This video comprises “1,500 hours of moving Lego bricks and taking photos of them.” It’s not particularly coherent in terms of theme, unless you call “8-bit games and music rule” a theme. Which maybe we should. Worth it for the chiptune soundtrack, the use of Lego as pixels and the particularly nice Pacman shots, which put you right into the maze.

Despite/because/completely independently of me writing a long and reasonably thought-out blog post about how Six Days in Fallujah might have the chance to address some of the long-running issues with war games making killing fun, its publisher has dropped it.

Too controversial, it seems:

‘”We had intended to convey the reality of the battles to players so that they could feel what it was like to be there,” said a Konami spokesperson in a comment to Asahi.com. “[But] after seeing the reaction to the videogame in the United States and hearing opinions sent through phone calls and email, we decided several days ago not to sell it.”‘

Of course, the developer might still carry on coding the game, but with a big publisher such as Konami dropping it so publicly, I wouldn’t put a huge bet on it actually getting a release.

[I wrote this for the blog I contribute to for work, over on bit-tech. I don't generally cross-post stuff I write for work here, but the idea for it grew out of writing the Peleliu post, so I think there's a good case to be made that it belongs here, too.]

Konami’s recently announced Six Days in Fallujah game rolls into town at the head of a of convoy of outrage over the fact it’s based on a very real and very contemporary battle of an ongoing war.  In a well-weighted editorial on Eurogamer, Rob Fahey nails why this outrage is nonsensical, and why it’s particularly unpalatable when it comes from the tabloid press:

“It’s not just the fact that the [Daily] Mail and others are essentially calling for the worst form of censorship, the blocking off of an entire event and saying ‘this is off limits, and may not be portrayed’ – something which would stab to the very heart of the freedom of expression our media should be championing… the thing that rankles most about this situation is the fact that this is a tabloid newspaper telling another medium that the way in which it’s handling current events is insensitive. I won’t need to remind any reader who walks past a news stand on the way to work, or flicks on Sky News or CNN in the evening, just how ‘sensitive’ the news media is in its coverage of war.”

The whole piece is worth a read as it eloquently defends the right of games to portray reality. Fahey’s defence of games isn’t totally blind though – indeed, he challenges those making games such as Six Days in Fallujah to engage more fully with their subject material:

“If a game like Six Days in Fallujah is to have any value, it must come from adding something to that discussion [of the war]. This isn’t about taking a pro-war or an anti-war stance – although both are valid starting points, there are countless others. It’s about making people think, informing them through their entertainment experiences, and commenting, as creators, on the media we create and the events we portray.”

Games based on real combat aren’t uncommon – the Call of Duty series has been at it for longer than the duration of World War 2 – and Call of Duty 4 is the most notable depiction of combat in Iraq gaming has seen so far (although, bless its little corporate socks, Activision has decided to tell players it was actually set it in unnamed MiddleEastistan). What makes Six Days in Fallujah interesting is that unlike other ‘real war’ games, it’s not an FPS, or an RTS. Instead, it’s a third person ‘action’ game.

The problem previous ‘real war’ games have had is that none has managed to rise to Rob Fahey’s challenge. This is because of the problem of fun, namely that war games – and FPS war games in particular – make killing people fun. This is because killing is the central mechanic of the game. If there was no killing in CoD 4, for instance, there wouldn’t really be any game left. You’d be able to run, reload, crouch and open doors, but really, those actions are solely there to support you killing people.

It’s not unique to CoD 4. It’s there in every combat orientated FPS game because in every FPS you need to kill hundreds, if not thousands of people as you progress through the game. In fact, you’re not killing people: you’re removing obstacles, because single player games that aren’t primarily puzzle games or simulators are always about progress through the level.

To impede progress and to make it challenging for the player, you need obstacles. These can be puzzles, but since you’re not making a puzzle game, it’s better if these are enemies, and it’s better if these enemies can tax the player by fighting back. When you, as the player, eliminate the enemies, you’re granted power-ups, new weapons and keys to enable you to access more of the game (and in turn cope with more powerful enemies). It’s such a simple and recursive formula that it needs to be jazzed up – it needs to be made fun, because you need to do it over and over and over again. It’s work.

As such, while these enemies might take on a human form – two legs, two arms, toting an AK and a couple of lines of dialogue – there’s nothing actually human about them, which is why you as a player (and also you as a character) are able to kill them by the bus load. You never pause before you kill these people. You never wonder what their wife is going to say. You never wake up in the middle of the night bothered by the fact you killed them. They’re just ciphers. If your soldier from CoD 4 had actually killed the number of people you kill in progressing through the game, that frequently, that proficiently, they would surely go completely insane. That, or make themselves leader of the whole world.

