On a forest construction site focused on logging, workers slave away at their tasks. At least two of them, anyway. The rest wander around in a daze, pacing back and forth along predetermined paths. It becomes immediately apparent that these unfortunate people are victim to some sort of mind control. At the very least, their corneas are damaged severely - whether by torture or self-infliction it’s not certain - for their field of vision is restricted to a mere 25 degree angle.

Amid this roboticism, clearly out of place, skulks a psychopath. Aware of the workers’ handicap, he moves among them unnoticed. It’s not enough for him to remain unseen, though - he tiptoes in an exaggerated manner as if to amuse an audience, but his only audience is himself. His attire is similarly hyperbolic: flowing, gilded robes adorned with fur and low-hanging tassles, ruffles poking out of the long sleeves, tights and ballet slippers, and a gaudy golden medallion hanging from his neck. Is he perhaps an escapee from a mental institution? The answer to that shall remain unknown.

Wtihout a doubt, his most unsettling physical feature is his oversized head, perched atop his ruffly collar, with a face frozen in a toothy grin suggestive of all manner of wicked deeds, a golden crown fused to the top of his skull. What malady could cause such a hideous deformity? Can this be his real head? Read on.

His true intentions are unclear. His modus operandi is to approach silently then startle a worker, after which he taunts the shocked person by performing patently ridiculous dance steps. Each dance of ritual mockery culminates in an obsequious bow, with which he presents his victim with a plate of food. Incredulously, it seems, he carries a limitless store of foodstuffs under his robes.

It is apparent as well that he possesses a sort of psychic ability, for he selects his victim by sensing emanating pangs of hunger. These poor, blank-minded souls must suffer greatly, as it seems that their diet consists solely of the questionable bits of cuisine doled out by this horribly disturbed individual. One can only wonder at the poisons these edible trinkets must contain.

Finally, the terrifying truth becomes clear: This sociopathic man is none other than YOU. At will, you are able to see through the eyeholes within this fabricated head you are wearing, trapped within this plastic prison with only your hot breath for company.

You may be thinking, “Is this Edgar Allen Poe? Clive Barker? Stephen King?” In fact, no. This, my friends, is the first level of a video game entitled “Sneak King“, (see him in action, if you dare) available to any of you willing to poison your body with saturated fats and sugar and pay - yes, pay! - the sum of $3.99 (not to mention the financial outlay of an Xbox or Xbox 360 system). It is a deal with the devil, and I pity those of you who choose to take it.

By the way, “Sneak King” looks considerably better on Xbox 360. Have fun in hell.

Collins College be damned.

If you’ve been unemployed in the last few years you’ve probably stared bleary-eyed at those Collins College ads playing ad nauseum on daytime TV, promising to make you a game designer. Forget about years and years of programming, design and writing experience, here’s the fast track! They even give you free game demos!

But wait - as easy as it is to become a top-notch game designer, did you know that you can make money playing them? Yes, it’s a little known fact that you can become a Professional Gamer!

Sadly, there are no formal schools to train you, but if you’re like Tsquared, a “self-taught” professional, you can actually teach yourself how to play games real super wicked good and make butt-loads of the green stuff! But to really kick ass at Halo 2, you’ll need to consider dropping out of high school to train for at least 12 hours a day. It’s not for everyone, but if
you’re dedicated and ambitious and you don’t mind a few callouses, you might just climb to the top of the button-mashing heap.

But playing games is not all fun and games. As you’ll find out, it’s a real timesuck, leaving little time for a rewarding social life. Any Major League Gaming player will tell you that traveling around the country on the Pro Circuit is a grueling chore. Luckily, the fame that accompanies Pro Gaming is sure to garner lots of sweet attention from the gamer ladies, making all those overnight stays in strange cities worth the sacrifice.

In fact, MLG is making its way to TV, just like any professional sport, so you’ll have no shortage of honeys at your beck and call. And don’t let those nay-sayers tell you that gaming isn’t a real sport - after a few years on the controller you’ll be able to lift any one of those stupid “active” athletes with only your thumb.

