Godwin's Law states that "as an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." As basically all video game discussion takes place online, let's just cut to the chase and give der fuehrer's take on recent events.

Hitler finds out that Toadette is not playable in Mario Party 9

DICE Informs Hitler about the Battlefield "Close Quarters" DLC

"Hitler planning the Minecraft griefer has been stole his things"

SPOILERS: Hitler Reacts to Mass Effect 3's Ending

It's hard for me to look at the news of the preceding 10 or so days and not feel like there's been some enormous, possibly irreparable rupture between gamers and those who serve them. I certainly contributed to this with a post about the ending of Mass Effect 3 and the movement to have it changed or appended.


I still disagree with the goal of the movement, and I still despise its fig leaf fund drive for Child's Play, making that charity a human shield and a passive endorser of the cause's righteousness. These things may rate scorn and condescension but there is one thing that should not and should never: The highly personal and emotional investment video gamers make in what they play.

Confusing their passion for base complaining is my moral error and I apologize for that. The truth of the matter is, I do just as much complaining as any video gamer. I just have a much larger megaphone through which to yell it. I've often felt that this is a community with a chip on its shoulder, committed to proving its disenfranchisement in every relationship. Yet if I view that resentment as illegitimate, I shouldn't be fueling it.

Nor should a guy like Phil Fish, the creator of Fez who recently said "gamers are the worst fucking people." Nor should the former Mass Effect producer insulted the whole community when she told them to quit fantasizing about being producers. I'm aware the latter comment was made at Game Developers Conference, essentially a gathering of professionals. She still addressed her statement to gamers at an event covered by the press.

A video gamer's idealism may be overreaching. It should never be impugned. It is as much a manifestation of this great interactive medium as it is the catalyst for it. That sounds like a lot of marble-mouthed malarkey, when what I really mean is, we can't shit on the indispensable resource that sets this art form apart from all others, even if its tone sometimes screeches into the eardrums.

Yet if we should consider our complaints carefully, I think the constituency should, too. I don't want to say everything becomes a cry-wolf situation—Capcom's recent behavior with its downloadable content is plainly shitheaded. Ubisoft's longstanding, patronizing DRM policy is, likewise, offensive to legitimate customers.

Please, however, examine and question what is actual disrespect of your time, interest, support and patronage, and what simply disappoints your expectations. I'm not telling you to find something positive in your thoughts. But it doesn't have to be something negative, either.

Yesterday, Blizzard announced that Diablo III will be out on May 15. Reddit seems to have beaten them to the punch. By two months.

In January, Reddit poster SweenWSweens said he used a ridiculous mathematic equation to guess Diablo III's release date. By figuring out exactly what Blizzard community manager Micah "Bashiok" Whipple meant by "early," SweenWSweens guessed that the highly-anticipated action-role-playing game would be out on May 15.

Which happens to be 100% accurate.

We checked the web cache data, and the above post indeed seems to have been from January. And no, SweenWSweens won't tell you when Half-Life 3 will be out. Even the world's most complicated mathematical equations can't tell Valve Time.

Release day math [Reddit via Reddit]

It's not only smaller, younger developers who have to worry about cloning. Idea theft is on the minds of the people at Epic Games, too. Even though they make big, burly games like Gears of War and Bulletstorm, the developer still sees themselves as an indie, said Epic CEO Tim Sweeney. People could try and do what Epic does, he offered, but the studio's titles have size on their size.

At GDC 2012's Back to the Garage panel, indie developers past and present like Jordan Mechner, Tim Sweeney, John Romero, Adam Saltsman, and Markus Persson talked about the joys and hazards of making games outside a big corporation. Sweeney said that Epic's core ethos "is to make games from high-end technology." "You can do that with 3 people and 300 people" he continued. "The skills are portable. Things you learn making a AAA game can be used to make a smaller game."

As the subject turned to imitators, Sweeney declared that "we've decided to make games that a Zynga couldn't clone. Make games too big so that cloning takes longer and the opportunity window closes. Also, we try to find a special sauce at Epic for our games that others can't replicate." Then, he said, get your game to go big quickly so that you're seen as the inventor and then it's others that get branded as the copycats.

