Each of those ideas presents problems to me as a gamer. Rage quitting is usually beneath me as a lady. Walkthroughs are only for use when I need to get through a game quickly for work purposes. And asking the Internet for help – particularly on puzzle games where there's no way to give hints without just telling you the solution – just feels wrong.

Obviously, my circumstances are different from the average gamer's because I have publicists for many games on speed dial. However, I don't like to abuse these connections when I'm playing a game for fun and not for review purposes. So instead, I usually stick to a ritual of behavior.

First, I pause the game during the part where I'm stuck. It could be a bum boss battle, a room where I can't figure out how to progress or at a point where I have no idea what I'm supposed to be doing or where I'm supposed to go. I'm the level-headed type, so I assume that this must be a case of user-error. Maybe I need to review my stats or my gameplay objectives and make sure I'm not under-leveled or something. This solved my stuck problem during that level with the train in Valkyria Chronicles.

If that doesn't work, I usually double back in the game to look for a special item or grind my level up in the case of bum boss fights. I usually don't have to do this because I'm a completion-obsessed gamer who searches every area, breaks every crate and fights every random encounter just for the experience points. But, hey, sometimes I missed a crate – sometime I forget to check the shops for all the armor upgrades. So maybe being stuck really is my fault. This tactic resolved an ugly boss fight in Tales of Vesperia – you know, the one with the demo boss only he's way harder in the retail game? And you can't go back and grind very much because the road is cut off?

Above: Sometimes, it's not your fault...

The third time, though, I stop blaming myself and indignation sets in. Why would they make a game this hard? How could I possibly have missed whatever it is I need to get past this point? What is wrong with the developers that they make something I can't figure out? This is a dangerous line of thinking because it's a small step away from a rage quit unbecoming of a lady. It also has way of contaminating the rest of my opinion of the game. Which is why I never finished the first Modern Warfare on Xbox 360 (stupid barn mission with the tanks – why don't you shoot them, Price, while I try not to die for the millionth time!).

The final part of my ritual is to quit the game – not rage quit, mind you; just a normal save and quit – and sleep on it preferably ‘til a Saturday morning. Then I come back to it while in my jammies with some cereal, the same way I played many a video game on Saturday morning as a child. It calms me down, gives me a fresh perspective and reminds me that games are supposed to be fun. This totally saved my experience with Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty (I hate you, Vamp – die in a fire).

There are exceptions and games that totally defeated my ritual, of course. I broke down and used a walkthrough on The Legend of Zelda: The Ocarina of Time after two and half years of wasted Saturday mornings ($%#&ing Water Temple!); I also looked up a puzzle solution in Puzzle Quest because I really wanted to capture a Wight or something and just couldn't figure it out.

But for gamers out there like myself who sometimes hit a wall with games we love (or would love to try and love), I ask you: How do you deal with being stuck?

Further reading:
Stuck!! – 21 game levels that stopped you dead in your tracks
Getting Stuck Sucks: OXCGN's Games That Frustrate

Image Cred

Now, of course I've heard people say that this is wrong; that video games cheapen or damage the experience of learning real music with their plastic peripherals and oversimplification of beats, rhythm and notes. But it seems like even more music games seem to be popping up in response to this criticism – all of which claiming that they are different, that they really are about the music and not about mimicking and button mashing.

Think about it: we've got Timbaland's Beaterator which includes lessons on real music theory in the tutorial, DJ Hero which introduces the concept of an artist who uses other people's music to make an original song and elaborate music studio components in Rock Band and Guitar Hero that put the power of composition directly in your button-mashing fingers. And let us not forget Wii Music and all its lofty educational ambitions.

To tone deaf choir reject like myself, the music game scene isn't just over saturated – it's downright intimidating. Am I supposed to be entertained, educated or indoctrinated? I can hardly decide.

All of this came up today while talking with Carlo Delallana (designer) and Matt Leunig (associate producer) about their game, Jam Sessions 2 – a guitar simulator. I was playing Good Reporter and trying to find out how the game would treat me as a gamer and also as a would-be musician (despite my evident failure in middle school).

I asked about the scoring system and Delallana said the game wouldn't punish me or make the song sound bad for messing up a note. I started to ask about competitive multiplayer and both Leunig and Delallana emphasized that their game was more about making music than trying to be better than the next guy. Finally, I told them about Beaterator's music theory lessons and asked for their take, and Delallana dropped this bomb: "There's a danger in teaching [music] because there's no one way to learn music."

That may be why Jam Sessions 2 is so careful not to punish gamers for messing things up – and why it doesn't really tell you what to do when you get to the music studio to start recording and editing your own tracks. It also may be why I gravitate to it over Beaterator or Rock Band because I don't really know that I want a music game to teach me or judge me on something I feel like I suck at. But is that reaction even worse than me assuming I know how to play the guitar having beaten Killer Queen on Hard?

It comes down to what music games are supposed to be for. If Delallana is right and there's no one way to learn music, then maybe it doesn't matter whether or not DJ Hero has a better track list than Scratch: The Ultimate DJ. But on the other hand, if the game isn't supposed to teach me music – if it's really just an interactive fantasy where I can pretend to be a rock star – maybe all music games are only as good as their set lists.

Either way you look at it, though, there is eventually going to be a music game for everybody if the market for these games keeps expanding like it is. Whether you're a choir reject like me or a Ukulele Hero hold-out, there just might be some comfort in that.

Luckily, Sion Lenton — Executive Producer at Codemasters on Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising — was a good sport and let "Professor Glasser" talk his ear off about real-life conflicts between Russia and Japan. You see, his game is loosely based on one of those conflicts with some, uh, minor tweaks.

In Dragon Rising, it's a few years into the future and China's economy is going down the tank. There's an island north of Japan called Skira (topographically based on real life Kiska Island). The island is contested territory between Russia and China because of its large oil reserves. Also, the US Army, acting on behalf of the Russians to "liberate" it from the Chinese.

I think my political science professor would flunk any of his students who couldn't name all of the things wrong with that premise. For one thing, Kiska Island is in Alaska – which is pretty far from any of the Kuril Islands north of Japan that are actually contested territory. For another, those islands are contested territory between Russia and Japan, not China – and I don't even think they have oil; they're just in a really sweet strategic spot. Also, China's economy is going lots of places these days – but none of them look like the tank. And the US acting on behalf of Russia against China? It wouldn't just have to be the future; it'd probably have to be a whole different planet.

Video Games | Operation Flashpoint: DR | Fog of War Featurette

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

I related all of this to Lenton as a roundabout way of asking if Japanese forces would be included in the upcoming downloadable content that Codemasters is planning for Dragon Rising. In real life, the Japan Self-Defense Force couldn't do anything to Russia (or China) unless Japan really did own the islands and Russia (or China) really was moving in on them with armed forces. But, hey, if we're not worried about realism, why wouldn't you want to get Japan in the mix?

Lenton said Japan would deserve more attention than just DLC ("That would really be a whole separate game," he said). However, he was intrigued by the idea of an overarching security dilemma as motivation for stealth gameplay.

Bear with me – I got an A- on my thesis for this. A security dilemma is a situation in which two countries both want the same thing. One can sell out the other to get that thing, which sort of sucks, but usually doesn't lead to war. Or, they can both try to sell each other out to get what they want and that almost always leads to war. Or – what usually happens – they get stuck in a staring contest where neither of them doing anything and so neither of them gets what they want. But nobody goes to war.

This was my roundabout way of asking if there was stealth in the game. After all, if Russian forces claim to shoot down Chinese planes in Russian territory but can't prove it with physical evidence, it's be really hard to convince the whole world that declaring war on China is totally cool. So, it would sort of make sense to have stealth in the game, right?

Lenton seemed to like the idea, but sadly it's not actually part of Operation Flashpoint. That's not to say the developer was totally unaware of international relations. After all, Lenton explained, a lot of work went into figuring out how to explain why US forces were involved in the conflict (*cough* oil *cough*). And the basic message of the game – that war is scary – certainly is a nod toward realism.

But after our little chat, I wonder if Lenton or other war game developers will look into security dilemmas as a basis on which to build a war-torn future to play in. After all, sometimes real-life is scarier that the "what-ifs" video game developers imagine for us.

Operation Flashpoint: Dragon Rising is out October 6.

Of course, the game doesn't call it torture. I think the term they use is "extreme interrogation tactics." But when is something "interrogation" over "torture?" Is it just how badly you beat somebody up, or does it matter what you're trying to get out of the person/NPC?

In Brink, this is what happens: you're playing as a military operative in a futuristic setting. During a firefight, you sneak behind enemy lines and happen upon an injured rebel writhing on the ground. An option pops up, prompting you to press X to interrogate the guy and it looks like if you select it, your character pulls out an iPhone-iish device. Your character then shocks the heck out of the guy until he screams, "Okay! I'll talk!" Then your objective screen updates and a new icon appears on the map.

In the grand scheme of violence in video games, it's not graphic. It's actually similar to what happens to Snake in the first Metal Gear Solid when Revolver Ocelot has him strapped spread-eagle style and shocks him (as the player, you press buttons to Resist or Submit — Submitting kills Meryl and I couldn't hit that button fast enough). The difference in Brink is that my character is doing it to someone else. So on a gut level, I don't want to call it torture because I'm the "good guy," right?

But then there's the Punisher game with interactive torture. That's torture because I think the game goes so far as to call it so, but as a player I'm comfortable with it because I'm playing as the Punisher. Yeah, he fights for justice, but he's not what people would call a "good" guy. So it's okay for me as a player to play as him torturing somebody because that's what the Punisher would do — never mind what I would do. Besides, they were probably bad people who deserved it anyway.

Now think about Red Faction: Guerrilla where you're playing on the side of a rebel faction. Like Brink, it's a wartime situation and gaining information is crucial to the success of missions. In one scene, explored by Stephen Totilo, an NPC sidekick "interrogates" somebody for said information. With knives. Is that torture? If you're not sure, apply the same line of questioning to Killzone 2 when Rico gets a little "extreme" when interrogating an enemy.

To confuse you even more on the subject of torture, think about situations where it's not about information — it's about control. For example, there's the Grand Theft Auto: Vice City mission, Death Row and the Ransom mission in Grand Theft Auto IV. In both cases, somebody is deliberately hurting someone else for revenge or just because they're violent by nature. That's really easy to spot as torture — but at the same time, in GTAIV, you're playing as Niko, the guy that hits a woman tied to a chair and then takes a picture of her. You don't really want to call that torture, do you? It's easier just to play it down as no big deal or write it off because it's not an interactive part of the game — so "you" didn't torture anybody.

Lastly, let's talk about torture being inflicted on you, the player. In these cases, you probably wouldn't think of what you're going through as "torture," (unless it's a Saw game), but by definition, a game is deliberately inflicting suffering on you. Example: Missile Command. The game is about mutually assured destruction in the Cold War era, but at the same time, it's a psychological exercise that tortures the player: by design, you cannot "win" Missile Command. Sure, a lot of early arcade games were un-winnable — but by forcing the player to realize that no matter how good you are at the game, no matter how many quarters you sink into it, you cannot save six cities from a nuclear holocaust, the game is deliberately messing with you. A more obvious example of mental anguish inflicted on the player would be Fable II — because it's not just that your character is being electrocuted, it's that you're losing all of that XP you gathered and racking up evilness (which is torture to a goody-two-shoes gamer like me).

So what's really going on in Brink? When I zap the guy with my iPhone-looking device, am I committing torture or just "extreme" interrogation? I didn't see an option to just question the guy before shocking him. I'm not sure if there were other ways to get the information that the subject had. I do know that if the game actually called it "torture," I'd be way less inclined to play as that class of character. For me, that would be the worst kind of torture: role-playing as a character that I want to play as benevolent, and then being forced to do something I'm not okay with because the game has other ideas about where the line between torture and interrogation lies.

P.S. You want the line clearly drawn? Check this game out.

Image Cred — GTAIV
Image Cred — The Punisher
Image Cred — Fable II
Image Cred — MGS

Throughout the event, panelists Joel DeYoung of Hothead Games, Jennifer Mercurio of the Entertainment Consumers Association, James Portnow of Divide By Zero Games and moderator/journalist Aaron Ruby tried to define what "gamer" really means. There were some arguments made that we don't need that term anymore, or at least that it no longer means 1) fat, 2) unwashed or 3) male. But ultimately nobody could quite put their finger on what made every single person in that room different from every single person over at the Bumbershoot festival.

Then, a man who'd been waiting in line for nearly half an hour for a turn at the microphone put it something like this: "[I define] ‘Gamer' as someone dedicated to the perfection of fun. You can't do that in 10 [minute intervals]."

There was an audible hiss from the crowd and the panelists shifted uneasily. Was this guy saying casual gamers didn't count as gamers, or just classifying all short gaming experiences as casual games?

Either way, it pissed a few people off. My QA tester friend who'd been sitting next to me put down her DS and loudly said, "Have you ever heard of The Sims?"

I'm pretty sure most of the women in the crowd were annoyed, plus a few of the panelists. I imagine especially so DeYoung who'd made a point about the need for episodic gaming experiences that family-minded gamers could work into their busy everyday lives.

The statement was wrong-headed, though, not just because it alienated all of casual gamers, but because it implies that short games are somehow not really games.

Alright, fine, people who play Bejewled exclusively probably aren't "gamer" enough to comment intelligently on Mass Effect 2. However, it's not fair to say that Plants vs. Zombies doesn't contribute in some way to the perfection of the real time strategy genre, or that the storytelling in Portal didn't have an impact on the way longer games construct their narratives.

Come to think of it, lots of what we call "core" games (that is, the kind aimed specifically at "gamers" and not at anyone else) are short or episodic experiences. Games like Ico, Uncharted, Rez, Shadow Complex and even Batman: Arkham Asylum were all on the short-ish side at or around 10 hours each – and yet all contribute in some way to the "perfection of fun" somehow, don't they?

Ruby responded to the question right away with, "Those are fighting words." Sadly, though, there wasn't enough time left in the panel for a discussion to kick off.

So, Kotaku, I leave it to you to weigh in on the casual versus core debate with respect to the term gamer. Is one flavor of gamer somehow less gamer than the other? Does length have anything to do with it, or is that a penis joke waiting to happen?

I got going on this idea because my first night on the job for Kotaku — covering a Godfather II event — I sliced my foot open and spent the next week limping from junket to junket. But whenever I thought I had it bad as a games journalist, I'd always remind myself that journalists in video games usually have it way worse. They wade through zombies, deal with emotionally unstable people and more often than not wind up on the front lines of wars and stuff. They're the ones that deserve a bottle of Cristal and a hug. But instead, they get this photo gallery.

Taylor — Suikoden 5
[Image Cred]

Irene Ellet — Valkyria Chronicles
[Image Cred]

Frank West — Dead Rising
[Image Cred]

Elena Fisher — Uncharted
[Image Cred]

Joseph Schreiber — Silent Hill 4

Keith Helm — Disaster Report
[Image Cred]

Ben Bertolucci — Resident Evil 2
[Image Cred]

Ulala — Space Channel 5

Everyone — Michigan: Report From Hell (never came out in North America)
[Image Cred]

Madison Paige — Heavy Rain
[Image Cred]

Laura Parton - D2

Keats — Folklore
[Image Cred]

Maya Amano - Persona 2: Eternal Punishment

Alyssa - Resident Evil: Outbreak
[Image Cred]

I give honorable mentions to the news announcers in King of Fighters 12, the sportscaster characters in any sports game ever and one to Reuben Oluwagembi in Far Cry 2 (couldn't find a good enough picture of him). Other than that, these are all I've got — hit me up in the comments if you think of more. Owen Good nominated Paperboy I assume on grounds that he would have been promoted to copyeditor by now, but I don't know...

P.S. I still have the cork from that bottle of Cristal in my purse. It reminds me of everything that's happened in the last year and how much of it I owe to Kotaku. Here's looking at another year of blogging!

Caryl Shaw, Senior Producer at EA's Maxis
To developers: "Who doesn't want to be a gay super hero? Are you thinking about this stuff when you're making your game? Well you should be!"

Dan Hewitt, Senior Director of Communications & Industry Affairs for the Entertainment Software Association
About the ignorance of the general public toward gaming: "We need to come together. We need gay and lesbian gamers to step forward. Come out, and then come out again as gamers."

Stephen Toulouse, Program Manager for Policy and Enforcement, Xbox Live
On expressing sexuality in Gamertags: "Who we choose to love is part of our identity."

Cyn Skyberg, Vice President of Customer Relations at Linden Lab
On expressing sexuality online: "The process for how we display ourselves as we really are [determines] what are the values we have as a virtual community."

Flynn DeMarco, founder of GayGamer.net and Kotaku alumnus
On blogs and gaming sites censoring the n-word, but not the other f-word in headlines: "They need to let people know that it's not okay [to use that word]."

There were two other issues that came to mind as a result of the panel that, sadly, I didn't encounter until after the Q&A ended. The first was brought up by my friend over at GamesRadar, Henry Gilbert: On Xbox Live, you can download McCain/Palin and Obama/Biden icons – so is the message that it's somehow more acceptable to express political orientation than sexual orientation?

The second issue stemmed from the part of the panel where moderator Justin Cole brought up the Flash game Watch Out Behind You, Hunter!, where players have to shoot gay men to keep from being raped: I thought to myself, what if you re-skinned the hunter to be a woman on her way home late at night from a club? Would that somehow make the game more acceptable because it removes the anti-gay sentiment? Or is it equally uncool because the game still advocates murder as a solution to sexual assault?

Discuss.

Not counting his first Japan-only forays on the Famicom and Superfamicom, Astro Boy has only appeared in one PlayStation 2 game and one GameBoy Advance game. The year was 2004 and both Sonic Team and Treasure Inc. (partnered with Hitmaker) developed games based on the 2003 anime remake of the original 1960s Astro Boy cartoon. Sonic Team's PS2 game, Astro Boy, was pretty lousy while Hitmaker/Treasure's GBA Astro Boy: Omega Factor was one of the best things to happen to handhelds that year. Since then, we've got nothing but a quietly-announced, never-demoed tie-in game to the upcoming CGI Astro Boy film directed by David Bowers.

Astro Boy's absence from video games could be due to many reasons – licensing, marketing, etc. – but two big ticket items ultimately tank any hopes of a serious Astro Boy gaming franchise: demand and need.

There's not enough demand for Astro Boy video games in the United States because we don't love him the way they do in Japan. The 1960s cartoon didn't even complete its full 193-episode run in the States when it originally aired in 1963; and it took decades before Dark Horse Comics to translate and publish the manga. Poor Astro Boy just wasn't on the radar as America's resident robot hero.

Back in 1960s Japan, when Astro Boy was first created, there was a desperate need for heroes. World War II had been over for more than a decade, but there was a loss of hope in the country and a profound fear of technology and nuclear weapons*. Anime and manga icons like Astro Boy and Ashita no Joe restored to Japan a sense of purpose and youthful optimism they'd lost in the war. Also, science-y things like Astro Boy put a friendly, rosy-cheeked face on technology, which helped the country cope with the devastating fear inspired by the A-bomb attacks.

