles away that you've never met.

    I won't argue that all or even most video games are all that educational, but you can't really argue that for most television either. At least video game playing forces you to make decisions more often than every halfhour when all the shows end and you have to find something else to watch.

    And while they're not an ideal subsitute for going out and meeting people. Online games can provide a sort of social experience for people who would otherwise sit in front of the television and probably start talking to the remote.

  • In typical Katzian fashion, a simple matter is overstated. It started out well, then got caught up in it's own snowball-of-hubris effect.

    Here's the short version:
    Videogames have proven to be a viable form of entertainment. Bigger than the movie industry and poised to grow larger yet. Mainstream culture is lagging behind in it's acceptance of this "fact" therefore mainstream culture is clueless and geeks are far superior, because we ,of course, have been the driving force behind this dynamic paradigm shift, like we always are.

    Well, you know what? Big deal. Video games are relevant. Whoopee. The mainstream hasn't clued into this. Big surprise.

    Large population masses do not suffer from early adopter syndrome. Get over it.

    -- kwashiorkor --
    Leaps in Logic
    should not be confused with

  • Anybody with the slightest clue about American young adult culture in this century should know the influence of videogames on The Matrix was minor when compared to the influence of comic books.

    "In its exaggeratedly dynamic kung fu scenes, in which actors float through the air and smash each other through walls,"

    This is from comic books, any similarity to videogames is due to the influence of comic books on videogames.
  • I disagree with you on that.

    The computer geeks that go into computer science are still going to be around. I am even starting to see it in some young computer users inner geek starting to come out.

    Sure that still isn't enough people but your forgetting that there will be lots of younger children wanting to make videogames just as alot of kids want to be movie stars. This will of course set kids on the road to computer science.

  • I've not read the book, only the review, so take this into account. However...

    Poole says that pixels lie. He's obviously a pundit, not a real technical person, then, or he'd know that pixels rarely, if at all, lie. What lies is either the person who fed the data in, or the person who programmed it. Let's look at examples:-

    1) Bombing of the embassy: purely due to a cockup by the CIA, no technical involvement at all.

    2) Bombing of civilian convoys: purely due to a failure of the Mk.I human eyeball on the part of the pilot. He'd been told there were armoured columns in the area, he saw what he thought was one, he hit it. No technical involvement; in fact, it was technical expertise that enabled the target to be taken out effectively. The fact that the target was a group of unarmed civilians is reprehensible, but doesn't change the fact that the technology worked as specified.

    3) Friendly fire in the Gulf: purely due to the troops in the personnel carrier removing the identifying panels from their vehicle. Had they kept them on, they would not have been attacked by the pilot who shot them. The technology did a perfect job of targeting the vehicle.

    So Poole hasn't many legs to stand on with this. The moral of the story: it's PEOPLE who screw up. The technology is designed to be as near to failure-proof as possible, for the very reason that if things go wrong, your soldiers may be killed. What it can't protect against is human error, or human incompetance.

    Maybe there's a bug in the code though, I hear ppl suggest? Well most of the ppl here who do programming will likely just be dealing with non-embedded and/or non-critical stuff - Linux, Windows, databases, GUIs, etc. Once you get into embedded safety-critical stuff, there's responsibilities on you to work to standards which ensure safety and prevent bugs by thorough review of the design, review of the code, and even review of the tests to ensure that you're testing all conceivable failure modes.

    There are many well-publicised software failures, such as Airbus, the Mars lander, etc. All these are caused by a failure to test properly. In the case of the Mars lander, a very simple integration test would have caught that bug. Obviously they tested each part in isolation, but never tested it all together. This is negligence, plain and simple, and avoiding these problems is the task of the current generation of software engineers. It's not even like the problems aren't well publicised (Len Hutton's been writing about them for years), it's just that there's an arrogance about programmers to assume that they don't need to test bcos they're "3133t" or whatever. Bullshit - you're fallible. Learn that and live with it, bcos if you don't, you'll never grow up, and eventually you'll cause some major problem by assuming you're God and can't fail. If the same software integrity had been used for Windows, there'd be no need for Linux cos there'd already be a strong, reliable OS, and then we'd not be bashing MS today.

    Grab.
  • Heh, gimme a cybernetic avatar, and I'll be content to conduct this "high-tech, game-like warfare" from right behind my computer (ala Qauke). My ping better be DAMN GOOD though.
  • Excuse my ignorance, all. Why do we all hate Katz again? I'm fairly new to /. and I see that everyone complains a lot about him. As far as I can tell his posts are at least interesting. I'd rather he was posting than not. Another dumb question: I assume he is a completely seperate person from the John Katz of stand-up comedy and cartoon Dr. Katz fame?
  • You mean "Not all video games are violent."
  • Dincha see that episode of Star Trek where they find the planet engulfed in global war, moderated by a computer? The computers simulated the attacks, and randomly selected members of the population for vaporisation. This was, in the episode, that planet's way of conducting 'clean' warfare, all the losses without all the destruction. Imagine that, sort of like the Neutron bomb, which vaporises living things, but leaves buildings standing. What does this say about us? That we'd rather preserve physical objects than lives...
    ---------------------------------------- -----------------
    Surface dwellers can be so stupid.
  • You are making the fundamental error of equating geeks with programing. Although most programers are geeks, ( not all mind you ), most geeks are not programers.

