Parker directed my attention towards this short yet insightful post by Jenni Mac about how videogames appeal more and more to a female demographic:

[W]atching the report it was clear that this involvement is actually because of two very different reasons. Men enjoy the activity, the skill, and the challenge. Although some women do enjoy these aspects as well, by listening to the interviews and examining the information it is evident women are interested in video games for the same reason they are interested in many other activities, the social aspect. Women quoted enjoying talking about it, getting together with friends for parties to do it and talking to people through the video games. Therefore although women are getting involved it seems to reinforce the true nature of the differences between the genders instead of providing evidence to how they are becoming more “similar” as the report seemed to detail.

Jenni makes a very good point here – one that’s also proven by sales records: The Sims, a game whose development team consists of an equal mix of male and female staffers and whose parent company Maxis has a female general manager, sold more than 100 million copies in all its different instalments with almost 60% of its players being females. What is the game all about? Basically: Being social.

This could also explain why the non-casual genre that has the biggest percentage of female players is the MMO with self reported numbers of between 20-25% female audience. As a study by the Nottingham Trent University states:

MMORPGs were found to be highly socially interactive environments providing the opportunity to create strong friendships and emotional relationships. The study demonstrated that the social interactions in online gaming form a considerable element in the enjoyment of playing. The study showed MMORPGs can be extremely social games, with high percentages of gamers making life-long friends and partners. It was concluded that virtual gaming may allow players to express themselves in ways they may not feel comfortable doing in real life because of their appearance, gender, sexuality, and/or age.

And then of course there’s the Wii which more than any other console encouraged social play: There’re no entry barriers, enough content to appeal to a female demographic and sheer fun of getting together with a couple of friends in front of the TV (probably also one of the reasons why Nintendo neglects its online business). The result: Even after two years after the Wii’s release Nintendo still has trouble meeting demand.

Of course men also like to be connected, but this mostly happens within a very competitive framework; Halo or Call of Duty being a case in point (probably also one of the reasons why Microsoft looks so much after its online business).

Then there’s the uncanny hate/ disinterest for Nintendo’s “albino waggle box“ on the part of the traditional male hardcore crowd (”I haven’t touched my Wii in ages!“) not to mention the shame when buying casual games – apparently all these things offend male sensitivities and the traditional (male) technicity of the industry. But hey, what can we do? It’s all in our brains.

Allan Reiss, MD, and his colleagues have a pretty good idea why your husband or boyfriend can’t put down the Halo 3. In a first-of-its-kind imaging study, the Stanford University School of Medicine researchers have shown that the part of the brain that generates rewarding feelings is more activated in men than women during video-game play. (…)
The findings indicate, the researchers said, that successfully acquiring territory in a computer game format is more rewarding for men than for women. And Reiss, for one, isn’t surprised. “I think it’s fair to say that males tend to be more intrinsically territorial,” he said. “It doesn’t take a genius to figure out who historically are the conquerors and tyrants of our species-they’re the males.”

What about you? If you’re a female gamer, what games do you play and why?

-Jens

Did you spend the best part of your childhood in arcades playing Pac Man? If so chances are you have a chronic anxiety disorder…

Earlier this year, the Philadelphia Research Center of Mental Illness Study found “an alarming rate of OCD” in kids who played 80s video games like Q-Bert or Pac Man.

As the author, Chris Ward, writes::

As someone who jumps out of his skin when friends blitz through levels of Super Mario Bros. and ignore the goddamned coins, I don’t disagree with this study one bit. My OCD impulses, like most people’s, are all about controlling my environment—and the virtual landscapes in games are a perfect outlet for this. On the downside, Pac-Man’s all-consuming urge to eat every last dot gets channeled right through the person controlling him.

The good news though is that games themselves are not the root of OCDs – “I don’t think games cause OCD—it’s a chemical imbalance in the brain you’re born with,” says Counselor Hillary Brady – but then again the current generation of games with their increasingly open worlds with all their disorder that somehow has to be brought under control offers the perfect playground these people.

