Check Out This Awesome Supercut of Video Games In Film

An oldie but I good I found while trawling youtube the other day, Slacktory has compiled a slick, entertaining 20 minute super-cut of memroable depictions of video games in movies:



Here's a list of the movies that appear: WarGames, Nightmares ("The Bishop Of Battle"), Shaun Of The Dead, The Beach, Tron, Joysticks, Night Of The Comet, Hollywood Hot Tub, The Avengers, Rancho Deluxe, The King Of Kong, Boyz N The Hood, Grosse Pointe Blank, Parenthood, Brainscan ,Terminator 2: Judgement Day, Fast Times At Ridgemont High, Freddy's Dead: The Final Nightmare, The Wizard, Wreck-It Ralph, The Last Starfighter, The Thing, The Hurt Locker, Adventureland, Cloak & Dagger, Airplane!, Snakes On A Plane, Toy Story, The Wrestler, Bloodsport, Jackie Chan's Street Fighter (City Hunter), Surf Ninjas, Ferris Bueller's Day Off, High School U.S.A., Midnight Madness, Back To The Future 2, Ghostbusters 2, 40 Year Old Virgin, Mallrats, Paul Blart: Mall Cop, Scott Pilgrim Vs. The World, Lost In Translation, The Karate Kid (2010), The FP, Superbad, Reign Over Me, The Wackness ,Swingers, Robocop 2, Wasabi, Juice, Inside Man, Crank 2, Dawn Of The Dead (1978), Superman III, D.A.R.Y.L., Encino Man, Jaws, Monster House, The Princess Bride, Rookie Of The Year, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, Stay Alive, Soylent Green, Eddie Macon's Run, Jekyll & Hyde... Together Again, and Scanners 2.

Game Developers, Armchair Designers and Game Critiques

Image courtesy The Muppet Holding Company

If you haven't added the insightful blog "Ask A Game Developer" to you bookmarks, feed list or blogroll, you really should. The blog is run by an unnamed game developer who both answers reader questions about game development, and occasionally write essays on different aspects of being a game dev. One of the more interesting discussion threads that emerged was the role that game reviews and YouTube reviews played in game development. As it turns out? Not very much.

"As a whole, however, the developers don’t really pay attention to that sort of thing. We’re too busy working on the game itself to really pay too much attention to the gaming media outside of cursory attention just to keep abreast of current events in the industry. A handful of people might enjoy watching the youtubers or other video makers (I think Zero Punctuation is fairly popular at my office) who post let’s-plays or reviews or opinions on games, but that’s more of the exception than the norm."

Well then, according to this game developer, who does care? The marketing team.

"...they absolutely care about the gaming media, youtubers, and anyone else who creates content related to the (possible) promotion of games. In these situations, however, what they care about is the metrics. How many of the readers/viewers are in the target demographic? What is the general attitude toward the developer and publisher by the audience? And, most importantly, if we spend part of our marketing budget to hire this person/group/etc. to promote our product, what sort of returns will we get? "

The blog author delves further into this when they discuss what they call "armchair designers" in the post "Getting Up From The Armchair":

"So here’s the thing about armchair designers. They tend to lack the context to make choices like how much time, effort, and/or money it will cost to get something done. After all, they’ve never had to deal with a budget or a production schedule or requirements before, so they aren’t necessarily aware they exist or how they work. They don’t know how long a cinematic scene will take to create, because they never had to wait for the motion capture and audio recording, or set up the positioning and timing, or make sure they stayed within the word budget, or had to create it without using any additional resources because the animation department was tasked up the wazoo already. Because the armchair designer lacks this crucial context, he lacks the necessary skills to determine whether something is easy or hard to do."

What do you think? I'm torn. I do believe that baseless, uninformed critique doesn't help anyone-- it's just posturing and pontificating on the critic's part and useless noise. However, just because someone doesn't have a background in game development doesn't mean that critiques that come from someone without a game development background are useless. Games, after all, are meant to be played. And some game studios have tried to deflect legitimate criticism with bogus technical explanations (google "assassin's creed" and "women are too hard to animate" for example), and making a game dev background a requirement for decent critique is a bit of unnecessary gate-keeping to excludes those that have already been marginalized in gaming spaces. In fact, setting it up as a dichotomy is a false choice, in my view. People can create AND critique, and many would argue that criticism is an important part of the artistic process in and of itself. While I think there's an effective way and an ineffective way to critique, I also think that creation doesn't exist in a vacuum and artists and creators will never learn, develop, or improve from an echo chamber.

What say you, readers?

The Status Is Not Quo: Being A Geeky Woman Online & What Men Need To Do

It's a bitter irony that for the many self-identified male geeks, nerds, gamers (both of the video and tabletop kind), comic books fans, sci-fi enthusiasts &etc that talk about growing up feeling unwelcome or ostracized in wider society, many women wanting to contribute to, or participate in, those same communities end up feeling that same isolation, hostility and othering just for being a woman online. Whether it's having their "credentials" challenged as being nothing more than a "fake geek girl" or being made to question their own legitimacy at an even just because they are attending an event with their significant other.

