Jun 2, 2010

CIA Drone Killings Could Lead To A "PlayStation Mentality" Towards Killing

Kotaku

CIA Drone Killings Could Lead To A "PlayStation Mentality" Towards Killing A United Nations investigator is warning that CIA-controlled remote drone assassinations of suspected Islamic terrorists could lead to a "PlayStation mentality" towards killing.

Philip Alston, U.N. special rapporteur on extrajudicial executions, has issued a 29-page report calling for an end to the CIA's use of unmanned Predator or Reaper drones in Afghanistan and Pakistan against al Qaeda and Taliban suspects.

Stationed hundreds to thousands of miles away from the battlefield, CIA operatives control the drones using a combination of remote video and audio, taking out targets using drone-mounted missiles. Missiles that Alston says have been responsible for the deaths of "many hundreds," innocent civilians included.

"Intelligence agencies, which by definition are determined to remain unaccountable except to their own paymasters, have no place in running programs that kill people in other countries," Alston said.

Alston's report also cites the fact that the world remains unaware of how the CIA picks its targets, where the CIA is authorized to kill, and how the organization deals with innocent civilians killed in the drone attacks.

But it isn't just the innocent victims Alston is worried about. It's the drone operators as well.

"Because operators are based thousands of miles away from the battlefield, and undertake operations entirely through computer screens and remote audio-feed, there is a risk of developing a 'Playstation' mentality to killing," he said, referring to the popular Sony video game console.

There's no doubt in anyone's mind that controlling a remote drone via video screen is a great deal like playing a video game. We ran a story last year about a 19-year-old drone pilot who attributed his success to his days playing the Xbox. Perhaps one day we'll see young people remotely controlling military vehicles without even knowing they are doing so, ala Orson Scott Card's science fiction novel Ender's Game.

Alston's report raises a lot of questions. Does the fact that you are so far removed from actual combat make the killing easier? Should any government have the power to kill a person or group of people from the other side of the planet?

Those questions and more will be pondered by the U.N. Human Rights Council today, where Alston will be presenting his report.

U.N. investigator calls for halt to CIA drone killings [Yahoo! News]

Jun 2, 2010

Going on A Harry Potter Killing Spree

Kotaku

Harry Potter is on a rampage and I'm in control.

Armed with a wand, I dispatch a gathering of witches and wizards as I maneuver Potter deftly through an abandoned factory. Swirling red lines spew from Potter's wand as I watch over his shoulder, the dancing lights lance into an enemy wizard until he collapses in pain.

This may not be the Harry Potter you're used to: A wide-eyed bespectacled youth of confused powers and wholesome values. No, this Harry Potter uses spells to torture his enemies into unconsciousness, snipes witches with magic that turn them on allies and unleashes wall-crumbling blasts of magic from the safety of cover.

Going on A Harry Potter Killing Spree Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows is nothing like what you'd expect from a video game based on a popular series of family-friendly books. And that's just what the developers hope.

Last month I had a chance to sit down with developers Bright Light Studios at EA's LA offices and take the upcoming Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 for a spin.

The game, built using a new graphics game engine, looks and plays a lot like a third-person shooter. You control Potter from a perspective just behind and above the teen. Potter is pretty fast on his feet and can even scramble into cover. Most importantly, you use magic to dispatch enemies.

Going on A Harry Potter Killing Spree The Bright Lite folks likened each of the spells I used while testing the game to different sorts of weapons. Confundus, which can be used to turn enemies upon each other from a distance, is like a sniper shot. Stupefy, which knocks people and things over, is like a rocket launcher and Crucio, an unforgivable spell used to torture enemies in the universe of Harry Potter, is like a machine gun, the developers explained to me.

"This is a very, very different experience," one of the developers say. "There is no Hogwarts, no school rules, just life or death."

And there also isn't much on the screen, besides the action. There's no life bar or targeting reticule. No magic gauge or currently selected weapon icon. Instead you pick up how you're doing by what's going on and how Potter is reacting to things.

Going on A Harry Potter Killing Spree The game played exactly how you would expect it to. It was sort of like playing Medal of Honor with magic. The cover system was snappy, controls tight and the battles surprisingly colorful. Most importantly, the game didn't feel like a children's title. There was in the portrayal of the characters and the detail of the settings, a sense of gravity.