"When you have a success, it's easy to capitalize on what you already know. But at Epic, we're really good at knowing when to zig and when to zag," Sweeney noted. "We made Unreal on PC and then moved to console because that's where the sweet spot was. Now, we're making games on the iPhone because that's the platform of the moment." So there you have it. Indie studio/engine builder Epic Games' recipe for keeping their concepts their own. Try and copy if you dare.

News and notes from around the world of sports video gaming:

• Dwight Howard ended—for this year, anyway—the drama surrounding his tenure in Orlando when he told the Magic he would waive the early termination option in his contract and remain with the team through at least next season. "I'm going home to play video games," he told reporters at a news conference yesterday. Earlier this year he gave out his Xbox Live Gamertag—WarriorDH12—to GamerLive.TV and bragged about his skills in Modern Warfare 3. As for playing in video games, Howard of course is in NBA 2K and NBA Jam; he also will cameo in Tiger Woods PGA Tour 13. [GamerLive.tv]


• Another huge roster update went out today for NBA 2K12, capturing the frenzy at the league's trading deadline. It includes the Wizards-Nuggets swap of Nene and JaVale McGee; the Bucks-Warriors trade of Monta Ellis for Andrew Bogut, and the utter devastation left by all the moves the Portland Trail Blazers made yesterday. See all the changes at OS. [Operation Sports]

• FIFA 12 featured Arabic commentary and menus for the first time. EA Sports appears to be going a step further this year, releasing a version of the game for Arab fans, reports Reuters. It sounds like that means a cover specifically for the Middle East region release of the global best seller.

The man who made Nintendo into a video gaming giant is warmly regarded in Seattle, and not just because the company's American headquarters are there. He purchased the Seattle Mariners in 1992, almost certainly saving the team from moving to Florida.

But Hiroshi Yamauchi, the third president of Nintendo, has never seen his team play. There are rumors, going back as far as 1992, that he doesn't even like baseball, which he didn't exactly knock down in one of his few interviews with western press.

Distance has something to do with it; Yamauchi is believed not to have stepped foot in the United States since he acquired the Mariners. At 84 years old, his trans-Pacific traveling days are quite likely over.

But Seattle and the Oakland Athletics open the Major League Baseball season on March 28 and 29 in Tokyo. This could be the last chance for Yamauchi to see the team he "has always viewed ... as a thank you to Seattle for being so welcoming to Nintendo of America," writes the Seattle Times' Larry Stone. A Japan visit the A's and M's planned for 2003 was scuttled by concerns about the impending war in Iraq.

Yamauchi has not been completely distant from the team. Stone notes that he was present at news conferences to announce the Mariners' signings of Japanese players, one of them future Hall-of-Famer Ichiro Suzuki. Ichiro is said to visit Yamauchi every offseason.

It's worth pointing out that Major League Baseball initially opposed his bid on the Mariners, not wanting to have a club owned by someone outside North America. He was required to have fewer than 50 percent of the voting interest in the club at the time; it since increased to 55 percent.

Maybe there's a grudge involved because of that. Perhaps MLB sending Yamauchi's team to his home soil on the 20th anniversary of the deal is a gesture of reconcilliation. Officially, the team does not know if Yamauchi will attend.

Whatever the case is, it would be gracious of Yamauchi to attend one of the games of the team he saved. The Mariners, under his ownership, matured from a laughingstock expansion franchise into a contender, bringing must-watch stars such as Ken Griffey Jr., Randy Johnson and Ichiro to millions of viewers. Two extremely significant records are owned by the Mariners. And if you know a Mariners fan, you know they get choked up every time they see this, one of the greatest moments—any moment—in that city's history.

It never would have happened if Yamauchi had not thanked the city of Seattle by saving their baseball team. I'm pretty sure the team would like the chance to say thank you in person after all of these years, too.

Will Mariners majority owner Hiroshi Yamauchi finally watch his team play? [Seattle Times]

In an adorable letter posted on the Borderlands 2 website today, developer Gearbox Software addresses some of the issues that fans complained about in the PC version of the action-role-playing game's predecessor, Borderlands.

Like an abusive boyfriend, Gearbox then promises that it won't happen again.

Here's what will be included in the PC version of Borderlands 2:

• An FOV Slider
• An interface tailored specifically for the PC
• Cloud save support
• Remappable keybindings for your keyboard and mouse
• Lots of other stuff that I don't feel like copying so just read the letter.

