Sunday Supplement – 14th August

Comic courtesy of Fat Gamers.

Finally…

As my thumb casually caressed back-down to up (the best players always held back-down in case they had to throw out a sonic boom instead), I watched, a pretentious smirk slapped across my face, as Guile nonchalantly flash-kicked Ryu out of the air and into oblivion. I had won the charity Streetfighter II tournament I myself had organised. I had brought in my SNES (two controllers in tow) to my secondary school and I had decided to charge a 50p entry fee (all proceeds went to charity of course).

As I basked in the glory and adulation of my jealous compatriots, my mind cast forward to a future when videogames might be freely available in every classroom in every school across the world. Although then, at the ripe old age of 12, I don’t think my idea of 21st century edutainment slept well with the results of EA executive brainstorming meetings that came to fruition this week.

A year-long project, backed by EA and lottery-funded education organisation Futurelab, will pilot videogames in the classroom (three secondary schools and one German school based in London) in the hope that they will refine methods of implementing them in teaching.

I know I know – you’re thinking they’ll put rubbish edutainment games on ten-year-old PCs and expect kids to love them like they love Grand Theft Auto (which of course they shouldn’t be playing). To be honest, that was my initial reaction too, but, apparently, the project will include commercial games, a first in the UK no less.

The games used are up to the individual teachers too, so expect Civilisation, Age of Empires, Rome: Total War and other historically accurate titles to be invading the national curriculum in a classroom near you.

Of course, it’s a great move, and an important step in the right direction. Engaging in the medium of gaming makes obsolete other, more passive methods of teaching like the power point presentation, textbook reading and film.

Once games have a foothold in the classroom, a foothold in parents’ and politicians’ minds will surely follow. Of course I’m hugely jealous. My history lessons consisted of two hours of textbook reading and comatose inducing essay writing on the socio-economic trends that led to the Second World War.

Yawn. How cool would it have been to boot up an Xbox and live the life of a soldier in the trenches instead of reading reams of uninspiring text from a rotting tome? (killing a few Nazi’s on the way, for added marks, of course!)

Alas it won’t be like that. The trial will be heavily observed, and will inevitably come under fire from parents groups and right-thinking zealots who will mark the move as another nail in the coffin of human decency and the erosion of society itself. But these obstacles must be faced head-on if we are to convince the world of the merits of gaming in education.

Personally, I felt more inspired by Link’s trials and tribulations as he developed from a young outcast into a powerful, mature hero in Ocarina of Time than any of Shakespeare’s plays (overrated). An essay on the relative comic techniques employed n The Secret of Monkey Island would most definitely have produced an A grade. A similar critique on Dickens’ Hard Times would have struggled to pass.

Oh well. At least I can console myself in the fact that my girlfriend is currently training to be a teacher. This little jewel might afford me some interesting opportunities to slip some ‘creative’ gaming into the national curriculum. ‘Yes darling… the auction house in World of Warcraft (ha! Got it in again!) teaches you about markets and economy. They’ll think you’re really cool.’

Er… I’ll go, but don’t expect any work to be done

Ahhh Amsterdam – the home of drugs, drink, prostitution and a few decent footballers. Not, historically, the home of next-generation console unveilings. Hey-ho. I’m not one to quibble. It’s off to Holland we go!

But wait! Why would Microsoft choose Amsterdam as the one place in Europe to give European trade and media their first playable taste of the 360? Is it because of how easy it is to get to from almost anywhere on the continent? Maybe it’s because the Dutch are so welcoming. But maybe, just maybe, Microsoft wants the army of journalists who will descend on Amsterdam in October to ‘sample’ the famous local ‘attractions’ the night before the event, in the hope they might be softened up to any deficiencies the console or the software might have.

But then I’m being ultra cynical, and I’m talking in sexual innuendoes, which I hate. Let’s just spell it out shall we. MAYBE MICROSOFT WANTS EVERYONE TO GET STONED SO THEY CAN PLAY A CD RUNNING ON MEDIA PLAYER AND CONVINCE THE WORLD THE 360 IS THE BEST THING EVER! I joke, but plenty of booze can only help improve the opinion the attending journos have of the console when they head back home.

Regional VP of Xbox Chris Lewis said: ‘To tell you our rationale for choosing Amsterdam would reveal some of our plans and we want to keep those as secret as possible!’ I rest my case.

There is hope

This week a jury in Alabama convicted a 20-year-old man of capital murder, rejecting the plea of not guilty by reason of mental defect after he claimed that his actions were influenced by GTA.