    Engineers of the good old fashioned kind are geeks. Physicists are geeks. The backyard tinkerer is a geek.

    Euler, Einstein, Archimedes, Edison, Lucas, the Wright Brothers, Louis Chevrolet, Chanute, Daedalus,Zeno, Da Vinci, Craig Breedlove, Fokker, Roland Garros, Tesla, Steinmetz, Maxwell, Kloss, Carver, Carrol Shelby, Frank Lloyd Wright. All geeks.

    While some of the above worked with computers a bit most of them never used one. NONE of them are/were "programers."

    The Uber geek is the pure theoretical mathmatition. Mathmaticians are in love with simplicity and elegance, not complexity.

    What are geeks interested in? A * Problem! *

    Complexity is a rich breeding ground for problems. UNIX and its variants are a rich breeding ground for problems. As those problems become solved much of the end user complexity will disappear below the " user horizon," if I may coin a phrase, much as the growing complexity of the automobile has disappeared below the user horizon. Turn the key, it goes.

    As UNIX becomes MORE accessible to the user than Windows and other propriatary commercial OS's it will naturally develop a user simplicity in a similar manner. The complexity may grow " under the hood " but the user interface will be simplified by that underlying complexity.

    Eventually, since programming is essentially mathmatics whether some like to acknowledge it or not, the simplest most elegant solutions " under the hood" will also be applied and the complexity will reduce to its most elegant form, much as the the microchip has reduced hundreds of mechanical components of the automobile to a single IC.

    At its lowest level that IC is terribly complex, but at the user level is still just a single, simple, component replacable by anyone in a matter of seconds.

    This is the challange of the free UNIX 'crowd.' To make the user interface the right balance of simplicity while retaining all the needed power, while at the same time retaining, and even expanding, the underlying structure.

    The core difference between the free Unices and Windows, and its ilk, is that the power and complexity is not * locked away * from the user if he starts itching to get under the hood.

    The computer will NEVER be as simple to operate as a TV or toaster oven until the task it is asked to accomplish is as simple as the task the TV and toaster oven are called on to make. It is wrong to try to make it so.

    Learn Barance, Daniel San.

    The user should have simplicity where such is appropriate, and should be required to learn the geek trade to accomplish tasks for * which it is appropriate.*

    Finding that balance between the two is where the REAL problem solving in interfaces is today.

    This will end up being a * different * interface with a * different * balance point for different classes of user.

    This is one of the things that, as a geek, attracts me to Linux. It is the supreme platform for playing around with such ideas, and the only one where the * end user * has complete access to the process if they so desire.

    A few of them will even make the jump to geek in the process.
  • I can only offer personal, anecdotal, evidence, but it seems to me that much of Americas youth, at least, is outside playing ball with its friends.

    Unfortunately, they appear to all be playing it with my mailbox.
  • Actually no, I've never noticed that. Perhaps you need to, um, . . . get out more.

    As for the good old board and paper stratagy games of A-H, there's always TalonSoft.

    Oh, wait. WAS TalonSoft. Oh well, back to " Blitzkreig" and " Africa Corps."
  • So what if video games are bigger than Hollywood? Porn is bigger than Hollywood too. Hollywood is vastly overrated as a cultural force. The real stuff is happening elsewhere, and has been for quite a while.

    --

  • As a counter-example, a female friend of mine recently vanished from the face of the earth for two months. I discovered that the reason for this was that she was spending most of her waking hours on Ultima Online.

    I also spend a lot of time playing StarCraft with a (different) woman. She's finished both the game and the expansion pack in single-player mode, something I never bothered with since I prefer multi-player. Similarly, she finished FFVII, when I only got about 25 hours into it, and even helped her son get through Pokemon.

    Charles Miller
    --
  • The more automated war becomes, the less that the human aspects of compassion, remorse and civility will come into play. Wars that lack compassion, regret for the lost souls, and civility towards the enemy give rise to massacres, and wars become tragedies.

    Non-automated war gave us the Mongol Hordes and the Crusaders, who were not exactly noted for their kindness and sensitivity on the battlefield.

    There are plenty of other examples of wars where face-to-face contact did not prevent wanton cruelty on the part of the victors.

  • Even if you don't like Katz, I advise you to pick up this book.

