And the Name of the New Sony PlayStation Handheld Is....

... the NGP.

Well, that was kind of underwhelming.

It stands for "Next Generation Portable," which seems more like a description of the thing than an actual name. In all fairness, this may just be a working codename, like the Wii originally being called the "Revolution," before Nintendo announced the name would be "Wii" and everyone started making pee jokes; or when Microsoft's new motion control technology was called "Project Natal," before we were told it would be named "Kinect" and everyone said, "No, really, what are you planning to call it?"

This replacement for the PSP, whatever it winds up being named (I'm personally in favor of calling it the Frumious Bandersnatch, but do people very take my advice? No. Actually, that's probably for the best.) certainly specs out like a fine piece of next gen hardware.

I've said some remarkably uncharitable things about Sony over the years, to the point where they finally stopped sending me product, or giving me information, or braking if they see me crossing the street, so I'll just point you at the roundup of coverage over at Joystiq to fill in the sordid details.

The big picture is this: it appears to be a powerful system that is attempting to take on both Nintendo and the entire mobile gaming market at the same time. The big news is the 5-inch screen, which has four times the resolution of the current PSP, as well as a touchscreen. There is also a touchpad on the rear of the device, as well as dual analog sticks and six-axis motion control developed for the Move. All of these features are squarely aimed at capturing a piece of the app market.

Oh, and then there's the other stuff: WiFi, Bluetooth, and ... 3G, plus a GPS. Front- and back-facing cameras, flash-memory support, stereo speakers and microphone, all wrapped around a nougaty center made of an ARM Cortex-A9 4 core processor makes this a beast, in theory. Speculation is running high about how Sony can possibly get this device to market at a reasonable price. GameStop has already speculated that it may cost $1000, but that's just their guess.

Sony has a habit of floating their flights of design fancy just around the time a competitor announces or launches a product. In this case, the release is timed to take the wind out of the sales of the Nintendo 3DS by promising a Swiss-army knife of mobile gaming, but what's the actual reality behind the NGP?

The PS3 was going to be the all-powerful Xbox/Nintendo killer, and the reality was ... not really so much.

The Move was going to be the all-powerful Wii-mote/Kinect killer, and the reality was ... not really so much.

The NGB might be all things to all people, but somehow I don't think Apple, Nintendo, or the Android producers are all that worried right now.

In other Sony news ...

There's going to be a PSP phone, and engadget.com says they have their little mitts on one. The device will probably be called the Xperia Play, and looks like a mashup of a PSP with a Sony Ericcson handset.

Swastika Playing Cards Revisited

As I wrote last week, I've been trying to get my hands on a somewhat rare set of cards from the US Playing Card Company (makers of Bicycle, Hoyle, and other brands). This particular design features a pattern of swastikas, leading some to speculate that it was made for export to Nazi Germany. I think I demonstrated fairly conclusively that this was nonsense, and that the design was merely a common motif (sometimes a symbol for good luck) that was probably discontinued after Hitler rose to power.

Well, I finally won an auction for a single example of the card, and here it is. Based on various features, I'd date this one to sometime in the 1930s. It's in amazingly good condition for its age, with a firm coating, no bends or creases, and very little discoloration.

Struggle for Catan Coming This May

Today is the day for new release announcements from Mayfair. Next one up: Struggle for Catan: The Multi-player Card Game, releasing May 19 and retailing for $15.

Here's the official line:

The Struggle for Catan™ is a fast-paced game between the 2-4 factions developing newly settled Catan. Manage your resources to build settlements, cities, city improvements, knights, and roads that generate victory points or special abilities. While your settlements, cities, and city expansions remain yours, valuable roads and knights change hands. Varied expensive city improvements give you additional victory points and lasting advantages, so they’re generally key to victory. As in The Settlers of Catan® board game, you win by being the first to acquire and play 10 victory points.

The Struggle for Catan™ is the perfect way for 2-4 players to swiftly and casually explore, settle, trade, and build on the beautiful and ever-changing island of Catan.

The box contains:

• 67 Resource Cards

• 42 Building Cards consisting of:

• 9 Road Cards

• 14 Settlement/City Cards

• 5 Knight Cards.

• 9 City Improvement Cards

• 4 Building Cost Cards

• 1 Destiny Card

• full-color rules

Automobile Coming in February (Mayfair Games)

Martin Wallace is best-know for his superb train games, including my favorite, Steam. I'm very curious about his latest, called Automobile and due from Mayfair next month. Maybe I'll get a peak at it during Toy Fair.

Here's the official press release:

Mayfair Games is pleased to announce that it has finally received copies of Martin Wallace’s Automobile™ at its warehouse and will start shipping copies to retailers and distributors on January 31, 2011.  The game is scheduled to have a street date of February 17, 2011.  Mayfair Games apologizes for the many delays and thanks everyone for their patience. 

