Archive for the ‘Playing’ Category

Move over, soccer mom. Back off, NASCAR dad. There's a powerful new demographic in the voting masses that's still completely untouched and ready to be shamelessly pandered to: Gamers.

Where are the politicians scrambling for the gaming vote? Why don't we see John Kerry publicly logging a 96-hour marathon run on "Final Fantasy XI?" Why isn't George W. Bush reinforcing the American family one "Sims Online" couple at a time?

It's easy to underestimate the reach of the gaming community. They don't share any racial characteristics (except possibly for an aversion to direct lighting) and they rarely intermarry. The closest thing to ethnic foods gamers share is Skittles by the handful and soft drinks with enough caffeine per can to start a car.

However, gamers also spent over $7 billion on computer and video games last year, and that's the kind of disposable-income demographic that can bring a tear to the eye of even the most hardened campaign finance director. Can any politician afford to ignore it?

The heritage of the gaming community is growing in leaps and spinning back kicks. There have been novels written within the game worlds, feature films based on game characters and their breasts (and here I'm not thinking of "Mario Brothers"), and even tribal ballads such as Buckner and Garcia's immortal "Pac Man Fever" or their soulful "Froggy's Lament."

There's also gamer poetry, thanks to wired artists such as Seth "Fingers" Flynn Barkan who just released a surprisingly entertaining collection of poems called "Blue Wizard is About to Die." Barkan writes of games gone past and of once-packed arcades now abandoned for introverted home game consoles. From his poem "Joust:"

"I don't think there is much doubt that riding an ostrich is pretty gay, especially when done as some part of a renaissance festival gone

"horribly

"horribly

"wrong"

There is a rich gaming language. It starts out as English, more or less, but quickly evolves to describe how u were totally about to bunnyhop in this kewl FPS but some kill stealing, low pinging n00b ganked u during a lag spike and raped your base before you could respawn. It's almost musical, in an "Apocalypse Now" sort of way.

Heads up, special interests! Angered gamers are willing to mobilize, as long as they can do it sitting down. Last week LucasArts announced the cancellation of the hotly anticipated new game "Sam and Max: Freelance Police" due to "underlying economic considerations," which translates to "we don't wanna, nyah." Outraged gamers immediately flooded the LucasArts home office with enough mail to cause structural damage and added thousands of signatures to the inevitable and ultimately useless online petitions. For a game! An incredible cool game, sure, but still. Imagine all that red-eyed energy harnessed and aimed by, say, a rumor that "Half Life 2" would be delayed another three months because a redistricting bill was hung up in the House.

The Republican National Committee Web site took the first halting steps towards courting gamers with "Kerry vs. Kerry," a Flash boxing "game" that pits the opinions of Senator John Kerry (D-Ma) vs. the opposing opinions of Senator John Kerry (D-Ma) in a knockout brawl. Unfortunately it displays a dismal understanding of the gamer mentality since there is no option to enter cheat codes, no secret doors to hidden levels, and I couldn't find any obvious way to make the senator steal the campaign press bus and embark on a virtual three-state killing spree. You call this a game?

Take some of that campaign money and bankroll games with political messages, hidden agendas. Get the word out to these hi-res voters. Duke Nukem may have gone to Washington back in '97, but that only resulted in two, maybe three good bills, tops. Let's get those pixels flying!

You'll probably have to perfect online voting first, though. The direct sunlight thing. You know.

Last weekend I took my 11-year-old son shopping for some new game cards that just came out, which he knew would be easy to find. As we went store to store to discover each one completely sold out, a familiar look of anguished need appeared on his face. A familiar look of anguished resignation appeared on mine.

We were hunting Neopets, a new collectable card game version of the massively popular Web site. If you've been idly wondering where your children have been for the last eight months or so, they're probably some of the 65 million people registered at Neopets.com. There they can raise, feed, and play with their own animated, appallingly cute critters — something like an online version of the virtual e-pet craze of the late 90's, or the egg 'baby' my high school Home Economics teacher made me carry around for two weeks. Neopets can absorb your attention for hours, even days at a time.

The Powers That Sell have gotten really good at this.

Archeologists excavating through the layers in my kids' rooms would find, along with a million Coke cans and some hamster skeletons, the strata of previous collectible crazes. Beneath a loose topsoil of Yu-Gi-Oh! cards are deep layers of Harry Potter merchandise, pockets of fossilized Pokemon, and a rich vein of Magic the Gathering cards, all heaped on a solid bedrock of compressed Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Star Wars figures. But Neopets might just outdo them all.