Online platforms like Twitter and Youtube have enabled women to work to curate and create spaces on their own terms. Women have flocked to these services to create their own networks of support, activism, and discussion as well as reclaim online space to talk about shared interests, media fandom, geek culture, video games and more from a feminist perspective. However, as Samantha Allen points out, for all the resources and community the Internet has offered, it has made it...

"...much easier for men to manipulate, harass, abuse, stalk, and, yes, physically harm women.This past weekend, I was on a panel with some members of Nostalgia Chick, a set of veteran media critics who often include feminist perspectives in their videos. They told me that the Internet, in many ways, has become a less hospitable place for them to do their work over the years. 

And I believe it. Between 4Chan, Men’s Rights Activist groups, theReddit Red Pill community, pick-up artist (PUA) groups, and anti-PUA groups like the one that Elliot Rodger clung to so dearly, the Internet has allowed men to band together more efficiently than ever before to threaten and antagonize women. Every woman with an online presence has a story to share about unwanted contact, sexual harassment, and predatory behavior."

Anita Sarkeesian, the writer and producer of the Feminist Frequency web video series, started the "Tropes vs. Women In Video Games" series that looks at video game tropes and culture through a feminist lens, has been the target of years of harassment, and recently shared a small sampling of the harassing emails she gets on a regular basis:

I get so many emails like this I could publish a coffee table book full of them.

It’s especially amusing that this misogyny laced email is unironically signed “See you soon m’lady. *tips fedora*”

Sadly, this is a widespread problem for women creators on YouTube, and was addressed at this year's VidCon, the world's largest conference for online video content creators. As Rae Votta outlines in "What It's Really Like For Women On Youtube":

In March, abuses of power by men in the YouTube space over their younger, female fans came to light after several women spoke out on Tumblr and other platforms about their experiences, causing community-wide outrage and task forces like YouCoalition, which was formed to “combat sexual abuse, emotional manipulation and other forms of violence in the YouTube community,” according to the website. Saturday’s Women on YouTube panel broached this still-raw topic, emphasizing the opinion that, while the start of the conversation about abuse had a lot of flaws, the important thing is that the community doesn't treat the situation like it’s finished, and still gives the issue the attention that it deserves.

Rojas, who was one of the women who spoke out against inappropriate behavior, chimed in, “We've shown a lot of people that they won’t get away with it.”
“We are not a community that welcomes abusers,” emphasized Lex Croucher. “The most important thing is to encourage people affected by this to come forward and [to be] supportive of those who do come forward.”

Lots of people try to frame harassment and abuse online as "just the Internet", but the emotional toll and physical danger is important, and a very real threat, and carry very real consequences. Recently, Samanta Allen was harassed off Twitter after she was buried under an avalanche of harassing tweets when she talked about how she liked the staff of Giant Bomb but was disappointed that for all the site's talk of valuing diversity, the site's first public hires in years were another two white men. Women's hurt and fear for safety and the emotional toll for being harassed online have real, chilling impact on discourse.

This is unacceptable. And the burden of speaking out shouldn't continually fall to the women being harassed. So what can we do? Guys, we have to loudly speak out against this behavior. We have to support women in our creative and media spaces. We need to let other men know that this behavior is not okay, and we need to make it socially unacceptable. We need to listen to women's experiences-- really listen, and not just wait for our chance to say "not all men". We need to realize that online harassment isn't something that just happens-- it's a choice that is made, it is a crime that is done.

As Andy Kouri says in "Fake Geek Guys: A Message to Men About Sexual Harassment":

It is wholly and rightfully and crucially up to men in this society and especially in this subculture to speak out and watch out. To end the cycle of bullying, harassment and violence. To recognize the grotesque irony of degrading women over matters of heroic fictions whose lessons about fairness and decency we’ve supposedly been studying since we were just little boys, and to start putting those ideas into practice as grown-ass men. 

Readers, what say you? Sound off in the comments below.

Why BattleNet 2.0 Is Ruining Starcraft 2 Explained-- WITH KITTENS!

Hands Free 3D, or: How to Control Second Life In Your First Life

Second Life investor Mitch Kapor has a new project in his lab: creating hands-free, 3D navigation for Second Life using a 3D camera that tracks your body geometry, allowing you to fly around in-world in much the same way you'd ride a Segway: by leaning back and forth. Why? From his site:

For the moment, our objective is to explore the possibilities for these new types of devices. We believe that these cameras will eventually make interacting with Virtual Worlds as comfortable as using a webcam. This will ultimately broaden the appeal of Virtual Worlds by allowing new ways of online expression. It may also attract people who find the current gaming interface too hard to handle.

You can see a short video of the concept in action here:

All YouTube, All The Time!

Hope everyone had a festive holiday. Here's some geeky youtubery related to the season:

First off, this video short was animated in the space of about 6 months-- two guys, adobe photoshop and adobe premiere and after effects. The premise: 3 LARPer nerds end up interrupting a nativity scene. Hilarity ensues.



They also animated two youtube responses:





Heh, of course, technically, I think if you're a paladin to Tyranus, you CAN be Lawful Evil;. But then again, I didn't see the lawful evil paladin use any class abilities. ;)

Here's a video for all the gadget dorks and Wii hackers: How you can take a Wii remote, a Wii sensor bar, and your laptop to create a Virtual Reality display! Seriously! The display properly reacts to head and body movement as if it were a real window creating a realistic illusion of depth and space: