Posts Tagged ‘video games’

Letter to Nickelodean, Prevent Children from Playing Adult Games

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood is a national coalition of health care professionals, educators, advocacy groups, parents, and individuals who care about children. They had members vote on the worst toy of 2010 (already?) for children. They voted that the popular Flash gaming portal, AddictingGames.com is the worst toy for children. This seems to be because Nickelodean and all of their affiliate websites links to AddictingGames.com.

I’ve played some of the games on AddictingGames.com and it’s a mixed bag of trash and gold. They don’t seem to discriminate which kinds of games are accessible through their website.

This is a problem, because Nickelodean is a company devoted to entertaining children, and yet AddictingGames.com is in the business of entertaining anyone. By having Nickelodean link to AddictingGames.com, there is no way to ensure that children do not play violent or sexualized and otherwise inappropriate games. There is no way currently to filter out the adult games if the visitor came from a children focused website.

Steve Youngwood, Executive Vice President, Digital, Nickelodeon Kids and Family Group is being targeted (rightfully so) by the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood to remove AddictingGames.com from their links page of games for children.

The only issue I had with this, was the original letter they wrote for people to sign and send to Mr. Youngwood, which I have copied below.

OLD

Dear Mr. Youngwood,

I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com.  AddictingGames.com features violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children.  I am shocked that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Perry the Sneak.  Linking to games like these from websites for young children is one reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.

I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children.

End of letter.

The problem I have with it is that it sort of distorts the truth. It implies that AddictingGames.com only has violent and sexualized games, but in fact, it has a wide variety, some of which are fine for children, such as Bloons.

I reworded the letter to say the following, which I think conveys more truth and offers a solution for all parties involved.

NEW

Dear Mr. Youngwood,

I am writing to express my outrage that Nickelodeon links to AddictingGames.com on Neopets.com, Nick.com and NickJr.com.  (note: I forgot to edit the “outrage”, because that is too strong a word to represent my view.)

AddictingGames.com features many games, some are fine for children, while others have violent and sexualized content that is completely inappropriate for children.  I am surprised that Nickelodeon would direct kids to a website where they can play games like Bloody Day, which boasts “back alley butchering has never been so fun,” or play the role of a leering peeping Tom in Naughty Park.  For this reason parents have selected AddictingGames.com as the worst toy of the year.

I urge you to immediately remove any and all links to AddictingGames.com from Nick.com, NickJr.com, and any other Nickelodeon websites for children. Something should be done to ensure that future links from Nickelodean websites only go to gaming websites that have child safe content. Or websites that have a wide range of content only display age appropriate content if the visitor arrives from a Nickelodean website.

Sincerely,

-Reid Kimball

I kind of rushed in that solution towards the end there, but the idea is that if someone is on a Nickelodean website and they click on a link to go to any outside gaming website, like AddictingGames.com, they are directed to a special section of the website that only features games for children.

I realize that there are ways to get around that, any kid could re-type the URL to get full access to AddictingGames.com. Another idea is that parents of children could register a “parental” account that will email them a list of games that are being played, at what times and for how long. This way, they might be able to discover that at 3:30pm, just after school, but while they were at work, their child went to AddictingGames.com and played an inappropriate game.

What do you think? Something ought to be done I think, because there is no ESRB for online games and in years to come, more and more games will be accessible online.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Education, Health, Social Issue Games, Videogame Industry | No Comments »

Chinese Proverb on games

Monday, May 24th, 2010

“Tell me and I’ll forget.

Show me and I may remember.

Involve me and I will understand.”

A Chinese proverb that I think speaks to the potential power of social issue games.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Arts, Social Issue Games | No Comments »

45 Minutes of Assassin’s Creed 2

Monday, May 17th, 2010

I just played about 45 minutes of Assassin’s Creed 2 and found it to be a shockingly poor production.

Subtitling

Being hard of hearing, subtitles and preferably full closed captioning are very important to me. Right off the bat I knew something wasn’t right when the opening cinematic is not even subtitled, despite my having turned on the subtitle option from the main menu. Unfortunately, this is kind of common in video games, but it’s even more disappointing and surprising this time because Ubisoft has publicly pledged to subtitle ALL their games in house. This initiative was announced well before Assassin’s Creed 2 was released.

Consider me unimpressed and very disappointed. My trust in Ubisoft making their games for the hard of hearing and deaf is non-existent right now. Only way I will play another of their games is if someone else, preferably the fine folks at DeafGamers.com can confirm an Ubisoft is properly subtitled.

The other faults of the game are numerous.

Who, Where, Why, When and What the Fuck is Going On Here?

