“(The) Chinese have invented some interesting ways to play with the in-game economy (not the real world economy). Ways that I have not observed here in two years of studying ‘World of Warcraft.’

“Chinese players are more attuned to the aesthetics of the game. At least they mention them more in interviews. They talked more about color schemes, animations, architecture, and so on more than American players.

“There seem to be fewer female players of ‘World of Warcraft’ in China. On the order of 20 percent here and 10 percent there.

“Here and in Europe and Australia/New Zealand people play with parents and even grandparents. Not in China. The older generation dislikes video games. People here play with brothers and sisters. But in China people don’t have brothers and sisters for the most part, so friend relationships are very important.

(Image by Morgan Sherwood)

(Photo by Stacina)

I'm not talking merely about tech and gaming journalists who write about sex and porn. Wired is doing its job when it analyzes the business of porn; Gizmodo is just playing when its staff leaves the CES tech conference for the AVN porn conference next door to poke fun at the dildos. Gaming journalism doesn't need to sanitize itself; gaming gets dirty and so should the writing. Plus, well, I wanna read about sex.

What needs to stop is the boy's club, in which women are only featured as sex objects. Forget being offended by it; I'm just sick of it — if I want titillation, I'll go to porn or, you know, an actual woman. Maybe I'll read Esquire, where they at least pretend to respect an actress's work before showing off her calves. See, it's not just that gaming journalism is obsessed with sexy women, it's that the obsession takes such an awkward form. The practice is found all over the industry. Some examples:

• Porn Stars Love Video Games! Popular site GameDaily interviews porn stars about whether their boyfriends can play video games, and which game characters they'd like to get with. In the interest of service journalism, each micro-interview is smaller than the photo of the porn star above it. (No male stars, natch, but then again who ever wanted to hear something from the mouth of a male porn actor?) GameDaily also wants you to read "Babe of the Week" and "The Most Outrageous Boobs in Gaming."
• Strip Halo 3: Porn stars get naked on video while playing a shoot-em-up with ugly guys.
• Shooting Range: Industry leader Electronic Gaming Monthly sent a team of girl gamers to a shooting range to test their real-life skills. Am I picky for being annoyed that they were chosen for hotness?
• Digital Lust: Now folded, Gamestar Magazine was an unapologetic tits-and-games mag. These "behind the scenes" photos from a holiday gift guide shoot looked so much like the start of a soft porn gallery, I felt surprised when I scrolled to the bottom and saw the model still had some lingerie on.
• Gaming's kinkiest costumes: "Got a fantasy? Chances are there's a game to match," promises this gallery from Games Radar. The copy is full of "then go talk to a real girl" asides, which only make it sadder that the site is so desperately reaching for the never-touched-a-girl audience.

The industry is addicted. Like a GOP presidential candidate, they're too afraid of losing the base to appeal to normal people with reasonable options. No wonder they're losing attention to mainstream coverage (who says GQ can't review video games?) and sites like Penny Arcade, a biting comic and review site in which a pre-teen girl — the niece of one of the authors — is the maturest, most capable gamer. Gawker Media's gaming site Kotaku, says editor Brian Crecente, goes out of its way to stop boy's-club coverage. Both sites have enjoyed years of rising traffic.

Sure, it's probably unhealthy to train men to treat women as sex objects. Screw that, it's unhealthy to the industry to alienate half its audience, and likely most of the other half too, particularly the part that's not living in its Mom's basement with little disposable income. We're not aching for a flash of tit from a girl made of polygons; we're not desperate to hear that our favorite girl from Bang Brothers wants to cuddle with Raiden from Mortal Kombat. We have money, we consider ourselves normal and maybe even cool, and we want to buy video games that don't suck.

Chuck Klosterman asked in 2006 why there was no Lester Bangs of video games. Writer Clive Thompson answered the cultural critic in Wired News: A. No one would hire him; B. He's already here and he writes Penny Arcade; C. The research takes too long; and D. The medium needs a new approach. I say E: The 18-year-old future Lester Bangs of video games is at some site being forced to compile "Twenty Hottest Asses of Xbox 360."

But Virtual World Productions may have a Hollywood edge. Based in LA and backed by LivePlanet, the studio that filmed HBO's Project Greenlight, VWP is wisely hedging its bets. One of its websites, Grid World News, chronicles Second Life, but the other, Azeroth World News, covers happenings in World of Warcraft, the more popular, and profitable, multiplayer online game.

