“Perhaps the video game medium is not a storytelling medium at all but an experiential medium in which storytelling possibilities are allowed to occur.”

∆ I’m sure I’ve been labeled worse things (and by subtler means), but none so seemingly apt after spending hundreds of dollars - and nearly as many hours - preparing and participating in PAX. Still, I suspect irrationality is often beautiful, or “in the eye of the beholder”, and something tells me Irrational Games had just such a dichotomy in mind when they named their company. A brainy beast like Bioshock broke barriers by being unquestionably irrational in light of what most others thought a game could be, do, or even say at the time. Irrational… but unreservedly right.

So yes, the label is perfectly apt. Until next year, PAX.

∆ Hey check out Commander Shep-terd!

∆ Mega64 Booth, Derrick was phasing in and out of dimensions all day

∆ Rage Cage

∆ Playable Demo of the Day goes to…

∆ Ubisoft Reveals More Revelations

∆ Guess when this game comes out? The future!

∆ Halo Anniversary Beach Ball

∆ Halo Anniversary: less beach ball, New Trailer!

∆ Marc Silvestri & the Digital Extremes team talk comics & games

∆ How to Fix Spacepod: Screwdriver.

∆ If only this were a picture of the line for Battlefield 3

∆ Not sure how I can “help”

∆ Re-reloaded, that is.

∆ Some game companies went smaller than others

∆ Bioshock Infinite..ly awesome

If you saw the slightly funny™ video I made not too long ago™ or read any of my subsequent gushings you’ll know I recently enjoyed Chair’s excellent XBLA entry Shadow Complex. Around that same time, I was also enjoying yet another game from that talented team on my iPhone: Infinity Blade. Using a version of Epic’s Unreal Engine, the graphics still impress me many months later, equaled only by the divine design of the world itself.

So naturally I took a bunch of pictures like a tourettey little tourist.

I know there’s more than a handful of you out there that were tired of talking about Gamification long before the word was invented, so fair warning: I’m not one of those people. Sure, it’s already been more than a year since Jesse Schell’s DICE 2010 presentation, and now we’ve had several months with Jane McGonigal’s book Reality is Broken, but I can’t shake the feeling that we still have a few things missing from the discussion. In fact, it’s been relatively recently that Heather Chaplin released her convincing counterpoint on Slate.com, and she does indeed have a firm handle on the possible problems and pitfalls of Gamification. First, a little b-roll.

Full disclosure: I’ve only just started Reality Is Broken, but I promise I don’t mean that in the way I’ve “just started” all those other books on my shelf. I mean iPad. Not my fault: reading a book is eminently more obvious at “work” than listening/watching a video (sue me). So I did catch McGonigal’s presentation at TED last month, and I’d be lying if I didn’t say I was more than just impressed with her ideas, I identified with them. I do a lot of good work at my job (when I’m not watching videos, apparently). I enjoy the profession itself. I’m thankful every day for the life it provides me and my family, but she’s right: I haven’t exactly saved the world or rescued any princesses lately.

Okay, so I haven’t recently done any of those things in games either (yay realism?), but inasmuch as McGonigal argues that we as gamers are often more “urgently optimistic”, socially constructive, “blissfully productive”, and “epically meaningful” in game worlds than we are in the real world… it’s hard to disagree. More over, I can only applaud any attempt at harnessing that energy to solve real-world problems, but is Gamification the perfect answer? Of course not, theperfect answer doesn’t exist. Is it an intriguing idea with some equally intriguing ramifications and flaws? Absolutely.

Enter Heather Chaplin (among others), who concedes that “people in the real world aren’t given enough opportunities to feel the same kind of achievement and satisfaction they do in World of Warcraft,” but counters that there are “legitimate reasons why people feel they’re achieving less,” and that masking such “boring literal truths” with an artificial “game-like layer” is not only childish but can be dangerously dissociative and fundamentally fascist. That may sound extreme, but after reading the entire article I’ll say it again: it’s hard to disagree. Still, while her concerns are certainly valid, they’re also far too familiar. I can hear my parents now: “This is kids’ stuff, why don’t you go out in the real world and do something productive with your time?” Such statements are fast falling behind gaming’s current evolutionary curve.

Prettied-up petulance? Possibly, and I’ll admit that my parents were right back then, but let’s be clear: nobody [sane] is championing 100% gamification here. I’m sure we’ve all enjoyed a marathon gaming session or two in our lifetimes, but I doubt anybody remembers thinking, “If only I could play for one more hour… FOREVER.” What is being championed is something that strikes at one of gaming’s oldest elements, an element that’s essentially at the center of this evolution: Escapism.