Having not played the first Assassin’s Creed, I was thoroughly confused with the beginning and was not a fan of that feeling. I could not connect with the main character, Desmond, who was also confused, but had more knowledge about the world and events than I did. Let Heavy Rain be a great recent example of situating the player in the world and introducing who all the characters are without putting the player under duress.

Quality

The production quality in the graphics, animation and art style was really lacking and at times jarringly poor. The way Desmond would turn his upper body stiffly, waist to head along with arms, to face the woman snapped me right out of the game. The home base where I jacked into the chair was really uninspired. Looked like some hipster’s NY loft rather than an underground operation doing… whatever it was they were doing. What was it?

UI Made Me Ask Questions More Than Answer Them

I spent the first mission mashing buttons without ever really feeling like I knew what I was doing and why. First, the game asks if I want to accept the missions, but, I can only choose to accept them. Why even bother asking me? It tried to explain certain combat moves to me, but 1) the text was extremely small on my standard def TV. BTW: Why the fuck won’t game developers make UI and text look proper on SD TVs? It really fucking pisses me off. The subtitle text is also ridiculously small. At least it had a tinted black background. 2) there were so many enemies on screen that when I tried to look at the UI to learn how to different moves, an AI enemy would attack me and I have to go back to attacking.

Combat

While attacking, I got absolutely no kinetic feeling of intensity or flow. It was lackluster. Transitioning from enemy to enemy to chain attacks was slow and clunky looking. The same animation would repeat over and over. I would punch someone in front of me, and see someone behind me was attacking and would attempt to turn to punch them, but the response was sluggish. I was often hit in the back of the head before my character would turn. Not fun.

First Free Running Race Mission

I don’t think I need to talk about this. It is universally reviled as a horrible mission for very good reason. Right after that I had to climb another building. One side of it is unclimbable so I would push my stick to the left to climb to the other side, but every time I did that my character would jump for unknown reasons and fall to its death.

Fight the Good Fight

A friend on twitter replied to my comments on the game, “Aaah! Don’t give up! One of the best game’s of the year.” Unfortunately, the first 45 minutes tell me it’s definitely not worth my time and there’s absolutely no reason why I should continue to give it a shot. That’s what the first 45 minutes are for.

I know the guys and gals that work on the game put a lot of effort into it, but this reeks of rushed development under very tight deadlines with a lot of overtime without proper rest. It screams of, “Fuck it, just ship it.” All of these problems are things developers can see early on in development and they need to fight for them to get fixed.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Game Design, Videogame Industry | No Comments »

Watch Out for Illegal Internships

Monday, April 5th, 2010

It’s a dream shared by many students, from elementary to graduate level. To work in the video games industry is a grueling goal many spend years pursuing. In their quest to land employment at a video game company, many college and recent college graduates are hoping internships offer a chance to put their foot in the door and to eventually bust it wide open for an invitation to be fully employed.

However, because of competition, the weak global economy and not knowing the law, employers may be illegally using internships to not pay for work that is benefiting the company. The New York Times(1) reported on April 2nd, 2010 that this trend has been accelerating in recent years and that there is a crackdown, particularly in California and Oregon to put a stop to this.

In November, 2009 The Employment Tribunals in the UK ruled that an intern, Nicola Vette was due back-pay for her work on a film with London Dreams Motion Pictures Ltd(2). The ruling sets a precedent that “workers engaged on an expenses-only basis are entitled to payment at least in line with the national minimum wage, in addition to payment for the holiday they accrue.”

Dana John, a senior at N.Y.U., had this to say about her unpaid internship, “If you want to be in the music industry that’s the way it works. If you want to get your foot in the door somehow, this is the easiest way to do it. You suck it up.”

That sounds exactly like the kind of thing people say about the video games industry. That you do whatever you can get in. I hear the phrase “suck it up” often during discussions about the games industry’s frequent exploitative unpaid overtime.

An important point from the New York Times article is that even if the company offers college credit, it doesn’t free companies from paying for the intern’s work, especially when it benefits the company.

Unfortunately, with how competitive the video games industry is, I believe this illegal practice of unpaid internships may be common, especially in the smaller, lesser known development studios. I’ve already contacted one developer in the US to let them know their unpaid internship may be illegal. A quick search of internships from Activision, EA and Ubisoft found that on some Activision internships, particularly at Raven were listed as being paid. Some others had no mention either way. At EA, it appears all internships are paid. Information on pay for Ubisoft internships could not be found.

Even though you may be willing sacrifice a lot in order to get a job in the games industry, you need to stick up for your rights and make it clear that if your work is going to benefit the company in anyway, you have a right to be paid fairly.

