December 2007 Archives

What with it being "the season" and all, the past few days have been a whirlwind of travel.  I don't particularly enjoy traveling, but the opportunity to visit with family - especially those that I havent seen in years made it well worth the 15 combined hours spent in the car.  Though I did learn the important lesson. If you're stuck in traffic in New York City and you need to find a restroom, traffic will never break, and Long Island will screw you.  File that away - one day it will mean something to you ;-)

As is typically the case during family gatherings, I feel as though I spend a lot of time catching up.   This in and of itself isnt particularly unusual, but it is the first time I've gone home with my thinking cap in perpetual on mode.  Maybe its a sign of an obsessive unable to unplug.  Maybe its a sign I enjoy thinking about the kind of stuff I write about here.  Its probably a little of both and somewhere right in the middle all at the same time.  But regardless, I found myself paying particular attention to the technology usage of the young peeps around me. 

Truth be told, paying attention was unnecessary.  The use of cell phones among the teenagers that filled my holiday season was about as subtle as the box that my copy of Rock Band came in (*makes a sound of glee*).

Now I've long since understood that a cell phone is as much as part of the modern birthing process as an umbilical cord.  But there was something about watching a herd of adolescent females whip out their who's who of expensive cell phones that made all the statistics very real.  At one point, during a pre-Christmas party, a 13 year old girl schooled me on the know battery problems with my particular Verizon LG phone.  Then she pulled out her Voyager, and no doubt inwardly laughed at me.  This wasnt a technical person.  This was just a regular teenage girl.  Just like all the other regular teenage girls who were just as cellular proficient.  Scary.

In a blog that I had abandoned due to my own lack of interest well before I started this one, I had written the draft of a post called "Bite Size Cellular Chunks".  I don't really remember the specifics of the post, but the delicious sounding title has always stayed with me =)  But after seeing the cell phone in its native habitat, the idea has returned to me.

Is the cell phone a good medium through which to deliver educational content?  Would students be more likely to participate in a class discussion if they could share brief thoughts from their cell phones - almost like a class based twitter?  Or use their cell phones to watch mobile ready video clips that pertain to a course topic?  Or review brief class notes through their favorite little cellular buddy?

I'm far from an expert on most of the things I talk about in this blog, but my knowledge of cell phones is defiantly sub par.   I get them, but truth be told they just aren't my thing.  So  these ideas are most certainly from an "outside looking in" perspective.  Maybe educational content on a cell phone is invasive and obnoxious.  But in case you havent noticed, I have this thing about engaging students where they roll.  And after a very digital native Christmas, I have a newfound  appreciation for just how much rolling goes on in the mobile world. 

Oh, and Happy New Year!

There has been a lot of buzz over the past week regarding the release of the Mitchell Report - Senator George Mitchell's look into baseball's nasty smear, performance enhancing drugs.  Assuming you don't live in a mountainside hermit shack, you've probably heard some of the talk surrounding the document, even if baseball isnt quite your thing.  If you're looking for more info than that, Wikipedia can skim the surface, and the report itself... can give you... itself.  

As professional sports seasons wind down, I often find myself reflecting on the number of players that step away from their various professions.  I suppose its some sort of twisted ritual by which I measure my own age.  Every year, a few more players retire and every year, the number of people who have been playing since I was a wee Stub drops like a drawn out, depressing New Years Eve countdown.  I guess its the side effect of being such a rabid sports nut.  I'm a far bigger football fan than anything else, but I pay attention to all of the big American sports, and to varying degrees, the Stubsian sports hour glass applies to all of them.

Roger Clemens is one of the few throwback players left from my formative years.  He's been pitching since I was 2, and that longevity coupled with his skill has pretty well embedded his name into that category of people I consider synonymous with a sport.  He isnt a boyhood idol or anything, and truth be told, outside of being a Yankee fan, I don't have a whole lot of interest in him.  But he is a name - a name that has played baseball at a very high level for as long as I can remember.  A name I recognize and remember from a time when sports were simple.  They might not have been any more pure than they are today - but I was young in "the good old days", and not tuned in enough to know about the negatives.  There was a purity in that youthful ignorance and I, as I suspect most people do, miss it from time to time.  