You can argue that military commanders might look at the map and think about combat in this way – enemy soldiers are just there preventing progress, troops who have experienced combat are tougher, and commanders do make calls that result in hundreds of deaths – and so there’s an argument that this ‘killing is fun’ problem doesn’t affect RTS games. But you don’t have to read many memoirs or watch much documentary footage to know that frontline soldiers have quite a different perspective. To even come close to this experience now gives you an idea of how far removed from fun it is.

This is what makes it interesting that Six Days isn’t an FPS, and that in an interview, Peter Tamte, the president of Atomic Games, the developer of Six Days, gives the following answer to the question, is the game going to be fun?

“The words I would use to describe the game — first of all, it’s compelling. And another word I use — insight. There are things that you can do in video games that you cannot do in other forms of media.”

As cynical as you might at first think (and I certainly did) Six Days was, Tamte is on to something here. Now, he might just be talking a good fight before preparing to roll over and make a crass cash-in. But he might be preparing to grasp one of the biggest issues in gaming.

So far, ‘real war’ games have always taken the easy route. Call of Duty: World at War is a great example of this. Some of its levels are set on Peleliu, a tiny island in the Pacific, which in 1944, was the site of a ferocious three month battle between US and Japanese forces. 11,000 Japanese were defending the island; only 202 were captured alive, while close to 1,800 Americans lost their lives.

In October last year, I had the chance to visit Peleliu, and it was a very moving experience. A lot of the WW2 stuff is still out in the jungle. I visited with a Japanese tour group, and we saw caves that still had scorch marks on the wall from where they were cleared with flamethrowers, and we saw places where groups of soldiers had committed ritual suicide rather than be captured alive.

After I wrote about it on, someone recommended I read a book called ‘With The Old Breed’, by Eugene Sledge, a marine’s memoir of the Pacific war that included fighting on Peleliu. I’ve only just ordered it from Amazon, but here’s the Wikipedia write-up – and as warning, it’s not pleasant:

“Sledge writes honestly of the brutality displayed by United States Marines and Japanese soldiers during the battles, and of the hatred that both sides harboured for each other. In Sledge’s words, ‘this was a brutish, primitive hatred, as characteristic of the horror of war in the Pacific as the palm trees and the islands.’ Sledge describes one instance in which he and a comrade came across the mutilated bodies of three Marines… He also describes the behaviour of some Marines towards dead Japanese, including the removal of gold teeth from Japanese corpses (and, in one case, a severely wounded but still living Japanese soldier), as well as other disturbing trophy-taking. Distinguishing the book from most other war memoirs is Sledge’s description of the sheer physical struggle of living in a combat zone and the debilitating effects of constant fear, fatigue, and filth.”

None of what Sledge describes is fun, but it very clearly has value as history and as media – the book is widely praised. Likewise, I wouldn’t say Peleliu was exactly fun place to visit, but it is interesting, challenging and enlightening.

With The Old Breed has been optioned for use as source material for a new HBO series on the war (called The Pacific) from the makers of Band of Brothers. I can’t imagine the makers of Call of Duty read it, and if they did, it didn’t really do much other than get reduced to the same old, same old of WASD and Mouse 1.

What this points out is that other forms of media – books, TV, films – have found that being fun isn’t necessarily a pre-requisite to being successful, both commercial and artistically.

Again, here Six Days might break with the past. Tamte (and Konami) has also been keen to point out how many Marines, and apparently, Iraqi civilians and even insurgents have helped them make the game. It’s clear however, that their impulse to get close to reality is tempered by a degree of political correctness:

“Q: Will players encounter situations like friendly fire or accidentally shooting civilians?

Tamte: Yes.

[Creative Director] Benito: We wanted to recreate the pressures and conditions the Marines faced and that includes adhering to the proper rules of engagement. So for example, as you may have seen in the demo, there’s an unarmed individual at the start and the Marines didn’t fire on him because he was unarmed and that was in accord to the rules of engagement at the time.

Q: Will there be portrayals of women being raped or dead children or are you just sticking to the combat?

Tamte: Well, what we’re trying to do is recreate the stories of the Marines that we’ve spoken with and that are involved in the creation. And we’re telling the stories of those particular Marines. None of the items that you’ve mentioned have come up in any of those stories.”

The portrayal of the conduct of the armed forces in a current war is obviously a sensitive issue, but it will be a shame if Six Days insists on showing the Marines and the rules of engagement as being perfect. It also makes you wonder why, if the time is right for Six Days, no-one has yet optioned Generation Kill (HBO’s excellent series on the invasion of Iraq, based on the equally brilliant book) for the basis of a game.

