Fantasy Flight Games to Publish Warhammer Fantasy Board Game

Over the past couple of years, Fantasy Flight Games used their game publishing agreement with Games Workshop to revise and republish a number of classic Games Workshop board games from the late 80s. Among these classics are Fury of Dracula, Warrior Knights, and Talisman. Old editions of these games were grabbing onerously high prices on eBay and preventing new gamers from discovering these gems and it has been a blessing that Fantasy Flight Games has brought them back into the marketplace. Some of us are still hoping that Fantasy Flight Games will release a new edition of Space Hulk or Warhammer Quest, though we're not holding our breath as Doom and Descent are pretty good replacements for those hard to find gems.

Following up on the success of these reprints, Fantasy Flight Games will be releasing an original board game based on Games Workshop's Warhammer Fantasy line of products. The game, entitled Chaos in the Old World, puts players in the role of one of four gods of chaos who are descending upon the world in order to remake it as they would see fit.



As Fantasy Flight Games' website describes it:

Chaos in the Old World makes you a god. Each god’s distinctive powers and legion of followers grant you unique strengths and diabolical abilities with which to corrupt and enslave the Old World. Khorne, the Blood God, the Skulltaker, lusts for death and battle. Nurgle, the Plaguelord, the Father of Corruption, luxuriates in filth and disease. Tzeentch, the Changer of Ways, the Great Conspirator, plots the fate of the universe. Slaanesh, the Prince of Pleasure and Pain, the Lord of Temptations, lures even the most steadfast to his six deadly seductions. Yet, as you and your fellow powers of Chaos seek domination by corruption and conquest, you must vie not only against each other, but also against the desperate denizens of the Old World who fight to banish you back to the maelstrom of the Realm of Chaos."

The description implies that the players compete not only against one another, but against the mechanics of the game itself. As in Reiner Knizia's Lord of the Rings -- also published by Fantasy Flight Games -- this can be a rewarding play experience. I eagerly await seeing how Eric M. Lang applies his excellent card game development skills to a competitive board game. The hardest part, other than the waiting, will be choosing between the "six deadly seductions" and the Blood God.

The games first print run will also include two cards that will interact with the Warhammer Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. The Signet of the Cursed Company lets you wander the battlefields of the Warhammer Online MMO as a fearsome skeletal warrior. The Call to WAR will instantly teleport you to your capital city.

Movies Christian Loves, But Shouldn't #1: Vision Quest

A couple of weeks ago, Nancy Rommelmann -- who put this interesting piece on a question of journalistic ethics up Tuesday -- had a post on her blog asking her readers to post links to songs they should hate, but find immensely enjoyable. Naturally, this prompted me to post a Rick Roll in the comments section. I did this for three reasons. For the fun of it, because the post was essentially begging me to, and because it genuinely is a song that always gets me to do the embarrassing "sway the arms while driving" dance. Her post also prompted me to check out the new Tinted Windows "supergroup" CD, which I have found I enjoy in that Oneders kind of way. Tinted Windows is fronted by Taylor Hanson, of Hanson fame, so I should despise them -- but I find my mp3 player playing a disproportionate number of songs from the album.

Needless to say, Rommelmann's post reminded me of one of the two songs that I truly cannot turn away from -- John Waite's Change -- and the film that contains the scene that always jumps to the forefront of my mind when I hear the song.

Excuse me, I'll be right back. I have to work out before I finish this post.

Click the second link in the above paragraph to watch the scene while I jump rope for two minutes.

Whew...back.

Now that you have clicked the last link, you know that John Waite's Change reminds me of the film Vision Quest. If someone were to describe the plot of the film to me in order to see if I would be interested in watching it with them, they'd have to wake me up a couple of seconds after they began their synopsis. The story is the typical coming of age high school male story that usually leaves me cold. Very rarely do they touch upon anything I find meaningful. I usually find the protagonists alien and the world they come from foreign.

Take White Water Summer, starring Sean Astin, as an example. I'm supposed to sympathize with Astin's character, and the fact that I like the actor should make this easy, but I never have. I see Astin's "city kid forced to endure the tyranny of a psychopathic camping enthusiast" as a lying cheating wuss. I always root for Kevin Bacon, who plays the mentally unstable youth counselor. Astin's character just needs to suck it up. And don't even get me going on how The Karate Kid's Daniel-san deserves every Karate kick to the gut he gets after he lied about knowing the martial arts. If you lie to be cool, you'd better be willing to face the consequences -- even if they mean your leg gets swept.

Vision Quest is the tale of Louden Swain (Matthew Modine) who decides to attempt an impossible task. He decides to leave his wrestling weight class, where he is likely the best wrestler in Washington state, to go down two weight classes and wrestle an inhuman wrestling machine named Shute. Shute is so inhuman that his workout regimen includes carrying a massive log on his back while he walks up and down every step of a college football stadium. It is a boring and predictable plot that we've seen done better in the classic Breaking Away where the actions of the protagonist speak for the frustrations of an entire socio-economic sub-culture. Swain isn't a proxy for the frustrations of blue collar Americans who have watched their hopes and dreams disappear as the economy has made the trades of their parents -- and what their future might have been -- obsolete. Swain's character lacks that depth, so I should hate the film.

But I don't. I own the DVD, and whenever Vision Quest is on cable I am compelled to watch. In the case of Vision Quest, it isn't the story that keeps me coming back, it is the characters. Louden Swain was one of the first characters I saw that seemed like a real person to me. When he talked about why he did one thing or another, it made sense and Matthew Modine's performance captured the sense of confusion I felt throughout my teen years.

Then there's Linda Fiorentino. I'd like to take a moment to thank the movies of the '80s for bringing Linda Fiorentino to the big screen. Her performances in Vision Quest and Gotcha! are two of the sexiest performances I have ever seen in film. The 14 year-old boy I was when I saw this movie quickly learned how powerful teenage hormones can be, and he had Linda Fiorentino to thank. This isn't to say that Fiorentino's performance is all "beauty" and no substance, it is the enigmatic depth of her character that makes her so appealing. Here is a women who simultaneously displays interest and disdain, certainty and confusion, naiveté and experience. She's quite a character, and leaves a lasting impression on any viewer.

Even the films minor characters leave lasting impressions. From Daphne Zuniga's performance as the plucky young editor of the school newspaper to Michael Schoeffling's performance as Kuch, one gets a sense of having met real people when the film has ended. When I saw Gross Anatomy years later, it was easy to imagine that the Matthew Modine and Daphne Zuniga characters were the same people from Vision Quest four years later. It should be noted that Zuniga's cute and quirky performance in this film so impressed the 14 year-old me that it is she who I have had a crush on ever since and not Linda Fiorentino. Yes, Fiorentino is a sexual force on the screen, but Zuniga is who I wanted to date.

Even though I should hate it, I can think of far worse things to do with 90 minutes than watch Vision Quest.

Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Popular Medievalism, and You

Cinerati friend, and Medieval Scholar, Professor Richard Scott Nokes of Troy University (the other Trojans) has post today where he discusses an editorial dilemma faced by a scholarly publication when they were deciding how to publish his paper "Beowulf: Prince of the Geats, Nazis, and Odinists." His article touches upon why the study of popular medievalism is a vital component of any serious scholarship regarding Medieval literature. His paper begins with a discussion of how important Beowulf -- the poem -- has been to various groups for the purposes of national identity, and posits that scholars (and I'm reading a little into Dr. Nokes' words here) need to be able to look at their valued literary artifacts from outside the ivory tower and take seriously popular uses, and misuses, of their beloved tomes.