This wasn't a bunch of cartoons shooting fireworks at one another, this was a life and death battle with magic that could torture a person to death.

My very short time spent with the game left me impressed with the title's new direction and how aptly it handled as a shooter derivation. What I couldn't tell was whether the game would quickly get old, sending me from one magical firefight to the next until the game was over.

Hopefully in re-imagining the video game take on Harry Potter, due out this autumn for the DS, PC, PS3, Wii and Xbox 360, Bright Lite didn't forget to tap into the compelling fiction of the franchise.

Going on A Harry Potter Killing Spree

Jun 2, 2010

One Year Later, Did These Wii and DS Promises Come True?

Kotaku

Nintendo cannot escape our promise-checking. Last year the world's top video game game company promised some cool stuff for the next year or so in gaming. What came true? Was any of their hype wrong?

We are one day removed from checking Microsoft's Xbox promises from E3 2009. Since than I have re-lived the entire June 2, 2009 E3 Nintendo press briefing. Glorious! (More fun than doing that for the '08 edition.) With Nintendo now under my hindsight-empowered microscope, I can point out a few basic ideas:

1) These Nintendo people declare release dates the way I declare that I am awake... you can take it to the bank!
2) Motion control comments are always kinda fuzzy, but not as potentially misleading as trailers that show motion control devices in action.
3) They just might be right about that Vitality Sensor.

Nintendo and friends, your E3 2009 promises are being checked today - exhaustively.

Background: The Nintendo press briefing occurred on June 2 in Club Nokia in Los Angeles. This showcase lasted one hour and 10 minutes.

Mario For Christmas

Nintendo exec Cammie Dunaway unveiled New Super Mario Bros. Wii. She admitted that Nintendo hadn't figured out how to make a 4D Mario game but did want to make a four-player version. She said the game would be out in "holiday 2009." Added that "players will be lining up to play with and against each other in Mr. Miyamoto's newest masterpiece."

Verdict: Correct!

At Last, You Are Mario

Dunaway showed off Wii Fit Plus, highlighting its workout improvements over the original Wii Fit. She also showed the title's new minigames, including an obstacle course. Of that last one, she said, "This is the first time you'll be able to understand what it's like to run in Mario's shoes." She said Wii Fit Plus would be released in the fall.

Verdict: She was right about the game's release timeframe. She was half-right about the novelty of the running in Mario's shoes. I had merely jumped while wearing his coveralls before (and, well, almost thrown up in the process.)

Forget about Natal

Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime took the stage to hype the Wii MotionPlus, the Wii Remote add-on shipping later that month. Here he would be trying to excite people about a new way to control games just a day after Microsoft had wowed people with Project Natal. "Most people won't see the difference until they hit the power button," he said of MotionPlus. "Then what emerges is a new sense of realism in gameplay, not the kind that makes a game look more real but one that makes it feel and play more real."

A MotionPlus concept trailer showed people doing such MotionPlus-ish gestures as playing ping-pong, shooting baskets, wielding a sword (with 1:1 accuracy!), pulling back a bowstring, swinging a golf club, riding a Jet-Ski, paddling with an oar and tossing a Frisbee. The trailer was a hype piece for Wii Sports Resort.

Verdict: I can't vouch for the level of realism people felt when they first played Wii Sports Resort (I thought archery felt authentic!) but I do know that swordplay in that game was not all about 1:1 mapping. Ah, the oversimplification of control nuance that trailer-making people make. Hey, Fils-Aime himself said after that trailer: "That's how it works on video. But on video you can do almost anything." Yeah! Then, to prove the video was the real deal, he played — and dramatically won — a fun round of Wii Sports Resort three-point basketball shootout.

Best Motion Controller Ever?

Before starting a fun demo of Wii Sports Resort's skydiving intro, Nintendo's Bill Trinen told us just how good the MotionPlus add-on is: "Wii MotionPlus detects the position of your Wii Remote. It detects the angle you hold it at. It knows all there is to know about how and where you are holding your controller and applies it to the game. Combined, the Wii Remote and Wii MotionPlus offers precision in motion."

