New information about EA’s upcoming hack ‘n slash game Dante’s Inferno keeps trickling in and, I must say, leaves me with a sort of ambiguity. Sure, the trailer looks grand and all that, but what the hell!?

Uhm yeah, the player takes on the role of Dante… Not Dante the scholar, writer or whatever, no… Dante the WARRIOR! His wife seems to be abducted by Satan himself and a beefed up Dante is exacting his revenge by taking up a large scythe and battling the demons of Hell! I wonder if Dante himself would ever imagine himself jamming holy crosses into people’s skulls.

Although Hell, as imagined by Dante Alighieri, could actually be a quite engaging setting videogame- and especially designwise, I’m not really excited by this vulgarization of what’s considered to be a literary masterpiece. Please correct me if you think I’m wrong!

On another note, I’m developing my own script for a game! It’s about William of Orange, considered to be the founding father of the kingdom of the Netherlands. In my game, also a hack ‘n slasher, the Prince of Orange singlehandedly wreaks havoc in the ranks of the Spanish army. It all culminates in a final showdown between the Prince of Orange and the Duke of Alva, mounted on a huge firebreathing gargoyle. You see, Alva has made a pact with the devil and… Uhm, well I’m not going to spend the entire story! For a comparison: it will be something like last years Conan-game. Imagine Conan being William of Orange, the thugs: random Spanish soldiers! As for the harpies, they will probably feature as demons under control of the Spanish!

Go William!

My blog is dabbling like the Zimbabwean economy and I deserve it! Too much stuff going on to put much on Science/Fiction, when I finally GET the time I can’t be bothered because I feel like I deserved some time off… When all else fails: post some random funny stuff! Thanks to Arno for bringing this wonderful mash-up under my attention, and the maker of this jewel: Stian Hafstad!

To all my American fellow students: Congratulations with your new president, I guess. Because it was more or less impossible to miss the inauguration on television, I decided I might as well view it myself. A bit discouraged with the answer I got when I asked an American “Does CNN feature the installation of the Dutch government and Prime Minister?”, I decided to see it anyway… As for the answer, it was: “Oh yeah, all the time!”. I might have actually believed it, if it wasn’t for the grinning and snickering. The ceremony was nice (is it always that pompous?), but there was something about the environment that I couldn’t really bring home.

Oh my! I’ve actually been there. Not physically of course, but the Mall of DC features heavily in Fallout 3! In very different way of course… In Fallout, the US is pretty much in ruins, the Mall crawling with big, fat Mutants and… Ok, so maybe not that different (Sorry, I had just had to say that. Too easy, I know!). Compare:

It seems Stephen Totilo of the MTV Multiplayer blog made a screenshot earlier, that's why I'm using this.

Creepy, no?

And then, after the ceremony they played all the songs from the Enclave Radio Station.

Anyone else had this dèja-vu?

Sorry for not updating as much as I should/would… What happened? Well, school’s definitely NOT out for summer, I have a lot of stuff on my hands etcetera.  On a positive note: I’ve played a lot of Fallout 3 during recent months which was pretty good! Bar the miserable ending, I found the experience very entertaining.

A pity for the broken quests and silly bugs but I found the game rich enough to overlook these flaws. On another note: My paper about comparing the books of Wendy Chun (Control and Freedom) and Alexander Galloway (Protocol) is nagging somewhere in the back of my head, so I’d better get back to work… Oh yeah, make sure to play Gears of War 2’s  ‘Horde Mode’!

Best wishes for 2009 and hopefully I will have more time for updating the Science/Fiction blog.

Best,

Stefan

Sorry for not posting anything for quite some time! Swamped in stuff for the University of Amsterdam, Gamekings and the copy of ‘The Ultimate Hichhiker’s Guide (of the Galaxy)’ I received from my girlfriend had me tied down to some extent! Not that this new post will entail much, just a weird anecdote I’d like to share with anyone reading this blog. Yes, all two of you! You know who you are, although I don’t… It’s just an example how people fail to grasp that stuff they put on the Internet can be SEEN!Well… Someone I know, I won’t tell her name so please don’t ask, recently went off to India for about two months. Her boyfriend stayed in the Netherlands. Alas… The girl proved not to be trustworthy, as she cheated on him with one of the locals. Well, we all know stuff like this happens, no biggy right?