But in addition to being a link to my past, Roger Clemens has also been named as a heavy user of performance enhancing drugs in the Mitchell Report.  Clemens was not the only player named (there were nearly 100 people in total).  And though the evidence against most would likely not stand up in a court, the release of the report has led to multiple confessions, lending some credence to what initially looked like shaky findings.  Clemens, for his part, vehemently denies any claims that he has ever used any sort of performance drug.  

So what does any of this have to do with any of my normal topics?  I suppose its forced me to ask the question, how much do I really want to know?  And not just about athletes, but about anyone?  And from there we make the jump to social networking...

I have been fortunate, in so much as despite the large number of my friends who are involved in social networking or the internet at large, I've never had a moment of negative zen.  The miracles of modern technology have afford me countless opportunities to learn about friends or colleagues, and offered them the same opportunities to allow them to learn about me.  But, as of yet, I've never had to deal with that technology casting a dark shadow over itself.  I've never been unlucky enough to discover something really awful about someone I know.  But what if it did?

For the most part, I try not to judge people for the content on their myspace page, for the pictures they post to Flick'r, for the links they save to del.icio.us, for the ideas they share in their blogs or for the tweets they fire off on twitter.  The way I see it, social technologies have afforded me an enormous opportunity to learn and share that I would otherwise not have had.  And if I decide to judge, that door might one day close on me.  It doesnt mean I agree with, or understand some of the choices people make, but by and large I'll accept them and be thankful for the opportunity to learn a little more about someone.  Besides - I'm not exactly your run of the mill normal dude anyway =)

But I've never opened up Flick'r to find a picture of a family member wearing a KKK uniform or swastikas.  I've never seen tweets that give me reason to believe that a co-worker might be racist, sexist, homophobic or religiously prejudiced.  I've never seen blog posts from friends that talk about the way they cheated their way through school, or alluding to the fact that they beat their children.  Those are all extreme examples, but even lesser ones beg the question, what would I do?  My judgment free social technology world would crumble into a billion pieces.  But where is that imaginary line between worthy of judgment and not?  

In response to Facebook's social advertising endevour - Beacon - I had written a post essentially asking if anyone cared if their friends knew what they were buying on the internet.  I find myself returning to that question again, but in a much broader sense.  

We all have secrets - those skeletons we would prefer stay in our closets.  The reasons we keep them are as diverse as the secrets themselves.  Pride.  Embarrassment.  Fear.  Power.  Security.  Self preservation.  But what if all those secrets were out in the open?  What would happen if none of us had any privacy at all?  What would happen if all of us knew everything about each-other?  Would people think less of you?  Would you lose any friends?  Would your professional life suffer?  Would anything change in your family?  If you could peer into anyone's closest, would you like what you saw?  Would you even care?

The significance on the Mitchell Report really has nothing to do with baseball to me.  Instead, its forced me to ask, how much I really want to know.  How much ignorance would I trade for bliss?

I love social networking.  I love the internet.  I love web 2.0.  So don't let this post fool you - I'm not planning on changing the way I roll.  But as these technologies progress... as more and more of our lives are exposed to each other, it does beg wondering if there is a point that goes too far?

I don't support cheating.  So if it turns out that Clemens juiced in a way that went against Baseball's rules, then I hope he is punished for his actions.  

Though I for one, was happier not knowing.



Image from soxblog.mlblogs.com

Ah the dictionary.  Is their anything we don't love about you?  Your many words.  The way you make us feel mentally inferior for not grasping your full bounty.  They way you save the day in a riveting game of Scrabbulous... or "Scrabble" for all you crazy brick and mortar types ;-)  And of course, the way put your finger right on the
pulse of society in the words you choose to include.  Gamers of the world unite:  "W00t" is in the dictionary. Giddyup!