I’m going to be very keen to play Six Days; the chances are it won’t live up to its billing, but the game described by its makers could be, even if only in a small way, rather radical.

I’m pleased to announce the first ever Custom PC book, the Ultimate Guide To PC Gaming, out just in time for Christmas on the 4th of December. It’s everything you need to know about PC gaming in one 174-page book.

It went to press yesterday, so we’ll get copies in the office at the end of next week hopefully. A lot of work went into the book – and I’m really pleased with the design and writing in it. The internal design was inspired by the design of Factory Records sleeves, as I was recently given a book called FAC461 – Factory Records, The Complete Graphic Album, which features lots of the famous Manchester record label’s beautiful designs. We used a font very similar to the one found on the front of Joy Division’s Substance, and the bright colours and grids were developed from the look of some of New Order’s singles.

The writing’s aimed at a more mainstream audience than CPC is,the idea being that there’s a very strong line-up of PC games at the moment (WoW, Warhammer, Left 4 Dead, Crysis, Fallout 3 etc etc) but that people might be put off playing them because the PC is typically thought of as a difficult machine to use, especially in contrast to games consoles. Hopefully the book will succeed in demystifying PC gaming and showing what a rich, varied and involving experience it can be. It’s going to cost £7.99 and is available from WH Smiths and Borders. You can also buy it from Amazon.

Updated: The book’s official site is up now at www.custompcbooks.co.uk.

Like many tech journalists, I’ve certainly done my fair share of Sony hating. What makes Sony such an exasperating company for me is its past: Sony used to make technology that was genuinely interesting, inspired even, and it was worth buying. Its stuff used to be so good. I wrote a review of an all-in-one Sony PC a couple of years ago that touched on Sony’s background:

"Not all PC manufacturers aspire to £499-plus-free-printer-scanner-kitchen-sink ignominy… It should not come as any surprise that Sony also considers itself above the vast swathe of beige PC builders. In John Nathan’s biography of the company, former CEO Norio Ohga talks about its approach. ‘Sony must always be extraordinary,’ Ohga says. ‘I always asked myself what was essential to the company. I find myself thinking about the Chinese character san, which means to shine dazzlingly like the sun. It’s not simply a matter of brightness. San means an extraordinary radiance.’"

These days of course, Sony usually comes across as bitter (why else would it stick Rootkits on customers’ PCs?) and out of touch (claiming people should work extra hours for a PS3!). Nothing embodies the fall of Sony like the PlayStation 3 – it comes across as overpriced and not very innovative, but having seen Sony’s presentations at GDC, I’m feeling perhaps all is not lost for the Japanese giant. In fact, I’m really surprised PlayStation 3 Home, LittleBigPlanet and the SingStar stuff haven’t garnered more praise.

Matthew Ingram, whose blog I really, really like (and respect – he’s a tech journalist *AND* he keeps his blog updated with smart posts daily, which is more than I can do) rounds up and summarises much of the criticism in a a post entitled ‘Can Sony Get Anything Right?‘ He focusses on the fact that PS3 Home is a bit of a Second Life rip-off, but lacks the open and flexible nature of the original:

"It sort of looks like a really nicely designed shopping mall where you can only buy things from one company… As for the likelihood of success, Tony Hung has a great phrase in his post at Deep Jive Interests, calling it “charming, desperate and futile.” I couldn’t have said it better myself."

Now, I do agree with the first bit, and on its own, i think Home would be an underwhelming riposte to Microsoft’s decent Xbox Live, but with SingStar and LittleBigPlanet, Sony is showing that it really *gets* online, and perhaps in a more radical way than Microsoft and Nintendo do.

Let’s compare SingStar with the upcoming Xbox360 version of Guitar Hero 2. I’m a huge GH fan, and the biggest, biggest problem with the PlayStation 2 version is the songs. There’s some good ones, some bad ones… but what you get on the disc is all you get. Clearly, when we have Emusic and the iTunes store, that’s hopelessly old fashioned. Yes, you can mod new songs into the game, but not easily or officially: what most Guitar Hero players want is a huge and deep catalogue of songs to explore, whose wares are cheaply priced and delivered instantly over the net. The Xbox 360 has the technical infrastructure, but it’s not there. From Koatku’s preview, the 360 version sounds
identical to the PlayStation 2 version, but shinier. Now SingStar for the PS3 (a roughly comparable music performance game) sounds like it delivers online functions like Mariah Carey delivers diva behaviour and high notes: in spades. 

Secondly, check out the video below for the PS3’s LittleBigPlanet: awesome physiscs, totally customistable levels, including the abilities to import your own stuff, and a way to share them: it’s basically Flickr for games. And that is awesome: fun, collaborative, competitive, inspiring: a complete other world.