In short, Japan needed Astro Boy and America didn't. Without the need for the robot boy hero, America never established a connection to Astro Boy that would inspire parents to make their children watch the 1960s cartoon. Later when the 2003 reboot of the anime series reached America, the show still couldn't find its audience and was canceled after spawning the hideous PS2 game and the wonderful GBA game.

That's not to say America can live without robot heroes.

We have one, in fact, and his name is Mega Man. Mega Man does most of the same stuff as Astro Boy – he even has the beam cannon on his arm – and he beat Tezuka's beloved boy robot to the US gaming scene by a good decade or more. He may not be as fleshed-out a character as Astro Boy, because Mega Man didn't start out with a manga or cartoon series to establish his back story. But he did have the whole filial piety thing going on with his creator, Dr. Light, which was similar to the connection Astro Boy had for his adoptive father figure, Dr. O'Shay (a.k.a. Dr. Ochanomizu, Dr. Packadermus Elefun, Professor Peabody, Jimmy Durante's nose-twin). So what if Mega Man wasn't about childlike wonder or youthful optimism; so what if he never did anything serious like address racism against robots. Mega Man was about kicking robot ass and Americans can totally get in on that.

So, alas, Astro Boy. We loved you in Omega Factor and we respect you as a cultural icon worthy of Mickey Mouse's company – which is why you're in the Robot Hall of Fame. But Mickey doesn't have a great gaming franchise and so far, you don't either. Maybe your upcoming tie-in movie game on PS2, Wii, PSP and DS will be good. Heck, maybe the film itself will be awesome. But in the meantime, we'll be sticking with Mega Man 9.

*The Films of Akira Kurosawa, Donald Richie

Ideally, Origins is supposed to be a "new" kind of fantasy that does away with Zeschuk's dreaded "elves sashaying through the countryside" and brings to the fore real human drama (but with non-humans). To create that kind of fantasy, BioWare had to find a spectrum of existing fantasy to measure their game by.

"At one end we have Tolkien's [Lord of the Rings trilogy]," Muzyka explained,"and for dark, low fantasy, we're using [George RR Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series]."

This confused me, because Martin's epic fantasy series is labeled as high fantasy, whereas low fantasy would be more like Conan the Barbarian. Either BioWare is cutting the scale short so they can stay focused, or they've confused Martin with Robert E. Howard.

"When you read [Martin's] stuff, it's not at all like Tolkien's stuff," said Zeschuk. "It doesn't have the traditional elements [of high fantasy]. The brutality of the world he created is extreme."

I object about the elements of traditional fantasy (c'mon — those books have knights and princesses and dragons and stuff), but I'll give the brutality argument to him:

*Ice and Fire spoilers* In the first book alone, a seven-year-old gets chucked out of a window in, like, chapter five and the main character has his head chopped off at the very end.*End spoilers*

That's the kind of brutality that struck a chord with Muzyka: "I was like, 'Wow, he just took away a character I really started to care about. Wow, that was emotionally impactful [sic]'." And that reaction is ultimately what makes him identify the Song of Ice and Fire as low fantasy.

Gaider, on the other hand, thinks that his bosses' definitions of high and low fantasy are "funny" at best. To him, high fantasy has to have "obvious magic" and technically Martin does. But "it's very, very subtle," so he could see where his bosses got the idea to label it low even if he doesn't agree with them.

There's a flaw in Gaider's argument, too, though. If magic has to be obvious in order for the fantasy to be "high," the The Witcher is high fantasy, surely?

Rather than talk his way out of that one, Gaider side-stepped. The skew between Martin and Tolkien still works for Origins, he said, even if it's not a clear example of the divide between high and low fantasy: "Martin's stories are character driven. The characters and their flaws drives the plot, where Tolkien is plot-driven. In that respect, [Origins is] leaning more towards the Martin side, where it's a human tale told within the context of these epic events."

"Dragon Age has elements of [Martin's brutality]," said Muzyka, "and has elements of the Tolkien-esque kind of fantasy as well. Which is why we're presenting it is something that's quite different."

Will Origins be a brilliant alchemy of fantasy sub-genres, or genre crisis in the making? The fact that the lead writer and the creators of the game can't exactly agree on what low fantasy is has me worried. The fact that Muzyka and Zeschuk think George RR Martin's series is low fantasy just because it's dark also has me worried. But what really bugs me is the thought that games can never not be low fantasy because it seems to sell way better than elves sashaying through the countryside.

P.S. That picture is from a scene in Song of Ice and Fire, drawn by Mike S. Miller — if you want Dragon Age: Origins pics, check out this post.

Almost ten years ago, I was on the grass at Clement Park adjacent Columbine High School covering what would become the world's most iconic school shooting.

Last week, I was on the Internet reading about the Winnenden, Germany school shootings, and nothing had changed. The breaking news in the search for answers was a familiar brew of gun control, parenting, and violent video games. A tough Spiegel Online piece Monday brought them all together when a commentator wrote, "But we have debated about weapons laws and video games for long enough. Our biggest problem are parents who aren't doing their jobs."

I can't fully point the finger at the Winnenden parents, nor the Columbine parents. We still don't have enough information on either of them. (Although sadly, you might note, it's ten years after the April 20, 1999 Columbine shootings, and only about ten days after Winnenden.)

But I was surprised to see video games become the bogeyman again. Call me naive.

Tragedies can bring about positive change, and Columbine is no exception. Police have adopted "active shooter" policies to charge in rather than hang back and form a perimeter when facing school shooters. And there has been new scholarship into what makes school shooters tick.

I began a ten-year odyssey of book research because I felt there had to be some common denominators causing school shootings. Traditional theories of juvenile delinquency would not do; school shooters did not tend to be warped by drug abuse, physical abuse, or poverty.

It's wrong to say the video games played by Columbine killers Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold had no effect on them. As I write in the book, previously excerpted here on Kotaku:

Video games may have given Eric and Dylan paths for their anger: Postal had details that previewed Columbine, and Doom's philosophy of the lone Marine against the rest of hell helped inform Eric and Dylan's us against them mentality. The game's tough as nails descriptions also seeped into their brains and influenced Eric's writings. Staring at the computer screen would keep Eric and Dylan from developing the social skills to merge with the rest of the world they so desperately wanted to connect with.