Verdict: The MotionPlus certainly improved the Wii Remote's sensitivity, as any player of Wii Sports Resort, Tiger Woods PGA Tour 10 or Red Steel 2 could attest. But the MotionPlus doesn't really know where your Wii Remote is if you are holding it still. Combined with the Wii Remote and sensor bar, it is better at knowing how the Remote has been moved and some of the distance information of the Remote vis a vis the player's TV, but it doesn't know it all and can be confused — just not as easily as the Wii Remote. MotionPlus was a big improvement to the Wii Remote, but not the know-it-all motion controller as presented.

Wait, is that game splitscreen?

Trinen and Fils-Aime faced off in a three-point Wii Sports Resort basketball shoot-out, going head-to-head simultaneously. And Reggie said the game would be out on July 26.

Verdict: Very tricky, guys. If you looked closely or simply tried the game yourself when it was released a month after E3, you'd realize that Wii Sports Resort basketball doesn't have a split-screen mode. For presentation purposes, Fils-Aime and Trinen were playing separate copies of the game on stage at E3, simulating a system-link or split-screen mode that wasn't possible in the final product. The real Wii Sports Resort requires players to take turns running the racks in its basketball shootout. The release date, however, wasn't an illusion. The game hit its date.

MotionPlus Line-Up

Fils-Aime promised Wii Motion Plus support for EA's next golf and tennis games as well as for Virtual Tennis 2009 and Red Steel 2, the last of which he said would only be playable with the peripheral. This does deserve an asterisk, though. For a showpiece technology of Nintendo's E3, MotionPlus has had very few games made for it beyond the ones mentioned at the Nintendo E3 briefing.

Verdict: 100% correct.

Nintendo has friends

Fils-Aime said third-party commitment to Nintendo platforms "will only grow this year." This lead into a trailer for Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: The Crystal Bearers and a mention of a new Kingdom Hearts for DS coming September 29.

Verdict: Hard to gauge whether that third-party 2009 strengthening panned out compared to the prior year's. But the prevalence of third-party-made Wii games in the fall of 2009, from Dead Space Extraction to Call of Duty: Modern Warfare Reflex Edition to Just Dance to Mario and Sonic at the Winter Olympic Games support the idea that '09 was a year with plenty of third-party Wii and DS development. Also, Fils-Aime nailed the Kingdom Hearts release date.

More dates

Fils-Aime promised a fall North America and European release for Mario & Luigi Bowser's Inside Story.

Verdict: Correct!

Hmm, are you sure?

Fils-Aime: "2010 will bring a new dawn with Golden Sun DS."

Verdict: A year has passed and we haven't heard a peep about this game. But there are seven months to go in 2010, six of which have yet to be filled with Nintendo release dates.

Check out these awesome games, really

Dunaway presented three games to showcase the diversity of development for the Nintendo DS. 1) "Beginning on October the 13th, you'll be enjoying [author James] Patterson's work in a new way. His Women's Murder Club: Games of Passion from THQ reads and plays like an interactive novel and will help usher both casual gamers and passionate readers into the wider universe of video games."2) And… "C.O.P. The Recruit will have an immediate attraction for fans of grittier, more open-world gaming." And… 3) Style Savvy.

Verdict: Style Savvy seemed like a pretty good DS title for those interested in a game all about women's fashion, but those other two? They were released, as promised. Whether they thrilled people is another story. Shouldn't they have shown Scribblenauts instead?

Draw!

Dunaway dated the free sketchbook animation app for the DSi, Flipnote Studio. She said it would be released for download in the summer.

Verdict: Correct!

UGC

"Other user-generated content is also on the way," Dunaway said, referring to a Mario Vs. Donkey Kong DSi game that would allow players to create their own levels. She dated the game for June 8, the following Monday. She also talked up this idea regarding WarioWare D.I.Y.

Verdict: This was one of the biggest understatements of the press conference as Nintendo would prove to be aggressive about offering DS and downloadable DSi games that allow users to share the content they create. The next year's worth of games like that included Picross 3D, WarioWare D.I.Y., Excitebike: World Rally and more. Dunaway was right about that June 8 date for Mario vs. D.K., of course.

"Another entirely different way of thinking about games."

