Looks like gamers’ best friend Jack Thompson may get disbarred. Really. A post on GamePolitics.com tells us that he’s facing an ethics trial in Florida concerning his professional conduct in court cases against the video game industry. Hopefully this will be the second-to-last post in which I’ll have to mention him.

We knew that Jackie boy was a moron, but who could have predicted that he’s actually only 9 years old? The proof is in the latest volley of pointless insults Thompson is slinging at Take-Two over Manhunt 2 getting an “M” rating (instead of “AO”) - the transcripts of which I have blatantly stolen from GamePolitics.com for your reading pleasure. As GamePolitics points out, these are just excerpts of the entire conversation, but I’ve seen more than I ever wanted, anyway.
——————–

From: Jack Thompson

Sent: Monday, August 27, 2007 4:55 PM

Subject: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

Dear Mr. Zelnick and Mr. Feder:

Congratulations on receiving a “Mature” rating for Manhunt 2. You’ll live to regret it (trust me), so enjoy it while you can. [ed. - a nefarious villain, that Jack.]

I want to bring to your attention the fact that at www.rockstargames.com anyone of any age can order Manhunt 2 and receive it, with no age verification whatsoever. Asking a 14-year-old if he’s 17 is not age verification, now is it?

You also know that the use of a bank card as an age verifier is a violation of all bank card agreements, right? [ed. - O RLY?]

Govern yourselves accordingly, if you can. [ed. - Take THAT, poo-poo heads.]

Regards, Jack Thompson

———————————-

From: Gena Feist

To: Jack Thompson

Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 2:47 PM

Subject: FW: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

Mr. Thompson,Your statements regarding our practices are false, as you know or should have known.

The Take Two website verifies age in two ways. First, consumers who purchase M or RP rated games certify that they are at least 17 years of age. Numerous websites use the same method for verifying age in connection with sales of movies and games. Second, we verify age through the use of a credit card number in connection with a transaction. Such transaction based verification is acceptable to both credit card companies and the FTC (see, e.g. http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/coppa.shtm).

We demand that you cease making these false statements about our online sales practices. Your dissemination of knowingly false statements for the purpose of adversely affecting Take-Two’s business is actionable and we reserve all of our rights under the settlement agreement and state and federal law.

Not only are your statements clearly false, but they were made in an email publicly disseminated to both the FTC and the press. Please be assured that I am happy to answer any questions you have concerning our practices in a private communications. It is for this very reason that our settlement agreement designates a legal contact for you at Take Two.

If you continue to make false statements to an audience of press and public officials, however, we will have no choice but to take action against you.

Sincerely,
Gena

———————————–

From: Jack Thompson

To: Gena Feist (T2 NY)

Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 3:39 PM

Subject: Re: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

As you should be aware, credit cards cannot be used to verify the age of buyers. Kids have credit cards, and they use parents’ credit cards. You have then got to be kidding me.

Take-Two is welcome to use age verification software that is available for on-line alcohol, firearm and other purchases of adult material. Stop lying. [ed. - … Yeah, and gimme back my Mickey Mantle baseball card!]

Thanks

Jack Thompson, Attorney

———————————–

From: “Gena Feist (T2 NY)”
To: “Jack Thompson”
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 5:30 PM
Subject: RE: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

Jack, give it a break. [ed. - Really!] I am happy to answer your questions and correct any misapprehensions that you have but I will not engage in this type of discussion with you. I am not a liar, I didn’t threaten you, and I wont get roped into this type of dialogue. Don’t bother writing back because I will not answer any further communications along these lines.

————————————

From: Jack Thompson
To: Gena Feist
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 5:28 PM
Subject: Re: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

Surely you are not taking the position that I am not allowed to communicate with the government about Take-Two’s actions, are you? If you are, then please know that that position renders the agreement unenforceable as a matter of public policy, since the law is settled that no agreement that restricts a citizen’s petition rights to the government is enforceable.

Are you seriously suggesting that an agreement that does not restrict me in that fashion does restrict me? Becasue [sic] if you are, then I have a new civil rights claim agains [sic] Take-Two. [ed. - I double-dog dare ya!]

Jack Thompson

———————————–

From: Gena Feist
To: “Jack Thompson”
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 5:20 PM
Subject: Re: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

Jack,

I appreciate that you directed this message to me alone. In regards to your comments below, I understand that you disagree with the use of a credit card transaction as age verification but it is accepted by the FTC and the retail industry as verification of age.

You are on notice that we use two industry and government accepted forms of age verification. Please do not repeat your false claims publicly or make claims that I/the company are lying about this matter.