    If nothing else, it highlights some of the paradigm changes in the world of computer games and also all the different things that you have to think about when you're playing even a simple game.


    _____
  • An interesting article and an interesting viewpoint from Steven Poole. I'd like to point out an opposing viewpoint (though not necessarily one that I agree with): in his book On Killing [amazon.com] , Dave Grossman argues that the prolonged playing of video games acts as a form of operant conditioning, training the player to act on every violent impulse instantly and without thought. (Even if you don't buy this argument, the book is interesting for its insights into the psychology of training ordinary people to kill in war.) Grossman expands on his argument in a pamphlet called Stop Teaching Our Kids to Kill [amazon.com] , which I haven't read.
  • The gamers age median is about 28, not the ONLINE gamers age median. I think it would be surprising to see a study of the demography of different types of game. I am pretty sure that youngre player would end up more attracted to online games where they can socialise with huge numbers of people (or crush them in power trips) and older players would end up playing more intrigue, puzzle and storyine oriented games.

    Anyone knows if such a study exists?


    "When I was a little kid my mother told me not to stare into the sun...

  • "When battles can be won or lost with the push of a button, both victory and defeat become miserable."

    The more automated war becomes, the less that the human aspects of compassion, remorse and civility will come into play. Wars that lack compassion, regret for the lost souls, and civility towards the enemy give rise to massaceres, and wars become tragadies.

    A machine will never see the death, and be able to mourn for the lost.

    That's not to say that I feel the current world situation reflects wonderful amounts of civility and compassion in war, but social issues on that level are rather outside the scope of this particular post.

    ----------

    - Does Katz actually think about this stuff before he posts?

  • Sounds like a pretty good book. I'll have to try to get my hands on a copy. But, I have to comment about two points that I don't really agree with.

    Poole believes that the The Matrix is one of the best and most successful examples of the two media in-breeding with one another.

    Hyperkinetic grammar?
    Exaggerated sound effects?
    Disregard for gravitational laws?

    This sounds far more like inspiration drawn from comic books than video games. And the influence of comic art and sensibilities in the Matrix is obvious. But I suppose it is understandable that the author draws this conclusions as many video game designers draw inspiration from comic books, directly and indirectly.

    One of the world's first virtual celebrities, Croft is one of the initial video game characters to break out in so global and commercial a way, as synergistic marketing propels her way beyond the videogame culture.

    Initially I rejected this idea immediately, but the more I think about it, the more accurate it seems. This is probably the first video game icon to have as much appeal with older gamer audiences as well as children. For some rather obvious reasons.

    But I think in any analysis of the impact of video games, one has to look back to the first virtual celebrity, Nintendo's Super Mario. He was a cultural phenomenon and Mariomania in the late eighties and early nineties was insane. From movies (the dismal Super Mario Brothers movie itself and the SMB3 promotional vehicle, "The Wizard", which still grossed over 100 million despite) to cartoons to lines of merchandise that would almost make George Lucas jealous. I can even recall (vaguely, it was 10 years ago) Mario being used in advertising campaigns for other products.

    But then again, people might liken Mariomania more to the Pokemon craze than Lara's current efforts. Still, I think people respected Mario a little more.


    Kryal.
  • From: here [logica.com]

    This is supposedly a true story from a recent Defence Science Lectures Series, as related by the head of the Australian DSTO's Land Operations/Simulation division.

    They've been working on some really nifty virtual reality simulators, the case in point being to incorporate Armed Reconnaissance Helicopters into exercises (from the data fusion point of view). Most of the people they employ on this sort of thing are ex- (or future) computer game programmers. Anyway, as part of the reality parameters, they include things like trees and animals. For the Australian simulation they included kangaroos. In particular, they had to model kangaroo movements and reactions to helicopters (since hordes of disturbed kangaroos might well give away a helicopter's position).

    Being good programmers, they just stole some code (which was originally used to model infantry detachments reactions under the same stimuli), and changed the mapped icon, the speed parameters, etc. The first time they've gone to demonstrate this to some visiting Americans, the hotshot pilots have decided to get "down and dirty" with the virtual kangaroos. So, they buzz them, and watch them scatter. The visiting

    Americans nod appreciatively... then gape as the kangaroos duck around a hill, and launch about two dozen Stinger missiles at the hapless helicopter. Programmers look rather embarrassed at forgetting to remove that part of the infantry coding... and Americans leave muttering comments about not wanting to mess with the Aussie wildlife...

    As an addendum, simulator pilots from that point onwards avoided kangaroos like the plague, just like they were meant to do in the first place...

  • Sure the "geeks" like more functionality, and are willing to sacrifice early learning curve time to get it. The only thing that the pretty GUI's and dumbed down interfaces create is a wealth of clueless users who can barely maneuver around a computer and need to be held by the hand.