Automobile™ is the second in a series of transport games by Martin Wallace (the first being Steam™) and published by Mayfair Games (the “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” series).  The third title, involving the dawn of air travel, is currently in development.

Automobile™ joins a group of titles scheduled to be released from Mayfair Games in the beginning of 2011 including London™ (also by Martin Wallace), Van Helsing™ (by Frederic Moyersoen), 1830™ (by Francis Tresham), the re-released Catan Dice Game™ Standard Edition  and Struggle for Catan™: The Multi-Player Card Game ( both by Klaus Teuber).

PSP2 Announcement Tonight

Speculation about the Sony PSP2 is running pretty high ahead of the press conference scheduled for tonight. Dual-stick controls are a given, but could Sony also be entering ... the smartphone market?

Also of interest: What we think we know about the PSP2.

Stay tuned for more.

Posted from iOS using BlogPress.

REVIEW: Epic Mickey for Wii

Epic Mickey
Wii: $50, Rated: E (Everybody)

Note: This is an expanded version of a piece called "Through a Glass, Darkly, With Mickey Mouse," which I wrote for the National Catholic Register, and as such not only tackles narrative and gameplay, but also offers a religious interpretation of certain themes.

Mickey Mouse didn’t start out as a pleasant, smiling corporate icon, but as a bit of a mischievous trouble-maker, and not above the occasional bit of anti-social behavior. He wasn’t the first child of Walt Disney’s craft. He was only created when Disney lost the rights to Oswald and had to start over. This time, he created a cartoon mouse, started his own studio, and the rest is history.

At least, that’s real history. But there’s also cartoon history, which is a little more interesting. In cartoon history, Mickey and Oswald are half-brothers, and Oswald felt forgotten and betrayed by Mickey’s sudden rise to fame. 

And Oswald’s not alone. Over their long history, Disney’s studios have created many characters who either never made it to the screen, or were forgotten when they faded from popularity. In his magical workshop, Yen Sid (the titular magician of the “The Sorcerer’s Apprentice” segment in Fantasia) is working on a special place for these lost characters to call home.

This is the premise of Disney’s bold new Wii game, Epic Mickey. The story begins with a scene directly inspired by the 1936 short Thru the Mirror, as Mickey steps through a mirror into a magical dimension. He finds himself in Yen Sid’s workshop, just as the sorcerer is leaving. Mickey begins to play with the paintbrush used to create the new world, and in the process unleashes the Shadow Blot, who is obviously inspired by the Disney Comics character the Phantom Blot. Although Mickey narrowly escapes the Blot, the world for the forgotten is consumed by darkness. 

Mickey returns to his own reality, and becomes a famous movie star, oblivious to the destruction he has wrought until he Blot reaches through the mirror and drags Mickey back. The world that was supposed to be a haven is now called The Wasteland. Unloved and forgotten, no one in this land has a heart anymore, and even Oswald now hates his half-brother. The Blot wants to escape, and only the heart of Mickey Mouse can set him free.

Armed with Yen Sid’s magic paintbrush, Mickey embarks on a quest through this dark and ruined land in order to set things right and atone for his sins. With the brush, he can both create and destroy. When he uses it to spread paint, the world is restored, enemies are turned into friends, and things are set right. When he uses it to spread thinner, everything it touches is destroyed. The paintbrush is controlled via the Wii-mote, allowing the player to paint the world back into being, or tear it down with a flick of the wrist.

Guided by Gremlins (lifted from an unmade wartime movie collaboration between Disney and Roald Dahl), Mickey sets about rescuing allies and either destroying or converting foes. It’s certainly possible to play through with the thinner button pressed, washing the cartoon characters away to oblivion. But it’s more practical (and satisfying) to turn them into friends who might be able to help. 

Good Mickey, Bad Mickey?
It’s easy enough to ignore the pleas of characters who need Mickey’s help and take the easy (even cruel) path. But the game is designed to nudge you towards the higher road. It may be more difficult, but it’s almost always more rewarding. Help a gremlin now, and he may get through a sticky spot later on.

The ethical choices do affect the world: good choices restore it and make it bright and colorful, while bad choices degrade the world and sap it of color. Unfortunately, these changes aren’t permanent, and resuming a previous level resets the world to its prior state. This seems like an odd element for a game that stresses the importance of ethical choice.

The levels themselves are based on and inspired by various cartoon and theme park imagery, and overall they’re very appealing, with plenty of hidden details and attractive visuals. The goals for each level, however, are often rather perfunctory, and rarely lift the game above the level of a standard platformer/action game.

Part of this is almost certainly the result of the difficult balance designer Warren Spector is trying to maintain. The game was billed as a kind of dark, revisionist Mickey, and the initial concept art showed an amazing, complex world that would have looked wonderful rendered with, say, Unreal or Source.

But that really wouldn’t have been a Mickey Mouse game for the masses. Spector needed to create a complex take on Disney lore in general and Mickey in particular, while still providing an E-rated game that could be played by a 7-year-old. Amazingly, he succeeds, sounding depths you don’t usually find in this material, while also keeping things light and easy to play. In other words, the deeper levels are there for adults who tend to note some things, but kids can still fly through the game just spraying paint all over the place.

Technically, the experience is somewhat hampered by poor camera controls and finicky aiming. The camera never quite defaults to the best location, requiring fairly constant manipulation to get just the right angle on the action. There are places where it certainly seems like you have a clear line of sight at an enemy, but when you fire a stream of paint or thinner, it’s blocked by the scenery.

There are also some 2D platforming sequences that are used to link levels. These feel like filler, and are generally getting a thumbs-down from reviewers and games. I liked them, however. They draw heavily on old Disney shorts, which I adore, and provide a brief change of pace from the main 3D game. They’re not brilliant examples or 2D gaming—no one will mistake them for Super Mario Bros.—but they’re a nice way to link levels.

The Religious Angle
As the narrative proceeds and the relationship between Oswald and Mickey develops, it’s hard not to see Biblical themes emerging. Oswald feels forgotten and betrayed by his “father” (Walt Disney) and jealous of his half-brother (Mickey), whom he obviously feels is loved better. Oswald tries to kill Mickey several times, with fairly obvious echoes of the story of Cain and Abel.

The religious themes become more pronounced as the game’s central dilemma plays out. The characters in The Wasteland are not naturally cruel. They are literally “heartless” because they feel forgotten and unloved. Mickey shines a little brighter because of his big heart, which is why the forces of darkness are pursuing him. In the end (big spoiler alert) Mickey simply gives himself up to the Blot in order to save his brother and his friend, the gremlin Gus. The Blot takes Mickey’s heart, and destroys The Wasteland.

But as the Blot attempts to escape, Oswald, Mickey and Gus team up to destroy him and recover Mickey’s heart. With the Blot gone, the world can return to what it should have been before Mickey’s thoughtless act, and the Wasteland can flower into a kind of Eden for the cartoon characters. Since these characters are “dead” to the outside world, it’s almost as though Mickey has harrowed hell and brought them to paradise.

The story plays out like a classic tale of good versus evil, redemption, sacrifice, and the triumph of love. Mickey Mouse may well be one of the few fictional characters never to have been seen as a Christ-figure, but in Epic Mickey that changes. The world is saved by his redemptive sacrifice and his love: literally, by the blood of his heart. Determined to undo the effects of his sin, he “dies” and is reborn, and in the process makes all things new.

Were these conscious thematic elements on the part of the designers? That’s unlikely. The game industry, like the movie industry, is simply using the culture capital built up by 2000 years of Christianity. It is, to use Flannery O’Connor’s famous phrase, not so much Christian as “Christ-haunted.”

Yet in spite of itself, amidst all the cartoon silliness and Wii-mote waving fun, Epic Mickey reaches some real depths. A being of joy and light enters a world twisted by sin, and using all the colors of the rainbow he paints it back into existence, and in the process redeems the world and himself.

Solitaire Chess: Try it Out!

The app version of Solitaire Chess, ThinkFun's excellent chess puzzler, is now available in the app store, but you can get a little taste of just how it works right here. Click on "Play Game" to try a few levels.

The Nintendo 3DS: Coming in March

Nintendo's new 3DS portable gaming system has an official ship date: March 27th. The device, which allows portable 3D gaming without the need for special glasses, has been getting a lot of buzz since it was first announced. 

Like the DS, the 3DS includes two screens: a touch screen on the bottom and a 3D screen on the top. As Nintendo says: "Looking at the screen is like peering through a window into a world where characters and objects have true depth. The system also has a 3D Depth Slider that lets players select the level of 3D they enjoy the most. The 3D effect can be ratcheted up to the highest level, scaled back to a more moderate setting or even turned off completely, depending on the preference of the user."

In addition to the standard DS controls, the 3DS adds a circular pad to provide more precise directional control. A built-in motion sensor and gyro sensor can react to the motion and tilt of the system, and more robust connectivity features. It ships in blue and black and is set to retail for $250.

More pictures, and the rest of the press release, after the jump.

"Mythbusters": Gamer Style

Sadly, it's not the real Mythbusters, since watching Kary blow up Tory with a redirected rocket would make for good TV.

Instead, a group called "Defend the House" has produced a series of in-game videos tackling certain myths from Halo: Reach, Black Ops, and other videogames. I usually find watching in-game videos about as entertaining as watching test patterns, but these are short, slick, entertaining, and often quite funny.  I'll embed a couple of samples, but you can find the whole series on Youtube.