Right!

After she returned to Holland, she spoke things through with her partner. He was, of course, put off, disappointed, angry etc. Still they decided to continue their relationship. A bit sad, but no biggy right?

Ehrm… right!

The real shocker occured shortly after the reconciliation. Probably thinking that ‘her boyfriend would not care because he already knew’, she put a couple of pictures online which featured her and the Indian local kissing. Kissing in a tuk-tuk, kissing on the back of an elephant, kissing in someone’s house, and generally looking very happy about it. Not on her site or something. No, she decided to put it out in the open and put them on her ‘Hyves’-page. Hyves is the single largest social networking site, a Dutch ‘Facebook if you will.  No biggy right?

Wrong!

Oh my God! What was she THINKING! Not only is it quite humiliating for her (soon to be ex-?) boyfriend, who’s friends will ask: “Erm… Who’s that guy putting his tongue in your girlfriend’s ear?” It might also be quite harmful for the girl herself. All her friends, and probably family, will suspect that something is quite clearly not right. I get tired even thinking of her having to explain the whole story for the ump-tienth time because of all the people asking: “Uhm… That’s not your boyfriend, right?” Mother’s weeping, father’s disappointed etcetera, etcetera… It’s hard to keep this rather silly situation a secret if your retard daughter puts it online for all to see!

Again, putting this sort of stuff out in the open is retarded beyond belief! Even when people tried to convince her to remove the pictures, she responded with a “Not everyone can see it, as not everybody has a Hyves-account”. Well, if that’s what you want to believe…

Situations like these are making me think that empowerment through the Internet is a myth. How about this? “The Internet gives us new, unexplored ways of acting like a complete dumbass.”

I’ve been waiting several years to play the newest successor in my favorite franchise: Fallout 3. I managed to get a collector’s edition (before the official launch). My Xbox 360 is still being fixed after having a ‘general hardware failure’. I see people playing the game, and hear them discuss the game, bantering about the quality and the hilarity of their in-game adventures.

Life is unfair and then you die.

In an urge of sentimentality, crossed with the anticipation of Fallout 3, I decided to play through one of my favorite games of the last century, all time, ever… namely Fallout. In this Role Playing Game from the team of Black Isle you play an unlucky individual, sent out into the apocalyptic wasteland that remained of the south-west of the USA after thorough nuclear bombing in the Third World War. Prior to the atomic devastation great shelters were made underground, to assure some people were left after the ‘The Big One’ hit home…

In short: the water purification system of your shelter, or ‘Vault’, breaks down and guess who is sent out to find a replacement ‘Water Chip’? Dwelling through the wasteland, inhabited by giant mutated scorpions, rats and brutal raiders you get to meet the sorry remains of civilization: shantytowns, slave traders and people who are horribly mutated through exposure to radiation. Although the world has changed a lot after the Bomb dropped, it seems it has changed not THAT much. Petty politics and economic conflicts still play an important role in the wastes. The player can help the people of different towns, sabotage their efforts to build some sort of viable society, or simply kill anyone. The beauty of Fallout is that the player’s actions have some real consequences in the gameworld. Obtaining the Water Chip involves taking one from a town called Necropolis. The citizens of this town are all ‘ghouls’, hideously mutated humans who rely on their own Water Purifier to provide the needed water. If the player decides to take the Chip anyway, the whole population of the town will die of thirst. The player can also choose to repair a damaged water pump so the ghouls still have a source of water after he takes the chip, but it’s a moral choice. This, combined with some great dialogues, gritty presentation of harsh violence and a, strangely enough, BELIEVABLE post-apocalyptic world brought Fallout a cult following.