But Eric and Dylan were not the only ones exposed to the joysticks: In one week in 1997, sales of Postal hit 15,000 copies, according to the Wall Street Journal. The video games did not cause their anger. That came from elsewhere.

That elsewhere, I have found, is in America's seemingly picture-perfect backyard: Suburbs and small towns in the South and West. Virtually every Columbine-style shooting has occurred on those grid points. My forthcoming book Columbine: A True Crime Story, a victim, the killers and the nation's search for answers notes:

There is not just a psychological profile of school shooters, but an environmental one - one which fits both Eric and Dylan. School shootings overwhelmingly occur in suburbs and small towns, which may be rich in sports, shopping malls, and BMW's, but poor in diversity and tolerance. Deviation from the whitebread norm is punished, and the high school campus is often the sole arbiter of adolescent status. A loser at school feels like a loser through and through. School shooters have no escape hatch, and nowhere else to turn for self-esteem. Options outside of school off ered by a big city are not found in small towns and suburbs: There is no Hollywood Boulevard for the punk rockers.

The template for suburban school shootings may be the inner-city, youth violence epidemic from 1985 to 1995 that "seeped into pop culture" as one study put it. Columbine, along with Littleton and the other school shooting locales, are the exact opposite of crime-infested, poverty-ridden high schools in Detroit and Watts. But thousands of Columbines across the country are tough, in their own suburban and small town way. Status and cliques are as virulent as gang warfare, and the outcasts face stiff odds. After too many marginalizations, dating rejections, or bottles thrown at them white, middle-class, disaffected youth may have hijacked the violent, inner-city solution.

The homes to school shootings have different names but the same genetic makeup: Springfield, Oregon. West Paducah, Kentucky. Pearl, Mississippi. Santee, California. They form a violent crescent through the South and West. Here, the spiritual forefathers of school shooters are Western gunslingers and Southern duels. Simply put, the psychologist Richard Nisbett notes, "The U.S. South, and Western regions of the United States initially settled by Southerners, are more violent than the rest of the country."

Jeff Kass, a former reporter with the Los Angeles Times and more recently the Rocky Mountain News, is the author of Columbine: A True Crime Story - A Victim, the Killers and the Nation's Search for Answers

Excerpts from his upcoming book.

I’ll give you a hint: it’s not game addiction. It’s media coverage.

That’s not to say that 17-year-olds have been committing matricide since time immemorial. Or that the American Psychiatric Association won’t enter video game addiction into the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders when review time comes up in 2012. Or that it’s somehow normal to log 100 hours of World of Warcraft in a week.

But I submit that just 10 years ago, Petric’s murder trial would not have gotten this kind of attention from the media. We wouldn’t have headlines like “X-Box Slaying” or “Mortal Kombat Murder.” It would just be “Teen Commits Murder Over Toy” with a quote about how he (or she) seemed like such a nice kid.

So why has the press shifted toward highlighting video games in connection with crime or tragedy? And why are they calling compulsive gaming an “addiction” when the American Medical Association and the American Psychiatric Association haven’t named it so (yet)? Is it because the public really thinks that video games are dangerous?

Or maybe the press is looking for easy headlines. For a little experiment, check out how many hits the razor blade story got this morning. Then check out the murder trial’s hits. And lastly, sit back and see how many hits this page gets.

If we pay this much attention to the topic, it’s no wonder that politicians and lawyers are doing it, too. That scares me because too much attention could legitimize something that might not even be real. Think of the Twinkie Defense in Dan White's murder trial – if politicians, psychologists and TV anchors had bought into it, people might well get away with murder if they can cram down a couple of boxes before getting out their gun.

For more reading on the idea of game addiction (you know, with actual science and stuff), check out:
The Daedalus Project
Stanford School of Medicine’s Recent Study
The American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry's Reaction to AMA Recommendations on Video Games

Apple has the infrastructure in place through iTunes to create a real value proposition for those that want to extend the capability of their console beyond gaming and has the cash — about $20 billion — to not only invest in the best components on the market, but in an online gaming experience that could rival Xbox Live. That cash could also be put to good use by acquiring major developers (did someone say Take-Two?) that could go from third-party powerhouse to Apple's first-party publisher."

Having just bought an iPod Touch last week despite having a perfectly functional Zune with 10 times the storage space, I can see Don's point. Apple has gone beyond making products. Now they simply create things people want. Would you want an Apple gaming console?

Apple is the only other company that can release a game console [The Digital Home]

Thing is, I don't really have a solution. Take for instance today's news of the Game Critics' Best of E3 finalists. Check out those categories.

Best Social/Casual/Puzzle Game
Best Online Multiplayer Game
Best Action Game
Best Action/Adventure Game

Heck this year there were even a few that didn't get enough votes to make the cut.

Best Simulation Game, for instance, didn't get enough nominations to make the finalists list, but what would you include in there. Spore? Why not. HAWX, Sure, I suppose. Left 4 Dead? Maybe.

That's the problem, a lot of these categories are very easy to redefine and justify. What if you were making a Best of list for gaming, which categories would you include? Me? I think you need to include one category for each console, because often gamers only own one or two and they want to know which game is best on "their" system. But what about those collection of genres? I find them baffling, but it certainly looks like a lot of people use them. Maybe they just need new names. So what are you waiting for? Get to it.

Sources have confirmed to Wired that all staff members not involved in developing game content will be laid off beginning in June. GameTap's editorial division has been operational for less than a year, and Sanchez said that "while we have been very happy with the work done by our editorial and video teams, we’ve made a decision to focus the business on our biggest strength, which is our game catalog."

"As a result, we will be restructuring the site to focus exclusively on gameplay."

Sanchez's full statement follows the jump:

A year ago we introduced a whole new GameTap to the world – GameTap.com. We added free, ad supported games, download to own games, and moved all of our video to the web site as well. A little later we added the editorial section.

We have had a lot of successes over the last year and the move to the web has been a good one for us. While we have been very happy with the work done by our editorial and video teams, we’ve made a decision to focus the business on our biggest strength, which is our game catalog. As a result, we will be restructuring the site to focus exclusively on gameplay.

What this means to our visitors is that instead of having a separate “READ” and “WATCH” section of the site we will be incorporating written and video content directly into the game pages. Doing this will allow us to improve and expand the gaming library and community aspects of our business.

For us, it’s always about how can we make your on-line gaming experience at GameTap the best out it can be and we think this is the way to do it. Speaking of having the best experience, American McGee’s Grimm is coming along great and will be ready to play this summer.

