For 6 years, the Californian government has been trying to pass a law which would essentially make it a criminal offense to sell adult games to minors. It would have had far-reaching implications and would have cost the games industry a massive blow to its creativity and way of thinking. Needless to say, its not the idea of keeping kids away from adult games we disagree with, merely the absurd notion that blanket-banning everything is the correct way of dealing with the issue – something most anti-gaming politicians seem to want. Luckily, common sense and justice has prevailed because the Supreme Court overturned the proposed law yesterday and we can carry on shooting zombies in peace.
It’s all to do with freedom of speech – art and literature can and should be free to express whatever ideas we like to an extent, and the only reason this 6-year battle has waged is because videogames are the youngest, least understood form of it. From now on, games should be protected in the same way other forms of expression are, like books and films. If this law had been approved, it would have meant game developers would have had to think very carefully about making mature games, because there’d be a lot more hoops to jump through in order to actually sell them. The same argument crops up again and again throughout history, and the end result has always been the same. What pisses me off is that the people responsible for suggesting the ban don’t seem to have any real understanding of the subject they are arguing about.
Kotaku have a bunch of interesting articles about the whole thing, including some reactions from a few of the big names in gaming. It’s all well worth reading if you want to know more. I’m just relieved I can continue to enjoy the games I love, and the developers can continue to make them.
Ken Levine, the maker of Bioshock, sums it all up very elegantly: “Today, the Court brought the medium we love fully into that circle of freedom. And we move forward empowered, but also with a sense of responsibility that words have meaning. So we as creators will choose our words with respect, understanding their power. But no law will have the authority to choose them for us.”
Dome Keeper is an excellent little spin on the tower defense game, in which you play the role of a jetpacking miner defending his base from swarms of aliens, whilst searching for a hidden relic buried somewhere beneath him. And now, with this huge free update, you can play it with friends.
I want to talk about Cloudpunk, a game where you get to be a flying-car delivery driver in a futuristic cyberpunk city. Its world is an incredible achievement of environmental design, and while the gameplay itself may be basic, the city of Nivalis is a thing of beauty to behold. Nivalis is built out of hundreds of hand-modelled cuboid buildings; there’s nothing procedural about it. Apparently it took 3 years for the devs to design the city, and it really shows.
I do love me some quality pixel art, and it doesn’t get much better than this. Cast n Chill is a cozy side-scrolling fishing game by small indie dev team Wombat Brawler, with absolutely gorgeous visuals. It’s simple to play, and you you can dip in and out of it at your leisure, making it a fine addition to our collection of coffee break games.
I’ve got an enormous backlog to catch up with, so my gaming time has been pretty varied lately as I jump from one thing to another. I’m squeezing every spare moment I can in between work, life, and fatherhood duties, and enjoying some side-scrolling platform action, blasting zombies in one of the best remakes around, and scaling a literal mountain.
Last summer, I collaborated with my mate Mark Vale to create our very first mobile game app. It’s all about pushing buttons as fast as you can. So, a great little time-waster when you’re on the loo, or waiting for your bread to toast. Mark came up with the concept, did all the programming in Unity, and I provided the art and music. There’s only one rule – hit the green light as fast and as many times as you can.
Now and then one can’t help climbing aboard the hype train. You work yourself up into a frothing frenzy in anticipation of some new game whose trailers and screenshots make it seem like the best…thing…EVER. That’s how I felt about Conker’s Bad Fur Day when I first read about it in N64 Magazine (before the internet butchered the magazine industry). They did several preview write-ups about it in the years before it was released, and it changed from being a cutesy 3D adventure, to merely looking like a cutesy 3D adventure plastered with a layer of adult filth. I couldn’t have been more excited to play it. Did it live up to my expectations? Hell yes.
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