Be that as it may, I actually found last week’s replay of this game… lacking. I’m not sure what happened. Somehow I could’nt keep myself from thinking: “Oh yeah, I know I really enjoyed this part when I was younger”, and “Yeah, I know I found this plot twist pretty dramatic when I first saw it.” It’s not just the fact that I’ve played this game before. Maybe it’s just that nostalgia has partially hijacked my memory concerning a game that I’ve played for some 100 hours. I know it’s a great game, but maybe not just as good as my memory told me. For the people who know this game: finally I’ve completed this game with Dogmeat still alive! The key is to have him cripple his leg so he’ll run away during combat, and keep him stimpacked in the Mariposa Military Base. For people who are not into this game *please* forget I ever mentioned this!

The upcoming Fallout 3, made by Bethesda Softworks, has met some serious controversy. Hardcore fans of the Fallout feel that Bethesda won’t do justice to their favorite franchise, dumbing down the complex game world of the first and second part. Although I share some of their concerns, for reasons too long, numerous and uninteresting for many readers that are not really ‘that’ deep into Fallout, I’m mildly optimistic about the continuation of the series. I’ve seen an early, it must be said, build of the game that promised to bring alive the wasteland in gorgeous 3D. The dialogs, sense of desolation and despair seemed pretty spot-on. The verdict is still pending on this one…

Even if Fallout 3 will turn out being ‘teh best game evaaaaah’, will it be able to stand up against my nostalgia-fed image of the first Fallout, and the second one that I’m leaving out of this comparison? Quoting that unnamed guy saying “It’s pretty hard competing with nostalgia, you know”…

*UPDATE*

I posted the character sheet for those interested, all two of them…

Xbox Live

While my own Xbox 360 is still being repaired, a hapless victim of the dreaded ‘Red Ring of Death’, gamers everywhere are using the console’s social network programme called Xbox Live. Rightly so, I might add. Microsoft’s Xbox was the first gaming console to add an online social aspect to videogames. How does Xbox Live measure up against Danah Boyd’s (with capital ‘D’ and ‘B’) definition of ‘social network sites’? Microsoft’s marketing blurb is certain: It’s a social network!

First, let’s take a look at Boyd’s definition. “We define social network sites as web-based services that allow individuals to (1) construct a public or semi-public profile within a bounded system, (2) articulate a list of other users with whom they share a connection, and (3) view and traverse their list of connections and those made by others within the system. The nature and nomenclature of these connections may vary from site to site.”

Xbox Live is an online social service, part of which is accessible via a website. The lion’s share of the application is available through the Xbox and uses an internet connection but is not really ‘web-based’. It’s features are: a friends list, the possibility to see the friends of your friends (although you can turn this option off to protect your friends from unwanted attention), view trailers, download demo’s of new games, extra’s for existing games, invite friends to play together, voice chat, video chat, recommend games to your friends, etc. It’s a paid service you can activate with a credit card or a pre-paid scratchcard for about 60 euro’s a year.

The bounded system and the (semi-)public profiles are in place. Every user shares a connection by default, they are all in possession of an Xbox 360 and presumably like to play videogames online. The friends-lists of their friends, or even the people they ‘recently played with’ are open to explore. Where Xbox Live differs from most other social networks is in the fact that messages are being sent on a one-to-one, or one-to-many basis. It’s possible to communicate with each other directly but the messages that two other friends are sending towards each other remain private. Xbox Live forms a sort of ‘Microcosmos’, controlled by Microsoft, with players doing stuff that Microsoft allows them to do. In a sort of Machiavellian way, this makes it very difficult for gamers to form coherent groups as well. Plus, now and then a new patch is forced unto the users. Gamers with a ‘modded’ Xbox, that can play copied games, find their consoles made useless by the software upgrades. In a sense Xbox Live thus assumes that every user is an enemy.

Future updates will introduce an Avatar-system and the possibility to share pictures with your friends, broadening the social network aspects of this service. Although the functionality of Xbox Live is working very well, I actually have some mixed feelings about the system.