First, they're friendlier. Neopets don't battle each other. When my kids were collecting Pokemon cards I could tell myself they were practicing their reading and math and learning the valuable skill of day-trading, but secretly I put the practice of training Pokemon to fight each other on behalf of their owners on the same moral level as cockfighting. Neopets just have contests where the winner gets points. Sorry, "NeoPoints."

Neopets don't have an annoying cartoon. At least not yet.

Neopets.com is a frighteningly safe place for your kids to go online. When you sign up you choose your Neopet — you can have up to four — and begin the process of naming and obsessing over it. You feed it and buy things for it with your Neopoints, which you can rack up by playing any of the 140+ games on the site. You can also earn large quantities of points — get ready for this — by clicking on approved sponsor banners or signing up for approved sponsor newsletters. Isn't that cool?

While you're there you can wander around Neopia, attend NeoSchools, buy NeoMerchandise, check your NeoMail, send NeoGreetings to your NeoFriends, or just generally go NeoWild. Every activity includes the possibility of earning more NeoPoints, thus teaching our kids the meaning of the phrase 'working for the company store.'

And now when you buy the packs of cards, if you can find them, they have codes inside to get even more NeoPoints for your Neopets! Wow! We need to buy all of these, Dad! Back up the car!

Take the collectability of Pokemon, add the Tamagotchi's demand for constant attention, combine it with the life-manipulation appeal of The Sims and stick it on a virtual world as self-contained as AOL only dreams it could be, and you get a product that makes nicotine and heroin look like casual hobbies. All they need now is an interactive plush Neopets doll to cause frenzied Christmas shopping. Whoops, what's that on the toy shelves already…

So get ready parents, and have your credit cards and car keys at hand. The hunt is on again!

The best thing about the Internet is that new trends, new concepts, new ideas are more or less instantly disseminated around the world.

This is also the worst thing about the Internet. Frankly, I could do without certain widely disseminated concepts, such as the notion that some of my personal parts need to be drastically improved right now by an amazing new pill.

Lately the newest fad– one that may be over by the time you read this — is the flash mob, the online equivalent of the Chinese Fire Drill.

If you're sensible and have therefore never been in a car with a teenager you may be unfamiliar with the term. To engage in a Chinese Fire Drill, one simply stops the car at a stoplight or street sign, whereupon everyone in the car leaps out and runs completely around the car before getting back in and driving off. This is done for the sole purpose of confounding everyone else in the area, although by now anyone who sees you do it knows what it really is, i.e. teenagers screwing around. I've participated in them, back in the day, although even while I was dashing wildly around the car I was wondering what this had to do with fire safety, and whether we shouldn't be calling it 'Indigenous Asian People Fire Drill' or something.

The main benefit of this — spontaneous and unexpected public befuddlement — has been picked up and improved by flash mobbers.

A flash mob is simply a group of people who meet online in a chat room or message board or through e-mail or a blog, and who decide to follow the bizarre orders of one of their anonymous number. The word goes out to be at a certain place at a certain time, coordinated by cell phones and instant messages, and receive instructions to do something inexplicable and harmless for a few minutes in a public place before quickly dispersing.

The first flash mob, legend says, occurred in Manhattan last May when more than 100 people popped up in Macy's and began loudly discussing whether to purchase a 'love rug' for their nonexistent commune. Since then the Hyatt Hotel lobby played host to 200 people who gathered, broke into riotous applause for a measured 15 seconds, and vanished. More than 100 mobbies invaded a Soho shoe boutique masquerading as tourists from Maryland. 300 mobsters stood in Central Park and chirped.

But it's spreading. On San Francisco's busy Market Street, more than 150 people spun clockwise for 10 minutes before fading away, and just recently 200 people descended upon Dolores Park for a massive (and quick) game of 'Duck, Duck, Goose' before scattering away, laughing. There are flash mobs springing up in Boston and Minneapolis, Vienna, Berlin, London, Rome, and anywhere else weird people can organize, which means central Florida is way overdue.

Pictures of events and schedules of flash mob activity can be found at Web sites like cheesebikini.com, which have been overwhelmed now that all of us columnists are linking to them.