Again Chris Ward:

Unfortunately, I was unable to complete a single level without trying to collect the hundreds of thousands of LEGO coins that appear when you break something. Note: everything is breakable. It’s the jingling noise the coins make. . .the way they zip through the air into Batman’s utility wallet. . .this simple, visceral thrill led to several uncontrollable hours of collecting shiny things. Current in-game progress as a result: 9.6%

I can relate to Ward. The last game I bought was Far Cry 2, a title with a massive environment where one of the goals is to collect more than 200 hidden diamond cases. When you’re close to a case a little green light on your GPS starts flashing and it flashes quicker the closer you get. Countless times I stopped my car just to spend… well, uncontrollable hours collecting shiny things. No matter if I was in the middle of a mission or chased by an angry mob of gun yielding rebels I just couldn’t resist the urge to waste a large chunk of my precious play time running around in the African Wild, climbing hills and tress and getting really agitated for not being able to complete my collection.

The same with GTA: when I got the chance to roam San Andreas I had to look up the location of all the places I was supposed to tag. I didn’t immerse myself in the story and the only way I interacted with the environment was by spray painting it – also motivated by the fact that the more I vandalised my surroundings the more weapons would wait for me in the kitchen. Because you never know when you might need those babies! Which relates to another disorder of mine: The fear of running out of items.

At least I’m not the only one:

I’m convinced that there must have been some kind of traumatic experience that occurred when I was just starting playing videogames that I subconsciously blocked out, but whose moral still remains firmly imprinted in my psyche: “Save every item till the last possible moment.” It’s the only way to explain this near maniacal packratism I can’t help but display. I’ve reached the end of many a game with an over abundance of ammo and supplies, and yet I continue to hoard and refuse to use.

The next game I was going to get is Fallout 3, but truth be told: The thought of all the loot to collect, all the side missions to be done, all the endings to be seen – it makes me freak out a little.

By speaking of freaking out: The solution to these problems might actually be more terrifying than the symptoms.

“We often find that our OCD patients benefit from playing not-so-organized games like many of the ’90s Super Nintendo games based on movies, athletes, and TV shows,” the Philadelphia study concludes. “[Compulsion for organization] is less likely because a video game based on Shaq has never had a clear objective.”

I think I prefer my disorders to Shaq Fu. What about you?

-Jens

One of the more interesting pieces of technology depicted in Vernor Vinge’s Rainbows End is that which allows users to put a skin over reality, just as we currently choose different themes for our operating systems and web browsers.

Thanks to some smart people working out of the Universität der Künste Berlin (”The Berlin University of the Arts”), we’re one step closer to making that happen.

From the description of their project:

Carcade is a concept for an in-car videogame for the passengers, which captures the landscape and uses it as a videogame environment. Existing objects, for example trees and architecture, are recognized by the camera and enhanced by videogame assets. The game is influenced by the manner of driving of the car. If the driver accelerates, the game becomes increasingly difficult. If the car comes to a stop a different game situation evolves. We developed a small game concept and a functional prototype, with which we did a test drive on the street. A webcam is connected to a laptop running camera tracking software which recognizes the horizon and objects in the environment. The player has to maneuver a spaceship and collect points whilst trying to avoid crashing into oncoming enemies.

It is still early days, but watching their video will help you understand the technology a bit better. As it advances, that boring prairie drive between Calgary and Edmonton could become a lot more interesting if it took the form of a space battle, jungle cruise or otherwise more-scenic route instead.

In order to further cement the relationship between videogames and driving, iTWire reports (via /.) that a car designed for the Playstation 3 game Gran Turismo 5 Prologue has made into real life and was unveiled at the Paris Motor Show. It isn’t just a fantasy car, either. Apparently the GTbyCITROËN handles the same in real life as in the the game.

