Fake Looking World, But With Actual Death

After reading this article in Slate, I felt an awful chill run though my body.

A brief summary: Raytheon, a military contractor, believed the current technology utilized in unmanned aerial vehicles like the Predator drone needed improvement. The machines were cumbersome to control, and pilots can only see what the UAV's camera can see.

Raytheon hired game developers to create a "Universal Control System," which debuted in Britain last week. From the Will Saletan piece:

The most important upgrade is visual. Multiple wide-screen monitors wrap around the pilot, producing a 120-degree field of vision. They integrate actual video from the drone with an interactive digital replica of the surrounding buildings and terrain. By digitizing the picture, UCS can lay information over it, displaying your available weapons and the location of nearby troops.

In other words, the Universal Control System creates a something that looks alarming similar to a videogame on the fly using real world data. It's like Tom Clancy Air War HAWX, but with real bombs and real death.

Look, it's one thing for the Army to distribute America's Army as a recruitment tool. If you're gullible enough to join the armed services because a couple really kickass Capture the Flag multiplayer sessions made you realize how fun and easy war can be, don't let me stop you. We need brave soldiers like that as far away from me as possible.

Making real war more like videogames, though? Modern combat is already top heavy with depersonalizing technological innovations, but at least someone has to look though a real television monitor at real objects before inputing the commands necessary to obliterate them. A videogame interface is exponentially abstracted from that abstraction; the reason "it's only a game," has been used to defend all sorts of morally repugnant behavior present in the medium is that it really is only is a game. It's not real and it can't hurt you physically or turn you into a murderous psychopath. There are consequences to gaming, both positive and negative, but until now they've been banal negative consequences -- 31 year old virgins with fourteen level 70 WOW characters, dudes flunking out of college because Xenosaga came out and needed to be played to completion finals week (true story: happened to a dorm-mate of mine), that kind of thing.

Of course, this being a mainstream media piece, the dangers of digital entertainment are exploited; Saletan makes it sound like the next generation of American soldiers, weaned on Playstion, are so disengaged from reality that murdering someone via this Universal Control System, to our brave men and women in armed services, will feel just like unlocking an Xbox achievement. Well, he doesn't say that. He compares the experience to setting high scores in arcades -- unaware that high scores and arcades have been dead for at least 8 years now, in the US.

However, this fact remains: war should not be a game. It should not look like a game or reward your achievements like a game. Taking a human life is serious business and it should be treated as such. It'd be nice if our political leaders knew this; perhaps funding to abuse the possibilities of the gaming medium will dry up when the era of the Military-Industrial Complex finally comes to an end.

Not every military application of videogaming is a grotesque misappropriation of technology, however. Have a look at a recent New Yorker article by Sue Halpern on a new PTSD treatment that incorporates a modified version of Full Spectrum Warrior. Here's a video.

MULTIPOINTS

Some thoughts:

OBLIGATORY HARDCORE GAMER POST E3 Wii COMPLAINT
*I am personally offended that UbiSoft, Activision, and other publishers have chosen to start "boutique" labels catering to a booming new demographic of gamers: stupid people. Already, this demographic has a politically correct title ("casual gamers"), a proclivity for game boxes with family-friendly pastel colors everywhere, and enough copies of Carnival Games to drown like fifteen kitties. And have you ever tried to drown a fluffy, cute little kitty with hundreds of flexible plastic discs? It's hard.

The Wii has not performed as it should have, that is to say, poorly. The system should have at best sold moderately well, mostly to the Nintendo fanboys, who'll buy anything Hudson designs so long as "Nintendo," is slapped prominently on the side of the plastic.

There were potential benefits to this "new-gen" arrangement: Nintendo had an opportunity to become the place developers, slaving away under the auspices of genocidal tyrant companies like EA's and Activision, could stretch their creativity,. While development costs continue to grow at an alarming rate for the HD systems, ensuring a steady stream of Bald Space Marine shooters and sports games to keep the corporate coffers filled, the cost of doing an experimental little thing on Nintendo's strange white box promised to cost next to nothing. And that WiiMote looked so elegant, in stark contrast to the increasingly ridiculous Xbox & Playstation harness-shaped contraptions -- perhaps those financial and input limitations were just the thing to spark some innovative ideas, eh?

*PFFFFFFFFFFFFFFFPHT*

As consolation, PSN and the Xbox Live Arcade have gamely stepped it up, providing the kinds of experiences I assumed the Wii would deliver.

The Wii, which should be overflowing with unrealized, epoch-making masterpieces 18 months into it's life-cycle, is today the home of... Ninjabread Man.

And the companies I assumed would throw their creative-types a little freedom to tinker around with gameplay mechanics, narrative presentation, waggle control, and the rest? They secured as many multi-year deals with Hanna Montana as their lawyers let them.

Outside of MadWorld, can you name one high profile Wii game developed by someone living outside of Kyoto?

I PLAY SOME HALO 3 CO-OP AND DON'T HATE IT
*I finally get why Halo is such a monster seller, and it only took me 7 years to understand: game's just dialed in. So far, it is the only console FPS I understand how to control -- the slow, smooth nature of the combat and the tuned analog stick sensitivity are as compatible as peanut butter & chocolate.