"We're trying to be the uber-media agency that services virtual worlds for information and other things," LivePlanet CEO Larry Tanz told The Hollywood Reporter. "Advertising, classifieds and personals will follow the content — content is just the first foray into it."

A staff of 30 — yes, 30 — journalists is currently churning out riveting stories such as "Honor Among Thieves", a look into the misunderstood life of rogues (a character class in World of Warcraft), and "Now That's a Whopper", which recounts a Second Life fishing trip.

It appears the news we broke last week of Slamdance removing the Columbine game from their lists of finalists and why has created quite the shitstorm, for lack of a better word.

Ian Bogost reports over on Water Cooler Games growing list of reactions to the decision:

Kelee Santiago pulled Slamdance finalist and future PS3 title flOw from the competition in protest.

To hear that the game had been pulled was deeply discouraging. As a group, our opinions on the quality of the game itself range, but we can all agree on one thing: it deserved to be there.

We also agree that the act of pulling SCMRPG is one we cannot condone. But how best to protest this action? Going to the festival, at which prizes are awarded, only to criticize its organizers seemed unfair at best, and hypocritical at worst. Therefore, we have decided to withdraw flOw from the competition. We agree with Jonathan Blow:

Jonathan Blow, creator of finalist Braid, has also pulled his game from the competition.

The game lacks compassion, and I find the Artist's Statement disingenuous. But despite this, the game does have redeeming value. It does provoke important thoughts, and it does push the boundaries of what games are about. It is composed with more of an eye toward art than most games. Clearly, it belongs at the festival.

So, in protest of game's expulsion, I have dropped Braid out of the competition as well.

Raph Koster has spoken up on the subject.

Dismissing the game "on moral grounds" essentially argues that it is exploitative; yet we do not necessarily consider clearly issue-driven films or books as exploitative. Rather, the sensitivity of the subject seems to be what is pushing the needle here. Can games, which some allege caused Columbine, then comment on Columbine without being regarded as exploitative?

SCMRPG is no great shakes as a game in its own right. It doesn't even try to do something new on that front. Instead, it's incurring controversy based on artwork, content, and most importantly, the medium that it happens to be in. Were its RPG plot excised and written out as a book, would anyone raise an eyebrow? Probably not.

As has Slamdance Game Fest sponsor Greg Costikyan, of Manifesto Games. Costikyan, while continuing to support the fest, has created a permanent place for the game on Manifesto's site.

As gamers, and those who love games, our reponse to this game, and to the criticism of it, should not be to hide, or run away, or hope that it goes away. Instead it should be to say: You do not understand, nor are you attempting to understand. This is not a glamorization of the murderers, nor yet a trivialization of the tragedy; it is a work of serious artistic intent and accomplishment, based on considerable research, that in fact illuminates and reflects the horror of that day. Just as there are novels of the Holocaust, there can be a game of Columbine, and neither need trivialize a tragedy.

Andrew Stern and Michael Mateas, winners of last year's Slamdance Grand Jury Prize, have written an open letter to the festival, asking for the reinstatement of the Super Columbine Massacre RPG.

We give no judgment here about how successfully "Super Columbine Massacre RPG!" addresses its topic. However we feel it is extremely important that the game community, including high-profile festivals such as Slamdance, support such experimentation. Games, as a medium, are as fully deserving and appropriate as film and other more established media forms, to deal with such subject matter.

And how can we forget Newsweek's N'Gai Croal.

This is a recipe for the continued infantilizing of a young medium whose potential, for all of the compelling works already released, still remains largely untapped. We haven't played Super Columbine Massacre RPG, but from what we've read, it strikes us as a fairly serious and well-intentioned attempt to grapple with the shootings and suicides through an interactive medium. And while we certainly recognize that many will see SCMRPG as ghoulish, offensive and trivializing of a horrific event, we reject the premise that it is inherently so—any more than Art Spiegelman's "Maus" or Pablo Picasso's "Guernica"—and any attempts to paint Ledonne's game as inherently so should be firmly and loudly repudiated. For those of us who care about the future of videogames, this is a time to stand up and be counted.