If you’ve played the Gran Turismo series of games, you’ll know exactly how hyper-realistic they are. In fact, I’m pretty sure I learned more about driving through the original Gran Turismo for PS1 than I did from the driving lessons I took when I was sixteen.

I’m probably not the only one that thinks that way, either. According to this CNN story, Allstate insurance will start offering specialized computer games to older drivers and that this could end up lowering their rates.

-Parker

(Editors note: yeah, it seems like we’re really on a videogame kick here at BlogCampaigning. If you’re not feeling the vibe, we’ll be back with more social media PR/posts later this week. But stick aroudn around for the videogames, because they’re important.)

You can tell the growing importance of a medium and its social acceptance if people deem it necessary to conserve it for the generations to come. It took a while for film – in the case of Australia even until the 1950s – with the consequence of the majority of the early works being irrevocably lost. The only idea we have of early television is because of contemporary witnesses or documents; the actual shows though are lost forever as most of them were live broadcasts and there were no means to record them – history forever carried away by the airwaves.

In order for videogames not to meet the same fate, academics at Nottingham Trent University have moved to form the United Kingdom’s First National Videogame Archive.

From the press release (via Kotaku):

In addition to a treasure trove of consoles and cartridges, the archive will collect and gather a broad range of items from across the industry. It will encompass the wider cultural phenomenon of videogames by documenting advertising campaigns, magazine reviews, artwork and the communities that sustain them - the overall aim being to collect, celebrate and preserve this vital cultural form for future generations.

Dr James Newman, from Nottingham Trent University’s Centre for Contemporary Play, said: “The National Videogame Archive is an important resource for preserving elements of our national cultural heritage. We don’t just want to create a virtual museum full of code or screenshots that you could see online. The archive will really get to grips with what is a very creative, social and productive culture.”

Sweet! The Library of Congress has actually been working on something similar for a while now. Together with a consortium made up of Stanford, the University of Maryland and the University it even proposed the idea of videogame canon, the results of which were revealed last year.

Game preserving is a really fascinating topic, especially considering the rapid hardware development. Remember 5¼ disks? Would you know where to get functioning drives? Even if one was able to locate the hardware the problem remains that one day it will break, no matter what. A fact that certainly makes a case for – unfortunately illegal – emulation. But then again isn’t part of the authentic experience also to play games on the hardware they were intended for? A keyboard certainly can’t emulate the awkwardness of an Intellivision controller…

And what about MMORPGs? Here preserving the code isn’t the problem, but preserving the actual interactions of the players – the really interesting stuff – is pretty much impossible. How did people use certain games? How did they collaborate? What does this tell us about the society/ country/ class they came from? All these elements that transcend the actual gameplay and therefore are most interesting to analyse might also be lost forever. Any ideas what to do?

-Jens

As an update to yesterday’s post about why videogames are so important, I strongly advise you to check out this post on Techdirt.

Apparently, the CEO of Activision has pointed out how much games like Guitar Hero and Rock Band have helped sales of bands and that perhaps the record companies should be paying the game companies to have their music included, rather than the other way around.

What do you think?

-Parker Mason

If you’ve been a BlogCampaigning reader for more than a few weeks you’ll know that Jens and I are both quite interested in ludology, the study of video games.

I’m fairly convinced that video games are the future of both entertainment and communications. I don’t mind that they aren’t being taken as seriously as I think they should be - it just means that there will be greater opportunity for people like Jens and I further down the line.

Like many of our activities, games are becoming increasingly social. According to a recent Pew Report, for teens “gaming is a social activity and a major component of their overall social experience.”

The report finds that 65% of game-playing teens play with other people who are in the room with them, while only 27% play games with people who they connect with through the internet. I think that those numbers are going to change rapidly, that the teens who are most easily able to connect via the internet to interact with their peers to play games and solve online puzzles will be the ones who are most succesful later in life.