Sources:

(1)http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/03/business/03intern.html?hp
(2)http://www.bectu.org.uk/news/548
(3)http://wdr.doleta.gov/directives/attach/TEGL/TEGL12-09acc.pdf (Page 8 is especially relevant)

Also posted at my Gamasutra blog…

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Current Events, Videogame Industry | 3 Comments »

What is Avatar Really a Rip-Off Of?

Thursday, February 11th, 2010

When I first heard about Avatar I was pleasantly surprised because I was working on prototyping a video game of the exact same concept. Greedy corporations with no compassion for nature or people destroy the environment and kill indigenous people to extract resources from land they occupy.

But my inspiration wasn’t Avatar, nor was it FernGully, or Dances with Wolves, or Pocahontas or any other movie one cares to compare Avatar to. My inspiration for the environmentally and socially conscious video game was real life. It was the many actual real events that I have read about or watched short videos on.

It always upset me when people couldn’t talk about anything besides making comparisons to other films because they were completely missing the point. Avatar isn’t a rip-off of FernGully or Princess Mononoke; it’s a rip-off of what is happening right now all over the world in the United States, the Amazon jungles, coasts of Somalia and the remote regions of India. Mega corporations based in the US and UK are mining for minerals and resources, just like the fictional RDA mining corporation in Avatar. And just like the fictional RDA, they are destroying the environment and harming, if not killing, the people who live in it.

I wish that Avatar wasn’t so escapist and that people after watching it could make the connection that what happens in the movie is reality and that it needs to stop, sooner than later.

With the greed of corporations driving the pollution of the planet, bit by bit, we are slowly killing ourselves. The rivers become polluted and we who drink from it or swim in it, contract diseases, which happened with me. But that is a story for another post.

In the meantime, educate your thinking with these links below.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Arts, Current Events, Social Issue Games | 1 Comment »

Solutions for Terrorism

Monday, January 4th, 2010

Soap Opera for Social Change is an episode of PBS’s NOW about a Kenyan based soap television show that is attempting to “re-humanize” Keynan’s who are in different tribes. In recent years tribes have attacked and killed each other over political differences. The show tries to inspire Kenyan’s not to look at each other as being from different tribes, but to look everyone as still being on the same team. To look at each other as a team of people who despite not being from the same tribe, are at least from the same country, Kenya.

I found the episode inspiring because it uses a popular media format for social good. My chosen medium is video games and my passion is to use it for social good. Several comments from the actors and producers of the show really struck me. One of them was “re-humanizing” people who may be different in some way. The other was that people often resort to violence because they feel they are out of other options, that violence is their only solution.

When 9/11 happened, I was gun-ho blood thirsty for some vengeance and retribution. As the years passed I read more about war and terrorism and came to the conclusion that the US was going about it all wrong. That one can never stop terrorist violence by trying to kill the terrorist before they kill us. It only fuels the fire of hate that lead towards their participating in terrorism to begin with.

The people who are drawn to terrorism are no different from anyone else, but they have suffered greatly and believe they have no other options left than to commit an act of terrorism. The “global war on terrorism” is into its ninth year and in my eyes it’s only spreading. First it was Afghanistan, then Iraq, then Somalia and now it sounds like we’ll be focusing on Yemen for some time. Oh, and then there’s Pakistan, how could I forget? That’s five countries in 9 years where we have launched counter-terrorist operations, usually in the form of drone attacks that kill innocents. There is no slowing if the US continues this behavior and our vulnerability to a terrorist attack is more likely. The war is making us less safe.

Most terrorists are well educated and they must be to go to terrorist training camps. You think they pick up wooden clubs and beat each other like mindless brutes? No, they area in fast paced classes learning calculus and trigonometry and chemistry and dozens upon dozens of weapons names, stats and functionality. They’re smart and their anger is often justified.

The whole point of using military is to scare the enemy into quitting. But with most terrorists, they are fearless and actually welcome death to become a martyr. We can’t win with violence when the enemy welcomes it. We have to listen and by listening, we’ll be able to give them better solutions than resorting to terrorism. One way to stop the expansion of the “global war on terror” is to “re-humanize” the terrorists. We must understand where their hate comes from and it’s not because of our freedoms.

© 2010, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Current Events, Social Issue Games | 3 Comments »

Article on Closed Captioning for Games

Sunday, November 16th, 2008

Quick update, Robert Ashley interviewed me a couple weeks ago for an article he wrote in The Escapist about closed captioning for video games called The Silent Majority. I hope we aren’t so silent anymore!

© 2008, Reid Bryant Kimball. All rights reserved.

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Posted in Game Accessibility | No Comments »