If you have any interest in gaming besides the playing of them, you must read all of these links. Seriously. Artistic expression in video games is the most important topic that will likely be faced by developers, perhaps ever. The fact that the game that seems to be bringing this topic to a head happens to be one that many find repugnant is incidental to the bigger issue here.

To be clear: This is not about SCMRPG. This is about whether video games will forever be relegated to the position of mindless entertainment and child's play or whether gaming as an industry can make that final leap into artistry, expression and tackle topics that evoke something more than fun.

This is why I finally decided to become a games journalist. I enjoy writing reviews, but what finally pushed me to make that leap from police reporting to features writing is the chance to be covering a medium at the cusp of becoming something so much greater. Brian Crecente

Update: Jan. 9
Three more finalists have dropped out of the festival. Bringing the the number of finalists no longer in the competition to five, six if you count SCMRPG, or nearly half.

Once Upon a Time withdraws from the finals.

"We are very saddened by the news of Super Columbine Massacre RPG being pulled from the Slamdance Guerilla Gamemakers competition due to loss of financial backing.
Regardless of the merit of SCMRPG being a finalist in the SGG competition, having chosen the game and then only removing it when pressured by outside influences brings the impartiality of the competition as a whole into question. Who is truly judging these games: the Slamdance judges or their financial backers?
We unfortunately feel that we cannot be part of a competition that does not rank artistic expression and free speech as priorities and would therefore like to withdraw our entry of Once Upon A Time from the competition.
We thank you for your support of our game and wish you continued success."

Finalist Toblo withdraws from festival.

We cannot condone removing Super Columbine Massacre RPG! from the Slamdance Festival on moral grounds. Along with the developers of Braid and flOw, we are pulling our game from the Slamdance Festival. In the unlikely event that Super Columbine Massacre RPG! is re-admitted to the festival, we would be happy to participate.

Fest finalist Everyday Shooter withdraws

As you may have heard, Peter Baxter, the president of Slamdance, decided to pull Super Columbine Masscare RPG! from the competition.

I do not agree with his decision. His action is part of a the ball and chain that continuously represses the games medium from advancing beyond superficial entertainment. Because the Slamdance games competition now carries the sharp undertones of this sad repression, I am withdrawing Everyday Shooter from the competition.

Grand Text Auto Publishes Letter of Protest from Finalists

We object to this decision and strongly urge the festival organizers to reinstate the game in the festival. It is legitimate for games to take on difficult topics and to challenge conventional ideas about what video games can do. No game should be rejected for moral or other reasons after a panel of judges has found the game to be of artistic merit and worthy of inclusion in the festival. We find it very unlikely that a similar decision would have been made about a jury-selected film, and see this decision as hurting the legitimacy of games as a form of expression, exploration, and experience.

Grumpy Gamer Calls for Finalists to Put Up or Shut Up

Apparently some people in the game industry are pretty upset by this, but my question is: Why haven't the other finalist pulled out in protest?

Seems like it's for one of two reasons:

#1 - They agree the game should have been pulled.
#2 - They don't want to lose the chance of winning the award to stand up for something they believe in.

Lastly, but not leastly, our formerly very own John Brownlee breaks down the argument for both sides and asks for help writing his Wired piece on the subject. Go... help.

It's bleak just to look at those questions: perhaps I'm too cynical, but for me, it's clear that the progression there signifies the complete death of art as a medium of deep personal expression.

I need your help. I'd like you guys to help me brainstorm and bring alternate perspectives to the table. Questions and viewpoints I haven't considered. Maybe you can try to answer some of the questions and give me a better idea on what people besides me think the logical progression is. The intention is that you guys will help me think about this n a wider and more three-dimensional complex, which will hopefully make my story at Wired News richer and better thought through.

What do you guys think? Hit our comments and let us know.

• Game rating board ESA sues gaming blog Kotaku (a Valleywag brother blog) for writing about the best. gaming t-shirt. ever (pictured). [Kotaku]
• The 49ers and A's both head south into Silicon Valley. [Contra Costa Times]
• Ray Ozzie says he's stepping into big shoes by replacing Microsoft president Bill Gates. YOU DON'T SAY, RAY. [Guardian]
• Fox Interactive steals http://myspace.com/bones from the band Bones, gives it to the Fox show Bones. Thankfully, the site replaces the band's page after an outcry, realizing what a stupid, stupid idea this was. Does MySpace realize they have users? [Techdirt]
• Top dogs from blog platform company Six Apart gab for a half hour about the new version of Vox and the Web 2.0 Summit. [Six Apart]

• Ross Mayfield is a paladin
• Ross is gonna die
• Jonas Luster is addicted

CEOs play 'World of Warcraft' in their downtime [ZDNet]

Here is the ConFonz's first E3 post, live from the Wired party at 1201 5th St. Robin Williams munches on his own mouth like an old man who's lost his dentures.