This might be explained by an article in Wired finds that gamers are using the scientific method to complete missions and raids. In one example from the article, a game academic notes that the teenage boys she studied (I’m hesitating to use the phrase “played with” here) “were building Excel spreadhseets into which they’d dump all the information they’d gathered about how each boss behaved” and that they would use these spreadsheets to “develop a mathematical model to explain how the boss worked — and to predict how to beat it.”

And if you’re worried about becoming the out-of-shape, pale stereotype of the gaming nerd like Jens, don’t fret. According to a recent study gamers are more physically fit than the average American (Jens is just lazy). If that wasn’t enought o get you feeling good about video games, a recent article in The National Post reports that a number of retirement centers in Ontario are using the Nintendo Wii to stage a series of competitions.

“It’s hand-eye co-ordination, visual stimulation and works as various forms of therapy. If they are in their wheelchair, it gets them excited, gets them enthralled into something that maybe they didn’t do before. They are not just sitting there watching something; they are actually engaged,” said Chris Brockington, senior marketing consultant for the group of retirement homes.  One of the residents added that the games were “both a wonderful social activity and a great way to exercise.”

I’ve also posted previously about my thoughts on the importance of video games here, and you can read all posts about video games by Jens and myself here.

-Parker Mason

(thanks also to Techdirt for first pointing out some of the links mentioned above)

Gamepolitics just directed my attention towards this interesting mod for Half Life 2: Thanks to some talented modders gamers can now experience a virtual recreation of the walled East-Berlin.

Explains Garry’s Mod:

The anticipated BerlinWall map has been released. The map offers singleplayer experience from the view of an East German citizen, dreaming of living in the West Germany. The gameplay in the map is non-linear, you can take many paths to west. Also, avoid making mistakes, they can be deadly, and remember to check everywhere for some sort of weapons.

The map works the best in Half-Life 2: Episode Two, but like common Source-based maps, it also works in Garry’s Mod. Not offering the best gameplay experience in it, but works great for posing and comics.

This is the kind of stuff I love: Using the simulational nature of digital games to foster a better understanding of historical events as they offer a grade of immersion other media don’t, fostering much needed respect for the often chastised games in the process.

If the rules work accordingly. Unfortunately I haven’t yet had a chance yet to play this mod (as I’m using a Mac) but from what I’ve gathered this might not always be the case.

According users of this forum, parts of the game involve direct armed confrontations with guards. Violence of this sort certainly wasn’t part of the process of trying to flee from the socialist reign of terror as this would have been even more suicidal. Apparently it is also possible to run through barbed wire without getting injured, an aspect I find highly objectionable as one of the most gruesome deaths at the wall (or what was to become the wall) was caused but just that: Getting stuck in barbed wire, getting shot, bleeding to death.

These problems are increased by an age old problem: Trying to escape from East Germany certainly involved a lot of arbitrary factors – games rules don’t, otherwise that game wouldn’t be playable. Or to put it differently: Life’s not fair, games (mostly) are.

By speaking speaking of belittlement: Saving the “game” or a God mode weren’t options for these people who decided to take the ordeal of escaping upon themselves.

From what I could gather from the screenshots the problematic nature of this games also extends to its representation. Using Combine soldiers as an ersatz for East German border guards again is highly troublesome – just like using the iconic crowbar as a weapon – due to the connotations that spring up in our heads: The first thing I thought of was headcrabs.

As much as the creators of this mod should be applauded for trying there still are massive problems up ahead, but as a glimpse into games’ potential as a tool to teach it can be regarded as a thought-provoking – yet problematic – project.

-Jens

The 1920s, not only the “Roaring Twenties” but also the decade that saw the peak of the KKK, the rise of communism, the publishing of Mein Kampf and the prohibition – all events pointing to the social tensions of the time.

Finally one of the main, yet so far neglected causes of these misdemeanors could be identified: The Spanish Inquisition arcade game, still playable at Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum. It is an absolutely terrifying torture simulator, allowing the mutilation of people whose only crime it is to hold different beliefs. Rumour has it that this game was the main reason behind the Bath School disaster.