Poe's Cipher Fascination

Pen and ink by Gabriel Caprav

Today marks the 202nd anniversary of the birth of Edgar Allan Poe. Poe's writing made a huge impression on me when I first discovered it in junior high, and has stayed with me ever since. His picture hung over my desk for years, which is pretty apt, since Poe was frequently hungover.

Poe had a madness for ciphers. This was most famously exhibited in "The Gold Bug," which includes a substitution cipher (and a lengthy explanation of its solution) as a key plot point.

That cipher reads as follows:

53‡‡†305))6*;4826)4‡.)4‡);806*;48†8
¶60))85;1‡(;:‡*8†83(88)5*†;46(;88*96
*?;8)*‡(;485);5*†2:*‡(;4956*2(5*—4)8
¶8*;4069285);)6†8)4‡‡;1(‡9;48081;8:8‡
1;48†85;4)485†528806*81(‡9;48;(88;4
(‡?34;48)4‡;161;:188;‡?;

And is solved thus:

A good glass in the bishop's hostel in the devil's seat forty-one degrees and thirteen minutes northeast and by north main branch seventh limb east side shoot from the left eye of the death's-head a bee line from the tree through the shot fifty feet out.

Poe Cipher

But there was another Poe cipher mystery that was lost in the pages of Alexander's Weekly Messenger for almost 150 years. Poe had used the newspaper to challenge all comers to send him ciphers, and he would crack them all. He claims to have solved at least 100 of them, and then signed off with two new ciphers by a "Mr. W.B. Tyler." There is some convincing evidence that Tyler was Poe himself, and that these final ciphers were his parting mystery.

They remained forgotten and unsolved until Professor Louis Renza of Dartmouth College brought them to light in 1985. Prof. Renza subsequently established the Edgar Allan Poe Cryptographic Challenge, complete with a $2500 prize, to crack the codes. In 2000, Gil Broza managed to do it and claimed the prize. 


There was some hope that these ciphers would turn out to be new, previously unknown writing by Poe, but this is almost certainly not the case. One was a passage from Cato, by the English essayist Joseph Addison. The other remains unidentified, but is not in any style recognizable as Poe's.

Angry Lego Birds

Now that those Angry Birds have their own plush toy line and TV show, it was about time for them to become immortalized in the Art Medium of Choice here at SOP. Lego craftsman Tsang Yiu Keung has created this fab set of Angry Bird sculptures, including slingshot and pigs, all from little bricks.

In other AB news, former Vice President Dick Cheney had this to say: "My three-year-old grandson was teaching me how to use an iPad the other day. To play games. 'Angry Birds' or something like that." 

Chess: "Proof Games"

If you have any interest in chess, then Chess Cafe should be a regular stop. Today, chess problem-solver John Nunn offers eight variations on the traditional chess puzzle. These "proof games" present a board position and the number of moves that have been made, and then challenge you to figure out the moves that led to that position. It's a neat kind of problem, as you can see from the example below.

For all 8 puzzles, including Nunn's interesting commentary and the solutions, check out the Skittles Room at Chess Cafe.

Proof Game One
Tibor Orban, Die Schwalbe 1976
Position after Black's fourth move

Thanks to Wayne for sending this one in.

From a Knave to a Jack

"He calls the knaves Jacks, this boy!" said Estella with disdain, before our first game was out. "And what coarse hands he has! And what thick boots!"

I had never thought of being ashamed of my hands before; but I began to consider them a very indifferent pair. Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

She won the game, and I dealt. I misdealt, as was only natural, when I knew she was lying in wait for me to do wrong; and she denounced me for a stupid, clumsy laboring-boy.

              Charles Dickens, Great Expectations 

All Fours is a kind of seed-game from which other, better games have grown. I plan to write about it shortly, but I wanted to start by discussing its most lasting contribution to card lore: All Fours is the game that gives us the word "Jack" for the card then commonly known as a "Knave."

Playing cards in Great Expectations

A Knave-like figure--the lowest rank in a royal court--appears in various guises in European decks: sometimes as a footman, a cavalier or knight, or a young man or woman. Their role is to be higher than the numbered cards, but lower than any court card. Traditionally, a "knave" was a serving boy of humble origin, or simply a male servant.

The game of All Fours probably arrived in England (and particularly in Kent) some time between 1621 and 1674 via the court of Charles II, and most likely originated in the Netherlands. The word "Jack" is probably a Kentish contribution. Although the reasons are lost in the mists of time, we can make a decent guess how the name came to be. In lower class English slang, a "jack" would have been shorthand for a laborer (eg, lumberjack) or a sailor. This may well have been how folk culture viewed the subservient "Knave" in comparison to the King and Queen of the royal suits. It's as a good a guess as any.