So E3 has started up once again. Outside, the Army stands watch, handing out CDs of its recruitment game via robotic mine-defusing/machinegunning-but-now-armed-only-with-an-arm. Funny,
though, the armymen onhand at the show were wearing significantly more bodyarmor than their counterparts over in Iraq. (Hmmmmmm. Confonz waxesWonkette.)

After the jump, vital booth babe news.

So, the show, the first for the Confonz since 2001, has utterly solidified the notion that Sony is completely fucked. In the ass. Nintendo had to fend off people with a stick. Microsoft was its standard oblivious, so wildly flush with cash that it could care less who anyone in its booth was, save for the reps from Wal-Mart. But Sony was friendly, accomodating, positivly desperate for good press.

So, elsewhere on the floor, it's getting hard to differentiate between the really cool, the amazing, and the groundbreaking. Bioshock, Hellgate, Spore, Darkness, Alone In the Dark, Gears of War, Jesus
fucking Christ! Which one to spunk over? Tough choice!

So, the booth babes were not gone. They were toned down a bit. Why? Wal-Mart. They demanded it, and they got it.

New phrase! Proceedural mating! Thanks Will, sorry we called you out for not washing yer hands.

But, um, how exactly does his video-gaming beat include vomit? He starts today's column:

I recently caught the stomach flu. The first symptom was nausea, and the second symptom was more nausea. I've never had nausea that actually woke me up before...

And surely a tech hook is coming...

Prior to this illness, I hadn't thrown up since I spent the evening with a bottle of Bushmills and a shot glass it invited along more than a decade ago...

Nnnnope. Today's column is all about the technicolor yawn. Is Lore just giving up? Helping Wired News die quickly? Or is he so busy making bile that he can't be bothered to do his job?

Sailing the Sorry Sea of Nausea [Wired News]

And now BusinessWeek tells us that Amazon founder Jeff Bezos has an avatar in the online playground. The multi-millionaire just chipped into an $11 million funding round for Second Life, and apparently he's been casing the joint. I asked around to verify. But an e-mail to Second Life got a "sorry, no comment" response — damn those pesky user privacy issues.

Calling all virtual-reality paparazzi: Valleywag wants pics of Jeff Bezos playing Second Life. Keep an eye out for an avatar dressed as a rocketman.

A Virtual World's Real Dollars [BusinessWeek]

The business of building games was never more corporate than this year. When IBM and Versant have booths on your show floor, you know that there's big bucks to be had. And you know that it means someone's been playing grab-ass in the closet with the consultants.

Last year, GDC was in San Francisco, and so shall it be next year. This was probably the last time that the event will ever occur down in San Jose. It's a slightly sad thing to see it move on up the penninsula, but mainly it'll be a boon for the after-hours crowd, all of whom end up drunkenly slurring their words at the bar in the Fairmont Hotel. It's a sad fact that there is fuck-all to do in downtown San Jose when yer drunk and have a corporate AmEx card. Of course, in SF, the Gold Club is only a block away from the Moscone, allowing game execs and PR weenies to have stinking stripper snatch rubbed all over their filthy mugs before lunch is over.

After the jump, be careful shaking Will Wright's hand (pictured, with his other hand and his face).

No free coffee, rad on-site game from GameLabs (Throw those Virgins in the volcano, go Green!), and a ton of confused executives staring blankly at the booths of Sony, Nintendo, and Microsoft.

You see, it's a transition year, and no one has a clue who's going to win the great console wars of 2007. In fact, no one even has a clue how to program the damn things. Game developers, as a rule, don't touch the hardware. They're purely routines and AI guys. The thought of optimizing code to run faster on multi-core processors is completely foreign to them. This is why IBM is here. This is why the bearded grognards of assembly code are now being recruited back into the folds, after having been fired in 1995. This is why Trip Hawkins is now peddling cell phone games.