Flash mobs are loosely based on 'smart mobs,' abrupt political groups pulled together by instant communications, and there has been talk about using their awesome power for social change or demonstrations. Fortunately insaner heads have prevailed. I fully support the revolutionary ideas behind flash mobs as they exist now, which are 1) bewildering the unwary, and 2) forcing computer junkies to get up and walk around outside for a few minutes. Flash mobs remain bizarre, meaningless, and fun, although it wouldn't surprise me to find out that a secret command went out for everyone in California to go get on the ballot and act goofy before running away.

So why haven't there been any sightings reported in Florida? We have more than our share of restless cyberpeople and frustrated performance artists. Personally, I think it's because it would be an uphill battle.

In Tallahassee, any group of more than three people that gathers in a public place is automatically declared to be a lobbyist faction and is immediately ushered into the Capitol to begin the arcane ceremonies. There's no room in Tampa to gather, unless mobbists are willing to tread water.

Masses of people suddenly gathering in Miami are treated carefully by authorities fearing an insurrection. Depending on the neighborhood, they're provided with hostage negotiators, their own festival day, or building contracts.

Residents and tourists in Orlando are already accustomed to paying large sums of money to odd people in strange costumes who do odd things in time with each other, whether it's at the theme parks or in the strip clubs.

And here, where massive public gatherings are a way of life, hundreds of giggling youths may have already swarmed and performed and no one would notice unless it blocked traffic. More than usual, I mean.

To get attention here, flash mobberistas would have to assemble en masse in Daytona Beach and do something that's never seen here, like playfully obeying traffic lights, pointedly not taking beer on the beach at night, or whimsically establishing light industry. I'm up for it, we just need a date. Anyone? Anyone?

Just last week I was trying to avoid overhearing a conversation between two enthusiastic guys who were alternately praising and criticizing the achingly realistic war-simulation computer game "Black Hawk Down." Both liked it, although they preferred "Medal of Honor" for sheer realism, excitement and total blood factor.

These were not teenagers, by the way. This was my boss and one of our programmers.

All around me folks are apparently deriving great personal satisfaction from their computer games and bonding with each other as they meet to share their experiences and advice on getting past tricky levels. I admit that in my time I've spent plenty of hours over a hot game console myself, but somewhere over the years I lost the devotion needed to actually complete a computer game. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but around here it does leave me feeling like a designated driver during New Year's Eve.

One of my co-workers (who shall remain nameless, to prevent retaliation and general snubbing), a person who appears healthy and even moderately athletic, is currently building a cabinet for his monitor and game systems to simulate an arcade machine. With just a little work he could expand it into something he could sit in. I suggested he expand it further, adding furniture and basic life support facilities, and take up the entire room. He could rush to it every Friday evening and climb in, surrounded by water bottles and salt tablets, to emerge Monday morning blinking in the sunlight with tracks on his arm from the IV drip and a killer high score. I was joking. He seemed intrigued.

There is a classic psychological study wherein lab rats are placed in a cage and provided with food, water, and a button that directly stimulates the pleasure centers in their brains. Once they discover how it works the rats will push the button over and over, ignoring everything else, until they die from thirst. I'd be interested in a study to see how much faster this might work if the rats could push the button in just the right way to get a hidden ability spinning back-kick, three extra lives, and a key.

At home, my sons proudly display their superiority over lab rats by periodically surfacing for food and drink before diving back into the digital depths. Their tendency to speak about their games as if they were real adds to the occasional bit of confusion. Once when my oldest was 15 he came into the living room after spending the previous seven hours playing "Gangsters," a very detailed 1920's simulation game.

"Dad, I'm not sure what I should do about my future," he said.

I was delighted. He was talking to me! And about real stuff! I put on my Concerned-Yet-Open dad face and asked him what his goals were.

"My accountant said I made too much money last year, and I can't decide whether to open a casino or another brothel."

What every parent longs to hear. I think I just stammered something mindless about "everyone loves card games" and he trotted back to his life of crime.

Just recently, his 10-year-old brother ran from his game of "Grand Theft Auto II" to dash in and shout, "I figured out how to make the school bus crash off the bridge!" I was faster on the uptake this time. I assured him that his mother and I were very proud.

One of my friends has taken to instant-messaging me at work every 20 minutes or so to tell me what her "Sims" are doing. This highly addictive life-simulation game allows you to create people and control their lives to varying degrees and has forced her to keep a kitchen timer by her computer to help remind her to attend occasionally to other necessary functions such as eating and, time permitting, bathing.

Personally, I wonder who's controlling whom. This month, not being satisfied with expansion packs that allowed her digital people to live, date, vacation, party, and have pets, she bought "The Sims Superstar" to allow her Sims to enter the world of fashion, movie stars, divas and general superstardom that she herself has always scorned and ridiculed. I'm sure this makes sense, somehow.

