most people know what i have to say on this subject, but, i will point out that it is important to remember that “video games” (i prefer something more like “the current generation of popular interactive entertainment“) are still growing up and the truly great artists are yet to emerge, even if we see a few pioneers… this is much like film was in the 40s and 50s, where many movies out there were trying to capture the stage experience on film, bringing broadway shows to those who could not go to broadway shows, for example… few people yet knew what to do with this “new artform”… but, flash forward to the late 1970s and we enter the age of the blockbuster… and today, there is no shortage of cinematic visionaries…
we will someday be at this point with interactive entertainment… and, even in the present, if one hears the phrase “video game” and think of a joystick, some bleeping, shooting aliens, or maybe munching blinking dots, they are at least twenty years behind in their understanding of the subject…

and i am now going to digress and move onto the links before i start getting into lists of examples :P

04 December 2005 – Next Generation – Why Ebert Was Right

rogerebert.com :: commentary
Dec6,2005 :: Gamers fire flaming posts, e-mails…
Dec8, 2005 :: The Art of the Game 2
Dec14, 2005 :: The Game of Art 3

blog: scanners :: Jim Emerson / January 23, 2006 > Kojima: ‘Games are not art’

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or “20 things gamers want from the seventh generation of game consoles” and wow, this guy nails it, even if he spends a lot of time being comical…

(warning, language that some may find offensive…)

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Waxy.org: Links Miniblog

Pioneer CLD-D704 notorious for streaking problems???(!!)

Bartender Magazine
Webtender.com – “In My Bar” – “Tell The Webtender what you have in your bar, and get a list of all the drinks you can make.”

Earth and Moon Viewer: Expert Request

the following links come from my LiveJournal Friends page, which i use as a simple online aggregator of site feeds…

boingboing: Deaf children in Nicaragua create new language
boingboing: D&D rarities sold off by terminally ill TSR illustrator
boingboing: Remembering

fark: VIDEO – Reporter covers dangerous intersection – huge crash happens behind him, live

Engadget: The Godfather horse head pillow

RefDesk’s SotD: MapMachine
   ”National Geographic’s redesigned online atlas gives you the world – your way. Find nearly any place on Earth, and view it by population, climate, and much more. Plus, browse antique maps, find country facts, or plan your next outdoor adventure with our trail maps”

and i finally bumped into a website with someone using the .name domain… i really wanted one of these for a long time, before i decided to just get a .com…

http://grant.henninger.name/

btw, it is just some guy’s blog, so no telling if it will be of any interest to anyone, it is just the domain name that caught my attention…

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(available on pretty much everything, PS2, XBox, GC, PC, even GBA, and more, though i have only tried the ps2 and gc versions…)

update: link probably doesn’t work… (dammit, cjayc, make your searches linkable!)

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here are some excerpts…

The world of massively multiplayer online games is often a dangerous place, what with constant threats from bloodthirsty monsters and murderous non-player characters. But now players have even more peril to contend with: addictive drugs that can incapacitate or kill their characters.

The designers of Achaea, one of the biggest online text-based games, have recently introduced a virtual addictive drug — known as gleam — as part of a story line in which a crime ring has been attempting to infiltrate the game’s cities. And some players can’t take it fast enough.

Achaea characters who take gleam get hooked quickly — suffering typical addiction symptoms: violent vomiting, shivering, irrational sobbing, begging for the drug and even overdoses resulting in death. Some of the game’s players are angry about gleam’s introduction into their world.

and then, there are virtual performance-enhancing virtual drugs…

In A Tale in the Desert, players discovered that by dosing their characters with a potion called Speed of the Serpent, they could gain extra waypoints, a valuable attribute allowing for instant travel across the game’s wide three-dimensional globe.

Speed of the Serpent was poisonous, though, and required the ingestion of an antidote within 30 days, or the character would die. If a player took the potion a second time, the antidote was needed within 29 days; a third use meant 28 days and so on.

Eventually, as players succumbed to their desire for the extra waypoints, the interval between potion and antidote was short enough that even the hard-core couldn’t keep up. According to Andy Tepper, the game’s lead designer, 18 players’ characters have died from addiction to Speed of the Serpent, more than from any other cause in the game’s history. Unlike in many multiplayer online games, where death means little, in A Tale in the Desert, a character’s death is final. It means starting over from the beginning, no small price for dabbling in a little performance-enhancing potion.

meanwhile, elsewhere in the virtual multiverse…

But even the larger games have elements some consider akin to addictive substances. For example, in Galaxies, smuggler-class players traffic in spices, spells that increase characters’ skills.

In an article in RPG Expert called “Life of a Smuggler,” the author wrote that spices can offer terrific benefits, such as increased strength. Yet there are also side effects, like lowered strength and vomiting, that last as long as the high.

Given the side effects, though, one might ask why the risk is worthwhile. [the eternal addict question, eh? -i_p] The author’s answer sounds just like it came from a real-world drug dealer.

“OK, who will buy and use your spices? Almost everyone that tries them a few times gets hooked,” the article read. “Free samples are good for business!!”

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i stumbled on one, then was surprised to see how many were listed, and these were just titles as i looked over at our game collection, i am sure there are tons more…

Final Fantasy X (2001) (VG)
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance (2003) (VG)
Final Fantasy IX (2000) (VG)
Silent Hill (1999) (VG)
Silent Hill 2 (2001) (VG)
Grand Theft Auto III (2001) (VG)
Space Channel 5 (1999) (VG)
Space Channel 5: Part 2 (2002) (VG)
Eternal Arcadia (2000) (VG)
Grandia II (2000) (VG)
SSX Tricky (2001) (VG)
Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999) (VG)
OverBlood (1996) (VG)
X Files Game, The (1998) (VG)
Shen Mue (1999) (VG)
Bravo Music (2001) (VG)
Okage: Shadow King (2001) (VG)
Rez (2001) (VG)
Amplitude (2003) (VG)
Driver 2 (2000) (VG)
Gauntlet Dark Legacy (2001) (VG)
Kingdom Hearts (2002) (VG)
Typing of the Dead, The (2000) (VG)
Parasite Eve (1998) (VG)
Final Fantasy VII (1997) (VG)
Legacy of Kain: Soul Reaver (1999) (VG)

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