When I was making this website I soon found that I needed "room" to add the odd comment now and then. I could have written a Blog, but I'm enough of a realist to know that I do not have the time. So this is more my corner for the occasional note.

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• How can a game be good if you've finished half in about five hours playing (even if it is dubbed a prologue)? That is my question after one session playing Gran Turismo 5 Prologue on the PS3. The last instalment of the game I played was 3 and I still like going around tracks in my finely tuned Susuki Swift (I'm really into the whole David v Goliath bit). But why can't I build and (fine)-tune my car in 5 Prologue? Because it is a Prologue? But why make a prologue if it doesn't showcase tuning in a small way, like just one car? And why can I only race cars I own when playing in two player mode, also because it is a prologue? And why do I have to keep on buying new cars? Is this consumerism gone rampart? Yes, yes the graphics and sound are great, but I do not care, I want to have fun playing. I want you to show me what I can expect from version 5, especially as the price I had to pay for this prologue is quite steep for what you get. 

• The key difference between writing for a traditional medium and writing for games is understanding the concept of agency. In most written works, the author has all the agency. This means the author controls exactly what happens. The author has complete autonomy over the outcome of every situation.

  In games, the agency is shared by the player and the author together. The player can't exceed the bounds of what has been created for him, but he can choose when, how, and in what context he will experience it.

  If you don't understand and accept this distinction, you might write great stories, but you'll write bad games.

  Wise words from a short but interesting piece by James Portnow entitled The Law of the Land of Game Writing

• Tying in with the games and violence debate, how about games as an addiction? See Neils Clark's latest piece on Gamasutra

• As the news below is on violence and video games some time ago the German WDR television aired Quarks & Co Wie viel Bildschirm verkraften unsere Kinder? (PDF). In this show they presented (new) German research on playing violent video games e.g. what it meant for your concentration and the difference between short term and long term effects:
  
  Dennoch deckt sich das Ergebnis aus unserem Test mit dem derzeitigen Forschungsstand: Kurzfristig haben gewalthaltige Spiele einen gut nachweisbaren Effekt. Eine langfristige Änderung des Charakters folgt daraus aber nicht unbedingt.

•  Press Release Link between online gaming and violence killed off

  People who play violent games online actually feel more relaxed and less angry after they have played.

  This is the finding of Miss Jane Barnett and her colleagues at Middlesex University. Their results will be presented at the British Psychological Society's Annual Conference in Dublin today, Wednesday 2 April 2008.

  The psychologists recruited 292 male and female online gamers, playing the game World of Warcraft. The players, aged between 12 and 83 years, were asked to complete a questionnaire on anger, aggression and personality and then played the game for two hours. After this time they were they were asked to complete the test again.

  The psychologists found overall the gamers were more likely to feel calm or tired after playing – but there were differences depending on sex, age and personality.

  Miss Barnett said: "There were actually higher levels of relaxation before and after playing the game as opposed to experiencing anger but this did very much depend on personality type.

  "This will help us to develop a emotion and gaming questionnaire to help distinguish the type of gamer who is likely to transfer their online aggression into everyday life."

• The women I know who play online avoid anything that would identify them as female -- including voice communication -- in order to avoid the unwanted, and frequently negative, attention.
  
  I took this quote from a text by Bill Fulton on online game behaviour just because it is sad to see that apparently the equation he uses in the full length discussion Normal Person + Anonymity + Audience = Total *%@^! does hold true (as you see I already take one of the suggested remedies to heart). As I also felt the need to hide my gender twenty years ago and if pressed for an answer would say that I will probably still do this today if involved in an online game, the only question I can ask is why? Why has nothing changed in twenty years, although (online) player demographics have changed? Did Bill get it wrong? Are there differences in what is being played? Will the Wii change things with their forthcoming online game possibilities?

• Anyone interested in game based movies should read Justin Mark's Opinion: Why Gamers Need To Open Up To Hollywood Not that I agree with what he says (if you analyse adventure games like I do, you probably couldn't) it is interesting to see what people think.

• March 4 2008, a sad day because Gary Gigax has died. Without him we would not have had Dungeons and Dragons and without D&D no adventure games. What more can I say....

• For an interesting comment on the Wii and hardcore games and gamers see On Japan, The Wii, No More Heroes & Super Smash Bros at the Gamasutra website

• Game Design Essentials: 20 Mysterious Games the latest instalment in Gamasutra's Game Design essentials has been published. Previous instalments were: 20 Unusual Control Schemes, 20 Open World Games, and 20 Difficult Games.

• Another interesting article on future game play (and story) is The Watery Pachinko Machine of Doom: Project Horseshoe's Thoughts On Story also at the Gamasutra website

• David Braben of elite fame (elite Wikipedia entry) talks about next gen narrative they are trying to achieve in the new game the outsider in a Gamasutra interview. Glad to see that some game developers still dare to think outside the box and hopefully they will achieve a game that is as immersive as elite was in its days (although I'm basically an avid adventure game player elite was one of the games that I played a lot in my Beep days. I did not find it capitalist at all but revelled in the fact that I  drove the 'story' (most of it in my head) forward by trading and risking life and limp when not strictly keeping on the right side of the law (I suppose I felt I had a bit of Han Solo in me). And those of you who have played elite as well know how tricky docking was when you couldn't yet afford the automatic docking option. Just being able to get that was worth a few risks.

• If your looking for a neat summing up of the game year 2007 have a look at Gamasutra's Best Of 2007 - by Simon Carless, Brandon Boyer, Leigh Alexander and Christian Nutt.

• On December 27 Gamasutra published an interview with Yair Landau President of Sony Pictures Digital Entertainment entitled Hollywood & Games: Sony Pictures' Landau Talks Convergence. If you read the man's opinions on the influence off Hollywood (past and present) on games' development you can clearly see that he has little notion of computer games. FYI Mr. Landau, 1st person games existed long before doom as did 1st person 'camera' angles in games. And if 300 the movie is a game experience why did the person next to me fall asleep? 

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