Online play via Xbox Live is a very important aspect of owning an Xbox 360. Multiplayer settings are an important feature in a lot of videogames. Without a Live-subscription it’s impossible to access these features, although a free ‘silver subscription’ is available for everybody which allow you to send messages to other gamers but not play with them. It seems that Microsoft is selling a half-baked system that comes to life through a payed subscription. Paying 60 euro’s a year lets you use a broken social tool within a constrained system. It’s impossible to ‘add’ anything to the social network, except for recommending stuff Microsoft put on it. As a thanks you’re being monitored, and considered a troublemaker by default. It’s Foucault’s Panopticon on steroids. It has to be said: MSN Messenger is integrated into the Xbox Network. The problem is that you can’t play games while using it, it takes forever to compose a message with the controller and the specially developed ‘Messenger Kit’, a miniature keyboard that only work if your fingers aren’t bigger than that of an eight year old, will leave you wanting.

As much as Xbox Live is streamlining the online gaming experience, its social network elements seem to be lacking, for now. It’s not all bad news, in the end of this year a new update will implement ‘live chatting with 8 friends at a time’. Although it looks like this means that Xbox Live will make you contact people in your ‘extended network’ better, it’s unsure if it will make the ‘Live Experience’ a bit more like a real social network site.

This article can also be viewed at the UvA’s Masters of Media-blog.

During the First Look event, held last saturday in Amsterdam, Sony Computer Entertainment’s Bernard Groenveld presented Little Big Planet, already presented in this post. Sony presented this “Make-your-own”-game as the gaming industry’s answer to Web 2.0 applications like Youtube.

Where the last post concerning LBP raised the question of the pitfalls of letting people put together their own levels, being the creation of inappropriate or copyrighted content, the answer lies (in part) in the appointment of ‘administrators’. The function of these employees is to pro-actively seek out content that could bring trouble to Sony or the players of Little Big Planet.

Does Little Big Planet in this way disqualifies itself as a ‘true’ Web 2.0-product? Although the users can probably still rate (or create) their ‘favourite’ and ‘least loved’ levels, there will still be filtering by Sony itself. Without trying to be high-strung this might be another clue pointing out that ‘true’ Web 2.0-applications are essentially incompatible with the interests of corporations?

You can also check this post on the ‘Masters of Media‘ blog

Though ‘Web 2.0’ is primarily an affair concerning ‘teh intawebs’, the videogame market will strike back soon with ‘Little Big Planet’, developed for The Playstation 3 by Media Molecule. Although the game is not yet available in stores it has gone ‘gold’, which means the code is done and the game only has to be put on discs and shipped.

Little Big Planet has two faces. On one hand it is a platform-game which features levels made by the developers. On the other hand it is a toolbox that presents the player with the means to create their own levels, design their own protagonist (the endearingly funny ‘Sackboy’), share, copy and paste level designs, vote for their favourite stages and level-designers. The best level designers could actually be recruited by Media Molecule to design new levels. Id est: creative level design might see creative players earning a job.

Although the premise of gamers creating content for videogames has been around for a long time in the form of ‘modding’ existing games, this is quite a big step for the console market. Some games have featured options to encourage user generated content, with mixed results. Forza Motorsport’s extensive ‘decal system’ has inspired gamers to create fantastic designs, as well as some naz(t)i pieces…

Halo 3 has an interesting feature as well, the Forge. The multiplayer levels are all available for editing, primarily through the placement of objects and changing the ‘rules’. In a game about shooting your enemies into smouldering bits this makes it possible to create different games altogether.

Little Big Planet is essentially a toolbox that allows players to do design their own levels, objectives etc. Hopefully the nasty contributions will be dealt with in an orderly fashion. The game is compatible with the PlayStation camera, which could make some of the player creations unbearably foul. Just like other Web 2.0 services it will probably remove these ill-mannered contributions but it’s always possible that children might be exposed to creepy images…

All in all, Little Big Planet will probably be a jewel in the PlayStation-catalogue. It all depends on the community behind it. Check out the trailer! Warning: Some extremely funky music!

You can also check this story on the ‘Masters of Media’-blog…