Hello My Future Borderlands 2 PC Player [Borderlands 2]

What's 60 percent space age adventure, 20 percent cuteness, and 20 percent some sort of photo matching game? Why, it's the Week in Gaming Apps, with graphics enhanced for your brain's retina display.

We had a definite science fiction theme running with this week's Gaming Apps of the Day. Waking Mars saw us journey into the depths of the red planet; Incoboto tasked us with re-igniting an entire galaxy of stars; and Flight Control Rocket gave us hope that no matter where the future takes humanity—whatever great and wonderful things we achieve—there'll always be thankless, high-stress air traffic controller jobs.

And then we featured a match game you play with your own hipster-fied photos, which I guess is sort of futuristic if you close your eyes and picture something else entirely.

Hey, how about those sexy new badges?

If you have a suggestion for an app for the iPhone, iPad, Android or Windows Phone 7 that you'd like to see highlighted, let us know.

Is This Instagram App an InstaMatch?

I am obsessed with Instagram. I think it's the most wonderful thing. Ever. It's not, I know, but I am finding myself spending significant amounts of time on it. So when I heard there was an app that incorporated Instagram, I got all excited. More »

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Incoboto is the Best Place to Be When the Sun Goes Out

The Corporation killed the entire galaxy. One-by-one the suns flickered and died, and without light or heat, so did every living thing in the galaxy, except for one small boy. And one small sun. More »

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This Game is About Gardening On Mars. It's Way Cooler Than It Sounds

Planting a garden is an exercise in resource management. What goes where? How much room will everything take? Which plant needs how much water? It's a constantly evolving puzzle that plays out over long periods of time. Speed things up a bit, and you're starting to have the makings of a really engaging game. Now put the garden on Mars. Good! Now we're getting somewhere. More »

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Fight Soot With Cuteness in Pebble Universe

I'm a sucker for cute games. The sounds, the characters, the music, the art. But a cute game coupled with thoughtful gameplay? We have a winner, folks. More »

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Flight Control Rocket Blows Up on the Pad

Flight Control was such a simple, enjoyable, universally acclaimed mobile game, it compelled the boss-and I don't mean Totilo, I mean the boss-to write a review of it two years ago. He came back from his safari in the messy backcountry of video game criticism with a nice trophy, too. Me, however, I get to deal with the sequel, a gobbed-up, what-the-hell, coin-operated unhappy meal slid across the fast-food counter of the iTunes App Store. More »

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Writer Tom Bissell, who might be one of the most insightful critics in gaming today, published a great piece over at Grantland today about Mass Effect 3.

Here's an excerpt (though you should totally read the whole thing):

A lot, finally, has been made of the fact that the male Commander Shepard can have a homosexual relationship in Mass Effect 3. It's an undeniably welcome development that gay and straight gamers alike can push a video game's male hero outside the heteronormative perimeter. In a similar vein, I found myself oddly moved when a male member of Commander Shepard's crew mentioned his - that is, the crew member's - husband. Video-game enthusiasts are, in many ways, the most reactionary and emotionally conservative audience out there. For that reason alone BioWare should continue to give gamers the chance to meet and interact with incidentally gay characters. (This is what more meatheaded gamers call "shoving the gay agenda down our throats!!") That said, BioWare's talented storytellers desperately need to rethink their curious devotion to the video-game sex scene, gay or otherwise, which, even at its best, remains as polygonally unconvincing as digital representation gets.

In fact, could we, as gamers, maybe politely band together to convince BioWare to can the sex scenes entirely, at least until the technology exists to make a non-hilarious one? Then again, I'm a shameless hypocrite, because I spent an inordinate amount of time as Commander Shepard trolling my crew for sex. All I can say in my defense is that, when I know Liara's in the next room, it's hard not to get a hankering for blueberry, if you know what I mean.

Giving the player choices doesn't mean you have to give the player stupid choices. Over the course of the Mass Effect games, I've emotionally misled at least three members of my crew, cheated on two more, and seduced both of my female aides-de-camp. Why have I been allowed to play a game called Mass Effect: Shepard Gone Wild? I have no idea. Neither real-life nor video-game commanders should be allowed to seduce their subordinates; it's beyond blockheaded even to give the gamer the option of doing so, especially when it shatters the gritty, war-is-hell vibe the game so desperately attempts to evoke. This aspect of the Mass Effect franchise feels like lonely-gamer pandering at its worst.