There is a twinge of disappointment in this glorious victory for gamer-kind, in so much as the choice to add w00t to the Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary occurred by popular vote.  Why is that disappointing?  Well probably because its far more amusing to imagine a bunch of editors sipping Brandy and voting for w00t on their own,
asking questions like "what the bloody devil is a whoot" and then using words like "balderdash".  Why the editors of Merriam-Webster in Stub's head are all members of the 1920 British parliament is beyond me..but its sad to know that isnt actually how it went down.  Ok, so its not really sad.  But it is less hilarious. 

Never the less, its always cool to see slang of my own vernacular, much less a gaming slang term that is half numbers, find a place in society as a whole. 

Gaming 1.  English Language 0.  Have you had your w00t moment today?


P.S.  While we're on the subject, its probably worth mentioning that the number 2 word on the Merriam Webster list was... you guessed it ... Facebook (verb).  This blog might be filled with nonsense, but its good to know I've got the topics right ;-)

One of the advantages of virtual worlds is that they afford users the opportunity to do things that would be difficult or impossible to do in real life.  You could walk on the surface of a virtual recreation of the moon, follow the path of a red blood cell as it travels through the virtual human body or.... go to the movies. Bah?

You heard right.  Warner Brothers and Sony have recently signed a deal with Gaia Online to start showing major motion pictures in online virtual theaters.  Why would you watch a movie in a virtual theater?  Because virtual worlds are cool?  Because your couch is lame?  Because you can?  Because its "social".  Because there is nothing like the smell of virtual artificial butter toping.  You decide.

But being the ever curious one, I decided that this little virtual movie theater business was just the motivation I needed to scope the scene.  And...well... Gaia is something =)  If you're over the age of 16 it will probably make absolutely no sense to you whatsoever.  Though I can understand why Gaia is growing in popularity among the younger crowd.  Part social network, part virtual world, its got an easy to use flash interface, tons of customization, message boards filled with the word avatar spelled with an "i" and best of all, everyone looks like an anime character!  But I digress...
 
Sadly there were no showings of the Matrix currently going on when I strolled into the Gaia theater.  But I did get to sit in a "room" for 5 minutes with 10 other avatars while people threw popcorn and flashed some combination of a laser pointed and a lightsaber at the "screen".  Amazingly, it did capture the experience of sitting in a movie theater filled with insane teenagers quite nicely.  It was ...stimulating to say the least.  Then I realized that I had just wasted several minutes of my life, and promptly logged out.

But despite not having actually seen a movie in the Gaia's movie theater, I did come away intrigued.  Not because I'm sold on Gaia or because I have a problem watching movies on my couch, but because watching movies in a virtual world environment does unlock some interesting possibilities. 

State College Pennsylvania isnt exactly one of the top 5 largest metro areas in the country.  Or 10.  Or 50 ;-)  And as such, there are times when limited release films don't find their way to our local theaters.  It seems like an obscure situation, but it happens more than you'd probably think.  And when it does happen, you can either drive 3 hours to the closest major city, or you can sit on you keester until the DVD is released.  I know very little about the business behind releasing movies, but I can only assume that limited releases have something to do with cost.  I'm not suggesting that servers like Gaia's are cheap, but they might offer a more affordable way to distribute movies then through traditional means.  Or imagine a geographically dispersed group (professional, religious, political, social, whatever) that would like to share some sort of movie activity together.  What might have been impossible before is now very realistic.  It might not be face to face, but it affords opportunities for people to come together, share an activity, and even communicate with each other all at the same time.  Or imagine friends or a family members sperated by hundreds of miles, having the chance to watch a movie together.  It might sound a little hokey or far fetched, but now, its all possible.

Perhaps more interesting are the educational possibilities.  I took a cinema class as an undergraduate, and a critical part of the course was watching movies.  One class day a week was devoted to movie viewings, and if you couldnt make the class, you were expected to rent the movie and watch it on your own time.  But is there any reason that same class experience couldnt occur online?  Or better still, why cant that experience be translated to distance education classes?  And these ideas are only the tip of the iceberg...