Still on the fence about Kinect? I was too, so I bought one to help me make up my mind. The way I see it, these are really the only four things you need to keep in mind when making your decision:

1) It works better than you think (or better than I thought, at least), and that’s to say: good enough to accomplish what it sets out to do. It’s not perfect, no, but it’s certainly the best in its class so far.

2) It’s not here to steal or replace your controller/gamepad - ever. First, it doesn’t even have the capability. Second, any software or hardware manufacturer would be stupid to make that decision anyways. Your Halos and Call of Duties (and most 360 games in general, I’d bet) will still be gamepad games, but now you can flail around whenever you’d like with some different games, too… that are purple.

3) It’s still first gen tech for now, meaning there’s not a lot and it’s not the best. Kinect Adventures is not an FPS/RPG with such an amazing pretense at depth that it makes you re-examine your life and the medium all at once - it’s a party game. It’s fun. That’s about it, but that’s also all it’s trying to be. This type of game will be around as long as the Kinect, I’m sure, but:

4) The future looks pretty promising. It’s hard to explain exactly, but it’s easy to understand when you finally get your hands on (then spastically in front of) the Kinect itself. Even with the flaws it does exhibit, I can see some pretty cool content coming before too long (heck, Dance Central’s already here).

If that just seems like a list of excuses to you, great, Kinect probably isn’t your cup of tea (until they release a game wherein you can virtually drink a cup of tea, I suppose). For the record, I wasn’t planning on getting one either - I figured maybe I’d come around by the time it had its first price drop next year, or when they started showing up used on ebay. Then I read up on the evaluations, watched some videos, and talked with some friends that owned one. Then I started to realize, deep in my soul, above all else….. that my wife told me to pick one up after work the other day.

So I bought it, it’s pretty cool.

PAX 2010 Montage Barrage

A.K.A. Duke Day, 2010.  I figured if I rushed to the Duke booth as soon as the exhibit hall doors opened that I wouldn’t have to wait in line for an hour before getting in, and I was right - I had to wait 2 hours. Luckily the booth was adorned with a number of brilliant tapestries showcasing Duke’s many abilities like boxing, mountain climbing, poking a shark’s eye out, and giving thumbs up in space.

Soon enough we were inside, though, and Randy Pitchford (CEO Gearbox) wasted no time in showing us how dedicated he is to gamemaking, and to Duke Nukem in particular.  I shook the man’s hand and moved into the next room… and played Duke Nukem Forever.  The game.  THE Duke Nukem Forever game.

It’s all there, and it’s all Duke - the weapons, the one-liners, and the womanizing.

From there I was able to catch the majority of X-Play Live, and stuck around for what was a typically awesome and often emotional Q & A session with Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins (the brains behind Penny Arcade and PAX itself). Here are 2 guys that deserve every bit of praise they get, 2 guys you should thank no matter what type of gamer you are.

At this point I had time to wait in line for one more game, and Dead Space 2 was it.

The funnest part was doing the DDR number with the necromorphs and driving the go kart all around the carnival, or at least that’s what it turned into because the game looks so good it scared my brain. The gameplay is all there with great new enemies and weapons that do everything you wish a sequel would: adhere to the spirit of the original while enhancing and building upon it at the same time. I thoroughly enjoyed it, but eventually the demo came to an end.

And that was it, PAX was done. People began to trickle slowly out of the convention center and down the street, most of them looking back to make sure it was actually over, hoping that somebody somewhere would suddenly tell them there was still one more day to go, that there would always be one more day to go.

There will be, and I’ll be there :)>

Well, at least I was able to get a quote out during this morning’s Bungie panel before my cellphone network was crippled beyond use yet again (AT&Totally Garbage™). Here’s what everybody else saw while I was strangling my phone…

…and Bungie did not disappoint - Halo: Reach has received as much thought, hard work, and polish as any other title from the franchise, and it shows.

From there I took a break from perennially perusing the panels to spend some time in the actual exhibition hall where more 30 billion dollars worth of electronics was set up in order to make me feel poor. Luckily it was all used to showcase video games like Fallout: New Vegas ∇∇∇

Assasin’s Creed: Brotherhood ∇∇∇

and Star Wars: The Force Unleashed II ∇∇∇

…then came Portal 2. Sure, waiting in line took some time but by the time it was over you had an awesome shirt that was probably too big for you and a bunch of brand new Portal 2 footage to mull over in your head for another month or so (here’s the full trailer, and some gameplay footage to boot).  Valve also let fly that the co-op campaign is separate from the main one, and that they’re each about twice as long as the original campaign from Portal 1. Bring it on!