    While microsoft has made the desktop accessible to all, they did it at the expense of obscurring the power and abilities of the hardware. everything simple can be done, but once you go beyond that, everything gets incredibly complex to do.

    in contrast to this is the open source model, where while there may be an initial delay in newbies picking up the technology, doing the harder things is a whole lot more straight forward.


    tagline

  • Total video game software and hardware sales in the United States reached $8.9 billion last year, versus $7.3 billion for movie box-office receipts. Of that, $6.6 billion of the videogame receipts were from software sales, retail and online.

    The question is now. Is that $8.9 billion only from the consumer market. If you think about it, businesses are going to be forking out new money for hardware more often to keep their machines top of the line (in the places that need it that is).

    Its not what it is, its something else.
  • >In the 1980s, the US Army developed linked tank
    >trainers in the United States and Germany, so
    >that tankers in Germany could fight mock battles
    >against tankers in the US. The reason for
    >immersive video game-like tools such as this in
    >a training environment is that it saves
    >money, saves equipment, and often saves lives.

    Actually, it was Lockheed Martin, not the army, that developed these tank simulators. And they didn't quit development when they hit "good enough" status in the '80s, they, as of last year at least, are still under continuing development.

    The system in question is called the Close Combat Tactical Trainer. And it includes, now, not just tanks, but humvees, bradleys, and avaition as well. Check LMIS @:

    http://www.lockheedmartin.com/lmis/level4/cctt.h tml

    I used to work two buildings over from the development/production area. A friend of mine worked on the CCTT himself.

    They really ARE a very immersive expierence. From the outside, a CCTT just looks like bigass plastic boxes w/ a bunch of wireing between multiple units and the control room. For the M1 sims, there are even two seperate boxes; one for the driver's reclined position, and one for the Commander/Gunner/Loader. But once inside...

    ... Well, they go for EVERY detail you can imagine. For example: Ear protection is a MUST!!! They have a sound system in there that is flat out amazing. In an effort to promote realism, they try to make the sounds of combat as realistic and LOUD as the real thing. Every switch and control is there to the last detail, and it's just as cramped as the real thing. Honestly, I don't see how our army guys put up with that crap.

    Of course, there were a few bugs when I was there. For instance, stuff blows up real good when you shoot it with the main gun (and set off heaps of subwoofers and mids to simulate the sound...) BUT, when I got to try the driver's compartment... well, the first thing I did, of course, was try to ram stuff (it's a TANK sim after all); and running into a simple farmyard barn caused the whole unit to crash as though I had plowed into the side of a mountain. Call me crazy, but I don't think a wood barn would stop a 70 ton M1 IRL. Fortunately, it wasn't a SYSTEM crash, just a TANK crash, and I was able to power the sucker back up (loud as fsck mids and tweeters) and tear up a bit of virtural countryside nonetheless.

    What's even cooler, is AFTER a battle. The control room has a record of every movement, every shot, every kill. You can then look at a reply of the battle from a 1st person POV of any given unit, from an overhead POV, a tactical map, or even in 3D from any angle you wish (think of the 3D camera engine in Myth II: Soulblighter)!!!

    Neat toys.... REALLY nifty COOL neat toys... Too bad lmco is an absolutely wretched company that treats it's employees like crap (I didn't know better when I took the job (first out of college) in the first place. after working in the bay area tho, Ill never work for a defence or government contractor again). Fortunately we both escaped from the defence contractor ghetto some time ago. Me to a really cool job in the city by the bay... and Andy wound up at a little company down in Tustin, called Loki.

    john
    Resistance is NOT futile!!!

    Haiku:
    I am not a drone.
    Remove the collective if

  • A lot of the appeal of good video games is that they are similar to action movies, only you get to control the hero and feel some sense of accomplishment. Take the excellent old game Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse. It's the only RPG I ever beat without books or cheats, and all throughout I could watch the plot unfolding and try to anticipate what I had to do, which is far more satisfying than passively watching a movie.

    As for detrimental effects on the players, I have an interesting anecdote on that. In 11th grade, my English teacher thought video games made kids uncontrollable and violent, and she knew I played them a lot. Meanwhile, she frequently commented to me that I was such a better student than the three major jocks in the class. People only assume video games are detrimental because they see kids who play video games going psychotic on one or two random occassions and attribute that to the video games, ignoring the vastly more common dangerously violent football player, as a "good wholesome sport couldn't possibly be the cause."

    -----------------------

  • Your story is - vaguely correct.
    I can't find the ausie newspaper that used to have this story...