I’ve posted before about how awesome GamesIndustry’s editorials are, but this week’s hit the nail on the head when it comes to Microsoft’s online approach:

"For all that Microsoft talked the talk about customisation and user participation when the Xbox 360 was rolling out, the company hasn’t really walked the walk. Xbox Live is beyond a doubt the most robust, consistent, fully-featured, user-friendly and generally brilliant online service we’ve ever seen… but Allard’s proud boasts that the HD Era would be all about user customisation seem to have been reduced to snap-on covers for the console, downloadable skins for the interface and the ability to play your own music in games."

Xbox Live is good, but it’s basically a store for buying games, a shared leaderboard and a way to hook up with friends for a game. it’s basically Steam + XFire + TeamSpeak/MSN/Skype wrapped up in one slick package. Which is good, but it’s not the be all and end all of online. Sony has got some neat new ideas, bright shiny ones. Watch the last 5 minutes of the LittleBigPlanet presentation and then see if you can honestly say Sony can’t get anything right.

Until now, fingerprints have been the most deadly threat the super-shiny PSP has had to face. Now, it is wrath. The frustrated wrath of a player of Ultimate Ghosts n’ Goblins. Man, it’s tough… but strangely compelling, too:

“So why did I keep on playing? Partly it was because I didn’t want to write an article for Bit-Tech having only completed the first two levels. But it certainly wasn’t because of any involvement with narrative or plot, or any sense of satisfaction from solving puzzles, and nor did I give a toss, really, about any of the characters. Initially, I didn’t think I had any emotional involvement with the title, either, until I realised that actually, Ultimate GnG’s difficulty enables it to harness one emotion extremely well: it’s probably best called exasperation. I realise this doesn’t sound good (you can’t imagine it listed on the back of the box, can you?), but exasperation is a key part of the audience’s emotional response to many thrilling scenarios. Exasperation is present – and crucial – in everything from horror movies to romantic novels.”

The full article on Ghosts, Goblins and difficulty in games is here.

Another article of mine is up at Bit-Tech – a top 10 list of ‘unique’ game controllers:

“There’s only so far you can go with a traditional gamepad. A few talented, brave and frankly bonkers designers have managed to convince and cajole their corporate paymasters into creating a special, unique add-on controller, solely for their game.”

You can have a read, here. As a writer, it was nice to do something more light-hearted after the politics piece last time, and it did well on Digg, too, which is great. Top 10s make for quick, fun reads, so I felt like the format suited the idea nicely.

Article number three is up at Bit-Tech, entitled ‘Who Owns Your Virtual Life?’ It’s all about the thorny issue of intellectual property rights in massively multiplayer online roleplaying games, and how popular titles like World of Warcraft are engaging – or not engaging – with user-generated content.

"MMO players play a significant role in creating the game, to the point that the creation of the game could be considered a partnership. Blizzard might provide the polygons and the servers, and script a few missions, but the intrigue, the stories, the emotional involvement, are all made by the players. What contributes more to the game’s sense of fun – the polygons, interface and horde of AI bad guys you fight, or the fact that using VoIP, you and people from all over the planet execute a flawless ambush with the kind of teamwork that makes Argentina’s 24-pass goal look passé, before making off with some top quality loot to enrich your guild’s coffers,and then having a good chuckle about with your comrades it on the forum? One, the other, or both?"

Have a read here.

Column number two is now up at Bit-Tech: this time, it’s about nostalgia and whether old, great games can still be discovered in the way classic albums or films can.

"If something is great, it should be great whenever you pick it up buy a fresh copy of Pepper or Kane now and they’ll still blow you away: they were great in ‘67 and ‘41, and they’re great now. Is the same true of FFVII?"

In order to discuss the point, I bought a copy of Final Fantasy VII – an acclaimed game from 10 years ago that I’d never played. I then compared it to the newly released Elder Scrolls 4: Oblivion, and so the article ended up feeling like FFVII vs Oblivion… which got me Slashdotted (yay!) and so flamed (as you’d expect).Brill

My first column for the excellent website Bit-Tech is now up, and it looks at two original PSP games, the Japan-only Beit Hell 2000 and Exit.

"Although it is a mini-game compilation, it’s a lot stranger than that: having played it for the past couple of months, you could perhaps describe Beit Hell as a love letter to the ‘Akiba-kei’: the denizens of Tokyo’s Akihabara district, the hardcore gamer geeks who queue for hours for new consoles and who still obsess over the death of Aerith.

As you might expect from a country that was contemplating tentacle love at a time when in England a bare ankle could get you deported to the colonies, Beit Hell is a pretty warped love letter."

You can read the full article here. Please do, more hits means I’ll get recommissioned