In any case, "Jack" didn't catch on until the late 19th century, when printer Samuel Hart started putting identifying letters on the corner of cards. These new cards were known as "squeezers" because they allowed you to "squeeze" your hand up tightly and just read the corner markings, as we do now. There was a "K" for "King," a "Q" for Queen, and, not wanting to confuse matters by placing another "K" for Knave, he added a "J" for Jack as a reference to its name in All Fours.

An early "Squeezer"

In the early part of Dickens' Great Expectations, which takes place some time after 1812, young Pip is mocked mercilessly by Estella for using the word "Jack" during a game of Beggar-My-Neighbor. The word was considered low, vulgar, and commonplace, rather than the proper term "Knave." At this moment, Pip's understanding of playing cards is as large an indication as his shoes or rough hands of the class gap separating him from Estella.

This would change by the end of the century. Knave became archaic and largely vanished, while the more commonplace word "Jack" took its place. It's an interesting transformation. Remember: playing cards first emerged among the upper classes, and only gradually filtered down to the lower classes, most likely as wealthy card players passed old, worn-out decks down to their servants. The common folk made these cards--and the games played with them--their own, altering an element of high culture into one of popular culture in the process.

Next time you call that card a Jack, consider it a triumph of the working man. He's a Jack because the common Englishman saw in him a fellow man of labor.

Swastika Playing Cards

I've been trying to get my hands on a strange old example of early 20th century card design from the US Playing Card Company. These are "No. 500" cards, possibly produced as early as 1909, and made until sometime in the early-to-mid-1930s. The entire card back is covered in an intricate pattern of swastikas.

Prior to the rise of National Socialism, the swastika was a common graphical motif, found in everything from Indian blankets to architectural details. (My wife's grammar school featured a nice tiled row of swastikas when she was young. I doubt very much they're still in place.) The prominence of the design in many cultures with a wide geographical and historical spread is actually easily explained: it's a common repeating pattern that naturally forms in certain types of basket weaving.

When Hitler adopted the "crooked cross" as the Nazi Party symbol, the once-harmless design took on sinister connotations which it shall never shed. I read some speculation online that these cards were produced by USPC for export to Nazi Germany, which is absurd on various levels. German card design is different, for one thing, and they had no need to import cards. The idea that Nazi Germany would have imported French-suited playing cards from the US is just silly.

Here's the best quality picture I can find, and this one came from an auction that I lost. If I can get hold of a better quality version, I'll post it at a later date.

Board Game News Weekly Digest – 1/14

Seize Your Turn continues to deliver the board gaming news links, hot and tasty. Meanwhile, I'm putting the May issue of Games to bed, which is requiring massive amounts of game time. Oddly enough, nothing interesting has shown up lately, but I have a large backlog of titles and bits to write about once time allows.

REVIEW: GoldenEye 007 for Wii

In 1997, GoldenEye for the Nintendo 64 brought the first-person shooter experience to console systems. Up until then, the FPS had largely been the province of PC games. GoldenEye changed that, creating a gripping console action game with superb design and multiplayer deathmatch that would set the pattern for years to come. It was a best-seller and remains one of the most highly regarded videogames of all time.

Reinventing a classic such as this for a new system could have led to all sorts of unfortunate results: it could have been a mere rehash, a pale imitation of the original, or a relic of a time when FPS design was quite different. GoldenEye 007 for the Wii is none of those things. In fact, it’s rather startling reboot not only of the original game, but the original film as well, creating a contemporary shooter that honors the original while offering something all its own.

The original GoldenEye had the odds stacked against it, since movie tie-in games were of notoriously low quality and it shipped a couple years after the movie’s release. The film, however, had introduced Pierce Brosnan as a strong new James Bond for the 1990s, rejuvenating a series that had slipped during the final years of Roger Moore and the misbegotten tenure of Timothy Dalton. In retrospect, it’s one of the strongest films in the series, and the game set a standard for subsequent 007 games that, by and large, has been maintained for the past 13 years.

First-person shooters have evolved a great deal since 1997. Health and armor packs have been replaced with the ability to recover health by staying out of the line of fire for a few seconds. The use of covering terrain has become commonplace, along with the ability to pop-up and fire off a few shots before returning to cover. Multiplayer has become far more sophisticated, with multiple play modes and online matchmaking over high-speed internet connections. Level design is more elaborate, and the ability of consoles to show larger spaces and longer distances has led to more lavish visuals. 

All of these changes are reflected in GoldenEye, making it a true game of 2011 and not a retro blast back to 1997. Activision hasn’t abandoned the fans entirely, however. There’s a special difficulty level that returns the health packs and the pacing of the original, and it’s actually quite hard to play. The game also offers three control schemes: original N64, GameCube, and the Wii-mote/Nunchuk combo.