The amazing thing - and it truly is unbelievable - is that the best players can earn six figure sums in prize money. That’s enough to make even the most diehard nine-to-fiver seriously consider a change in profession. But to really make it as a pro, it takes a zeal for fragging that’s extremely rare. Just because you can circle-strafe like a demon, don’t think you’re a shoe-in as a fragmeister - you need real blood-lust that extends to multiple slaughter-grounds, whether futuristic or Gothic, and virtuoso skills with deadly weaponry, from BFGs to rocket launchers and even the odd sword or two.

The most important thing, above all else, is the refusal to consider anything else but the present moment - a proactive myopia, if you will. You must quell any sort of looking ahead, any postulating on where your pro gaming career might lead you, say, 15 years down the line. Only if you concentrate on the video screen at hand can you achieve the virtual success you desire.

Oh, and invest that prize money wisely.

I’m at a loss to understand all of this pre-ordering crap. Haven’t you all got something better to do?

So, you’re going to rush home, take it out of the box and bathe in the aroma of fresh plastic, lovingly unwrapping each controller and cord, safe in the knowledge that you’re one of 100,000 others in the world to behold the shiny black soon-to-be-scratched-up-and-slathered-with-finger-prints PS3 which you proudly pre-ordered at the cost of two desktop PCs, to be a free beta tester for this unfinished brick full of electronics which, by the way, already needs updated firmware before it ships.

What is it? Bragging rights? Boasting to friends and co-workers like a middle-aged man and his corvette? A rabid PlayStation devotee, perhaps, who must have it before anyone, maniacally spilling the contents of his piggy bank on the Toys “R” Us checkout counter? I put it to you: Would you still be so devoted were the price $799? $899? $1,999? Where would it stop? What could finally convince you sit down and shut up?

Remember what happened to Veruca Salt in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory? Let that be an omen to you early adopters out there. I do not want to see any bitching from any of you on any PlayStation forums. I don’t care whether the Blu-ray stops spinning, the power supply melts the case, or one of many firmware update gunks up the whole thing - I swear to Science I will not be reading it. Mark my word!

And don’t get me started on the Wii. Thanks to the damned PS3 we’ve got “Pre-order Mania!” Nevermind how many units are being shipped, you hear the words “Wii pre-order” and your salivary glands squirt. This obsession with being “first” is sadly endemic in this country - it’s not like there’s nothing else to do except pace madly back and forth in front of a toy store like Eric Cartman, who also faced a horrible fate thanks to his crazed quest to obtain the Wii. Heed well his plight.

You think it’s a case of sour grapes? Hardly. I want to play these things as much as the next guy - well, not as much as you, obviously. It’s just that this rampant consumerism sickens me and needs to be stopped before you’re all pre-ordering the newest microwave oven from Kenmore. Where does it end, people?

For me, this rant ends here. I can’t remember the hundreds of other pithy points I wanted to make, lucky you. I hope you’re satisfied that all of us normal gamers will have to wait just a bit longer for … nirvana, did you say? Get over it.

Ever had an opinion about something and argued vehemently for your point of view, only to find out you’re wrong? It’s a sobering experience. The tough part is, how do you react in that situation? If you’re well-adjusted and sure of yourself you might shrug it off and eat humble pie with a little humor. No one’s perfect, right? On the other hand, if you’re insecure and egocentric you might debate more aggressively, make excuses and still insist you’re right - despite evidence to the contrary - and it usually ends up being a much more embarrassing situation than if you simply owned up.

I know of no better example of this than Jack Thompson. He has maintained from the start that Rockstar’s game “Bully“, which takes place at an exaggeratedly corrupt boarding school, is a “Columbine simulator“. And this, mind you, is before he ever set eyes on the game, much less played it.

Well, I’m playing Bully right now, and I can tell you - without vehement argument - that Mr. Thompson has no idea what he’s talking about. There’s not a single gun in the game, and certainly no groups of outcast students conspiring to murder classmates and commit suicide. Sure, there are firecrackers, stinkbombs and itching powder, but none of these “weapons” causes anything close to homicide. The worst that can happen is that a kid falls to the ground writhing in pain, and so what? Kids get miffed and punch each other at schools all over the world, without first being corrupted by a video game.