And despite the potential opportunities this move opens up, let us not overlook the obvious statement it makes regarding the significance of virtual environments to the future of mainstream media.

It might not be easy to share a bag of popcorn in a virtual theater, but at least its possible to share an experience.  Interesting stuff.

One of the inevitabilities of blogging is that more people read than leave comments to the things you blog about.  It goes without saying I'm totally cool with that - there is by no means any expectation that reading this blog is synonymous with participation.  But it doesn't assuage my curiosity as to what you all are thinking =)

So over the coming weeks I'll likely be testing out a few variations on ways to solicit non-intrusive feedback, from people who might be interesting in sharing their opinions, but may not want to leave their names or write up full blown comments.  Today's test, the Sodahead poll!  ZOMG.  And what better way to test something than to dive right in.  Just as an FYI, this is an embedded third party polling system, not something home grown in case you are curious.

I don't cook.  Truth be told thats really in the best interests of everyone around me.  Its not that I havent tried.  I can work a grill pretty well, and if given enough time I can usually come up with something "interesting" in your more traditional kitchen.  But "interesting" usually yields items like "Stub's chocolate chip cookie apocalypse".  What does that mean?  3 part chocolate cookie 1 part dynamite.  Serve with blindfold, jaws of life, and milk.  Most people strive to improve on their weaknesses.  But, were that the case with me and cooking, I would have starved to death a long time ago.

Given my ... dubious culinary history, I'm probably the last person you'd expect to find on a site like Epicurious.  So imagine my surprise when my Facebook home page pops open a few days ago to show me, and anyone else who was looking, that I had book-marked some sort of crazy pie in my epicurious recipe box.

I did what?  I have a recipe box?  Where is my pie?

As it turns out, there were two culprits in this little mystery.  Culprit 1 is my girlfriend, who ninjaed my laptop.  But the much bigger culprit is the much maligned Beacon - the cornerstone of Facebook's next generation social advertising agenda.  My girlfriend bookmarks pie recipes.  My Facebook page is open.  Independent systems communicate and all of a sudden I've got an email from a friend who is wondering what makes me think I can bake a pie.  Its not so much the beginning of the Skynet and a real life Terminator series that has me upset.  Its more that despite all the insanity, I still don't have a pie.

If you havent been following the drama of Beacon or Overlord's Zuckerberg's subsequent apology for it, then feel free to hit the jumps for the scoop.  In a word, its been a PR disaster, and for quite a few reasons.  But the point of this post isnt to pass judgment on the Beacon debacle, as thats pretty much been done to death. 

Putting all the issues of Beacon's privacy aside, I'd like to ask a more philosophical privacy question.   Do you care if your social network knows what you buy on the internet?

We've always established that I'm not a real person, but for my part, it just seems like the logical next step to me.  Of course, I use the internet to buy military history books and video games - it wouldn't exactly be a major security leak if all of you found out about it ;-) 

But what about you?  Are the movies you rent, the things you buy, or the recipes you bookmark something you'd prefer to keep out of the eyes of your social network?  And if not, would you mind if I stop over for pie? =)

Back in June, I wrote a post titled Fun First Learning Later, which essentially discussed the need for fun in educational games.  Games that are fun are worth playing, and will provide opportunities for both direct and incidental learning.  Games which are not fun, or what we call "lamesauce" (that was the royal we mind you) have a much bigger hurdle to overcome when it comes to imparting wisdom on the minds of their players.  Its a pretty common sense idea - no one wants to play awful games just because they are games.  

But sometimes it seems like that concept is missed on educators seeking to harness the power of the video game.  I'm reminded of the Seinfeld sequence between George, Jerry, and NBC.  "But why are they watching?  Because its on TV!  Not yet it isnt."  