    The programmers were using infantry models with a kangaroo shell over them, and assigned the tactic retreat, so they vaguely stayed together and ran as the helocopters approached. This was done, as
    I remember it, for fun - an easter egg. While yes it is true that wild animals running from dense overgrowth can indicate the position of a helicopter - this was not a "specified feature," but instead a practical joke by punchy coders. Now, here is the kicker... during *preliminary testing* - long before any visiting pilots, officers, or what have you visited they had not disabled the "return fire" option. Therefore here was a pack of retreating kangaroos shooting giant beachballs (the default weapon) at whomever the test engineer was running the thing. The story has been exageratted that they were firing missles and that there were any visiting personel present at the time of the actual event.
  • I'd have to disagree with the following statement:
    "Video games ... will never be as good as films at telling stories visually, or as good as books at weaving "cerebral tapestries" of ideas and human lives."

    I'd wager a guess that anyone who's finished Deus Ex would find this comment erroneous. Personally, I found this game engrossing in the way that a good book would be. When I finished it, I felt exactly the way I feel when I finish a good story; sad that it's over, wanting a sequel so I can find out what happens to the world and characters afterwards.

    Maybe this is a fair statement if one just looks at games such as Street Fighter or Quake even, but I believe that there are games out there and there is the possibility to have an engrossing story line within a game world.

  • (since nobody else made this snide comment, and I haven't posted much lately. . . )

    If so-called "violent" games cause the players to act out violently in meatspace, where is the glut in the Masonry profession from all the recovering Tetris addicts?

    Or were they all included in that amnesiac study? I forget. . . .


    Rafe

    V^^^^V
  • DDR is obviously the answer to this problem.

    If you havnt played/seen/heard of ddr.. check it out sometime. Its basically dancing kereoke. Music plays and arrows scroll across the screen, and you have to step on the right arrow in time to the music.

    sounds silly, but its tons of fun. AND ITS EXERCIZE. Ive lost a good 10 pounds playing this game... Now if I could only pass La Senorita... :/

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion
  • Steven,

    Yes, missiles do go off-target. Some stuff does have errors in it. But not "all the time" - the examples above (the embassy bombing, friendly fire, etc) are all examples of user error. This is akin to blaming Word bcos you've made a spelling mistake! ;-) All this technology is only ever as good as "the people using it", and in this case the technology is performing precisely as required.

    The obvious conclusion to draw is not that the technology is faulty, but that the operators are. Therefore what we want is not less tech, but _more_. Eliminate the fallible pilot/bomb aimer/navigator, and install a computer which will never hit a "friendly" target. Give it full authority to fire at what it likes, so long as it's the enemy (or so long as it thinks it's the enemy). Program it with "forbidden" targets (like embassies) and examples of "civilian" targets (like tractors). Then set it loose, and wait for the fireworks.

    I'm not recommending this at all - the idea of a full-authority automaton in charge of a fighter plane is very worrying! - but it seems the more logical conclusion to draw. "The missile hit the target it was told to, but the target was actually a friendly, therefore it's a failure of the missile" seems a strange conclusion.

    Having said all this, though, I've not read the book - I'm only going through the filter of Jon Katz's review. You may have another sale come Xmas, if only to get the full story! :-)

    Grab.
  • Without the ability to fight, how can you defend yourself from oppression?

    I would find it oppressive to live in a country where people with real mental problems go on a shooting spree with a gun they bought in a hypermarket. Freedom isn't much use if you're shot before you even know what's going on.
    It's also interesting to note that gun crime in the rest of the western world is virtually non-existant outside of terrorism and gangs shooting each other, perhaps because US criminals know they need a gun before they go a-robbin'. You're only free if the other side isn't armed as well, then it's just a case of who's quicker to react.
  • When I say the 'western' world, I mean the richest countries in the world. And over here in the UK, I am far, far less likely to get shot, because it's damn hard to get a gun here, even illegally.

  • "...gaming should never be considered a waste."

    I have to agree. Gaming does much to expose people to the magic that is computing. How many Slashdot readers first started programming in an effort to learn how to MAKE the very games that they were playing? Plus, the technical innovation, in both hardware and software arenas, that games display make the industry move. Don't ever short-change a gamer or his games.

  • Well, this was before they were popular, and I just sold him my old Mitsumi about 3 months ago ;)

    ----

  • A serious question. I'm not sure about the "size" of your economy.
    How much is the porn industry worth?
    How much is the cocaine industry worth?
    i.e. Is $17billion really that much compared to other traditional "big bucks" industries.
    I know they aren't even the biggest industries, but they are sufficiently taboo such that it's hard to estimate quite how large they are, and likewise sufficiently embarassing for people to not want to publicise them).

    FatPhil
    (Sex budget $0, Drugs budget 0$, FYI)
  • Absolutely. Same with cars, too. I think it's outrageous that the average idiot can drive a car simply by operating a steering wheel and a gas pedal.

    The user interface for a car should be made so complex that only experienced mechanics can drive them. Sure, almost all of you will have to go to school for a few years to learn how, but that's just the price you should have to pay for your driving privileges.
  • I remember the movie:

    "What are you shooting at?"
    "Buildings, cars, people..."