Bully’s “Bullworth Academy” is crawling with ne’er-do-well tough kids who are constantly trying to pick fights. How many times have you wanted to haul off and clock a stupid bullying jock in the jaw? But in fact Bully discourages such fighting. Should you get into a brawl within eyeshot of one of the many patrolling administrators, he’ll chase you down, grab you by the ear and drag you to the principal’s office.

Unlike Rockstar’s much-maligned “Grand Theft Auto” series, Bully offers no incentives for unsavory behavior. You’re punished for skipping class, violating curfew and even for teasing the girls - you might even be forced to mow the lawn. And there aren’t any drugs on campus, either. It’s a clever, benign lampoon of educational institutions. It should elicit fond (and not so fond) memories for anyone who’s been through grade school and high school - and I’m guessing that’s most of us. True, not everyone’s a gamer - most of all not Jack Thompson - and the game’s content won’t be to everyone’s taste. That’s to be expected with almost any game.

Now that Thompson has played the game, he’s in the tough position of having to back up his contention that Bully should be banned from sale due to its terrible, horrifyingly violent content. It’s sad that he has such a bone to pick with Rockstar - Thompson has feuded with the company about “Grand Theft Auto”, to no avail - otherwise I’m certain that his litigious frenzy would never have seen the light of day. He’s just one of those guys who refuses to admit that he’s wrong, thinking he’s saving face when truthfully he’s just making an ass out of himself.

I, for one, am sick of hearing about Jack’s tirade (which may earn him the prestigious honor of contempt of court). I’m going back to Bully. If I steal some flowers from the garden in front of the girl’s dorm I can offer them as a gift to a classmate and get me a smooch.

Remember the dynamic holographic advertisements that follow Tom Cruise around in Minority Report - are those really the future of advertising? Minority Report is set in the year 2054, a time when targeted advertising finds you via retinal scans or something of the sort - a bit invasive but not hard to imagine given the lengths that today’s advertisers will go to in order to pimp their latest products.

Well, apparently in the 2142 consumer market, retro will be all the rage. In fact it seems that the only products available are highly anachronistic, to the tune of 136 years old, give or take a year. And the target demographic is soldiers at war, on the Battlefield. At least that’s the turd that Electronic Arts and IGA Worldwide want us to swallow by integrating dynamic in-game ads into the futuristic new game Battlefield 2142.

But the believability aspect is less important than the retinal scan– er, IP address identification method they’ll be using. You’re assigned a local user number associated with your IP, and every time you log in, the time of day is captured to better target your most likely demographic (males 18 to 34 play from 6pm to 9pm on weekdays, in case you were wondering) among other things like which ads you look at, for how long and from what angle. They claim not to care who you are, I mean, it’s only an IP, right? Not your social security number. And so begins the slippery slope …

Lots of gamers are understandably pissed off about it. Particularly fans of the Battlefield series, many of whom are claiming they’ll refuse to buy the game. This fiasco is definitely a step toward the futuristic advertising seen in Minority Report, and like it or not, we’re just going to have to deal with it, ’cause it ain’t goin’ away. Not long from now it’ll be barcode tattoos we’re bitching about.

“Immersion” has been a buzz word in the gaming industry for years. Everyone’s trying to make their game an “immersive” experience that’s supposed to make you forget you’re playing a game, suck you in so completely that the rest of the world falls away. When a game fails to achieve such immersion there has to be a scapegoat, and usually the blame falls on cut scenes. Cut scenes - little pre-rendered movies that typically move the story forward or dispense information - get a bad rap because they interrupt gameplay, jarring the player out of the world of the game.

But what sort of immersion is destroyed by them? How immersed can you be, staring at a two-dimensional image a couple of feet from a monitor, tapping at a keyboard and a plastic bar of soap?

It’s ironic that movies are generally maligned as elements in games, since really, the closest thing we have to true immersion today is movies. Seeing a great movie on a big screen - a passive experience - is far more emotionally engaging than playing a game, an interactive experience that by nature ought to be more involving than a film. The fact that it isn’t is a measure of the infancy of gaming.

But there’s no doubt that gaming will one day surpass movies in immersion. It’s inevitable. There are plenty of movies that illustrate ways that such a transition could happen, actually (kind of ironic, in a way). Some are less plausible than others, but the idea of full immersion in an imaginary world has been around for some time.