It's hard to disagree. The sex scenes in BioWare's recent sci-fi role-playing game feel stilted and uncomfortable. I'm not sure why so many people seem to love them so much. Maybe there's just no better alternative?

Relationship Blues [Grantland]

At the end of the Game Developers Conference, everyone is usually exhausted. I sure was—it had been five long days of standing and walking, of typing and recording and listening, of engaging in long, heated conversations about video games. Also long, heated conversations about Buffy, which seemed to be the most popular non-game subject for the conference.

But by the end of the day Friday, I was beat. I had one more appointment—to meet with Shawn McGrath and David Kanaga to spend an hour playing Dyad. It was an intense, jarring, tripped-out, and weirdly soothing experience, and wound up being a great way to end the week. This is a game to watch, and to play when it comes out.

I've written about Dyad before on Kotaku Melodic, but that was before I'd played the game. Now that I have, I can report that it is indeed fantastic, and also that it's yet another game that aims (and succeeds) at simulating an intense drug trip. The video above gives a good breakdown of how it works—stick around after the title screen to see some gameplay.

Created by McGrath with music by Kanaga (who has also done music for the IGF-nominated Proteus), Dyad is a racing game that is as much about inertia as it is about speed. You race as an organism that can reach out and latch onto "enemies," which are orange or blue glowing orbs lining the racetrack ahead of you. Each time you latch onto one, you pull yourself along; latching onto a pair of the same color gives you a boost. In many of the levels, grazing enemies will give you the energy you need to perform a "Lance," which sends you blasting forward, propelled by how many enemies you can careen through.

Dyad is not an easy game. That's because there's no real way to just hit the accelerator and power through the level. If you want to get any kind of speed going, you'll have to be really smart about how you navigate the level, perfectly hitting enemies, timing lances, and maximizing overdrive to fly through.

I played for a long time by myself, trying to get better and examining how its central mechanics work. With a game like this, it can be really hard to tell whether it's a controlled freak-out or just a mess. Dyad regularly edges right up to that line, and that's what's so interesting about it. A fellow critic who'd played the game described it to me as a game where "You're always just on the edge of completely losing control." I like that description.

Kanaga's music is a huge part of the game, and goes against tradition in a number of important ways. Dyad's music is reactive, changing as you push your way through the level. Each enemy you hit causes a tone to sound, and the tone palate changes depending on what kind of music is playing underneath it. But it's not as simple as, say, Child of Eden, where a single, developing song plays for the entire level.

In Dyad, the music makes some extreme shifts with no warning, which contributes to a sense of visual and aural disorientation. Tempos drop and increase, and hitting the "Lance" button can cause an entirely new type of music to start playing, warping the visuals into a kaleidoscopic explosion of color. It's beautiful, and distinctly trippy.

Speaking with McGrath after playing the game, I allowed that I couldn't really talk to him about the game without talking at least a bit about drugs. Parts of Dyad seems to be directly influenced by the swirling colors and melting sensations brought on by hallucinogenic mushrooms. McGrath confirmed that yes, a particularly strong 'shrooming experience did inform/inspire part of the game, though he doesn't regularly take mushrooms these days.

I'm struck by how effectively Dyad channels the experience of a drug high without leaning on it overmuch. There is a whole culture surrounding video games and drugs that people don't talk about very much, though there are more than a few lists out there of, say, "The best games to play while stoned."

Dyad is less a game to play while high than it is a game that makes you feel high. Evan may have felt as though Datura is a trippy game, but I believe that Dyad is far more directly hallucinogenic.

But then, drug-experience simulation isn't the point of the game—any trippy aspects are secondary to its racing engine. I mentioned earlier that Dyad is very difficult, and it is—I did fine at most of the levels, but there was a point at which I couldn't quit keep up. At that point, I gave McGrath the controller and watched him play his own game—and it was remarkable.

With a sure hand and amazing focus, he blasted through a few levels, perfectly grazing every enemy, maximizing every lance. The game as I'd seen it was transformed into a cornucopia of sound, color, and motion. No question about it: Some people are going to get seriously good at Dyad, and their playthroughs of the game will be spectacular.

Dyad will be coming to the PS3 as a downloadable game at some unannounced point in the not-too-distant future. McGrath has been working on it for four years, and will be publishing it himself on the PSN. Keep an eye on this one.

Glowing Dyad soars,
racing in the mushroom cup
Dude I'm freaking out!