    I think that was meant to be the biggest chiller of that scene: that any person could be semantically reduced to the status of 'target,' like inanimate objects.

    While I strongly oppose out-and-out censorship of video games on First Amendment grounds, the honorable Mr. Katz does bring up (or rehash) a point: while the combat simulator can turn a person into a technically capable soldier, it will do nothing to ensure that soldier remains a person.

    Theoretically, that's what *books* are for. (But wait, many of the people who oppose improper videogames also oppose improper books...)

    Yes, the video game could be used as an educational forum, of practical and ethical knowledge, but who'd pay for it? Television networks all over can barely *give* it away.

    Remember in the 50s when it was suggested that television would be a way to bring culture to the masses? Plays televised and brought into peoples' homes? Now what do we have? Pamela Anderson's breast implants on eBay, but that's a story for another time.

    You want to talk about the decay of a nation? Let's not look at the perverting effects of either television or video games, but the decay caused by a lack of meaningful content. Perhaps I should stop now, before I get too preachy. (Too late?)

    ---
  • In my opinion video games will change. I mean, the role they're playing and the role they'll play in the near future will change the look game-companies and coders will have on themselves and others will have on them
    Because of the impact they have on the day to day life, governments and other authoroties or even all major multinationals won't be able to get by them, because of their:

    educational value

    advertisement value

    well-being value
    -- But hey, I'm just an average Joe myself...

  • Yet again, stats are abused, point being the videogame industry is worth almost as much money as Hollywood. Poppycock. I think the key phrase is "movie box-office receipts". How about revenue from: - pay per view - rentals - VHS and DVD sales - collectors editions and directors cuts - additional rape everytime a new video media is released (DVD2, whatever) - pay cable stations - network television and basic cable - clothes and toys and crap (yeah sure, for videogames too, but to the same extent?) The average consumer gets his balls busted on every rung of the ladder and most of them don't even realize it. NOW let's compare revenue stats. -Jason

  • Remember: All video games are not violent (Score:3)

    by Masem ( 1171 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @08:12AM (#699764)
    Sure, go to any store that sells PC and console titles, and most of them are going to be about physical violence to some living being (whether it's just beating the snot out of them as in Pokemon, or out and out killing like Q3A).

    However, take a look at the top selling video game charts once in a while. Most of the time, at least 2 of the top 10 are going to be non-violent games. SimCity3K and Roller Coaster Tycoon are still at the top of the list. Games like Ceasar III, Pharaoh [*], racing games like Need for Speed, etc will usually come in near the top 25. The infrequent puzzle/adventure game such as Myst or Monkey Island get up the charts too. The number of these games in best seller lists tends to be disproportionate to the number available for purchase, suggesting that more people buy the non-violent games. This is probably a reflection on parents buying games for their children and staying with 'safe' titles, but it could also imply that game buyers also want to some extent less violent games. I know for myself that I like variety -- I can't play a FPS for anymore than a few hours straight before I need to switch to another genre of game.

    [*] Ok, so you do have to battle enemies here, but I see it being true from an historical persective -- and your main goal in these games was not to genocide the opposing culture, but mainly to defend your own. It's definitely hard to compare the battles in these games to a q3a deathmatch.

  • Video Games & The Pentagon (Score:3)

    by ch-chuck ( 9622 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:03AM (#699765) Homepage
    Have been researching vidgame history and found this [arizona.edu] blurb about Ralph Baer designing video games for the Pentagon in 1966, which led to the Magnavox Oddessy, Atari Pong, etc.

  • boom and bust industry? (Score:3)

    by peter303 ( 12292 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:50AM (#699766)
    The first 15 years was boom and bust- new technology and titles followed by saturatation and boredom. US companies like Atari were victims. Japanese conglomerates have more staying power through the slow times. Are we beyond the cycles yet?

  • Katz speaking at University of Minnesota (Score:3)

    by crumley ( 12964 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:51AM (#699767) Homepage Journal
    Jon Katz is giving a talk 3:00 pm Wednesday, October 18th, at the Cowles Auditorium in the Humphrey Center on the University of Minnesota West Bank Minneapolis Campus. The talk is entitled " Interactivity: Understanding Cyberspace and Its Impact on Education, Culture, Technology, and the Young." Sounds like pretty typical Katz fare. What kind of scares me about this is that some people at the talk may actually get the impression that Katz is an expert on this stuff. I doubt that I am going to make it myself, but I thought maybe somebody might want to meet him in person. Bring "Katz sux" sign or something ;).

    What's really amusing is that the ad for this talk says that he is also teaching a 1 credit class entitled "Mary Shelley, Frankenstein, and the Unabomber." That would really be good for a laugh.