My faith in the human race has been partially restored. The then 18-year-old Devin Moore killed three police officers with one of their own guns and fled in one of their own cars. After he was arrested, he said: “life is a video game – everybody has to die sometime.”

Unbelievable. It appears quite obvious that Moore concocted the story in an effort to get himself off by jumping on the current anti-game bandwagon. Thankfully the jury saw it coming, and sent him down.

I don’t blame the victims’ families for filing a civil suit against Take Two Interactive, Sony and the retailers that sold the game, however futile it may be, because in cases of immediate grief people look for blame to help themselves make sense of tragedy.

What I find disgusting is certain individuals, who will remain nameless, who latch onto the pain and suffering of others and use it for their own twisted agenda.

Either way, the decision of the jury marks an important milestone in the history of the game industry’s relationship with society. It sends out a clear message: despite ‘hot coffee’ and the panic inducing sensationalism of media outlets, lawyers and politicians that we have seen of late, the average sound-of-mind individual doesn’t think games make people kill each other.

The decision sticks two fingers up at the anti-gaming brigade and holds two thumbs aloft for considered thought on new technologies. The fact of the matter is that the average Joe isn’t stupid enough to believe games make people commit murder, no matter how loud people shout ‘murder simulator’ on television. Yes, there is a need for a ratings review in the US. Yes we need a shake-up of the rules guiding the selling of adult-rated games to minors. And yes, publishers, developers and the specialist press need to be more responsible when it comes to the marketing of adult games to young men. But I feel proud to think that the US people are educated enough to resist what’s being pumped into their veins from corporate broadcasters, and employ common sense.

Let’s hope a precedent has been set that will safeguard rational thought for many years to come.

Shhh, or the Mail will find out

A South Korean man died this week after playing Blizzard’s Starcraft for 50 hours straight.

Just read that sentence again. I can barely believe it myself. He was 28, was playing in an Internet Cafè in Taegu and had hardly slept or eaten the whole time. The police said he only stopped for the toilet and for short bursts of sleep. He died of heart failure stemming from exhaustion. This is a completely tragic case, but it must be remembered how unique it is. The guy obviously had severe issues. He had been fired from his job because he kept missing work to play.

I guess he just couldn’t let go. There’s an innate common-sense fail-safe that kicks in whenever a human being finds itself becoming addicted to something. Add to that friends and family who will usually give you a kick up the arse if they see you flushing your life down the toilet, and you start to realise why these stories get reported – they’re unusual and out of the ordinary.

For some people, though, this fail-safe just doesn’t work, and loved-ones don’t spot the tell-tale signs of weakness. As with gambling, as with television, as with anything, it can get out of control. Unfortunately, in this case it was Starcraft.

MMOs, though, are probably the most addictive of all games because of the self-improvement mechanic. They can really suck you in for marathon gaming sessions that can last the better part of an entire weekend. Hell, I took the better part of a year to play one MMO non-stop. But still, what this poor soul did was extreme, and shouldn’t be considered symptomatic of the gaming community in general.

If you think you’re genuinely addicted to games, don’t be embarrassed. Talk to someone, a friend or family member. You might even want to go to a GP. We’re still at the stage when gaming addiction isn’t taken seriously, but a few minutes of embarrassment might save your life. Do the right thing.

This week’s new releases

When is August going to end? Another week, another dull list of games on the release list. There is light at the end of the tunnel now though, with the September releases so close, we can smell their huge advertising campaigns coming through the air vents in our otherwise ‘closed off to the outside world’ apartment. It’s a good smell, but it can’t quite overpower the retched stench of July and August.

This week we can’t really recommend any of the new releases, so we suggest that you save your hard-earned money (assuming you aren’t a spoilt little kid with too much pocket money) for the truck load of PSP games due out on September 1st. While they aren’t all great, there are plenty that are worthy day-one purchases: Virtua Tennis, Lumines, Ridge Racer and Wipeout Pure to name a few.

• Coffee Break (PC)
• Great Invasions (PC)
• Pac-Man Pinball (GBA)
• Premier Manager 2005-2006 (PS2, PC, GBA)
• The Arcade (PS2)

Next week on Pro-G

As we’re scraping the barrel for new releases worthy of coverage on the site, next week we’ll take a look are more PSP games, and have some hands-on impressions and gameplay videos of Capcom’s Without Warning – the game by Circle Studios, the ex-Tomb Raider people.

There’ll probably be a couple of not so great games covered as well, but don’t blame us, blame the publishers who have refused to release anything decent this month.