We entered into the settlement agreement because we did not want to engage in unnecessary litigation with you, but I assure you that we will enforce the terms of the agreement if necessary and that any suit will include a claim for our legal fees under paragraph 11.

Sincerely,
Gena

———————————-

From: “Jack Thompson”
To: “Gena Feist (T2 NY)”
Sent: Tuesday, August 28, 2007 6:17 PM
Subject: Re: Letter to Take-Two’s Strauss Zelnick, Ben Feder Re Manhunt 2

What is wrong with you? You threaten me with enforcement of the agreement, and I ask you how I have violated it. Are you nuts? [ed. - Psychologists call this behavior “projecting.”]

Jack Thompson, Attorney

———————————-

[ed. - Sigh.]

Whether or not you care (and you should), Bioshock, the new FPS/RPG from Irrational Games, is the game to play this year. (Download the demo here.)

No discussion of Bioshock would be complete without mentioning the game’s progenitors, namely, System Shock (1994) and its sequel, System Shock 2 (1999), two of the greatest games of all time. To understand why, it’s helpful to compare the design and gameplay of all three.

The original System Shock was put out by Looking Glass, the innovative developers behind classics such as the Ultima Underworld games, which set the stage for System Shock with their software-only, true 3D graphics engine. (The company also employed such an engine in Thief and Thief II, two more of the best games of all time.) System Shock was one of the first (if not the first) game to utilize the “amnesia” storyline, i.e., the main character (you) wakes up in a strange, empty space station with no memory of anything, and you have to figure out who and where you are and what to do next. System Shock uses an ingenious way of providing that info: via voice logs scattered around the ship, recorded by crew members now dead. Here’s a look:

That software engine is still pretty impressive today, given how well it performed even on the modest hardware of the time. True, the enemies were all still 2D sprites a la Doom, but the environments were true 3D with fairly realistic physics.

System Shock 2 raised the bar a bit with hardware Direct3D support. It followed the same narrative formula, adding character customization options including three fields of specialization and a slew of cybernetic implants to use. SS2 was creepier than the original, with lots of scary triggered events to keep you constantly on your toes. It’s also the first game I can remember playing that relied heavily on sound cues for gameplay strategy, i.e., “I hear growling up ahead, I should tread quietly…” etc. And though the overall narrative structure was linear, it was non-linear in terms of how you accomplished your goals - lure a zombie to its death, sneak without killing anything, crash through the levels killing everything … the freedom to choose was liberating compared to other games at the time. SS2 is still such a classic that people are still creating mods for it. Here’s some gameplay:

Sadly, a System Shock 3 was not to be. But eight years later, a spiritual successor to the Shock series - Bioshock - is upon us, with the requisite next-gen graphical upgrades as well as an even more open-ended approach to gameplay, along with a fascinating arsenal of genetic mutations that make variations in gameplay virtually endless. Here’s a good look at the beautiful graphics and unique gameplay of Bioshock:



I would write more, but I have to get back to playing Bioshock. For my job. Really. To summarize: Bioshock is an amazing experience, likely more so than any other game coming out this year. Buy it now and play it. Then, play System Shock 2 and see how, despite its age, the design (not the graphics, obviously) is still miles ahead of other shooters even today. Then play Thief 1 and 2, and Deus Ex, and witness the virtues of the thinking-man’s shooter. Trust me on this one. Or, don’t. Blogs suck.

I like easy games. By “easy” I don’t mean “casual”. You know how most games are fairly easy through the first few levels? That’s the kind of easy I’m talking about.

I want stuff to happen for me, I don’t always want to be the instigator. I prefer reacting, taking time to evaluate what’s put in front of me so I can make the best decision on what to do next.

I don’t play games to fail. I’m as good a sport as anyone, but when a game becomes so hard that I keep dying dozens of times in the same spot, I draw the line. At that point I either enable “god mode”, seek out a walkthrough or abandon the thing altogether.

I typically have from five to twenty such games installed on my gaming rig simultaneously. Most of them I’ve quit playing out of annoyance and moved on to the next, only to quit that one out of annoyance, and so it goes. After a little while I start noticing desktop icons for games I haven’t played in, say, a month, and I think, “Gosh, that game looks cool. I wonder why I haven’t played it in a while?” And then I launch it and rediscover - again - why I don’t want to play it.

Right now I’m playing Overlord. This may be the one game in a dozen that I actually play all the way through! How great it feels to have a pack of minions who adore you and are willing to do anything to please you! See, you play this huge, ultra-powerful, dark, dastardly, evil demon “Overlord” guy and you can summon wicked little elf-like creatures to do your bidding. You wave your arm and your nasty group of minions rushes in the direction you’re pointing, destroying and murdering everything along the way. Right now I have the power to control 15 minions, but soon my powers will grow. GROW, I tell you!!