    --

  • Re:Didn't "they" say a lot of the same stuff... (Score:3)

    by ronfar ( 52216 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:30AM (#699768) Journal
    ...a few decades ago about comic books? You know, comic books are bad, they are frivolous junk food for the mind, they are bad for the imagination and make kids stupid. Comic books were wildly popular and the "adults" couldn't understand the attraction.

    Well, comic books failed to wreck the youth of this country. But they also didn't, in simulated Katz-speak, "usher in a new paradigm of creative interactivity and illustrative expression that trashes all the stale old educational and institutional models." They wound up with their niche in popular culture.

    You're thinking of the United States.

    In the United States, of course comic books are irrelevant. Almost all culture is irrelevant in the United States, but comic books, in particular, never recovered from the crusade waged against them in the United States in the 1950's.

    The situation is considerably different in Asia.

    Oh, I'm probably going to hear some American say next, "Oh, I've seen manga, they are just as stupid as American comics... and I wouldn't call porno a big advance." Americans know nothing about the role of comics in Asia or about the kind and variety of comic books they have in Asia, they only see the ones that get imported and translated for the American market. (Which is a very narrow market, kept in its pathetic ghetto.)

    In Asia, comics are a vital, vibrant form of entertainment with a great deal of mass appeal. (And this goes beyond just Japan, to places like Thailand, for instance.) In America, they are teenage power fantasies, for the most part. (Heck, computer games have already gone beyond that, remember when Deep Blue beat Kasparov?)

  • Things I Never Knew About Lara Croft (Score:3)

    by Tackhead ( 54550 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @07:51AM (#699769)
    > the impact of the legendary Lara Croft, the pistol-toting,
    > ponytailed, hotpants-and-shades digital star of the l996 game,

    Lara was wearing hotpants and shades? And she had a ponytail?

    [/me runs the game]

    ...well, I'll be damned. Up until now, I never noticed!

  • Now, how many people who spend a lot of time on the net, or even the computer, are being told by their parents to come out and watch TV with them? When computers are actualy promoting an interactive medium of entertainment, much better then vegetating.

    I don't know about you, but I got heavily into online bulliten boards (aka BBS) about 13 years ago. I used to spend most of my "tv time" in my bedroom, alone, logged onto various WWIV and Renegade boards reading and responding to posts... (which made slashdot a natural choice for me when BBSing started to die out)... anyway, the point is, I was repeatedly accused of being "addicted" to my computer, though I always argued that interactivity with other people's thoughts was a much more productive use of my time than watching ESPN (which is what my family spends most of their leisure time doing.)

    My parents went so far in those days as to physically sever the cable from my monitor so that I had to splice it back together (in secret) whenever I wanted to logon.... or disabling the phone lines in our house. (I ran a 30 foot phone cable over to the neighbor's box.) Eventually, they got over it and let me be.

    Now, years later, I'm out on my own, still relatively "obsessed" with computers, and the only real difference is that now, my parents are online too, so they can check email & sports stats while they're watching espn.

    -The Reverend (I am not a Nazi nor a Troll)

  • Market shrinking in Japan though (Score:3)

    by kazzuya ( 135293 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:59AM (#699771) Homepage
    Cellphones, with all their features, are what made videogame market in Japan shrink by 30% in 1999.
    Youngsters there prefer to pour their money into phone bills rather than new videogames.
    Interaction between players is currently also the target of most videogames. Competing with others constitutes the main appeal.. but sometimes is not quite enough. Games like Quake III are great fun but turn out rather unfair unless you have a nice T1 line or local network. Other games like StarCraft work much better on the Internet but the verbal interaction is limited and often undesiderable (insults, lame players that beg you to ally so to achieve victory points). Also during those online experiences it's very rare to spot female players.. on the other hand, cellphone technology in Japan offers wider communication, silly but entertaining mini-games and plenty of chicks.
    Now I'm curious to know what will happen to the US videogame industry if and when cellphones will catch up.

  • old argument (Score:3)

    by photozz ( 168291 ) <photozz AT gmail DOT com> on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:49AM (#699772) Homepage
    But most education and media institutions still refuse to take this new form of culture seriously, dismissing videogamers as either a trifling teen entertainment, or a corrosive influence on young minds.

    Ya, but havent they been saying this since the 70's when stand up consoles (pong, asteroids...)strted appearing? all of the arguments, good and bad, seem to just be rehashing old ground from days gone by. Were just not poping our milk money into machines anymore. If your woried about a corrosive influence on young minds, it helps to pay attentin to what your kids are doing for a change.