Professor Nokes' discussion of the moral dilemma the publication faced, and the paper itelf, are worth your time. Stop over and give them a read.

Speaking of worthy reads/plays, here is a glimpse at some of the items Cinerati thinks belong in everyone's "popular medieval" library/game room.

Fantasy Flight Games' Beowulf: The Legend, is an excellent game that mechanically attempts to emulate the rhythm of an epic poem.

I have always enjoyed the TSR Minigames SAGA and VIKING GODS. It should be noted that if you choose to play the Aesir in VIKING GODS, your chances for victory are very slim. The game is very fun, but you must go in with the proper sense of doom. Hela is no ally to the Aesir in this game.

I also enjoy RAGNAROK by SPI, a game that was originally published in an issue of Ares magazine. The Aesir aren't nearly as doomed in the game, so you don't need to be as fatalistic when you begin play.

Over the past two years, White Wolf Publishing released their excellent Scion role playing game. In the game, the players assume the roles of the descendants of ancient gods who have been at war with the Titans for millenia. While the premise of gods versus titans leaps straight from Greek mythology, the game assumes that many pantheons are participating in the same struggle. Naturally, the Giants and other monstrosities from Norse legend fit perfectly within this paradigm and the players can play the Scion's of Thor, Odin, Tyr, or even Loki. The game was originally planned to be three books, which contained a campaign where the players progress from Hero to Demi-God to one of the Gods in the struggle against the Titans.

The success of the Scion title led White Wolf to publish a companion, with more pantheons, and an alternate campaign book entitled Ragnarök. We here at Cinerati cannot wait to play in a Ragnarök game. Ever since hearing tales of our friend Roger Frederick's modern day Ragnarök campaign in the early 90s/late 80s (it used the GURPS Supers system), we have been on the lookout for a well constructed offering that approached the quality hinted at by Roger's players. Sadly, Roger wasn't a part of the writing of this project, but it is an excellent read.

As an aside, I have always wondered if the Völuspá was operating at the behest of Odin in order to fool the giants into thinking they would eventually win in their struggle against the Aesir and Vanir. By giving them a "prophecy" where the trickster betrays the gods in favor of the giants, Odin delays the war and increases the tenants of Valhalla. It would be a grand trick indeed if the Völuspá were a lie.

Thanks George Lucas, Because 10 Years Ago You Killed My Childhood Forever

Marc Bernardin reminds me why today is a sad day for Gen X.

When I was really young, I used to spend the night at my grandparents house every Saturday night. It was a magical time. Like most kids who visit their grandparents, my time with Oma and Opa was spent reading, picnicking, washing cars, getting to sleep in to ridiculous hours on Sunday, and experiencing the love of one's elders -- which included a very different set of social norms from life with my parents. My Opa was a retired career Sergeant Major in the Army who had served in WWII, Korea, and Vietnam. And when my Opa returned home to the United States after his tour with the US Occupation forces in Europe, he brought my Oma from Germany to our fair shores.

For the most part, my Oma and Opa were serious people. After dinner, we always watched the news and Oma and Opa were always interested in my opinions on the issues of the day. This was true when I was 14 and it was true when I was 7.

But the times with Oma and Opa weren't always so serious. Some of my favorite times were when my very serious Opa would, almost at random, tease my Oma with some sarcastic remark or jibe. His giggle was infectious and watching Oma go from red with anger at being criticized to laughing out loud and poking Opa when she realized it was only a jibe, is one of my fondest sets of memories from childhood.

The other time things weren't too serious at Oma and Opa's was late Saturday evenings. My Opa would stay up with me and watch the old Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers serials on some UHF bandwidth local station. I hadn't seen anything like them, and I was immediately addicted. Opa also introduced me to the glorious films of Ray Harryhausen. So in the summer of 1977 when STAR WARS was released in the theater, I had the perfect background of experience having spent a good part of 1976 and early 1977 watching the old serials with Opa. The movie captured the feel of those classic tales perfectly, and even borrowed some scenes. I dare anyone to watch the Flash Gordon serials without experiencing moments of "déjà cinema". I was 6 years old and STAR WARS was a joy to see in the theater. I watched it over 20 times in the theaters -- I am certain that is a conservative estimate. The serials fostered my love of narrative storytelling, but STAR WARS cemented my love for movies.

This is a love that continues to this day, but a part of the childhood wonder I brought to every movie I watched died ten years ago today. You see...on that day ten years ago, George Lucas released STAR WARS EPISODE ONE: THE PHANTOM MENACE. The movie was the single largest pop culture disappointment I have ever experienced. It was worse that when DC killed Superman and broke Batman's back. It was a worse disappointment than the Joel Schumacher Batman movies (though not a worse movie than those movies).

THE PHANTOM MENACE wasn't that bad of a movie, all things considered, but it did lack one thing that the original had in spades. The new movie lacked "heart." It didn't contain the same sense of wonder that inspired the first films, it seemed more workmanlike than inspired. The original series of films has a number of flaws, narratively and cinematically. For example, ust how long does it take for the Sarlacc to digest you? But the original films had an aura of enchantment that the franchise has failed to recapture as it has become more about continuing STAR WARS and less about sharing the wonder of a tradition of Space Opera tales.

Since THE PHANTOM MENACE, my movie viewing has become a little more cynical and I don't go in expecting to feel enchanted anymore. Sometimes a film can make me feel slightly enchanged, STAR TREK and QUANTUM OF SOLACE come close, but I no longer watch previews expecting that they even come close to representing the wonder (or lack thereof) that a particular film will offer.

Don't even get me going on how much I think WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE will suck.

Books Every Gamer Should Own: Rick Swan's The Complete Guide to Roleplaying Games

In November of 1990, the world of role playing games was still largely a mystery to the majority of mass culture. Most people "knew," thanks to the culture wars, that D&D was devil worship and it made you go crazy like Tom Hanks in "that" made for TV movie. There had been some products released in the 1980s that attempted to convey to the lay person what role playing games were about and what some of the best role playing games were. These products did a good job of introducing the concepts, systems, and assumptions underlying role playing games as a hobby. They also provided great information to those who wanted a better understanding of these games than the evening news was providing them -- sadly not enough people read these books and some of the misconceptions regarding rpgs linger into the modern day.

While the concept of what role playing games are was a mystery to the majority of the public, the vast array of products available and whether they were of good quality or not was largely a mystery to the majority of gamers. Unless you subscribed to THE SPACE GAMER, WHITE DWARF (before it became all Warhammer all the time), THE DRAGON, or some other gaming magazine -- most of which were fairly obscure and weren't available at your local bookstore (THE DRAGON being the exception) -- you had no source for thoughtful and accurate reviews. Since the creation of the role playing game hobby, circa 1973 with the publication of D&D, literally hundreds of new games -- in a wide variety of genre -- had been published. Some were still in print, others had come into print and faded away. Unless you had a phenomenal hobby store in your local community you were likely unaware of the majority of these games.