Natalie Wood died while making one of the first of these - not due to any fault of the film, though it was a pretty awful movie. Remember Brainstorm? With those huge reel-to-reel shiny rainbow tapes that could record the actual experiences of people? That way before the advent of the digital age, so of course a six-inch wide rainbow tape was the only way to record such massive amounts of data. Powerful technology, and of course the government jumps in to steal it - but not before Louise Fletcher dies playing back a recording of someone who perished using the machine. Yikes.

Recording people’s thoughts is also the theme of Strange Days, an interesting movie that most people have never seen. Ralph Fiennes deals in black market recordings of experiences like robberies and sexual escapades, recorded with a portable Mini-Disc player attached to a hair net, which could be worn under a hat for covert recording. It’s a bleak concept of immersion; in fact in the opening scene a man recording a botched robbery attempt ends up falling to his death, resulting in a very popular black-market disc.

Not all conceptions of total immersion are so dark. In Until the End of the World - another movie that nobody’s seen - William Hurt’s father has invented a device that can record experiences with a sole purpose: to enable is wife, now blind, to see her family and grandchildren before she dies. It’s a touching use of the technology, although the story does spiral into people using the technology to record and watch their dreams and becoming addicted to it. Nothing’s ever easy, is it?

Closer to the gaming aspect, there’s The Thirteenth Floor, a campy murder mystery in which characters jack into a huge mainframe (a la the Matrix) that simluates perfectly a 1937 Los Angeles. More a technological experiment than a game. But probably the closest amalgam to what the future of immersive gaming could look like is put forth in eXistenZ, in which a game designer uploads her “game” into these big blobs or neural tissue, and the “player” interfaces with it by means of a fleshy, umbilical-type cord that runs from a “bio-port” at the base of the spine to a jack in the blob. The game designer then jacks herself in and becomes a sort of “dungeon master”, guiding the experience. Granted, the whole idea of a spinal bio-port is unlikely, but the very end of the movie makes the idea a little more plausible (I don’t want to spoil it in case you might watch the film).

Clearly, we’ve got a long way to go till we reach the state of full immersion, but I do think it will happen - some kind of neural interface that provides a completely realistic experience. In the meantime, get your PS3, your Xbox 360, fire it up on a 60-inch hi-def monitor with a fantastic surround sound system, and hope for the best.

In high school we used to pile into a local movie theatre for “Midnight Madness”, i.e. 12:00am showings of George Romero’s original Dawn of the Dead. Now, that was a really scary (R-rated, woo!) movie for teenagers back then - it generated in me a fondly-remembered feeling of uneasy dread (remember the intestine feast?) that I haven’t felt since. That is, before Dead Rising. Dead Rising promised to bring back those teenage fears by actually throwing me into that horrible mall full of zombies, incredibly outnumbered but determined to survive. I couldn’t wait to check it out.

So I finally fire it up on the Xbox 360 and, after suffering through numerous painfully dull cutscenes I’m finally on the mall floor, crushing zombie skulls with a baseball bat and I’m happy. I’m happy that I can pick up almost anything to use as a weapon - a bench, a potted plant, a guitar, a golf club. I like that I can make this guy I’m controlling go into a lingerie store, don a camisole and come out swinging. This is some fun stuff.

Sadly, the spare, manageable amount of undead beasts at the beginning quickly gives way to hordes of them. It becomes a button-mashing fest - I’m worried that the X and A keys on the 360 controller will just give up the ghost any minute now. Instead of feeling some fun, eerie dread, I’m on the edge of my seat pounding on the controller, riddled with anxiety not because of some good plain zombie-killin’ fun, but because the game’s save points are too freakin’ far apart, and I don’t want to do this crap all over again.

I’m not so happy now. Most missions have you rescuing scads of refugees holed up in stores and leading them to “safety.” This is not fun. Trying to cut a path through 50 zombies to make way for these babbling idiots is an infuriating task - these folks are helpless and they die a lot, and I’m sick of it. Die, I say. Die.

I could go on, but … yes, I will go on. Wonky camera movement accounts for 50% of my dying horribly; sometimes losing even one second of reaction time can mean doom. Another regular contributor to my demise is the wacky B button, which you use to open doors and pick things up, but only if you’re facing the proper direction - and finding the proper angle is often an excercise in frustration. And did you know that you can regain health by drinking a gallon of coffee creamer?