  • ask yourself... (Score:4)

    by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @06:04AM (#699773)
    You've got a tank commander who has to co-ordinate about 10 things at a time, s/he basically has to watch 4 different displays at once, remember exactly where their turret is pointing, which way they are going, where their other 3 tanks are and where the enemy is and what each person in the tank is doing and supposed to be doing.... Now... who would you want to be that tank commander? somebody who's never done anything more than plunk their arse down in front of a tv, or someone who's played videogames most of their life and is used to dealing with multiple flows of information... I can tell you that the military chooses the second for very obvious reasons.

    As well, both the CDN and US gov'ts are currently working on multiple simulations from a full VR flight sims to full VR and interactive first person shooters (using the halflife engine of all things, as a basis) designed to be linked up over high bandwidth comms for "team play" for training spec forces units.

    When's the last time a TV managed to help national defence?

  • If the median age is really now 28, and there are more female players, why is it that just about anything I play on the internet (Quake, Diablo) is full of 12 year olds picking the female characters, naming them stupid things like "BigBoobs" or "SexFreak" and calling each other "fag"? And of course, when finding out I'm a girl, pestering me with "what do you look like?" and stuff.

    Oh well, at least it gives me more incentive to take the railgun and castrate them with a slug...
    ---

  • Family values are inverse of technological values. (Score:5)

    by nharmon ( 97591 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:46AM (#699775)

    Back in the day, when you sat yourself down in front of the TV, your parents said too much of it will rot your brain. And they were correct, you were simply vegetating in front of the tube, not expressing any creativity.

    Now, how many people who spend a lot of time on the net, or even the computer, are being told by their parents to come out and watch TV with them? When computers are actualy promoting an interactive medium of entertainment, much better then vegetating.

  • Games and Obesity (Score:5)

    by Life Blood ( 100124 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:56AM (#699776) Homepage

    Video games are wonderful. I play them all the time. The big problem with them as far as I can see is not violence. The violence of video games is no more graphic or realistic than what kids see in movie or TV on a regular basis. In fact it is dramatically less realistic than the real world due to the limitations of computer graphics etc. Besides, most kids are smart enough to realize that these are games.

    The problem is this, americas children and teenagers are overweight and getting fatter. This is a serious problem and the dramatic increase in video games/gaming isn't helping. Video games build problem solving and other skills, this is good. However, over use means a loss of hand-eye coordination and physical fitness. America as a nation needs to get outside an play some ball with its friends.

  • Dare I say it... (Score:5)

    by AntiPasto ( 168263 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:42AM (#699777) Journal
    Katz is actually interesting. Wow. Good job my man.

    I don't know why I was born this way but I have just never liked games. I sort of like flight simulators, and my honey and I play Scrabble quite a bit. I was always one reformatting instead of getting thumb callouses.

    Some friends of mine play all sorts of things. All the time. They live for it. A friend of mine here at work with whom I was just recently relating my gamelessness suggested that I keep it that way because games are like crack.

    I enjoyed putting Gran Tourismo on easy, and just wheeling around for about a half-hour. That was it. I'm not trying to sound stuck up or something, it was just not my thing. I highly respect a friend of mine, Nathan. I used to work at a computer software store in High School, and this guy would return games the next day... sometimes even the same night. "Didn't like it. Beat it too quick." It seemed arrogant, but hey, we had a nice liberal return policy and I didn't care. Later I became friends with him, and on many occasions become very interested in the quality of plots he describes in games, like Siphen Filter and Rainbow Six. I tried to play these things, but for a non-gamer having been intrigued by an uber-gamer, I didn't have much fun.

    I won't even mention how badly my ass has been kicked in Teken.

    My point is, gaming should never be considered a waste. I equate gaming with how I learned Linux, or PHP. To me that was intriguing, and stimulating, and worthwhile... and honestly even if it sounds unproductive, I feel that games are the same thing for those that enjoy them. I mean... they are learning.

    ----

  • Didn't "they" say a lot of the same stuff... (Score:5)

    by Seinfeld ( 243496 ) on Tuesday October 17, 2000 @05:49AM (#699778)
    ...a few decades ago about comic books? You know, comic books are bad, they are frivolous junk food for the mind, they are bad for the imagination and make kids stupid. Comic books were wildly popular and the "adults" couldn't understand the attraction.

    Well, comic books failed to wreck the youth of this country. But they also didn't, in simulated Katz-speak, "usher in a new paradigm of creative interactivity and illustrative expression that trashes all the stale old educational and institutional models." They wound up with their niche in popular culture. Sure, I wish my differential equations textbook was as engaging as a comic book or video game, but please. Anyone who thinks that every form of media should or could somehow contain the same excitement or interactivity that Tomb Raider does needs a serious reality check. "Thrills, chills, and mind-numbing strobe-light 3d effects - it's all part of Bob Vila's Home Carpentry video workshop!" Heck, writing code for video games doesn't even have that. The thrill of video games does not replace the satisfaction of human contact, the joy of creating, or the imagination invoked when reading a particularly good book.


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