Comments Jack Thompson: “If some wacked-out adult wants to spend his time playing The Spanish Inquisition, one has to wonder why he doesn’t get a life, but when it comes to kids, it has a demonstrable impact on their behavior and the development of the frontal lobes of their brain.”

-Jens

Not only did I get a chance to play Guitar Hero World Tour at the Games Convention (awesome drums, way superior to Rock Band’s) and beat my English speaking friend John and two 12 year old girls in a round of a German version of Buzz I also came across Douglas Edric Stanley’s controversial Space Invaders Installation that has players trying to fight off the destruction of the World Trade Centre’s Twin Towers.

Upon me asking what it was all about I was informed by a staff member of the Computergame Museum (the organiser of the exhibition), that it was a statement regarding America’s foreign policy respectively that the invaders represented the terrorists who were responsible for the destruction of the WTC. I could kind of see where he was coming from: The attackers as the alien “others”, hostile to our culture, blindly leaping forward without any regard for our Western values, fanatical in their compulsion to destroy, the inability to communicate and the fact that we won’t be able to win this war despite our wildest gestures (as conveyed by the game’s motion controls).

Trying to hit the red UFO (Bin Laden?!) by using arm movements in front of a symbol for one of the biggest tragedies of the 21st century did feel ambiguous to say the least. Eventually it left a shallow impression, I couldn’t see beyond a simple juxtaposition nor was I taken by surprise by an interpretation I didn’t think about before, a view which possibly could have shed a different, more compelling light on the installation.

Do I agree with the pulling of the piece? Not necessarily, after all freedom of expression is what differentiates us from the invaders. Also the fact that apparently it is OK to commercially – and cynically – exploit 9/11 (+ Pearl Harbour + several wars) by means of movies, books and merchandise while a non-commercial installation draws worldwide negative attention makes for an interesting imbalance – admittedly, in Stanley’s abstract work compassion for the victims is largely absent, something which differentiates it from other media deemed more acceptable.

Nevertheless, I still believe that digital games have the potential to make strong, insightful and relevant statements. As Leigh Alexander puts it on Kotaku:

Invaders! actually accomplishes everything we’ve constantly asked games to achieve - it draws mainstream attention. It provokes thought and discussion. It deals with a real-world issue. It’s open to interpretation. It’s independently-created art.

And it stings, doesn’t it, to see our hopes for the medium twisted into such an uncomfortable, painful shape. But let’s not let the pain force us to dismiss it. This is an achievement.

If a shallow, transparently controversial juxtaposition such as Stanley’s installation is capable of eliciting such a response then the future for digital expression surely looks bright.

-Jens

After long discussions the German Kulturrat, the umbrella organisation of the German cultural associations, today welcomed the federal association of game developers GAME, as their latest member. The rationale behind this move: Games are sponsoring all kinds of arts and artists, from designer to script writer to composer; they all benefit from the burgeoning industry.

Despite this somehow strange reasoning (games being “Kultur” because they help to sustain other arts instead of being accepted as cultural artefacts in their own right) Malte Behrmann, chairman of GAME, describes the decision as a milestone of German media policy. “For the first time an association of the game industry was incorporated in an institution of cultural politics. The game industry finally arrived in the cultural sphere. This is a great day for the German game industry!”

This whole procedure again goes to show show that in Germany new forms of media always need to be legitimised through the concept of Kultur – which on one hand can do miracles in terms of acceptance. After all culture epitomises an anti-barbaric distinction which perfectly serves for bourgeois self-legitimation – but then again this anti-barbaric distinction also prevents Gears of War 2 from being released in Germany and helps to perpetuate the patronising behaviour of the German state in terms of censorship.

Soon to come: Discussions about culturally valuable games whose market share is marginal at best (at least we Germans are trying our best to save the world again, even if it’s just the saving the virtual world from unnecessary brutalisation).

-Jens