Into this product rich and information scarce environment arrived a perfect catalog for the role playing aficionado, Rick Swan's The Complete Guide to Role-Playing Games. Even if the "complete" in the title was a bit of an exaggeration, there were many games excluded from the book, the volume is was an invaluable resource for the gamer who wanted to know what was available in 1990 and whether it was any good or not. The fact that the book is topical today is a testimony to the insightful reviews provided by Rick Swan. The majority of the reviews are "true reviews" and not merely product recommendations. This is because the reviews don't merely provide a recommendation pro or con a particular product, they also give a glimpse into the history and mechanics of the game. One can determine whether a particular review is a "true review" or a mere product recommendation by asking themselves one simple question about the review, "does this review add value to the 'art' in addition to evaluating a particular product or work?" In the case of games, a "true review" would include meaningful discussion regarding game design -- from either a mechanical or narrative perspective. Many of the reviews in Rick Swan's book meet this criterion.

This isn't to say that I agree with every review, I don't, but it is to say that the vast majority of the reviews in this book are a worthy read for gamers of any generation.

An example of an argument that Swan presents in the book that has shaped the way I view my hobby (how often can you say a review has shaped the way you view a particular medium?) is this section of his review of the Dungeons and Dragons Game -- in this case the Red Box Basic Set and not AD&D:

Purists grumble that D&D isn't just simple, but simple-minded. The rigid character classes give players little freedom in customizing their PCs, and advancement by levels is arbitrary and unrealistic. The magic system and combat rules are illogical, Armor Classes represent the chance of being hit rather than offering protection from damage, experience points are meaningless and abstract, the adventures are juvenile... you get the idea.

These grouches completely miss the point. Complaining that Dungeons and Dragons is an unrealistic RPG is like saying that chess is an inaccurate wargame. We aren't talking about delving into the social structure of medieval Europe here, we're talking about tossing fireballs at lizard men and swiping gold pieces from ogres. Dungeons and Dragons provides a streamlined, easily mastered set of rules that emphasizes action and adventure. And as a bonus, it's an excellent introduction to the entire hobby.

This is only a small section of Swan's review of the D&D game, which he gives 3 1/2 stars out of 4, but within these two paragraphs you can begin to see an underlying philosophy of what role playing game design should focus on. In this case, the argument is that it is perfectly appropriate for a game to focus on fun at the expense of realism -- an argument that Gary Gygax often made in THE DRAGON while defending his creation. Amazingly, many of the criticisms launched at Basic D&D can be heard in the criticisms many people are making of the newest edition of D&D (4th Edition). It is often said that the game is overly simple, for MMORPG obsessed teens, for those too stupid to understand the complex rules of 3.5, and a score of other statements that echo the sentiments that Swan so easily pushes to the side. Like the Basic Set, 4e is an excellent introduction to the entire hobby.

As I wrote earlier, Swan's review of D&D is one of the things that helped shape my appreciation for the gaming hobby and helped me form my underlying philosophy. My philosophy is simple, the system should serve the intention -- an adaptation of form follows function. But in the case of my gaming philosophy, ornament isn't necessarily a crime -- ornament can be the purpose; and in the case of games the narrative "fluff" can be said to be the ornamentation surrounding the mechanical design. The ends of gaming is "fun" and though that word can have many definitions, it is the goal of the game designer (and the DM and players in interactive role playing games) to play toward the goal of fun. Needless to say, fun trumps verisimilitude at every turn in my gaming philosophy. I'm not a purist. I like elements of chance introduced into my games. But then again, much to the dismay of Adolf Loos, I adore art nouveau.

It is this love of "form follows fun," that also points to the review where I most disagree with Mr. Swan. He is unkind to the classic Pacesetter game Chill. According to Swan Chill is:

a horror game for the easily frightened...While most of Chill's vampires, werewolves, and other B-movie refugees wouldn't scare a ten-year-old, they're appropriate to the modest ambitions of the game...Though it's been out of print for years, Chill remains as popular as ever on the convention circuit. I'm not sure why...Chill is too shallow for extended campaigns and lacks the depth to please anyone but the most undemanding of players.

I guess for Mr. Swan it's okay for a fantasy game to be about throwing fireballs at lizard men, but it isn't okay for a horror game to be based on the Universal Classic Horrors or the glorious Hammer films. Mr. Swan, it seems, is only satisfied by the deeply nihilistic horror of the Lovecraftian kind exemplified by Call of Cthulhu where life is meaningless. Too bad, Chill has some wonderful fodder for the Game Master well versed in the classic horror tale who wants his players to be ghost hunters like the Winchester Brothers rather than gibbering lunatics who have seen what man was not meant to know. I have always been struck by how an individual can defend the simple gateway game on one hand, but then dismiss another because it isn't high art. And that criticism can apply to any number of critics.

Disagreements aside, the book is a wonderful and necessary edition to any gamer's library.

Why the Internet is Better than Malls for Your Shopping Needs

The last thing one would expect to find on a pop culture site that features posts about comic books, video games, role playing games, and movies is a post about an advertisement for an online fashion retailer. Well, this is such a post. The ad starts predictably with two women interested in the same article of fashion, then escalates to violence, only to reveal that the malls have been overcome with flesh eating zombies.

Okay, that last bit might be an exaggeration, but when you consider the lack of blood loss when the one woman rips off the other woman's arm it isn't that much of an exaggeration.

Apparently, people who shop at malls are zombies ergo smart people order their fashion online from the safety of their bunkers.

Hat Tip Tulkinghorn and Andrew Sullivan.

Jody Drew Me a Custom Troll for Trollhalla

One of the advantages to having a multi-talented wife is that when you ask if she might have the time to draw a troll dressed like Sherlock Holmes for you to submit as a profile picture on a website -- you get one with lightning speed.

I have recently joined the Trollhalla community. Trollhalla is a website created by Ken St. Andre, the author of Tunnels and Trolls (the second published fantasy role playing game), as a place where supporters of the Tunnels and Trolls game can come together and chat while simultaneously supporting the game they love. As many of you know, though I am a huge fan of the King Kong of mass market role playing games, I am also a very big supporter of smaller press and independent game designers.

I have always thought that much of the most innovative developments in gaming come from the smaller companies. In fact, one of the reasons I like the King Kong of the industry so much is that each edition of that game has responded to innovations in the gaming industry -- either by altering mechanics or hiring people who were innovative designers for smaller companies. The most recent giant behemoth shows influences from a number of my favorite games -- Feng Shui, Savage Worlds, and The Burning Wheel among them -- and I eagerly await seeing how the next "mutation" of D&D incorporates current developments like the "how to run mystery scenarios" systems of the excellent Gumshoe system.

But my support for smaller companies is not the only reason I am surprised that it took me over 25 years to find this group -- they subscribed to a fanzine by Ken before the internet. No, I should have found this group much earlier because when I was younger Tunnels and Trolls was the game I played more than any other. There was probably a time when I had nearly memorized all the encounters in The Arena of Khazan, and my 3x5 library of gladiator npcs for that adventure easily numbered in the hundreds.

When I was young, as today, I liked playing fantasy rpgs with friends. But I also liked playing baseball, playing soccer, wrestling, dating, and I had a part-time job. Marathon gaming sessions with friends were something one could only really do during winter and summer breaks. Tunnels and Trolls solo adventures were something I could do right after I finished my homework and they were a lot more entertaining than a lot of prime time television.