A change to GameTap.com [GameTap Forums via Game|Life]

I'm on the road again today with my wife, son and two dogs. Trish is driving us back from El Paso, Texas to Denver. I spent a longish weekend visiting my mom and step-dad and since I'm going to be reviewing Wii Fit soon for Kotaku, I decided to bring along my Wii and a copy of the game.

Shortly after setting it up my step-dad wandered into the room to see what was going on. My son was hammering away at the Ski Jump mini game and it wasn't long until he wanted to give it a try. My step-dad, you may recall, is the one who fell asleep watching me play Grand Theft Auto IV. It's an understatement to say that gaming isn't his thing. But after about 15 minutes with the game he went to go get my mom. I think she'd really like this, he said.

Turns out she did. She likes it so much that I left my Wii Fit with them, but only after they promised to buy a Wii once they could locate one. Even more surprising, my wife, someone who doesn't like to talk about games or watch me game, let alone play games, actually stepped onto the Balance Board to give it a try and said she wanted to "check it out" in more depth when we got home. Chills, it gave me chills.

The thing is, I'm still slightly convinced that the Wii Fit is the Brain Age for the Wii. Brain Age was the game that convinced thousands of aging baby boomers, including my mom, to buy the DS only to use it for a week, maybe a month, and then forget the device. I can say with 100 percent authority that my mom hasn't just given up on the DS, she's forgotten she owns it.

The Wii Fit will certainly strike a chord with some aging baby boomers, but I think it will strike a bigger chord for that group one generation younger so worried about their health and physique. But will it really get them into gaming? I don't think so.

When deciding whether they were going to buy a Wii, my mom and step-dad asked me if it came with Wii Sports. Then they asked if they would ever need to buy another game again. I'm thinking this is more about buying an ideal, a concept: That Wii Fit will make them fit, or healthier, than it is about getting them interested in gaming.

As much as I want to believe Nintendo's line, that the Wii in breaking from tradition and cutting a path into the untapped non-gamer, general population, I think what they're really doing is finding ways to attract people to gaming who will rarely stick to it by tapping into the fears of an aging population.

What defines 'maturity'? I think the entertainment industry is somewhat hampered by defining works that include sex or violence or rough language as having 'mature themes': clearly there is an age component ('Should 10 year olds be watching this stuff?'), but it's overly simplistic at best. In my media collections, I have works I consider thematically "mature" in the ratings game sort of way, and the works that are mature in a different way. The ones that play with preconceived notions of the way things are or should be; the ones that deconstruct the traditional, reconstitute it as something new; most importantly, the ones that can be read on a number of levels.

The wonderful thing about the last bit is it tends to be sophisticated and subtle; if you'd like to ignore the historical context, or the barbed, oblique criticism of something it won't lessen your enjoyment of the work on other levels. The first time I read A Dictionary of Maqiao, one of the few novels on the plight of sent down youth during the Cultural Revolution I have managed to stomach, much less enjoy, I realized at the end the author was effectively attacking a century of literary criticism in China. The next time I read it, I came in with a fresh perspective and a whole new take on little bits and pieces of the novel. Heavy stuff, but the average person without any grounding in academic works on the subject could read and enjoy the book.

We sometimes toss games off the "deep" deep end: the trumped up moral dilemma of Bioshock and the ensuing months (and months and months) of discussion, added to excitement over Ayn Rand and Objectivism, was - in the end - overblown, and we quietly put it to bed. Leigh Alexander said something to the effect that we get so excited when a game seems to be trying that we go overboard. Sometimes designers toss their games off the deep end: much as I love Xenosaga, barring the atrocious second installment, by the third game I was left going 'Oh, come on' when yet another heavy-handed Biblical reference popped up. Sure, I was left wondering if Nietzsche's introduction and reception in late 19th century Japan was similar to the one in China, but was that really the point? Yes, there were some good strands of classic themes — questioning belief systems, organized religion, technology — but it got lost amongst Issachar this and Wagner that. Someone on the team clearly knew their Isrealites and classic Germanic operas, at least superficially (shame they weren't a Strauss fan, we could've had a ship called 'the Fledermaus'), but to what end?

The question is: do they need to try so hard? Certainly, the subtle layers and multiple readings I favor in my 'mature' media don't just happen. On the other hand, one of the things that distinguishes most of those works for me is what pleasurable experiences they can be for a range of people. I generally pride myself on having a more or less accessible collection of 'serious media,' and I wish I could put more games in that category. You can have your cake and eat it, too. Why do we find it so hard to strike that perfect balance in games? I'm not suggesting that there aren't games that don't offer rich themes and subtle nuance, but the trend seems to be swinging towards over the top and in your face.

I spent a few weeks padding my way through Jonathan Blow's Braid - it's clever, it's interesting, it's different. On a purely superficial level, the game is a return to simpler times: the plot resembles a fairytale (complete with be-braided princess, though I don't recall storybook heroes wearing suits and ties), the graphics have this lovely dreamlike quality that I associate with high-quality children's books, the game play is something that we're all familiar with (on the surface, that is) - the classic platformer.

Still, after a few hours with the game, my mind was already shuffling off into philosophical territory, seeing parallels with readings I've done on the nature of time and the complication of memory. And I can't say I ever thought I'd come across a game that made me go 'Gee, I wonder what Michel Serres would have to say about all of this'; while being in a much more easily digested package, Braid asks us to rethink time in games and time and memory more general, at least a little. It tweaks game mechanics a bit, rewrites some rules of the platformer genre, and in the process, achieves much more than might have seemed possible from a casual glance at it.

For a storybook setting, it's pretty damn grown up in some respects. I suspect many will write off Braid as nothing more than a rehash of classic platformers, dismiss the ending as a trite twist, criticize it for not being as 'revolutionary' as it probably should be, given the press it's gotten. I tend to think the most influential of works don't set out to be so: they become influential over time. Set out to overturn the cart and create something trailblazing and new, and 95% of the time you're going to fall short of the goal. Still, for a short little game, it can be enjoyed on several levels. It's trying hard, maybe too hard in some cases, and it deserves credit for that; it also deserves credit for functioning on several levels.

I really don't think it would take much to push a little harder and make more games that function on deeper levels that don't overwhelm players with their 'deepness.' I so wanted to love Eternal Sonata, and I wound up being very disappointed because I saw lost opportunities left and right. It would have been possible, I think, to weave aspects of Chopin's life into the main story without resorting to inserting "educational" snips that were reminiscent of low-budget elementary school videos. There were glimmers of what could have been every so often in the game, and that made me all the more unhappy the designers didn't push just a little further.