Unfortunately, the whole affair left the ConFonz with a sour taste in his mouth, and why there's so little actual gossip in here. The ConFonz did find out two juicy bits of gaming-god info, though. First, Steve Jackson is looking for a publisher. He's got an old 4X game he wants to publish online, and it's all written in Perl(!#^@@##&)43d)-../. Second, Will Wright doesn't wash his hands after he pees in the little kid urinal.

So, 2K Games hosted an event to celebrate Sid Meier [pictured]'s Railroad. Sid's wife and son were at the event to help celebrate the announcement, and the Marylanders enjoyed the W Hotel's hospitality thanks to the ingenuity of the ConFonz.

The ConFonz is highly offended at the purports of Valleywag posters that Nick is somehow behind this glorious prose. Far be it from the ConFonz ro masqurade the affairs of the valley as anyone else's. You see, the ConFonz is far drunker, and far more awake than Nick could ever achieve!

End result: Railroad is a blllance and asset driven game, and Sid Meirer's son is a WoW addict just like everone else. He's gonna major in CS, and learned C++ as a first language. Can you imagine!? Sid programmed the prototype of Railroads in C, and his son has learned a more advanced, object oriented language as his first! Rest assured, Sid's kid is a total nerd. He lives aross the street from the mall too. Indescribable dichotomy!

It came time to head across the street to the Khonke-hosted I-Play party at the Mars Bar.

The party was supposed to celebrate the launch of 24, the cell phone game, but it ended up being a forum for the leftovers of the Marketing conference to get drunk on Khonke's dollar.

And therein the gossip flowed. The bullet points:

nVidia spends a shitload of cash on charities. Investors, remember this as you quickly remove your dough from the company.

Future Network USA, formerly Imagine, was nowhere to be seen at the event. Not a huge defeat, since this was the first time for this event, but unsettling none-the-less. Look for Future Network to be a platinum sponsor next year if for no other reason than to piss off Ziff and the 1up gang.

EA almost bought I-Play, before Digital Bridges got ahold of them. We'll see who's laughing and who's crying in a year.

There were some new terms created for the show. One is the "paid-by-schwag" employee. This term is used to designate gamers who have been bribed with labeled goodies as an incentive to go out and post hype in forums.

Earlier: ConFonz at the Game Marketing Conference: gamers vs. little old ladies [Valleywag]

Remember, these are the same people that told you John Romero is going to make you his bitch.

The Game Marketing Conference took place behind Sega's San Francisco offices on Wednesday and Thursday. It's strange being here because a double digit percentage of the folks here have fired me (There's yer only clue!)

One highlight, however, was watching the faces on the various media sales people's faces when Doug Scott, EA's director of entertainment marketing, said that he felt 50% of EA"s marketing budget should be spent on non-traditional (read non-print/non-banner) marketing. The room chuckled a bit, then shifted uncomfortably, as the Ziff Davis and IGN people collectively shit themselves.

The highlights of the event were twofold: first, as soon as the 600 Townsend-hosted event was over at 5 PM, the little old lady's auxiliary showed up to host an art opening for the Norwegian design exhibit in the lobby. They carted in cases of 2-buck-chuck and hassled the conference attendees, demanding that they remove themselves from the premises immediately. Sean, VP of Kohnke Communications, was threatening to beat the living shit out of the old bags, but relented when it came time to head across the street to the Khonke-hosted I-Play party at the Mars Bar.

In Part II, ConFonz drops the party gossip.

Game Marketing Conference [The Game Initiative]

Sony Online Entertainment held an event at Broadway Studios in North Beach. The party was ostensibly held for the purpose of informing game editors of SOE's offerings in a setting not beset by scantily clad booth babes and shouting Xbox barkers. But in reality, the event was held within earshot of all the best strip clubs in SF, and the editors themselves were the Xbox nerds.

Sony showed off Gods and Heroes, it's newly acquired boring ass grind.... I mean... newly acquired MMORPG. They also showed a demo of the PS3 Untold Legends action RPG, which looked like shit and boring as hell.

In general, the event came off as the last desperate gasp for attention from a company that's been single-handedly made into a niche player by World of Warcraft. Too bad all these damn MMO's are the same cursed thing over and fucking over again! It's enough to make you long for the days of square colored blocks bouncing smaller colored blocks back and forth for points.