As it turns out, my crazy talk might just amount to something every once and a while =) And with that I bring you the story of Arden.  Arden, if you don't know, is an MMO designed around the world of Shakespeare.  The effort to create Arden was headed up by Dr. Edward Castronova of Indiana and its purpose was educational - study virtual economics and teach students Shakespeare in a virtual world environment.  Sounds like a good idea, and to be honest it was.  There was only one problem.  Arden was double glazed in lamesauce and no one wanted to play it.  That, dear fellows, is what we call a $250,000 learning experience.  Whoops!

A few friends and I were discussing the plight of Arden yesterday, when one of them astutely observed "welcome to the boredom that is Second Life".   

I'm sure the moral of the story is self evident, so I won't blather on endlessly like I normally do.  I'll just leave you with a well known quote from The Merchant of Venice.

"All that glitters is not gold."  

Who knew Shakespeare knew EduGaming too ;-)  

A few months ago, I finished up the single player campaign for the highly touted Halo 3. Under normal circumstances, I'd toss out a SPOILER WARNING, but if you havent beaten Halo by now, chances are you have no interest in doing so. Halo 3 ends with a funeral cut-scene, honoring the virtual soldiers who died in a virtual war, complete with a 21 gun salute. The funeral represents the end of a story that took 3 games to tell, and I suppose, by video game standards, you'd consider it dramatic.

But the scene is not what you'd call sad. In fact, its not really emotional in any way shape or form. Its not because the scene itself is poorly done, or because the voice acting is bad. There is just an emotional hollowness to it. One that left me wondering "why".

Inspired by this experience, I started trying to wrap my head around the idea of video games in an emotional context. A good television show can make you laugh. A good book can make you cry. But despite my undying love of them, video games are not a medium that has been particularly effective at creating emotional responses (fear and disgust not withstanding). This is surprising in my opinion, as the interactivity that makes games what they are seems like it would serve as the perfect adhesive between an individual and emotional experiences (or perhaps attachments?). Play the closing cemetery scene in Saving Private Ryan and I'm running for the Kleenex. Play the closing funeral in the Halo trilogy and I'm thinking about what to have for dinner. Whether the story is based on fact or fiction is irrelevant, at least in my opinion - the emotional impact comes from how its told. From the acting. From the film's ability to touch us. Video games have stories, and actors, and even directors. But I don't think, in the recorded history of man kind has a video game made anyone cry. Well... thats not entirely true. I did cry when I five starred Free Bird in Guitar Hero. It was beautiful. ;-) But you see what I'm saying - despite the interactivity, the "human connection" between people and movies is far stronger than the one between people and games.

There are three fairly obvious reasons for this disconnect. The first is that media like film or books have had a lot longer to hone their craft than video games have. The second is that making an emotional impact on the audience is not really the goal of a video game. Games are games because they are interactive, and thus will nearly always live and die by gameplay. The story, the game writing, the highly scripted cut-scenes - they all exist to create context for that gameplay. They are secondary priorities. Chief Johnson's facial expression and dying words in Halo are inconsequential if the game isnt fun enough for you to want to play that far. You won't play a terrible game, much less spend $60 on it just to watch the cut-scenes if the game itself isnt compelling. And by the same token the cut scenes can afford to be terrible if they game is good enough to make up for them. Movies on the other hand are games without gameplay. They are 2 hour long cut-scenes. Things that are second tier for video games - character development, voice acting quality, writing, plot, framing a scene - they are all movies have to work with. The result is that movies and books and television have refined the art of story telling in a way games have not yet done. And though the cinematic element of games is developing, in general, in ways that games have not yet had to do.

The third is that by their very nature, the artificiality of game's create a barrier to emotional attachment. The characters in a game, including whatever character you control, are not real. Even in the best games, that is always apparent. The movie Castaway isnt real either. But it is significant because Tom Hanks is real. Because his ability to act, to create a connection with his audience makes his story "real enough" to empathize with. He is a real human depicting human things and he does it very well. He is not a representation of a human doing human things. Imagine if Green Mile had been done with Pixar characters and you'll understand what I'm getting at. So when games do try to play off your humanity and your emotions, they are doing so at a disadvantage.