I tried to make it work with the Wii-mote, really I did. I stuck with it for several levels, and then just gave up and went with the GameCube controller. Although some people have adjusted to the point-and-shoot nature of the Wii controller, I’m not one of them. It simply lacks the speed and responsiveness I need for a game like this.

The first transformation for the new GoldenEye is the rather unceremonious replacement of former Bond Pierce Brosnan with the voice and likeness new Bond Daniel Craig. This affects the entire tone of the game, making it more gritty and intense, in keeping with Craig’s two outings as Bond. Dame Judi Dench returns as M (a role she took over starting with GoldenEye), but the rest of the original film’s cast has also been replaced, and their characters updated or eliminated altogether.

It’s actually rather intriguing to see how GoldenEye is reimagined for Craig’s more brutal, less debonair Bond and a more high-tech age, complete with cell phones and digital photography. The plot remains largely the same, hitting most of the major action set-pieces of the film as Bond deals with the betrayal of a former MI6 agent and the threat from a new EMP weapon. But the whole thing feels very different due to the changes and updates.

The gameplay itself is a nice mixture of stealth and gunplay, and you control which to emphasize. If you play it quiet and slow and stay out of the line of cameras and guards, you can get through many levels with minimal shooting. Or, you can charge in guns a’blazin’ and just shoot the heck out of everything. There are plenty of secondary tasks and puzzle-like challenges that require the use of Bond’s multipurpose cell phone, as well as a couple of driving sequences. Altogether, it offers a satisfying mix of gameplay styles and a solid 10-12 hours of solo play.

The multiplayer remains outstanding, and it’s a real treat to be able to take GoldenEye online at last. Multiplayer includes a huge roster of Bond characters and villains to choose from, and some have special powers, such as Oddjob’s killer bowler. If you’re a fan of the series, it’s going to be a real treat facing off against Rosa Klebb or Jaws, or entering Nick-Nack mode, in which everyone is Herve Villechaize-sized. There are several new types of play, including Golden Gun mode, in which people vie for control of the one-shot/one-kill golden gun.

It’s good to have GoldenEye back for a new generation, and with so many new features and novel elements. Is it as good as the original? Well, since it preserves what made the original good and expands upon it, then yes: in fact, it’s better. The original is fondly remember because it was new and different. The remake isn’t new or different, but by any measure of quality it’s a better game.

"Playing is Good for Children" says the New York Times UPDATED

Well, that's a relief.

Also ... "Studies Show Water is Wet," and "Scientists Agree: Puppies are Cuddly."

I don't know whether to be pleased or mystified by "Effort to Restore Children’s Play Gains Momentum," a story in the Home & Garden section of the New York Times. Like so much from the Times, it reads like a dispatch written by and about alien life-forms. In this case, people have recently discovered that these strange small beings known as HU-MAN CHIL-DREN enjoy peculiar rituals called "PRETENDING" and "PLAYING," and that these rituals may now be safely classified as "GOOD" due to the opinions of Designated Experts.

What kind of Type-A, OCD, careerist, whack-job parents do Times writers generally associate with that they think a mom who lets the kids play in the house--even if it gets a little bit messy!--is somehow news? They even manage to find some chin-tugging expert to say, “Play is just a natural thing that animals do and humans do, but somehow we’ve driven it out of kids.”

Speak for yourself, lady. I teach kids, I volunteer with kids, and I live with kids, and I have never encountered one who has had the play "driven out" of him. I do the "play" thing professionally, and kids know how to play just fine.

I'm not always sure that parents know how to parent, however. If the story were merely a lament about the over-scheduling of the average American child, then I'd agree, but that hardly means that children have "forgotten" how to play. They merely have parents who think a child's every waking moment must be filled with some kind of self-improving busywork. I heard one parent justify this kind of intense parenting by saying "If we don't have our kids keep up, then the Chinese will beat us." I'm not sure what exactly they think the Chinese are going to beat us at. Long division? State capitols? Ping-pong?

My family is hardly typical--my wife and I both work at home and our kids don't do sports--but I know plenty of "typical" families, and none of the kids have what one "expert" actually calls a "play deficit."

The Times story ends with excerpts from a 75-page instruction manual on how to play, including such gems as these:

“Climb on the couch with your friends and pretend you are sailing on a ship to a distant land,” reads one idea. Another, from the section on construction play: “Lay a toy on the floor and figure out how to build a bridge going over the toy with blocks.”

“Make paper doll cutouts from old newspapers and magazines,” a third suggests, “and let your imagination fly!”

I don't mean to sound judgmental (wait a second: yes I do), but if your kids need instructions like these, then you have royally screwed up the whole parenting thing, and almost certainly screwed up your kids.

We play a lot here at Casa McD: certainly more than the average household. Part of that has to do with the constant flow of games coming into the house for my job, but part of it also has to do with the rules we laid down. TV watching and screen-based games are limited to a few hours spread over Friday, Saturday, and Sunday, and sometimes on days with heavy weather. That's always been the rule, so the kids have learned how to play on their own. I've had parents marvel at this. How do you do it? My kids would never stand for it! they say.