Other things I discovered:
*There are a lot of lasers and energy balls and other such nonsense. In a sci-fi shooter, this is par for course. However, Bungie is the only developer that understands that spectral highlighting and particle effects work most effectively when employed with subtlety. Unlike, say, the Metroid Prime series, firing a gun does not fill the screen with light bloom. The brilliance of underselling the flashy graphical effects is that, for once, you can actually see what you're shooting at.

*The shooter genre consists of the same 30 seconds of gameplay repeated over and over again: Move forward - see enemy - shoot enemy - duck behind something - kill enemy - move forward. Bungie gets this, and makes sure those 30 seconds are a lot of fun.

*I can't imagine playing this game solo. Co-op is what made the game fun.



I BEAT METAL GEAR SOLID 4 ONLY TO DISCOVER I LIKED IT LESS THAN METAL GEAR SOLID 3


*I might have more to say about this game later, but the most striking observation I have is as follows: Kojima needs to hire a goddamn editor.

COLUMN: 'Jumping Really, Really High': There's Only One Way to Go: Up!

['Jumping Really, Really High' is a semi-annual column by professional jumping enthusiast The Dude From the Legend of Kage - pronounced "KAH-GAY" - the protagonist in Taito's seminal arcade and NES title Legend of Kage. In this installment, Dude From Kage comments on the recent innovations in super huge jumping on display at E3 and dispenses some advice for newcomers to the genre.]

The humble jump is a most basic action to perform in a videogame. For many players of games, older ones in particular, jumping is the action performed more often than any other, if we were to add every single jump ever attempted together. That is to say, you've jumped over more things than you have shot with guns, ducked under, punched, hit with sword, and so on in your gaming career.

There is a sensible reason for this. In 2D space, which I have spent my entire career occupying, the jump is the most elegant solution to many design problems creators and players face. Although you in the 3D space may not spend your days jumping constantly to avoid obstacles, you have a major ability unavailable to me - lateral movement. When confronted with a pit in real life, you can just step around it or find an alternate path to your destination. Ninjas and wizards are more difficult to circumvent, but if you attack the problem with patience and dedication, there is nothing those fiends can do to you. I envy this.

What works in real life does not always translate well to your 3D games, of course. The potential for getting lost is a real worry in 3D, and the confusing wireframe maps and tiresome need to control the camera must make finding destinations difficult! I am lucky insofar as my destination is always hundreds of feet to my left or thousands of feet above that river in the second stage. Those ninjas must have taken my gal in one of those two directions; there's no other place for me to go.

In addition, your 3D games are dauntingly complicated. Your playstation or Xbox controller has 8-16 buttons (depending on how the D-pad is utilized) and two analog sticks. Many contemporary games require you to use all of these buttons to do anything neat. Two buttons for my throwing star and sword attacks and a working d-pad to jump 90 feet into the air -- that was all The Legend of Kage needed to be fun. Okay, it could have used tighter controls. Any level design wouldn't have hurt. Otherwise, though -- perfect.

However, videogames are in three dimensions today, with obvious and awesome exceptions like The Legend of Kage 2 - coming to America soon on your DS! This shift briefly put a damper on the jump, because in realistic 3D space, one in which objects appear to have depth and weight, things could look very silly and cheap if no laws of physics get obeyed.

As the main hero in the Legend of Kage, however, the humble jump was merely a starting point. After all, I could uncontrollably leap like 90 feet into the air, throwing ninja stars in 8 directions, limbs akimbo. Indeed, my jumping was truly a marvelous thing to behold.

I am ashamed to admit that I grew cocky in the past 15 years, certain that my record for "most ridiculous jump height" was safe forever. Until 2007, my closest competition was Mighty Bomb Jack, but his crippling addiction to eating things he found on the floor of a castle shattered his hops, his health, and his dreams.

However, in the wake of Crackdown's massive success, a whole slew of 3D superhero games is 'acoming this way: Prototype; Infamous; Spiderman Friend or Foe; Mirror's Edge (sorta) and I'm sure a lot of other dumb games I haven't heard of yet -- games with big jumps.

As an expert in the field of jumping, I have some advice for the developers of these types of games:

• IMPRECISE CONTROL TO ENHANCE VERISIMILITUDE - So you know when you jump off, like, a tree branch forty feet up in the air in The Legend of Kage you have absolutely no way to gauge your landing spot? Definitely keep that mechanic in your 3D games. That's what makes it cool.
  
• DESIGN LARGE, ARBITRARY ENVIRONMENTS TO TRAVERSE - Don't worry if the layouts don't make any sense -- force players to move in unintuitive ways. They'll love you for it!
  
• WORTHLESS SWORDS - What kind of jumping game would empower the player with something like a useful melee attack? A jumping game with no balls, that's what.
  
• EPIC CINEMAS - The Legend of Kage was one of the first Nintendo games to open with a cinema. In it, my girlfriend or mother or sister or whatever gets kidnapped by an evil blue ninja. There's no dialog. There doesn't need to be. Remember: whoever plays your games is going to want motivation and production values.
  
• PUT SOME AWESOME KABUKI WIZARDS SOMEWHERE - Those things were awesome.

Listen to my advice and you're game will be remembered 23 years later. It may not be remembered fondly, but it'll be remembered.

I'm really drunk.

I found this HILARIOUS.