So here's to T&T and Trollhalla, stop by if you want to chat with some people who are enthusiastic about a very fun game.

Now to email Ken to see how I can submit the image.

Axes Don't Attack Cops, People Attack Cops With Axes

Earlier this week, I posted about a tragic event where a sword fight between family members led to the death of an elderly woman. Now we have this news of a man attacking police with a battle axe.

More on How Playing Games Can Increase Your Employment Marketability

I would probably take fewer than two minutes of perusing the archives of this website for even the most dense person to deduce that I am an avid lover of games of all types. I am a ludophile extraordinaire. I'm the type of person who reads that the CEO of Spirit Airlines owns over 1700 board games and asks himself,"hmmm... Do I have that many?" The answer to which will vary depending on whether you get to count Role Playing Games, Board Game Expansions, and Card Games. It varies even more if you count each product within a Role Playing Game line as "one game" or as individual games in the equation. In other words, my answer might be -- depending on the initial criteria for the variables -- "Yes, I own as many games as the CEO of Spirit Airlines." Sadly, without the paycheck of said CEO.

It should be noted that Mr. Baldanza, the CEO I am referring to, has owned over 3000 games -- and currently owns approximately 2000 -- according to his BoardGameGeek Profile. I trust his profile more than the New York Times as he -- unlike me -- appears to have time to actually update his profile. My profile significantly underestimates my game collection and I really ought to get to work making my profile accurate. Though the fact that Mr. Baldanza's profile is actually updated may provide a clue why Spirit Airlines receives so many customer complaints -- just sayin'.

I also own a fair collection of video games ranging from the Atari 2600 era to the modern 360 era with a couple of stops over in PC land.

All of this is to say that if anyone would be excited to read articles regarding how playing games increases your value as a potential hire, it would be me. So when I read articles, like this one from the Washington Post discussing Changing the Game: How Video Games are Transforming the Future of Business, I read them with a pretty open mind (especially when the book can be purchased for my Kindle 2 in seconds while writing a blog entry) -- maybe too open. Add to this that the CEO of Spirit Airlines thinks that certain games provide real world skills that can be applied to running an airline, and one can see how it might be easy to get excited about how all that time I've been playing games hasn't been wasted time. And if 97% of teens spend time playing video games, it might help worried parents to discover that their kids are also developing some useful skills while beating Guitar Hero: Metallica or setting up a World of Warcraft raid.

There are reasons to believe that playing games can be beneficial in developing a variety of skills -- social and otherwise, but one should always keep in mind that not all games are created equal. Candyland is a great gateway game that is one of the best ways to introduce children to the norms of gameplay, and the fact that who wins the game is completely random can be a tool to teach young people how to be gracious when they lose a game. Learning that losing isn't the end of the world by learning that sometimes winning is impossible, can be a wonderful experience for children. Especially, when the outcome of the game is "hidden" and that the only way to find the result is to actually finish the game. Candyland teaches how to lose, how to persevere when things look glum, and that winning doesn't make you a better person. Candyland's approach, with winners and losers, is a far better way to teach self-esteem (and its limits) than the modern "no losers," "no conflict," "no touching," and "no dodgeball" movement that seems to be pedagogically popular.

All that said, Candyland isn't the best game to teach a young person mathematical skills, or how to look at challenges critically and logically, or how to develop deductive skills. Games like Settlers of Catan, Chess, and Clue are much better for these skills. And you can also learn many of Candyland's lessons through physical sports which have the added benefit of being good exercise as well. If you want to maximize the benefit of playing games, then one would imagine you might want to play a "balanced diet" of games.

Recent research has also demonstrated that young people who play video games are less likely to experience depression than those who spend time watching television. This is good news indeed for parents who worry about their Prince of Persia obsessed tyke might become a lonely couch potato. Video games, and games in general, are active experiences. But studies like the one related to the link between TV and depression should also be read skeptically. As much as I only want to read happy things about games, I can't help but have my "is the research normatively biased gnome" whisper into my ear, when I read explanations for the different reactions to the various stimuli like the following:

What is it about TV that makes it more detrimental to an adolescent's health than gaming?

In a word, advertisements. Most hour-long TV programs now have over 15 minutes of commercials. That adds up to a lot of time spent listening to advertisers tell you exactly what's missing from your life - and how their product will improve it. "The bottom line is that when we do sit down and think it is nice and relaxing [to watch TV], the reason we feel that way is because our thinking brain is completely turned off," Dr. Primack explains. "It can almost be related to commercials brainwashing us, and saying 'you want this in your life.'

Really? It's commercials that cause depression? Not the inherent passive nature of the medium? Not the lack of social element in TV watching? (All points brought up by Nachbar -- the journalist who wrote the article for The Escapist -- as things that are benefits of games.) Commercials make us feel inferior? Wow. [sarcasm]How insightful in that Frankfurt school cultural hegemony kind of way.[/sarcasm]

I don't know about you, but when I watch the most recent Suave commercial it isn't telling me "exactly what's missing from [my]life." It seems to me, the commercial is saying that Suave is a good product for those who live busy lives. And when I see a car commercial for a BMW (or a sports car) driving swiftly along some coastal highway, my first thought is usually "that's pretty." I don't spend time thinking to myself, "why don't I have the latest model of Mercedes." I'm just not that obsessed with certain material goods defining my sense of self. Not that my personal experience proves anything -- one cannot generalize from an n of 1 with any degree of accuracy. But social sciences are at their weakest when they try to describe "why," especially if the study didn't have a second test group who was exposed to television shows without commercials, and various groups exposed to specific genres of television entertainment. I'll need to read the full report to see what variables they account for, and how they account for them, but unless they test specifically for a correlation between watching advertising specifically and depression, this sounds like a normative bias to me.

All that said regarding a potential weakness in the study -- one cannot know if it is an actual weakness unless one sees the test design -- that doesn't mean that there is not a correlation between television viewing and an increase in the odds of exhibiting depression. There is. There also is no similar correlation between playing video games, many of which do actually have ads in them. The good Dr. and I will have to discuss what all that "unlocking" of vehicles in various race games is other than advertising.

Anyway...no one ever said watching TV would help you develop job skills.

Swords Don't Kill People. People Kill People.

This isn't the kind of news you expect to read in the 21st century, but it appears that a 70 year-old woman was killed trying to break up a sword-fight. According to the news story, it isn't clear whether the 70 year-old woman was killed by her husband or her grandson.

For some reason this strikes me as more shocking than a shooting death. It seems to me that a shooting death, as a result of an escalating argument, can happen "accidentally." Accidentally, in the sense that a person who is inappropriately waiving a gun around might have the gun go off. My imagination is finding it difficult to create a scenario where a sword "accidentally."

I had considered including a gallows humor Elric reference here. But after reading the first commentator on the news site's blog, I can't do it. This is truly, as the Unlocked Wordhoard wrote, the least cool swordfight of the year. The Highlander references in the comments section are even worse.

As a gamer, I hope that it isn't later discovered that Chris Rondeau played D&D, was an SCA member, or any other gaming link you can imagine.