I never understood this response. You're the parent! You make the rules. You shape your child's world through the decisions you make. And if your child doesn't know how to play because he's staring into a screen all the time, or because she's bouncing from ballet to soccer to Mandarin lessons to yoga, then you made the wrong choices somewhere along the line.

Take away the DS, turn off the computer, cancel the stupid lessons, quit the team, and dump a pile of Lego in the middle of a table, get a stack of paper and a new box of Crayolas, or break out a board game. If you want to give your kids the best, then give them time to just be kids.

UPDATE: Some people wanted to know if I'd read this story about Chinese parenting. Yes I had, and if it's accurate, then it's a rather chilling portrait of a nation of psychopaths. I find the entire drive to "get ahead" at any cost utterly nauseating, whether it's from Eastern or Western parents. What are we trying to get ahead of? Why must professional, academic, or even personal achievement (more correctly, over-achievement) be the defining measure of a life, rather than love or joy? Perhaps certain children are happy being driven to misery so they can play a nice little piano piece and make mamma proud at the recital, but I'd say those children are definitely in the minority.

I'm not saying that kids don't need to be pushed and made to understand that hard work is needed to master anything, but the "Chinese mother" techniques described in the story cross the line into brutality. I agree that rote memorization and drilling is a huge benefit to kids, and I spend summer break tutoring my kids in Latin, history, literature, math and other subjects in order to keep their minds sharp and extend their range of learning. Every parent has to push their kids to learn math, study science, and practice instruments, but the vast majority manage to do so without turning it into some kind of cruel psychodrama.

Perhaps this drive to create "superchildren" is a byproduct of China's monstrous single-child policy, with incredible pressure brought to bear on that one child to fulfill all his or her parents' dreams and expectations. In any case, I'll put American independence, empathy, high spirits, freedom, and inventiveness against obsessive Chinese parenting any day of the week, and twice on Sunday.

"Postings of a Troubled Mind"

The Wall Street Journal has a detailed article about the Tucson shooter and his activities in an online gaming forum. The story, "Postings of a Troubled Mind," depict a deeply disturbed young man who alarmed everyone whose path he crossed. The shooter was a time bomb, but the search for a trigger is the work of political and journalistic hacks. I have close, personal experience with mentally ill people, and I can tell you this much: anything can be a trigger.

The forums frequented by the shooter are for a browser-based game called Earth Empires, about which I know nothing. It appears to be a standard global conquest strategy game without the kind of grotesquely violent elements that tend to alarm non-gamers. It's about to get very famous, very fast.

Even in the notoriously wild world of game forums and chat rooms, the comments of the killer were remarkably bizarre. They show an obsession with conspiracy theories about education and grammar, contain copious references to violence and even cannibalism, and veer into inexplicable non-sequiturs. It seems as though everyone who encountered him thought the same thing: this man is dangerous, and one day he's going to snap.

Now that the media and politicians have embarrassed themselves by trying to tie this horrific crime to Sarah Palin and the Tea Party movement without the tiniest bit of evidence, they will now move on to blaming games as well. This is SOP. I've written different versions of this story for most of my career, and the political and media reaction is as predictable as the sunrise.

Just to be clear: I like Sarah Palin, although I'm not certain she's presidential material; and I support the limited-government goals of the Tea Party movement. Neither Palin nor the Tea Party bear any responsibility in this tragedy, and I find it deeply hypocritical that the same people urging conservatives to "tone down the rhetoric" are simultaneously accusing us of complicity in mass murder. Talk about your irony impairment.

By and large, mainstream journalists don't have particularly sophisticated minds. They manipulate a few well-worn (usually inaccurate) narrative tropes and assumptions, and rarely dig deeply into unfamiliar territory. (And, yes, I say this as a professional journalist with extensive newspaper experience.) The mind of a mass murderer is a wild and unruly place, and journalists feel this need to Explain It All in 1200 words by a 3:00 deadline. Reality doesn't actually work that way. Reality doesn't fit itself into the five Ws and an inverted pyramid style, with a 20 word lede and a three-line nut graph.

In keeping with my standard policy, the name of the shooter will not appear in any of my writing or anywhere on this site.  Spree killers and assassins are fame whores, and their crimes are only fed by a media culture which rewards them with the recognition they so desperately crave. Only six names matter: Christina-Taylor Green, Gabe Zimmerman, John M. Roll, Dorwin Stoddard, Phyllis Schneck, and Dorothy Morris. Remember them. Pray for them and their families, as well as for Rep. Giffords and the other wounded.