Not that I hate the game. No, I’m determined to wrest some enjoyment out of this thing. I can’t let my teenage zombie dreams die like so much brain spatter on the wall. I’m holding on thanks to one saving grace: If you save the game after you die, you retain all of your accumulated experience when you start again from scratch, so the game is ostensibly easier next time around. I know it’s not much, but old dreams die hard, baby. At least for another week or so.

PS3 comes out on 11/17/06, a solid two days before Wii comes out on 11/19/06. That should give Sony a good head start in eclipsing the sales of Nintendo’s Wii, eh? Yeah, uh-huh.

Seems Sony is hell-bent on losing money this year. It’s not enough that they’re losing beaucoup d’argent just getting PS3 out the door - they’re squandering a whopping $30 million to put 15,000 PS3 kiosks in retail venues, in a clear bid to induce starry-eyed reactions leading to more open wallets. “Once the consumers get their hands on a PS3 and understand what’s under the hood, I think price will not be a factor in the decision-making process.” says Sony’s delusional COO Jack Tretton.

Well, DFC Intelligence analyst David Cole thinks that price will indeed be a factor, and with Xbox 360 price cuts likely, I’m inclined to believe him. In “Win, Place or Show: Does it Really Matter?” Cole says the “he console hardware battle is a marathon, not a sprint, and will be played out over the next three years.” There’s almost no doubt that it’ll be a “Wii60” world well into 2007, at least until Sony sees fit to cut the price of its Blu-ray behemoth.

Cole goes on to predict that to earn its place in the console war Sony must “[keep] the PlayStation 2 market active, thus slowing the upgrade cycle, and becoming more price aggressive by late 2007.”

With the Wii on the scene, who’s going to want to settle for PS2? And really, who cares? The important thing to remember is that as a result of all this technical braggadocio, we’ll end up with a very rich selection of games on multiple platforms. Competition is irrelevant, since eventually a high percentage of gamers will own two or maybe all three platforms, anyway. And way down the line, physical console boxes will be unnecessary.

So everybody should just shut up and play a game.

I rarely get excited about new games. The last one I was hyped about was Oblivion and since then, nada. But then there were two.

I stumbled across a preview movie of an upcoming game for the Nintendo Wii called Trauma Center: Second Opinion that blew my fragile little mind. I mean, you knew it was coming - a surgery simulator for the living room - but who knew it’d be so soon? The video shows how the Wii remote can be used to excise a tumor, stitch up wounds and apply bandages. Okay, so it’s not very realistic, but you gotta admit that this is a pretty way for gaming to stretch the boundaries of what can be called a video game. Seriously. Can’t wait to get it.

Next, Bioshock. Saw this video today - a walkthrough of many features and characters in the game - and I’m even more titillated than before, given my predilection for Irrational’s games.

Imo, the original System Shock by Looking Glass, and System Shock 2 by (Looking Glass offshoot) Irrational Games are two of the best PC games ever. Both, btw, are non-3D-accelerated, proving that next-gen graphics do not necessarily a good game make (I’m talking to you, Condemned: Criminal Origins).

It’s obvious to see then why Bioshock from Irrational is another title that has me slack-jawed, months in advance. Bioshock takes the open-ended action/RPG style of the System Shock series and injects it with what looks to be some terrific AI and fantastic graphics. Judging from the video I found today, Bioshock looks like it has what I love most about the System Shocks: non-linear gameplay that requires intelligence and creative thinking more than quick reflexes.

That’s it. It’s an event when my lid is flipped, so I thought I oughta share.

I’m here to tell you that this game is HUGE. Two and a half gigabytes, people. But don’t let that stop you from downloading it. In fact, Solid State Networks built us a custom download manager for America’s Army with their truly amazing implementation of the BitTorrent protocol, which makes the download scream - so you really have no excuse. And come on, it’s a full game - a top-of-the-line first-person shooter with killer graphics, multiplayer and up-to-date realism in weapons and vehicles. If you’re a shooter fan and you haven’t tried it … tsk, tsk.

We’re so impressed with Solid State’s technology that we hope to integrate it into PlayWhat for all of our downloads sometime soon. I’ll keep you posted on that.