Spirit Airlines CEO's Board Game Recommendations

Do you ever dream of becoming the CEO of an airline that receives more complaints per customer than any other airline? Do you dream of running an airline that runs commercials comparing its low prices with how low it would be if your friend were having an affair with your mom? Do you dream of running an airline that pretty much charges for everything except the air you are breathing while flying?

If you answered any of the above questions, then Spirit Airlines CEO Ben Baldanza has a list of board games he believes will help you become an airlines CEO some day. That's right, Mr. Baldanza is a board game geek who believes that the skills he uses every day in running his airline can be honed by playing board games. Surprisingly, or not surprisingly, none of his recommended board games are actual simulations of running an airline. Baldanza's introductory paragraph to this list states, "if you really want to do the job well. No game with an airline theme even comes close...."

The board games he does recommend vary from long standing classics like Go to popular modern Eurogames like Power Grid. Given the depiction of Spirit in the NY Times article, I was surprised that friendship ending games like Diplomacy and Illuminati were nowhere to be found. Given the large volume of board games at Cinerati headquarters, I was surprised that there were so few of these games in the Cinerati library. We have Go and Power Grid, and have been hunting desperately for a good copy of King Oil, but none of the rest have found there way onto our game shelves.

Apparently, the Cinerati headquarters isn't the place to learn the skills to become the CEO of an airline that punishes the price insensitive, but Baldanza's list has ensured that the Cinerati headquarters will soon host a copy of Chinatown.

Paizo vs. RPGNOW (aka DriveThruRPG): Two Different Ways to Satisfy Consumers

When Wizards of the Coast decided to remove all availability to purchase their gaming products (past, present, and future) as PDF files, the decision left ripples throughout the gaming industry. Wizards left due to rampant piracy of their products and the effects that piracy was having on physical (and digital) sales. Last week, I wrote that I thought this was both a good and bad decision by Wizards -- good on the new products and bad on back catalog.

I also argued that this would be a good thing for the gaming industry overall. It was my belief that gaming companies would look to take advantage of the void left in the wake of Wizards leaving the market. This occurred rather quickly with several publisher joining in a Celebration of PDFs, where they offer their current PDF products at a significant discount. This has had mixed reviews from the brick and mortar retailers, but I think it is a smart move. You can read some of the brick and mortar reactions here, here, and here.

What I didn't expect, and maybe should have, was the different ways that different online stores would respond.

Stewart Wieck and Sean Patrick Fannon of RpgNow (and DriveThruRpg), who shut down access to Wizards pdfs instantly (earlier than he was requested), went quick to work negotiating limited access for his customers who had previously purchased products from the Wizards catalog from his sites. He notified his customers that starting tomorrow customers will be able to download previously purchased Wizards pdfs for a 24 hour period. After that period, all the material will be gone for good. Stewart was seeking to both satisfy his customers, who had previously paid for access to material, while adhering to Wizards' wishes. Kudos to you Stewart and Sean.

Paizo, on the other hand, appears to have made no such offering to their customers and it looks unlikely that they will do so. Where RpgNow left dead links of my former products, so that I could at least see what I had purchased -- and so they could negotiate the deal they negotiated, Paizo removed all references to Wizards products I purchased from their website. This not only demonstrates that it is unlikely that Paizo is negotiating a deal with Wizards, it exhibits three weaknesses in Paizo's customer service.

First, it hinders my attempts to draft a letter to Wizards demonstrating how they have benefited from my digital consumership (I will have to go through my files to manually figure out which I purchased from Paizo and which from RpgNow). Second, it demonstrates a lack of foresight that Wizards might be up for some negotiations. Third, it demonstrates that Paizo cares more about its own publisher business than it does about any business revenue it acquires as a digital game store -- a short sighted view in my opinion.

Paizo is a very successful publisher, but I have found that they are a poor retailer. Physical orders from their site take inordinate amounts of time to be fulfilled as they seem to carry very little inventory. Rather it appears that they use your order as the basis for an order from a distributor. This causes delays in fulfillment and exhibits poor command supply chain dynamics. Their pdf response seems to exhibit this same poor command.

Their response to Wizards removal of pdf was two fold. First, they discounted their "in house" pdfs by 35% (all of the products they publish are discounted). This is a smart move by a smart publisher. Second, they removed the Wizards pdf -- apparently without negotiating with Wizards to have an "Download Recovery Day." This is a bad move by an online retailer.

The problem here is that where RpgNow (and DriveThruRPG) are viewing me as a consumer of all the products they offer, Paizo seems to be viewing me primarily as a consumer of their in house products and not of their store in general. This is a mistake that runs the risk of alienating me as a customer, since it appears they only want my business when it directly benefits them and not when they only receive a percentage of the proceeds.

Paizo should offer a recovery day as well. Failure to do so will not cost them my business, I am a loyal Superscriber, but it might cost them other consumers who are on the fence.

Dave Arneson 10/1/1947 - 04/07/2009 R.I.P.: Another Gaming Legend Passes Away

If it weren't for Gary Gygax and David Arneson, my Saturdays would look very different. Between the two of them, they created a game (and hobby) that has altered the face of recreation. When Gary and David organically created the role playing game called Dungeons & Dragons, I don't think they could ever have guessed that it would lead to the creation of so many exciting games. Without them there would have been no Champions, no Tunnels & Trolls, no Magic the Gathering, no Space Hulk, no Ultima, no World of Warcraft.

Without these men and their creation, the world would be less fun. Given the number of heated arguments about which edition of various role playing games is superior, the world would also be less interesting.

As I read the words, "these men" and "their creation," I realize that I am doing one of these men a disservice. It is true that the combined activities of these two men led to the creation of the Dungeons and Dragons role playing game. They are after all the acknowledged co-creators of the game, as Wizards of the Coast's website so eloquently remembers. But in many ways Dave Arneson is the creator of the role playing game and of the continuing dialectic between mechanics and persona that moves innovation in role playing game design.

Role playing lore tells us that Major Wesely's Braunstein was the ur-roleplaying game. Major David Wesely was the first Dungeon Master (or Game Master), but role playing games may have died in their seedling state if not for the efforts of the first "role player." That gamer was David Arneson. I can try to describe what happened or what it meant for gaming, but I doubt I could do a better job than Ben Robbins from Ars Ludi. Ben writes:

Dave Arneson: Gamer Ex Nihilo

“Peaceful revolutionary. Gets points for printing and delivering leaflets to each of his revolutionaries, and more for handing them out to other civilians (who may be agents or guerrillas of course…). Starts at home. (B-4)”
–Braunstein 4, Banana Republic

When you started gaming you read all these books, and they told you you could be a cleric or a thief or an elf (or a vampire or a Prince of Amber) and they told you you should probably pick a caller and set up a marching order and listen at doors and all that other stuff. You marched your character around and talked in funny voices. Sooner or later you may have realized that the rules didn’t drive the game, your imagination did.

But what if you never had any of those books? What if no one had ever explained to you what roleplaying was? Were you a good enough gamer to become a gamer without even knowing what a gamer was? Could you have just started being a gamer out of thin air, without anyone ever telling you how to do it?

Dave Arneson did.

He lied, swindled, improvised, and played his character to the hilt. He came to the game with fake CIA ID he’d mocked up, so when another player “captured” and searched him he could whip them out. Other players were still moving pieces around the board and issuing orders like a wargame while Dave Arneson was running circles around them and changing the whole scenario. He was winning the game entirely by roleplaying.

