MEMBER BLOG

I feel ancient. :)

Oh, and Live Earth just has to be on my birthday. Darn. However, I will be made up for it with an ice cream cake from the Chinatown Ice Cream Factory. Oh, lychee and mango, how I cherish thee. And a Korean BBQ buffet. Yum, yum. (Hmm... makes me look like an emotional eater. But I don't care, it's my birthday!)

So far, on my birthday:

2:30 am - 4:45 am: Play Twilight Princess.
4:45 am - 10:00 am: Sleepy Sleepy
10:00 am - 11:00 am: Watched Venus Williams make her come back to win her fourth Wimbledon as the lowest seedest ever (23) to win a major! She now joins the ranks of Martina Navritalova, Steffi Graf, and Billie Jean King.

"Video games are different because they are interactive."
"Movies are passive; video games are active."
"Video games are dangerous because people are actually performing violent acts, not just watching as an observer."

How many times have we heard these statements, these casually spoken sentences, from those who seek to severely restrict video games. Yet all of them ignore one crucial component: the magic circle. One core feature of playing - video games or otherwise - is that it occurs in a separate and self-contained sphere that encloses players in a spatiotemporal frame; that is, a frame that is either bounded by space or time, or both. This magic circle effectively isolates the game from the more "serious" tasks of daily living. For a sports game, this is usually the actual playing field: the baseball diamond, the Olympic stadium, the chessboard. There are sharp temporal boundaries as well, a beginning and an end that marks gameplay as a temporary interruption from daily life. It is within this closed world that games are primarily played.

The magic circle is far from being a phenomenon. When two puppies play, it is mutually understood between the two animals that though they are biting and tackling each other, in an actively aggressive mode, that they are not going for the kill. Even the temple or church is a sacred area in which religious ceremonies occur within that confined space, where worshippers practice some forms of behavior that is only appropriate for the duration of the ceremony. For video games, this space is confined by the actual ruleset governing them. That the rules are meant to be balanced and fair to all players - an idealistic and special world - separates the video game from the hardly fair and idealistic world that we all live in.

In fact, this element of fair play within the magic circle presents a serious issue of morals in players, especially online players who frequently deal with cheap tactics or immoral behavior. When certain players step out of bounds, or hack into the system to give themselves an advantage, it disrupts the agreed-upon conventions and rules by which the entire gaming community is held. Usually, moderators have to come in and resolve such abuse, but more often than not, this develops from the reactions of many more numerous players, taken as a whole, who desire justice against these "lawbreakers."

Thus, it is only under the rare occurence when people are unaware of the magic circle that problems occur. The magic circle is meant to serve as a hidden protective shield that supplies a safe and reliable gratification of human drives, but it breaks down when the players themselves are unaware of it. Believing that the reality of Doom extends to the reality of regular life is as dangerous as biting someone's ear off during a boxing match. This is the primary reason why children, many of whom have undeveloped lines of what is acceptable in a game as opposed to real life, are restricted to buying games.

However, interactive, violent, and active video games - like nearly all (if not all) forms of media - naturally exist in a bubble. Games naturally presuppose that players are consciously aware of the game's objectives and rules, and play, even in its most primitive sense, imply this intuitive understanding. Indeed, video games are pleasurable on the fundamental basis that they are make-believe. Thus, no matter how engrossing video games become, they are bound by the force that makes them engrossing in the first place.

Hey, the magic circle ain't magical for nothing.

If the Wii could become a transformer, I believe it would be a very user-friendly robot. And you could control him (her?) (it?!) comfortably between three and eight feet. Oh, Wiimote recommendations for the sensor bar, I hardly knew I needed ye.

Of course, the whole purpose of this blog entry is to celebrate the Wii-ness that is now in my life. I found the system in Chinatown of the New York City variety selling for $350. Not bad around here or the Internet, really. And that was without tax, with the added bonus that my money was going toa small store. Hey, there needs to be some competition with the GameStop/EB Games giant. There's nothing more American than bringing down big businesses; that is, unless you actually reach the dream of owning one.

Carefully riding the subway back to my Flushing abode - carrying a Wii, three games, and numerous accessories in New York City makes one nervous - I finally returned home after dodging the sights of fledgling fanboys. Then, like all new things, I treated each Wii component like a baby, as my family watched me entranced by the whole process - and probably the scent of new technology. They should make a candle for that.

Installation, in line with many a blog, was a breeze, apart from my own stupidity. Yes, the sensor bar only works if I plug it into the console. (It should have been wireless... *grumble*). And now - I mean, now now - that I finally peer down at my clock, I know that it is 3:21 AM, the time which I stopped playing the darn thing.

I have been adrift in a school of Brian Academia and a stadium of Wii Sports - the only reasons why I have yet to open Twilight Princess. I touched WarioWare for a brief moment, but I didn't really get it. Let's just say I can understand why a 9.1-rated game is sitting in the used section. But truly, I'm just letting myself build up to the total engrossment and commitment that is Twilight Princess. (Hope it's the same with WarioWare.) I'm glad I let Big Brain Academy and Wii Sports get me accustomed to the system, the Wii-mote, and the Wii-ality of it all. (Geez... that was so Elmer Fudd). A visual interface for video games is viable and demanding - of which the Wii is an example and a pivot point from where the industry should be heading towards in terms of the next generation.

Sorry for the technicality of the previous statement. Maybe it's because my brain is overloading from all those activities in Big Brain Academy. By the way, I am quite good at all the areas of the game, except for Memorization. There's something about finding birds in covered cages and having the cages rotate that befuddles me more than the Shell game. And if you are a Gold Medal recipient of the face recognition activity, I bow down to your greatness.

Speaking of greatness, the Transformers movie is awesome. That's right... is. Like, I saw the movie on Thursday at 8pm before it is released on July 4th...is. To all fans, it's everything that you wanted out of a Transformers movie. Aside from a rather abrupt ending and epilogue, you will like this movie, and this is coming from a person who has never really been interested in the whole Optimus Prime/Megatron thing. Big robots of any kind has always been linked in my mind to compensation for something down below (Big O, anyone?). And yes, on a critical level, Transformers probably isn't going to win any awards (aside from perhaps the next MTV Movie Awards or something like that), but it's just entertaining. It's like 300 in that sense (though 300 might win for cinematography).

It also just goes to show you that Michael Bay knows what he's doing. Though I think Transformers ranks just a tad beneath X-Men 2, it's spades better than Superman Returns. You know,in the whole villians actually fight kind ofway. Why can't we have someone like him directing films based on video games? Why?! [Dumps question into MrCHUP0N's mailbag...]

(Let\'s keep this short and sweet.)

PASSION. Somehow, this word is abandoned for the more fearful word: ADDICTION. Could it possibly be that when someone sacrifices much of their livelihood towards the pursuit of success ...   read more...

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Pet Alien (DS) - HonestGamers.com Staff Review

Put to sleep.

Take my games. Take my console. Hey, take my pride as a male. But that will never compare to someone taking my memory cards. Sure, I could just get another one for $20 bucks and upload some game save off of GameFAQs, but that's my blood ...   read more...

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I actually heard of Fire Fire Revolution many months before GameSpot posted a sidebar article on it, but the idea of having real-life consequences for video games is an intruiging yet dangerous one. Would you play Counter-Strike if you were given ...   read more...

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I think I may have seen everything now.

There's R-Type in my Final Fight! (Staff Review @ HonestGamers.com)

The age-old question of whether games are art arrived once again at the 2007 Game Developers Conference, and the answer of yes was met with little resistance. The game industry is reasonably confident in this assertion and continue...   read more...

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