Nintendo president Satoru Iwata presented the pulse-sensing Wii Vitality Sensor, a method of seeing the "information relating to the inner world of your body." He predicted that "people will be able to use the products we are developing with this Wii Vitality Sensor to achieve greater relaxation. Maybe everyone under pressure in our stressful society could use this as a way to relax, with a video game." He imagined a day when video games would be seen not just as things that could generate excitement but that could instill relaxation and even aid people in falling asleep.

Verdict: The Vitality Sensor was mocked by many onlookers, but, really, who knows? The software could make it awesome. A year later, we just haven't seen any. It is supposed to be showcased at E3 2010 this month.

In retrospect, was that game done already?

Dunaway talked up the fourth Mario-starring game of the Nintendo event, saying that Super Mario Galaxy 2 would be the — get ready — first-ever second 3D Mario title on a single Nintendo console. She then showed a trailer for it.

Verdict: Not only was this true, but the Mario Galaxy 2 trailer showed portions of dozens of the game's levels, all looking polished, as if the game, which wouldn't be out for 11 months, was done already. Very impressive.

The Harder Edge

Fils-Aime said he read the blogs. He knew that people wanted more and wanted the kinds of games not normally associated with Nintendo. So he said he would showcase three games of that type, all of which he told us would be out before the end of 2009: The Conduit, Resident Evil: The Darkside Chronicles, and Dead Space Extraction.

Verdict: Yep! All these games came out for the Wii — and only the Wii — before 2009 ended.

Metroid's Back

A new Metroid from Team Ninja and Nintendo was announced. Metroid: Other M? Say what? Dated for 2010. Fils-Aime said the game is a "historic collaboration [that] is going to reveal a Metroid game unlike any you've experienced before. It will take you deeper into Samus' story and further into the Metroid universe."

Verdict: I sure hope that Metroid game is going to be good. It was supposed to be out late this month but was delayed until the end of August. Usually, delayed Nintendo games turn out to be pretty good. We'll see!

Final Judgment: A job well done by Nintendo, in terms of accurate promises. None of the release date promises was broken and the hype on the Vitality Sensor was kept conservative. I can only dock Nintendo for a little bit of sleight of hand, setting up the MotionPlus as a next big thing in motion control while slightly fudging the device's accuracy — and more importantly — the extent to which it was going to be supported by Nintendo and its friends. Nintendo, your powers of prognostication earn you an A-minus.

Sony, you're next.

(Please also check out our promise-checking of Microsoft's 2009 Xbox hype.)

PICs via Gamespot's feed of the Nintendo press briefing.

Jun 2, 2010

You Say Apocalypse, I Say Retro Chic

BioShock™

You Say Apocalypse, I Say Retro Chic Much like telling an erotic story within a Victorian backdrop seems ever so sexy, human depravity juxtaposed against a seemingly golden age of good, moral values is darkly comic and that much more disturbing.

In the future, the ‘60s never happened. Or at least, that's what we are led to believe in the alternate history of Bethesda's Fallout 3. While set in a post-apocalyptic America in the 23rd century following the events of a devastating war in the 21st century, curiously most of the post-war artifacts of Fallout 3 look and sound an awful lot like the artifacts of a post-World War II America, as if American culture somehow became frozen in time around 1959 and maintained a seemingly cheery and idyllic image of the ‘40s and ‘50s up until that great disaster.

Of course, this notion of creating a static image of post-World War II America is not exclusive to the Fallout universe. The underwater city of Rapture in 2K's Bioshock literally finds its progress halted on New Year's Eve 1959, and the similar images of a ruined society juxtaposed against the relics of a culture of the ‘40s and ‘50s also make up the bulk of 2K's game.
Both games seem to revel in this juxtaposition of an idealized American age with the ruin of society. The soundtracks of both games jarringly counterpoint the brutal actions of scavengers in the Capital Wasteland and Rapture. Inhumanity and desperation is hauntingly accompanied by songs by songs by Billie Holiday, Cole Porter, Ella Fitzgerald, the Ink Spots, and the Andrews Sisters. That both soundtracks are comprised of songs, which almost exclusively belong to a time associated with values, decency, and decorum, is, of course, intended to be ironic and also serves as a means of emphasizing just how rotten the world has become since a time so idealized in the American imagination.