You may think of Dave Arneson as one of the godfathers of GMing, but even before that he was the godfather of players. He was, literally, the proto-player.

###

“You’re the student revolutionary leader,” Wesely says “You get victory points for distributing revolutionary leaflets. You’ve got a whole briefcase full of them.”

Much later, having convinced his fellow players that he is really, perhaps, an undercover CIA operative, and that the entire nation’s treasury is really much safer in his hands, Dave Arneson’s character is politely ushered aboard a helicopter to whisk him to safety.

Far below the streets are still churning with fighting, plastic soldiers colliding with innocent citizens and angry rioters. In his lap sits the forgotten briefcase of revolutionary leaflets. “I get points for distributing these right?” And with a sweep of his arm he adds insult to injury, hurling reams of pages into the downdraft of the helicopter where they scatter and float lazily down upon the entire town…

Final score: Dave Arneson, plus several thousand points

Big whoop, you say, this is all old timey stuff. We modern gamers are way beyond dungeon crawls and listening at doors and all that primitive stuff. We have indie games and story games and narrative control and yadda yadda yadda.

Yes indeed. But even skipping the “standing on the shoulders of giants” argument or the “know your roots” argument, look again at what happened in that game: Dave Arneson was winning entirely by roleplaying. He isn’t doing tactical combat or playing some dumb-ass linear quest, he is making his own rules and being, for lack of a better word, an excellent player by any modern definition. He is making the game.

Don’t think Dave Arneson would kick your ass in some Sorcerer or Dogs In The Vineyard? Then you haven’t been paying attention. He would, as the kids say, take you to the net.

Modern gamers are pushing into new territory, but they’re also reclaiming old territory whether they know it not — the lands of their ancestors. If you’re an indie gamer or an avant garde gaming revolutionary, old school titans like Dave Arneson and Major Wesely are your peeps. They were trying things that had never been done before in their day too. They are your guys.

It is rare that people come along and create something truly new. The cliche that there is nothing new under the sun is very often true, but when it isn't we can be inspired and entertained in ways we never thought possible. Role playing games were (and still are) such a new concept in play that theorists debate whether role playing games are merely games or whether they are also a form of art. When you look at a group of gamers moving pieces around a board and rolling dice, role playing games certainly seem to fit nicely into the niche of game. But when you see those same people, descendants of Arneson's CIA agent, acting out their actions and creating entertaining narrative experiences -- some semi-scripted like a Christopher Guest film and others completely improvisational -- the argument that role playing games can be art gains some traction.

One thing is certain, role playing games can move the soul by being immensely pleasurable experiences. They can have this effect no matter how you play them -- hack and slash or persona immersion intensive -- the games make for good friends and good stories.

To repeat a thought above, they make the world more fun.

Thank you Dave for making the world a more interesting and entertaining place.

Wizards Pulls PDFs: Good and Bad for Wizards, Just Good for Competitors

Yesterday, I read a tweet that Wizards of the Coast would be ending all pdf sales of its current and back catalog of products. Wizards required that all of the web-based stores that sell their pdfs not only cease selling pdfs (as of midnight last night), but that they also remove the capability to download previously purchased pdfs from patrons who had purchased pdfs in the past. I regularly purchase pdf products from DriveThruRPG (I use their RPGNow gateway) and from Paizo Publishing. Like many consumers, I am disappointed that Wizards of the Coast will be -- at least temporarily -- suspending all digital sales of their products.

The twitter news was verified by both RPGNow and Paizo. In fact, Paizo sent me an email reminding me to re-download any products that were not currently on my hard drive. The email read as follows:

Wizards of the Coast has notified us that we may no longer sell or distribute their PDF products. Accordingly, after April 6 at 11:59 PM Pacific time, Wizards of the Coast PDFs will no longer be available for purchase on paizo.com; after noon on April 7, you will no longer be able to download Wizards of the Coast PDFs that you have already purchased, so please make sure you have downloaded all purchased PDFs by that time.

At the time, Wizards had given no reason for the cease and desist on all sales, but it quickly came to light that it was response to rampant piracy of their products. Wizards has recently taken eight individuals to court for illegally distributing their recently published Player's Handbook II.

While I am disappointed in Wizards' decision, unlike a lot of people on the internet, I am not angry. In fact, I understand and think that in the long run this choice may be good and bad for Wizards and just plain ol' good for the industry as a whole.

Before I begin my analysis, you should know that I am a strong advocate for creator rights. This means that I am very much pro-copyright and anti-piracy, though it also means that I am highly critical of corporate "work-for-hire" agreements. I understand some need, in a company like WotC/Hasbro, for "brand ownership" of a property for the purpose of continuity, but I think most writers should receive royalties based on current and future sales of IP they helped create. The fact that Gygax and Arneson saw little money from D&D after they were no longer directly contributing to new editions was a tragedy, as is the fact that Wolfgang Baur sees no royalties from Dark * Matter. The gaming industry could learn a lot from the film, tv, and music industries (particularly the film and tv industries) when it comes to acknowledging creator rights.

In addition to being pro-copyright myself, a friend of mine is former Senior Counsel, Content Protection Litigation at Fox. Not only do I think that he isn't evil for suing the hell out of pirates, I think he was right to do so. This is especially true since Section 512 of the DMCA affords Internet service providers with general immunity for transmitting, routing, or providing connections for materials through their networks. The law prevents companies like Fox from attacking the "deep pocket" highways that allow for the illegal transmission of data, and forces Fox to go after the actual criminals who -- lacking deep pockets -- are often sympathetic compared to big companies like WotC and Fox.

I think Section 512 is good and necessary (because I am a fan of free speech and I don't want corporations deciding what I can and cannot write...as I wrote I am a fan of creator ownership and control), but that the current environment forces corporations to act as "law enforcement" which is potentially bad for everyone. By making corporations the enforcers, the law forces corporations to act against their own interests while acting in their own interests. This is the situation that WotC/Hasbro find themselves in. They must defend their property, because no one else will, but in doing so they will alienate fans and cost themselves money.

So, what do I think they should do? According to Landslide (the American Bar Association's IP trade publication), entertainment piracy is "estimated to cause $18 billion in trade losses around the world last year." The ABA information was based on the International Intellectual Property Alliance's Special 301 Letter to the U.S. Trade Representative dated February 11, 2008. This isn't an industry ending problem, but it is a significant one. There is very good news regarding the majority of IP providers cooperating with IP holders when there is alleged infringment, (according to the same source) "ISP compliance rates remain high even in jurisdictions where the framework of intellectual property laws generally is perceived to be weak." But there is also bad news in that there are (once more according to the same source) "rogue sites and ISPs that refuse altogether to play by the DMCA's rules. One of the most notorious examples is the Swedish torrent index site The PirateBay...it has been estimated that The PirateBay enables more than 40 million downloads of protected content every month."

We have a serious problem, and it's a problem that doesn't merely affect big corporations. I have been a patron of Wolfgang Baur's Open Design Project since its inception and have contributed to every project he has worked on so far. The purpose of the project was to create a product that only the funders would have the ability to use. It isn't cheap to participate at the "Patron" level, and I have never felt so used as a consumer when I discovered Open Design Projects listed in bit torrent indexes. While it is true that small companies can actually benefit from file sharing, it can replace advertising for these firms, it is also true that word of mouth without file sharing could work just as well. There is such a thing as fair use and while the particulars of fair use are vague, it certainly includes reviews on websites and message boards.