One of my academic areas of interest is the film scene in Republican China; we have article after article and book after book that dissect films for their political and social significance. My current research is on Hollywood film advertising in 1930s China, and by default I've been exposed to advertising campaigns for domestic films, the ones that scholars have read, re-read, and dissected for their 'deep meaning.' What many of these deep readings ignore is the sheer economic realities of the film industry: directors may have wanted to 'say something' or urge people to action, but companies wanted to make money. It is the benefit of hindsight that allows us to carefully examine and critique these films on an academic level while ignoring the economic realities of the film industry.

What in the hell does Republican era Chinese film advertising have to do with games? Well, when it comes down to it, the film industry (like the game industry) is concerned about making money at the top levels — the goal is not to change society, but to bring in the money. Even films that are seen today as being deep and insightful were sold on the principles of color, sound, and excitement (violence, mystery, sex or whatever), or simply having a big name attached to the project. Sound familiar? People like Blow rail against the current structure of the industry (not without basis) and the focus on cash, but other industries have somehow managed to produce works that stand the test of time as great works while working within the constraints of having to make money — often while working under conditions that simply aren't an issue in the gaming industry (or modern film industry, for that matter).

The excuse that the game industry is 'young' doesn't cut it — people always point to the film industry, as if it was a wasteland of vapid entertainment and no thoughtful criticism prior to the 1940s, which is demonstrably false. The earliest extant Chinese film is a 1922 comedy à la Charlie Chaplin called Romance of the Fruit Peddler, and even 19 year old undergraduates in the year 2008 are entertained by it. On the flip side, it does — and did — say something about the unpleasant realities of Shanghai society in the '20s (all this in 20 minutes, with no color, sound, or cameras that could zoom or even move without being physically hefted. Amazing!). Likewise, Chaplin's iconic character of 'The Tramp' made his first appearance twenty years after the first-ever public screening of a film and was entertaining while offering a reasonably serious social critique (and Chaplin was a serious commercial success). Criticism and thoughtful debate were likewise going on much earlier than we care to admit. If people want to use the film industry timeline as an excuse for why we're not further along, then they better start explaining why the money-quality-depth conundrum was not insurmountable for film makers in the teens, '20s, and '30s (even in locales that were lagging behind Hollywood and Europe from a technological and economic perspective!) — yet is cause for much wailing and gnashing of teeth among gaming circles.

What makes money? What's the guaranteed cash cow? It's the Final Fantasys, the Halos, the 'great stories' of gaming. Really, I'm A-OK with tradition. I think it's pretty cool that the Shuihu zhuan continues to be reinvented, and that includes forms like the Suikoden series; you can't get much more 'traditional' than one of the Four Great Classical Novels. I don't think a renovation of games (or at least some of them) needs to take some radical form; I'm not even convinced a radical form is the best way to making inroads to really changing things. I like our "great stories," the great classic games. There's something to be said for the comfortable, the familiar, the tried and true. There's a reason I go back to my favorite books, my favorite movies, my favorite games. I go back because something about them made me love them, and switching on a console or cracking open a book takes me back to a familiar, much loved space. Making classics - making them well - is nothing to be dismissed, nor is going out on a limb and trying something new, no matter how minor it seems. One of my favorite descriptions (from The God of Small Things) of those 'great stories' applies as well to my favorite games as it does to my favorite books (not surprising, perhaps, given that the great stories tend to pop up in all media):

The Great Stories are the ones that you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don't deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don't surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover's skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don't. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won't. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn't. And yet you want to know again. 
That is their mystery and their magic.

I don't think we're ever in danger of losing the "great games" and their ilk, if for no other reason than they are generally successful and profitable. Square has made a very profitable business, and an excellent reputation, out of precisely that kind of conservative, evolutionary design that produces great games. There's plenty of crap out there that turns into a popular success, but there are plenty of games that have much to recommend them that also have commercial success. I think those great games - the familiar and well loved - are the best places to play with tradition, but the most dangerous places to start: you risk alienating a core audience. Braid is successful in many ways because it starts off on immediately recognizable and understandable territory, but I think it will wind up suffering for that, too.

The fact we have "great stories" — great games, great genres, great tropes — is what makes me think it wouldn't take much to bump stories up a notch. We already have a kind of Maqiao equivalent in games — just as Han Shaogong makes a 'tip of the hat' to those in the know and offers a little something extra for readers who have the background, plenty of games tip their hat to fans of particular games or genres (I can't count the number of times some insignificant detail of a game resonates strongly with memories of other games played, usually leading to a good bit of delight on my part). And usually, that tipping of the hat is subtle enough that players who don't understand the reference won't be hampered by lack of background or interest. I'm not a gigantic Final Fantasy VII fan, but I was really delighted with Crisis Core: stepping back into a familiar world, with familiar characters, and seeing a different take on familiar situations was a pleasant experience. The whole game is an ode to things that came before, but — while I doubt many people who have picked up Crisis Core are totally clueless to FFVII — it was eminently accessible. Would the uninitiated miss a lot of the little moments? Of course. Could they play the game and enjoy it? I think so.

Is it really a huge leap from that sort of careful crafting and structuring to pushing beyond the borders of games to offer a little something extra for those who want it — without detracting from the enjoyment of people who simply want plain old entertainment?

I hope some games never change - I'd hate to see the death of my favorite game mechanics or play styles or even plot points. But I'd also like to see more richness without the pretensions: we shouldn't have to desperately cling to any bit of hope in a game and trump it up. I'm sure the pendulum will sort itself out eventually and we'll find a happy medium between pure entertainment and the overbearing Xenosagas of the world. A game doesn't have to be full of belabored Gnostic or Objectivist overtones to be 'smart' or 'deep,' and aiming for 'smart' or 'deep' doesn't have to mean an end product that isn't any fun. Throwing games off the deep end does us — and them — a disservice, but so does ignoring the subtle potential for just a little bit more.

"Spring breeze in Yangliu" (1975), from Stefan Landsberger's Chinese Propaganda Poster Pages; Eugène Delacroix, George Sand (1838); Redskin ad, Xinwen bao (27 Sept. 1929); Laogong zhi aiqing (1922)

But after reading that King of Fighers XII was completely hand drawn, the answer to updating a 2D isometric game suddenly felt obvious—just draw it out.