So far this is an ideal game for me. (Not that I condone murder. One must choose to play the lesser of prevalent evils in today’s gaming world if one wishes to remain ethically solvent. What?)

Much of the time I’m a gaming tourist. My intent is to see all of the work put into a game by the designers, which means I cheat. I’m not an A-type (does that even apply anymore?) whose goal is always to win; rather, I admire the landscape and gameplay design without becoming bogged down by it.

Bottom line is that I see and appreciate tons of games, but I suck at playing them. This is kind of embarrassing, given my job. But hey, I don’t have as much time (or patience) as I had in my younger days of leisure.

Go and download stuff from this site. Watch my video reviews already.

Whenever it comes time to write a blog entry I’m faced with a dilemma.

I don’t read blogs much. I don’t like them. I don’t even like the word “blog”. I don’t care about the opinions of random strangers. Particularly since most rhetoric found in blogs is quasi-literate, rife with the dreaded “there their they’re”, “it’s its” and “your you’re” confusions. Yes, I wield a grammar hammer. I can’t abide the sloppy indolence that results in the misuse of language. I have seen “your” and “you’re” juxtaposed multiple times - consistently in error - in a single blog entry. Mine head doth asplode.

Aside from the ubiquitous illiteracy, the content of blogs is ubiquitously trite, or worse, authoritatively insipid. Bloggers can write thousands of words and in the end, still say nothing at all, having stolen unrecoverable minutes of your life. Common efforts include unoriginal stabs at humor, vituperative invective, and unnecessarily abstruse vocabulary intended to insinuate intellectual superiority (ahem) - all utterly uninteresting. (There are a precious few blogs - usually attached to respectable publications - that are sometimes worth reading, but I’m not talking about those. Or am I?)

Understand, I’m not excluding myself from this damnation - thus, the nature of my conundrum. Why should you care what I have to say? Most often I don’t care what I have to say. Once I’ve written something, I don’t even want to go back and proofread it, I’m already bored with it. I’m bored writing this. In the spirit of blogging, though, I keep writing, even as I wonder if anyone will have read far enough to see this.

I’d rather be gaming. Every second I spend typing this drivel is a second I could have spent searching for Garridan’s Tears at Frostfire Glade. (Well, the game’s on Pause in the background, I admit.) What can I write that’ll be worth my time writing, let alone reading?

I could try the LiveJournal/Blogger avenue and bitch about the fact that my expensive video capture card will no longer capture video so I have to waste time this weekend sending it back to BlackMagic. But I’m peeved about it, so why should I write about it, only to get more peeved about it while boring readers with the petty details of my personal life?

No, this is a gaming blog, and readers expect talk about games. Games. Hmmm.

You can’t tell by reading this, but I just took a sizable break to battle a pesky Frost Atronach. I’m going to take another one now.

All right, he’s dead. I tricked him by standing in a group of rocks beyond his reach while I pelted him with steel arrows. Now I just need to quaff that Philter of Frostward potion to protect me from frostbite and get to the Tear collecting.

Wait, that’s it! Instead of droning on about myself and foisting my opinions on you, for each blog entry I’ll just play a game and narrate it for you as I play! This is a gaming blog, after all.

Of course, I’m joking. A useless attempt at humor, to avert your attention from the fact that I have nothing interesting to say.

Maybe I’m just in a crappy mood. But why should you care? Just forget it. I’m sure you will. I would.

It’s E3 time again - well, a smaller, less friendly E3 anyway - and of course there’s a slew of exciting videos to make you salivate. Sadly, the majority of upcoming games are first-person shooters, each with a more visually beautiful way of killing everything in sight. But there are a few new titles that break from the fragfest mold, and here are a few or their E3 videos (thanks, Gametrailers.com):

Assassin’s Creed

Echochrome

Dungeon Hero

Wii Fit

And, well, OK, here are some upcoming kick-ass shooters:

Killzone 2

Mass Effect

Unreal Tournament 3

I know that all of you were terribly worried when you heard that video game addiction might make its way into the DSM-V as a mental disorder.

Well, you can all breathe a sigh of relief. At least for now, there’s no way to become addicted to video games:

“There is nothing here to suggest that this is a complex physiological disease state akin to alcoholism or other substance abuse disorders, and it doesn’t get to have the word addiction attached to it,” said Dr. Stuart Gitlow of the American Society of Addiction Medicine and Mt. Sinai School of Medicine in New York.”

Make sure you pay attention to the news, though, in case the status changes and you suddenly find yourself jonesing for your next deathmatch.