This problem isn't limited to entertainment either. The AP recently announced that it will be taking a more active role in enforcing the proper use of its content on the internet. For years, people have been cutting and pasting AP articles without paying for the right to publish them and have been contributing to the strains on the news industry. The news industry certainly has other problems as well, but it is still true that the "information wants to be free yo" crowd are helping to nail the coffins in on that industry. And if you think that web ads are going to pay for everything and allow for all the free content you want, you might want to read this article in The Register. Apparently, YouTube "will lose parent Google $470m this year, because it can't generate worthwhile income from advertising." And if advertising won't make up the difference for what is given away free, Atlas will Shrug and the content will go away.

And that is exactly what happened with WotC. Atlas Shrugged and essentially told the world that it was taking its digital toys home and not letting anyone else play with them. This has made a lot of fans very angry. And while it certainly won't stop pirates, it will allow WotC to look for ways to better predict the impact of piracy on their profit margin and provides them an opportunity to look for alternate ways to offer the products digitally.

And here's where I finally write how this is good and bad for Wizards, and just good for the industry.

THE GOOD AND BAD FOR WIZARDS

The good is that Wizards is protecting their intellectual property and is showing a genuine desire to proactively go after pirates. The music industry lawsuits may have been onerously expensive and cost the labels a lot of goodwill, but they also reduced piracy. The lawsuits work. People are actually rational actors and weigh the costs of paying a small fee for a song or potentially getting sued. Wizards actions will likely reduce the amount of piracy they are suffering.

The bad, well...it's the same as the good. Wizards' fans are beginning to feel as if they are the ones being attacked. I don't personally understand how any non-pirate could ever feel this way, but many do. Add to that the fact that Wizards' isn't just suing the fans who are pirates, they are punishing fans who have done no wrong by removing the product from the internet and you have a public relations disaster. This is bad for WotC/Hasbro and is more evidence that the current legal team at WotC have no idea how to deal with their consumers. The first was their awful attempt at a Game System License for 4th edition -- it was too restrictive and like yesterday's action seemed to punish those who wanted to work in WotC/Hasbro's best interest.

I think it is a good thing that WotC/Hasbro removed all of their newer product from digital availability. They still have publishing costs on most of this stuff. They have physical product, which is far more expensive to produce than digital, that needs to "turn over." The 4th edition stuff, contrary to naysayers, is selling well, but it would sell better if piracy were minimized. This is moderately sound business.

I think it is a bad thing that WotC/Hasbro have removed access to all of the out of print product. The bandwidth costs for the products was being absorbed by the online stores, so these were nothing but a revenue stream for WotC/Hasbro. Now the only way to get these products is through second hand distribution, legal and illegal. Either fans hunt the books down on eBay or fans download them illegally. They have no other options. This is bad business.

What WotC/Hasbro need to do is make the old and new available in ways that minimize, because you cannot eliminate, the affects of piracy. The first thing they can do is use a World of Warcraft/Music Subscription model for their digital content. By using a Flash based reader they can allow DDI subscribers to access all of the 4th edition books currently available. They should do this at two fee levels, the player fee and the DM fee. "Players" would be able to access, with an internet connection, any and all player oriented books that are currently in publication -- in addition to other DDI materials -- anytime they want. They will be allowed to read the books for no additional charge. When the core books were the only books, this would have meant just the Player's Handbook, but as time passes it includes more and more books for the same fee. "DMs" should be allowed to read all publications, on Flash Paper, that are in publication for the current edition. It is up to Hasbro whether they want to allow the printing of these books, rather than just the reading of them, but I would recommend that they do.

They should also make available Kindle editions of the books...just for me.

Second, they should allow the purchase of all older editions through either traditional channels or their own pdf store. Piracy is no more, and actually less, a problem with these products when they are available for sale. Currently, you can get the entire catalog on various bit torrents, but you cannot buy them. Let consumers buy them and minimize the damage that piracy is doing to your bottom line. Do this now!

This may be what they are planning, but WotC/Hasbro have been silent on the issue and this is costing them loyalty and goodwill. This also provides a wonderful opportunity for small businesses to fill the gap.

JUST GOOD FOR COMPETITORS

By pulling out of the digital marketplace, WotC/Hasbro have left a large number of legitimate consumers in search of a product provider. Smart companies like Paizo (they are offering their Pathfinder PDFs for 35% off the regular retail price through the end of April), Rogue Games, Louis Porter Jr. Design, are immediately seizing the opportunity. With lower overhead, and lower advertising budgets, than WotC/Hasbro they have much to gain through goodwill and less to lose from piracy. Companies like WorldWorksGames still worries about pirates, but they beg their fans to not become them. They use their small size as a marketing tool to dissuade piracy, and it works...a little (see Open Design comment above). Companies like Pinnacle Entertainment Group couldn't have survived some pretty rough patches if it weren't for digital sales. They still suffer piracy, but their rules and products are also inexpensive so hopefully many pirates become customers in the long run. As I wrote earlier, piracy can serve as word of mouth for these companies. One imagines that few people are so callous as to acquire all of their products through piracy. But it is still true that the same word of mouth could be achieved without piracy.

Nothing will stop these smaller companies from risking the seas of piracy, as they have less to lose than WotC/Hasbro -- and that is a good thing. It is good for the hobby if more companies are competing for your dollar, it leads to innovation in gaming. Savage Worlds, Pinnacle's excellent RPG, wouldn't exist if they hadn't needed to find a new way to compete. The Indie Press Revolution is filled with excellent games, available digitally, looking for your gaming dollar. As long as WotC/Hasbro stay out of the digital market, these companies will have a chance to grow, and that is good for the industry.

It might be bad for WotC/Hasbro, but that depends on what they do in the next few weeks. And I think that is all they have before to announce where they are going digitally before the ill will will overwhelm them.

DEADLIER THAN THE MALE and 24: SEASON 1

The current season of 24 is the first season my wife and I have watched. When the show started, we thought that the premise of a "real time" television action/drama was ingenious. Our lives were very busy, and we had no DVR at the time, so we missed half the first season. We then saw a commercial where Jack's daughter is attacked by a mountain lion and our suspension of disbelief was lost before our viewership began.

Years later, under the continual barrage of recommendations by our friends, we capitulated and started watching the current season.

We like it -- as unrealistic as it is -- very much. We also think they should rename the show to Jack's Very Bad, Horrible, Awful, Day. We also don't like having to wait seven days to see what happens next. We can be thankful for the fact that we haven't seen any of the other season, because now we have some content to view between our weekly updates of Jack's current horrible day.

Naturally, we began our filler viewing with Season One and we're about halfway through the season. I was amazed at how much effort the villains of the first season took just to make sure they could get a shot off at a Presidential Candidate. I thought no one would go through so much effort. But then I saw a post on a blog I regularly read (Lee Goldberg's fine A Writer's Life) entitled "There Have Got to be Easier Ways to Kill a Guy..." which bore surprising similarities to the first episode of 24. Watch the clip and I'll discuss the similarities below.

Now that you've watched the opening to Deadlier than the Male think back to the first episode of 24 -- Day One.

