Historically, the Netherlands is not known for game development. The reason why I packed my bags for foreign climes (Germany) in 1991 was that there were no serious game development companies in Holland at the time.
But by now, things have changed.
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Last Saturday I went to have lunch with a friend on the terrace of a (literally) small cafe here in Vienna. Because of a nearby wedding, there were a lot of people around and the place was full. At some point two German tourists joined us at our table. After about half an hour or so, one of them asked where I was from, and then what my name was. And then it turned out he was a tester at Blue Byte back in the mid-nineties, when I worked there.
There is no deeper significance, except for general thoughts on time, and how it flies, and the world, and how small it is.
The saying goes that in the US, you can show someone cutting off a breast, but you can’t show someone caressing one. I have seen several cases where the artwork for European games had to be made more war-like for distribution in the US. I also know of one very interesting case of sex, or something approaching sex, needing to be removed for distribution in the US. Sadly, I don’t think I can publish the details here.
However, this anecdote of a nipple being cut (in the sense of censorship), combined with the amount of hours I have spent in the last 9 months working on versions of GTA: Vice City for the Xbox with less violence than the US version, has made me decide that I want to try my best to not censor myself, within the boundaries of my sphere of influence and of what fits the project. I would be proud if the next game that comes out with my name in the credits will need to have parts censored for the US market that can stay in in Europe.
David Cronenberg, one of my heroes, once said something along the lines of that you shouldn’t censor yourself, because someone will do it for you anyway (the way he said it made more sense). So why not do what fits the vision of the game, what needs to be done for the game to be coherent and consistent, and see how far it can be taken? It may run into opposition from the people you work with, it may not be feasible given the constraints of production, but it’s important to have a balance of forces, and to make decisions in the right way, at the right time, for the right reasons.
Ask me in a year or so how things are going.
What with professional gaming growing bigger every day, it’s hardly surprising that equipment manufacturers are following.
For instance, are you using the right mouse pad? Or the right mouse skates? (I hadn’t even heard of those things until a week ago.)
It’s a good thing that there are mouse pads for everyone.
I just looked at the website for Gunner Palace, an unfinished documentary about US soldiers stationed in Iraq. Mike Tucker, the filmmaker, spent several months with units in Baghdad. He describes the making of the documentary on the website:
The purpose of my visit was to embed myself with a unit for as long as they would have me. Surprisingly, or perhaps not, owing to the fact that I was briefly in the military and come from a military family, I found a unit that embraced my presence. The unit, 2/3 Field Artillery aka the “Gunner” Battalion was based in Uday Hussein’s Azimiya Palace-sitting in the middle of Adhamiya, the most volatile area in Baghdad.
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This had become their movie, not mine-each person with their own reference. For the older officers and NCOs it was MASH. They brought aloha shirts for poolside BBQs. For others it was Platoon and Full Metal Jacket. You could see it in the way they rode in their HUMVEES. One foot hanging out the door-helicopters with wheels. For the teenagers, it was Jackass Goes to War. This was a war unlike any other. They had Playstations, souped-up gaming laptops and Internet access-Paris Hilton and Amazon on demand. The emails and the Sat phones helped them stay in touch with family, but all the technology in the world couldn’t bring them home.
There’s a lot of postmodern surrealism there. It’s a powerful read.
And it makes me wonder: games are becoming more and more a part of global, everyday culture - something I occasionally try to document here. But is global, everyday culture becoming more and more part of games? Sure, we’re expanding beyond the hyper-hobbyist obsessions of the past, but is it enough? And are we expanding in enough ways?
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When I met roBin at the GDC this year, one of the quirky things she did was steal one of the bizarre Microsoft stand-up thingies from the lounge bar (the ones that look like the absurdly shaped and dressed woman from the Noir XNA demo) and claim she would use it as an award for particularly bad cases of sexist depiction of women in games at E3 (”the boobie awards”).
Well, she’s posted her pictures. And fine pictures they are. The Microsoft object is nowhere in sight, though.
Speaking of sexist depiction of women in games, what’s with the Playboy Mansion vibe in this screenshot of Sims 2?
Society is still working the kinks out of the integration of video game culture and mainstream culture, and I’m not talking about Ray Davies.
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The Pratimoksha, the Buddhist monastic vows, have been revised, and now have something to say about video games.
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I changed the look of the site a bit. The most obvious change is the color scheme. Feedback is welcome. (Graphical help as well, although I like these colors ;)
Oh yeah, if the site looks sorta kinda like it did before: hit refresh, your browser may be caching the stylesheets or something.
People who regularly read this blog, or should I say, people who regularly drop by to see if I’ve updated this blog, will have noticed my greatly reduced posting frequency of late. This is the first post in June. In May, I have posted five times, twice only to reassure my dwindling audience that I am not dead.
Well, there was a reason for that: I was too stressed, with the bad kind of stress.
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