Today is the official launch of our Solid State-powered redesign! This is a huge improvement for us, and a first in the industry, all to benefit you guys! We hope you love it as much as we do. Check out the press release:

PlayWhat.com Deploys Clientless Hybrid P2P Delivery Solution From Solid State Networks

Gaming Site PlayWhat.com Implements ION(TM) Media Accelerator for Faster Downloads and Seamless User Experience

TEMPE, AZ–(Marketwire - June 12, 2007) - PlayWhat.com, an emerging destination for game demos and media downloads, today announced site-wide integration of Solid State Networks’ peer-assisted delivery technology to provide the fastest content delivery available on the web. PlayWhat.com is a website that specializes in providing a consolidated library of game demos and media-rich content for quick and easy download access from both Firefox® and Microsoft® Internet Explorer®.

“We’ve configured every download — demos, trailers and other media — to be delivered by the ION™ Media Accelerator peer-assisted browser plug-in, with custom PlayWhat branding designed for us by Solid State Networks,” said Todd Volz, Executive Editor for PlayWhat.com. “As a result of Solid State’s outstanding implementation that combines HTTP with the BitTorrent™ Protocol, file transfer speeds have skyrocketed, allowing us to deliver high-quality content to our customers at blazingly fast speeds. Needless to say, this makes for an exceptional user experience.”

Faced with increasing bandwidth demand, PlayWhat initially resorted to rate limiting its servers, which ultimately compromised the user experience. The company explored numerous options and determined that technology from Solid State Networks would dramatically reduce bandwidth costs, provide more reliable downloads for consumers, and significantly enhance its users’ experience downloading game demos, movies and video reviews. Solid State Networks elected to work collaboratively with PlayWhat in order to demonstrate the new clientless peer-assisted solution made possible by the ION Media Accelerator technology.

“This collaboration has been mutually beneficial in many respects,” said Rick Buonincontri, CEO of Solid State Networks. “PlayWhat is an excellent showcase of a site-wide implementation of the ION Media Accelerator. We look forward to helping PlayWhat maximize their use of our DDN to further expand their network capabilities while helping them lower their per-unit delivery costs.”

“We’ve just launched streaming video reviews of games, and we couldn’t be happier with Solid State’s delivery of our video on-demand content,” Volz said. “The ease of integration coupled with high-performance results made Solid State’s peer-assisted technology a real windfall for us. The transition was seamless, and our users adopted the new download system quickly. We’ve received nothing but positive feedback.”

In its two years of existence, PlayWhat.com has steadily gained recognition as an outstanding provider of gaming downloads and information. With the addition of streaming-video reviews, PlayWhat intends to reinforce its reputation as the place you go when you want to “Know What to Play.”

I am SO SICK of Jack Thompson in the news. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to acknowledge his inane behavior for amusement’s sake. Now that he’s barred from dealing with Take Two, the guy, naturally, has found another ambulance to chase - though this time, I think he’s in over his head. Jackie and Goliath.

Here’s a quote from his new, insipid letter to Bill Gates regarding the impending release of Halo 3:

“Here’s the deal, Mr. Gates: Either Microsoft undertakes dramatic, real steps, through its marketing, wholesale, and retail operations to assure that Halo 3 is not sold, via the Internet and in stores, directly to anyone under 17, or I shall proceed to make sure that Microsoft is held to that standard by appropriate legal means. I have done that before successfully as to Best Buy, and I shall do so again as to Microsoft and all retailers of Halo 3.”

Read the entire letter at GameAlmighty.com. It’ll be fun to watch the behemoth squash the mosquito. Then what? Sue the U.S. Army?

I’m a sucker for non-linear gameplay. Well, worse than that: I almost invariably quit playing linear games after a couple of hours.

The Call of Duty series managed to sqeeze past my lineometer due to impressive graphics and action that felt non-linear thanks to constant forward motion.

As most of you know, Call of Duty is the indirect spawn of Medal of Honor, the FPS series that jettisoned WWII shooters into massive popularity. After several wan spin-offs on multiple platforms, it’s been a while since we’ve seen a MOH title. But coming soon is Medal of Honor: Airborne, which seems poised to make non-linear gameplay de rigeur in the FPS genre. Rather than make you follow a linear path through every mission, MOH: Airborne lets you parachute anywhere into a level - streets, rooftops, whatever - and fight your way to the goal from there. Now that’s what I call non-linear, baby.

Even though I’m sick to death of carnage being the focus of almost every game, even though I wish someone would come up with a way to use this technology for good instead of evil … I can’t wait to play this thing. Check out these trailers.