Backtracking for a moment, it's in my humble opinion that Diablo III can't go 3D and maintain its trademark click to kill feel. But even giving the benefit of the doubt to Blizzard that they could deal with this issue (maybe by maintaining the same camera angle), it's hard to imagine such tiny characters on screen in 3D without becoming cartoony. Picture the units in Warcraft 3—there's a reason that the chunky style works for this world—the eye can identify small units that have large, cylindrical arms and giant blocky weapons.

But this art style doesn't match that of the Diablo world. Diablo is carnal in that stereotypical RPG way. If a weapon glows, it's with patina. If a monster is ugly, it's not in the PG Crocks "ugly is beautiful" way. It looks like an ugly monster.

With these boundaries in mind, the solution of hand drawing (and sticking with sprites) seems perfect. Without the limitations of polygons—current screen resolutions combined with Blizzard's artistic talent could create a Diablo that we've only seen in our mind's eye, one that is essentially concept art imported directly into the game without the artistically-limiting technical compromises of 3D modeling. (In short, it'd look a lot like Diablo 2 with the gloves off.)

Granted, KoF's process involved starting with a 3D model, turning it to 2D and then filling in the shading gaps by hand. That's how their animations look 3D and 2D at the same time. So if Blizzard mirrored such a production workflow—and there's absolutely no reason to believe they would—we could have plenty of the 3Desque eye candy in a true isometric world, not compromising Diablo mechanics, but bringing an unmistakable level of greater visual depth to the franchise. (UPDATE: Apparently the 3D to 2D conversion was used in Diablo 2, but it seems the hand-finishing elements of KoF were not.)

Sure, this is just one blogger's opinion. But a hand-drawn Diablo III feels like a Diablo limited only by an artist's pen. And the whole imaginary prospect seems very exciting to me.

What if publishers could counteract the Blockbusters/GameFlys of the world by offering digital rentals, and taking the idea a step further, stick it to GameStop resales by offering a simple system in which gamers could trade or sell their games online?

Stepping back to compare the digital movie industry for a moment, Apple recently signed on all the major film studios to rent their releases online. How does such a system work technically? It's easy, if a movie could be purchased and downloaded before, a download that costs a little less and is tagged to expire is really no more difficult. How does such a system work pragmatically? Apple, wanting to support (read: profit) on their media hardware, only takes the most modest chunk off the song/movie's sale price. The rest goes to those who create the content.

Does this not seem like the obvious next step for the gaming industry?

As for building a digital resale marketplace, such a scenario grows far more complicated, but not impossible. Now that gamers are comfortable dealing in points, imagine this simple system: you buy a game for 100 points, sell it for 50 points, and buy a used games for 75. So what's the catch? You can't sell a used game, and you only get sale points credited if someone buys your game.

Is the plan flawed? I'm sure. It took all of ten seconds to think of. But the important idea here is that an all digital model could have publisher-profitable limits on trade that would be made up to consumers by its extreme ease of use.

But most of all, the truly enticing aspect of such a model (for publishers/devs) is that consoles could provide a relatively safe haven for such a rental/trading system to exist. Unlike PCs, the specialized hardware and OS of these closed boxes make potential exploits far less likely at the scale of the average user—and when they do occur—far more manageable to the infrastructure as a whole (because, face it, firmware wars work pretty freaking well).

And while I'd love to have complete freedom with my digital content, I'd gladly make a few sacrifices for one, simple to use system that works from my couch.

It's nationalism, one could argue. After all, Sony and Nintendo are Japanese companies. And last year, American company Microsoft debuted their Xbox 360's IPTV at CES. But the truth is, Sony, at least, doesn't hold out their good announcements for Japan.

Leipzig won for gaming announcements last year, with Sony unveiling the PS3's DVR, PSP multiplayer syncing with the PS3, and all sorts of neat PSP communication/navigation apps.

The real problem with unveiling such electronic consumer products at CES is that companies like Sony aren't prepping the PS3 to be a DVR in America, let alone the PSP (which requires a wireless digital television signal that doesn't exist in our country). For reasons of either infrastructure (or sometimes stupidity?) video game companies are missing huge hardware opportunities at CES (and America).

Why doesn't Nintendo, in their crafted for the general public attitude, unveil WiiFit to a fat nation that's hungry for weight loss schemes (not as a game at E3, but a real consumer product at CES)? Why doesn't Sony roll out PSP GPS for a country that drives more than any other?

Oh, and timing isn't a great argument either, since CES's proximity to no major holiday makes it the perfect venue to announce technologies that are still inches out of reach.

Frankly, it's shortsightedness and limited thinking on both company's parts. Sony may have excited a few with their promising Blu-ray to PSP transfers, and while admittedly a big step in the right directions, such technology is almost an insult when compared to what we're bound to see from the company in the next year: an incredible digital movie store and/or phones that sync with PS3s...let alone whatever crazy peripherals Nintendo is dreaming up.

The truth is, every major player today is attempting to not only succeed in this generation of consoles, but expand the market in the meantime. Nintendo hopes that your grandma plays brain training or casual titles, Sony hopes that high end home theater enthusiast will seek unparalleled media connectivity and Microsoft hopes to wade moderately into each of these respective pots with titles like Buzz and movies that can be downloaded to your TV.

So why miss an opportunity to speak to the non-gamer public who is willing to spend a bundle on things that plug in? America might not have 1seg capability, but we're not exactly cooking our pterodactyl burgers over an open flame, either.

The real world is a pain in the ass. It involves traffic, cleaning gutters and lines at the grocery store. And often gaming is effective because it streamlines the experience of life, like a movie, just giving us the best parts, the frosty tops of cupcakes without the dry bottoms. That's why when I loaded Burnout Paradise and found a large, beautiful world just waiting for my destructive domination, I was let down.

It's ungrateful, I know. A team of hardworking programmers and artists from Criterion have assembled a game that (like the upcoming Midnight Club) allows you to explore an open world GTA-style and start street races almost seamlessly from a traffic light.

But such a world brings its burdens that agitate my lazy bastard side. Such a world requires stopping for gas, finding repair shops and hitting up a drive-thru for a new paint job. And such a world also requires one of my personal pet peeves, maps, to navigate to and during races.

It's not that Burnout Paradise is bad or that the idea is inherently unsuited for the genre, it's just that I don't mind clean menu systems that can bring me to a race quicker than driving there. And I'm not sure that an open world is really making a game like Burnout any better (or something like Tony Hawk or even Jak 3). I don't always mind clean cut levels so much because they allow me to take the good bites first and last. What about you?