Cargo Noir, Coming From Days of Wonder This March

The next game from Days of Wonder is Cargo Noir, designed by Serge Laget, co-designer of Mystery Express and Shadows Over Camelot.  I'll let the official press release fill in the details:

Cargo Noir is a game of illicit trading in which players run "families" who traffic in smuggled goods. The game takes place in the thrilling and evocative setting of 1950's film noir.

Game play in Cargo Noir revolves around a changing set of notorious smuggling ports – Hong Kong, Bombay, Rotterdam, Panama, Tanger, Rio, Cape Town, New York and Macao – that are filled with various types and quantities of contraband. Players dispatch cargo ships loaded with gold to the ports that hold cargo they desire – hoping that it will be enough to snatch the goods away from any opponents. The acquired goods are then stored in the player’s warehouses until enough is accumulated to create valuable combinations to trade away for Victory Spoils.

"Everything in Cargo Noir grew from a core auction mechanism that is simple and trivial to explain - you can only bid up, and the last bidder standing gets the goods," says designer Serge Laget. "After that game development focused on three areas: fine-tuning the balance so there were always multiple paths to victory; making sure the game shines with two players as well as with five; and finding a theme that would be evocative with a feel that is very different from most other auction or trading games – a Sheep for two Woods it ain’t!"

More pictures after the jump:

Resources For Young Game Designers

Ask the average modern American boy what he wants to be when he grows up, and the chances are fairly high that he'll say, "I want to make video games." It's what my own son would say, and based on the emails and questions I get from readers and acquaintances, I know other parents are finding the same thing. 

A reader recently wrote asking me if I could put his nephew in touch with someone in the video game business, in order to provide some direction and encouragement. I've received similar requests before, but oddly enough I really don't know many designers any more. I stopped doing features and previews years ago, which limits my coverage to pure opinion journalism. This means I really don't interact with designers like I used to. That was a deliberate choice, because I found my friendships with designers occasionally interfered with my ability to cover their work. Now I just deal with PR people, and that's probably for the best.

But it also means that I didn't have any concrete connections to offer this gentleman, or others who have asked similar questions. What I would like to offer, however, are a few resources and words of advice for parents who have children with an interest in this industry.

Don't discourage them. There are more aspirants than jobs at this point, but the jobs are there and growing, particularly in the area of mobile and web-based game development. (Rovio, makers of Angry Birds, is advertising for 8 new positions.) I was discouraged from becoming a filmmaker when I was young, even though I had displayed a natural aptitude for it. I pushed ahead anyway, went to NYU film school, and worked in TV and film production for a little while (until I realized that writing was a lot easier and less time consuming). I hated the fact that adults kept trying to steer me towards a more "sensible" profession. To hell with that. Let the kids dream big and, if they fail, they fail. At least they took the shot.

There are a lot of things that can help a teenage get a sense of the profession and give them a head start if they ultimately decide to pursue it. The most important thing is to just do it. It's a pretty simple thing for an 11 or 12 year old to get started making games, if only small ones that will show them the process, which can be dull and frustrating, but also quite rewarding.

Towards that end, I recommend The Game Maker's Apprentice, which provides a step-by-step guide for making a variety of little games using the Game Maker software from YoYo Games. (Game Maker can be downloaded for free, and is also included in a disc bound with the book.) There's also a sequel, The Game Maker's Companion, which picks up where the first leaves off.

Visual Basic Game Programming For Teens is a decent next step, although I wouldn't spring it on a middle school student. Game Programming for Teens also has some good parts, although the BlitzMax software it uses is not without problems. Experienced developers may scoff at the idea of making real games with the tools described in either of these books, but that's not really the point. It's simply important that kids get a sense of the process of designing, programming, and troubleshooting. If there are better tools, tutorials, or programs out there, by all means use the comboxes to recommend them. I'm always looking for new things.

It's more important for a young person to get some experience and perhaps build a portfolio than it is for them to make a viable, marketable game. Some colleges even open their game programming classes to high school students, which could provide a structured program for learning the basics.

We also just gave my son Anime Studio Debut 7, and animation software that's very easy to use, yet very powerful. Computer animation in a natural companion for game design, and Anime Studio is a great way to learn the basics and make nice little films.

As a parent, I'm encouraging my son to pursue his interest in making games by using these tools. He may find that the reality of "making games" is less enticing than the fantasy, and turn his attention to something else, thus   preventing a false career start later in life. Or he may find that he loves the process and has a natural aptitude for it, and thus have a head start on the hard work of learning how to do it. 

Right now, he's partway through Game Maker's Apprentice, and the jury is still out. He has a natural aptitude for this kind of thing, partly due to his high intelligence, and partly due to the peculiar wiring of the Asperger brain, which tends to be heavily biased towards interacting with and understanding machines and technology. Right now, I'm just encouraging him to explore the process. He'll decide for himself whether it's something he wants to pursue in the future.