With sales in the millions, such hyper-realistic games are plainly shoving their way into the zeitgeist. Were I the suspicious type, I'd think that President Bush himself had just finished playing "Command and Conquer: Operation Iraqi Freedom" with a high score and low casualty rate (but without finding any of the hidden levels).

But mostly I just smile and nod when everyone tells me about his or her virtual successes, and inside I pity them a little. Why would anyone obsess on such a meaningless, time-wasting activity is completely beyond me.

And then I rush home to decide if I'm going to watch one of my hundreds of special edition Criterion expanded, limited-edition, four-disc, director's-cut box set DVDs, or go buy a few dozen more.

My 8 year old son has quickly learned how best to devote his time and energies towards learning and defeating any and all video games that cross his path, and he does so in a very direct and forthright manner: he gets online and looks up cheat codes.

He hasn't quite figured out why I'm not at all impressed with the way he swept through the opposing forces to win the day when I know for a fact that his character couldn't be killed and was probably whistling during the bloodbath, all because of some letter combinations he typed in at the beginning of the game.

"But dad, I won!" he says, turning toward me while behind him his character keeps winning without him.

Last night, after he scooted back into his room with a fresh batch from the web, I looked at my wife and said "Imagine when he starts dating and tries to find the cheat codes for it." And we laughed. And then we looked at each other, and grew thoughtful. Why the hell aren't there any cheat codes for dating? My mission was clear.

DATING CHEAT CODES (for use with the DateSharkTM adapter)

At the begining of your date, type these codes into your DateSharkTM handheld unit and keep it in your pocket throughout the date. Do not turn the DateSharkTM off! Please be aware that the Spony Corporation does not guarantee the social success of any of these codes, they are presented here for entertainment value only.

DATECASH – grants you $100. Can only be used once per evening.
DATESPIFF – restores your health, cleans your clothing and freshens your breath for those abrupt meetings.
DATEWHEELZ – lets you cycle through the available automobiles until you find the one that'll make the best impression.
DATEGAUGE – gives you a heads-up display that tracks how well you are (or aren't) doing.
DATETALK – allows you to simulate sensitive and informed conversation. Political or religious conversations will require modifiers.
DATECHAT – provides a hidden drop-down list of your date's interests and favorite foods
DATESCENE – lets you change backgrounds, so the grubby dockside pub becomes a four-star bistro.
DATEJERK – provides a dial so you can adjust your date's intelligence level from "Moron" to "Professor".
DATEGULP – allows you to eat any and all home-cooked food with impunity.
DATEZOOM – lets you jump levels so you can move straight from "1st Date" to "Sleepover". Also works in the opposite direction, for dates that are moving along a little too fast.
DATENOBABY – grants you immediate birth control, lasts until the next round
DATESHROOM – makes you twice the size and adds speed and endurance. Also you glow.
DATETOOL – grants you all of your weapon.
DATE69 – makes your date do that thing you like, whatever it is.
DATEGARD – prevents the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, such as line-dancing.
DATEAMYL – grants you full energy.
DATEZONE – provides a graphic map of your date's body, pointing out specific strategies and areas of interest (hint – perfect for discovering hidden surprises and easter eggs)
DATESHIELD – protects you against all ex-es, irate family members and protective pets.
DATEDEUS – god mode. Allows you to score anybody, regardless of your own personality or physical charms. Also known as the Scott Baio maneuver.
CTR-W – save date. Allows you to save the date whenever you've mastered a level, so as not to jeopardize your standings if you screw up. "Hey you got to 'Hand Under the Bra'! Save! Save!"
CTR-O – open date. After you do screw up, just hit CTR-O and restore the date to the previous level of success.
CTR-ALT-DEL – for when the evening is tanking big time. Restores you back to your home, alone, in good health, dressed, and undiseased.
CTR-Z – clear memory. Ideal for the next morning when you'd really rather your date didn't remember how to find you, ever again.
CTR-YOW – spouse mode. A few quick keystrokes and your date turns into an old, ugly, fully dressed business associate.

Keep in mind that this is a two (or more) player game and your date may also have a DateSharkTM, so your results may vary. Happy hunting!

Coming soon – the DateSharkTM web site. Head to our online database and type in your date's name to get responses from other players who have played your date. Tips, tricks, even complete walkthroughs!