You Say Apocalypse, I Say Retro Chic

The effectiveness of this kind of contrast really can't be overstated. Much like telling an erotic story within a Victorian backdrop seems ever so sexy (it is so much more fun unbuttoning something that seems to be so very buttoned up), human depravity juxtaposed against a seemingly golden age of good, moral values is darkly comic and that much more disturbing. For instance, Bioshock‘s art deco architecture and retro advertisements serve to heighten the horror of what Rapture and its citizens have become. A scene in the game in which the protagonist comes across a woman who seems sharply dressed in 50s fashion cooing over a "baby" in a perambulator is one of these moments of horror. The image of motherly concern straight out of an issue of the Saturday Evening Post is disrupted by the knowledge that something isn't right in the world of Rapture, where art deco columns crumble and the paint is peeling off the image of an enthusiastic woman selling cigarettes on a nearby poster.

Fallout 3‘s opening sequence, which begins with the flickering of cathodes on a retro seeming radio and the strains of the Ink Spots's "I Don't Want to Set the World on Fire", demonstrates this commitment to suggesting the "wrongness" of the world in contrast to that which we assume must be "right". The camera pans back and reveals the interior of a bus, in which the radio and a schmaltzy bobbling, plastic hula girl are mounted. It continues to pan back to reveal that the bus lays on a heap of torn metal and glass. A crumbling Washington monument is revealed and then a gas-masked and heavily armed warrior in black emerges in the scene to complete the image of the decimation of an American mythology. This image depends on its audience's sense of the initial images representing a kinder, gentler America and doesn't simply replace that image with one of a grimmer vision of American decay. Instead, it allows the images to coexist with one another, perhaps, suggesting a commonality or a causal link that exists between these two images, ideal and decaying at once.

Which returns me to my initial observation, that it might seem that in the universe of Fallout that the 1960s never existed. One can't help but wonder though, given the lingering images of post-World War II America in the Capital Wasteland if this isn't the image of the transition between 1959 and the future. This 23rd century America with its rotting Washington D.C., full of scavengers and mutants, may be the equivalent of the ‘60s, a cartoon image drawn just as large as the cartoonish Vault Boy that represents the stasis of ‘40s and ‘50s values throughout the series.

You Say Apocalypse, I Say Retro Chic

Likewise, that Rapture is fallen as of 1959 in Bioshock‘s alternate history is seemingly appropriate. In 1959, the first wave of Baby Boomers were 13 years old, the next decade was to be theirs, the dominant years of their coming of age. The sweetness of "(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window?" would give way to the melancholy and ferociousness of Joplin, Hendrix, and the Doors. Suits and ties, pencil skirts and embroidered sweaters would give way to jeans and sandals, tie dye and love beads, long hair and dirty feet. Moral certainty would give way to Vietnam and Watergate.

Truthfully, neither game fully idealizes post-World War II America fully. The plasmid advertisements of Bioshock reveal a sinister animosity between men and women of this "more moral" age as they frequently feature cartoony images of buttoned down husbands using plasmids as a way of combating their rolling pin wielding wives. Fallout 3 includes some songs on its soundtrack, which reveal a less than ideally modest vision of sexuality from that era. The thinly veiled sexuality of the lyrics of "Butcher Pete (Part 1)" (a real "lady killer" in more ways than one) or the inclusion of "Let's Go Sunning" (a song from the soundtrack of a nudist film from 1954) reveal that this age was a less prudish and genteel one than it is often imagined. However, while a dark sense of humor underlies these comic revelations of a less than innocent culture, Fallout 3 and Bioshock‘s post-1950s worlds are anything but funny. Brutal and violent, the citizens of the Capital Wasteland and Rapture are selfish, cruel, and frequently driven by unchecked desire and drug addiction.

In these futures, the world transitions into a future that looks more like the present. In that sense, Fallout 3 and Bioshock may be less forward looking than they are about critiquing the now.

Republished with permission from Pop Matters.

G. Christopher Williams is an Associate Professor of English at the University of Wisconsin - Stevens Point and the Multimedia Editor at PopMatters.

PopMatters is an international magazine of cultural criticism that reviews music, film, television, DVD, books, comic books/graphic fiction, and video games. Additional coverage of gaming culture can be found in their Multimedia section.