SPOILER ALERT IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN 24 SEASON ONE

We have a woman who seduces a man on an airplane in order to get his special key card. She then leaves the plane using an explosive device on the airplane's exit door (and another explosive on board for good measure), which causes explosive decompression allowing her to escape as her other bomb blows up the plane. Mind you, this was all to get a key card that would allow an assassin, who has had extensive plastic surgery in order to make him look like the now dead journalist, to enter a location where he could eventually shoot a Presidential candidate. This doesn't even get the gun in his hands, a side of the plot that adds several layers of planning to what is already a convoluted assassination attempt.

END OF SPOILER ALERT

Apparently, the creators of 24 don't agree with Mr. Goldberg. Apparently, they believe there are far more complicated ways to kill a guy.

The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft Coming to the Big Screen

In what must have been a strong application of Non-Euclidean Geometry, Mac Carter and Jeff Blitz have inked a movie production deal for a comic that will be released this Wednesday. The Strange Adventures of HP Lovecraft is a comic that combines the fiction of the famous author with biographical information from the author's life. The narrative is a kind of "What if HP Lovecraft was writing about real things?"

It's an interesting idea, but fans of Lovecraft have yet to receive a big screen adaptation of anything Lovecraftian that comes close to capturing the mood of the author's tales. The best "true" Lovecraftian film is the H.P. Lovecraft Historical Society's "period" silent adaptation of Call of Cthulhu that was released in 2005. The made for Showtime version of Dreams in the Witch House comes pretty close to capturing the feel of the books, but the Society's adaptation far outshines the typical Lovecraftian fare like The Dunwich Horror, Die, Monster, Die!, Dagon, and 2007's Cthulhu. This isn't to say that all of these Lovecraft adaptations are horrible, just that most of them fail to capture the building sense of dread of a Lovecraft tale.

The Society's silent was so good that I eagerly await their adaptation of The Whisperer in Darkness.

According to Variety and The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft blog, Universal thinks that the comic's version of Lovecraftian horror is a good fit for their Classic Monster series and might be a good vehicle for Ron Howard. For genre fans who are alarmed that Mr. Howard might be directing a Lovecraft related film, one should remember that Mr. Howard -- in addition to being a very skilled director -- got his start as a director with Roger Corman. Roger Corman's adaptations of Edgar Allan Poe tales are classics in the horror film canon, and Poe was a major influence on Lovecraft. The Corman - Howard - Poe - Lovecraft connection may seem tenuous. After all Grand Theft Auto was a long time ago, nor was it a horror film, but films like The Da Vinci Code and Willow demonstrate that Howard has a deep affection for genre films and the way he directed madness in A Beautiful Mind would translate easily into representation of personal horror.

My opinion regarding whether the comic itself is worth adapting will have to wait until after the next few months. I would say after this Wednesday, but one should never judge a comic book (or television series) by a single installment.

Most Frightening Bread in the World

Take a second and imagine what you would consider to be the most frightening bread in the world.

Is it some yeast Shoggoth oozing slowly toward you as it consumes city after city?

Is is some mold covered lump that looks as if it is about to rupture, thus producing enough spores to suffocate a small town?

Is it filled with maggots or grubs and thus seems unpalatable?

All of those are certainly frightening, but they are far from the most frightening bread in the world. None of those loaves would simultaneously please Slaanesh, Orcus, Khorne, and Lerotra'hh, as the most frightening bread in the world ought to do. The most frightening bread in the world should be something that would make Edgar Allan Poe and HP Lovecraft smile, a daunting task in and of itself. It should also make for a good decoy when being chased by ravenous zombies.

The world can be thankful that Diana Eid is letting the world know that Kittiwat Unarrom has designed a bread that pleases the dark gods and serves as a perfect distraction for those ravenous zombies. Only in this case, the brains they eat will be made of "dough, raisins, cashews and chocolate." Not exactly zombie fare...and even with those great ingredients I'm too afraid of the bread to even think of eating it.


Image Credit -- Diana Eid

End of Gaming as We Know It Announced at GDC: Hello Kitty MMORPG to Be Released in the US

Every so often there is a paradigm shifting event that occurs within the media. Sometimes it is something like Poe's invention of the detective mystery or the Lucas/Spielberg invention of the blockbuster. In the 1980s, one huge paradigm shift in afternoon animation was the shift to cartoons that were blatant advertisements for lines of toys. When the toys being advertised through cartoon stories were things like GI JOE and TRANSFORMERS, children had much reason to rejoice. But when the next shift came, the STRAWBERRY SHORTCAKE and MY LITTLE PONY shift, teenage boys throughout America wept as they watched their favorite shows replaced by talking ponies.

This week at the Game Developers Convention in San Francisco, a paradigm shift of monumental proportions was announced. Sanrio, the makers of those cute HELLO KITTY artifacts we find at malls across America, are going to be launching a HELLO KITTY MMORPG in the United States. Just when beautiful women like Felicia Day were giving fathers everywhere hope that their daughters could share the joys of crushing Horde Guilds in PvP Raids, Sanrio dashes all those hopes aside by creating this game. Now the young girls of the world will be able to:



"Just soak up the super-cute atmosphere?!" We're doomed. No instanced dungeons slaying the minions of a diabolical lich. No riding giant tigers and Gryphons. No mining for ore to manufacture our sweet rifles so that we can shoot our Orcish enemies. Nope. We can spend money at malls...interact with Sanrio characters...and cultivate our own farm. This gives new meaning to "farming" in an MMO.

What is the father of twin daughters to do?

Oh well...maybe I can customize my character to be like Pochacco. He's cute as can be after all.

Listen to the Geekerati Inteview with David Gaider

Last night, Eric and I had the pleasure of talking with BioWare's David Gaider about his new book Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne and the upcoming video game Dragon Age: Origins. The discussion provided some great insight regarding what we can expect from the next rpg from BioWare.

Given BioWare's excellent record when it comes to quality PC and console rpgs, David and his crew have a lot to live up to and it sounds like they are likely to exceed expectations. Dragon Age: The Stolen Throne takes place thirty years before the event that transpire in the game and makes a natural jumping in point for those who can't wait until the second half of the year for the video game experience.

In the past, many of BioWare's successful rpgs have been based on licensed products. But with recent games like the action-rpg Jade Empire and the deep play of Mass Effect, BioWare has shown an ability to develop immersive settings with compelling narratives.

David Gaider lives in Edmonton, Alberta, and is a Senior Writer at BioWare's Edmonton studio, where he has worked since 1999. He is currently the Lead Writer on Dragon Age: Origins, responsible for story and setting design, and prior to that worked on such titles as Baldur's Gate™ 2, Baldur's Gate™ 2: Throne of Bhaal, Star Wars®: Knights of the Old Republic™, Neverwinter Nights™ and its expansions.

I don't care how cool Apple iPhone ads are, they cannot top this!

How many phones have viral ad campaigns featuring Formula 1 drivers using their phone to drive their F1 vehicle?

The Blackberry Storm does.

Watch the last minute of this viral video to see Lewis Hamilton use a Blackberry Storm to steer his F1 car.



Now, if only I can figure out which frequency Hamilton was on...then I can guarantee an F1 victory for Kimi next year!

P.S.: I know the remote thing is camera magic. It's still bitchin'