So what? Other than one Stub's puzzling interest in having video games challenge his emotional state, what purpose would a game that makes you feel something serve? The answer to that is relevance.

Back in October, Dr. Ian Bogost (Georgia Tech) speaking at the SIEGE conference, attempted to answer the question of what would be required in order for video games to be relevant in a cultural sense. His answer, in a highly oversimplified form, was that the importance of games could only be determined with the help of historical perspective, and would be predicated on their ability to accurately capture some aspect of the human condition.

For the longest time, Bogost's speech frustrated me, because as someone who spends much of his time contemplating the value of video games in our society, I had been hoping for something slightly less... philosophical. In a word, I had been hoping for ammunition - wisdom from a well known academic and game scholar to help me better spread the goodness of gaming to the masses. But though it was disappointing at the time, the speech stayed with me, and kick started this entire process into gear. More importantly though, mulling over my frustration eventually led me to realize that I had totally missed the point. Bogost was right. The ability for games to capture emotion, to capture some part of our humanity will eventually determine their cultural relevance because that is how media works. Historically famous works of art, literature, cinema, or television are not famous because they are just straight up awesome. They are famous because they meant something. Because they inspired something. Because their contribution to or effect on humanity is worth mentioning when the history of our species is recounted. Its a much "bigger picture" look at things than what is popular, or cool, or educational in the here and now. But its the only picture that will be remembered long after we're dead and gone.

Without some sort of deeper connection to their audience, video games will, at best, be remembered as an entertainment, educational, or cultural fad and little more. And as a video game addict who pretends to be an intellectual, such a fate is unacceptable to me.

But if you'll assume that video games do hope to stand up to the test of time - that they do hope to make be a part of the human story then how will it be accomplished? How do games become more than a pastime or a teaching tool, and evolve into their own chapter in the as yet unwritten chapter of the human history.

Choice.

Should they cease to exist tomorrow, theater, film, television, music, literature and art have all proven their value in the human story. They all have shown their ability to capture something - some part of our tale. And yet all of them are frozen - mediums in which "choice" is an irrelevant notion. When you go see a movie, you don't choose what the main characters look like. You can't choose how they respond to situations. Those choices are made for you, by the film's actors, directors, screenwriters, and producers. When you read a book, you are offered slightly more choice, in so much as your imagination can build the story out visually in your mind. But in the end, you are still at the discretion of the writer as to the story of the book, and whatever facts your you are given to build your imaginary world. Its a passive experience - writers, actors, artists, musicians, and directors bank on their ability to capture some "thing" in a way that it will mean something to you (or in some cases, in a way that means something to them). In more complex media, the notion of interpretation or perception can be discussed, but in the end the medium itself it no different.

Unlike any other form of media, video games do offer the potential for choice, and with it an experience where a story is told through the decisions of the audience. An active experience that is yours, not a passive story being presented to you by someone else. A chance for who you are to play into what you are doing, not by way of interpretation, but by way of a change in the medium itself. Or perhaps more significantly, a chance to explore something about who you are not.

Last week I picked up the Xbox 360 game Mass Effect, a space drama RPG that is essentially built around the concept of choice. The game itself is very story driven, and while controlling the main character, you essentially dictate that story, or at least parts of it. You choose what your own "Commander Shepard" looks like. You give him or her a past. You respond to other characters and situations in the way you choose, and the story is built out accordingly. Negotiate with the kidnapper for a peaceful solution, or gun down his entire unit. Respond to your superiors with polite, well mannered answers or snide, sarcastic quips. Risk the lives of a few or risk the lives of a galaxy. The best part of the game is that you decide it all, and your choices can have a significant impact on the story.

The game itself is also built to be far more "human", in so much as its not about polar truths - right or wrong, good or bad, righteous or evil. It is a game about the gray areas. A game about imperfections. A game about choices and their consequences, and the fact that there isnt always a perfect answer.

The effect is one unlike any I have ever experienced before in a video game; part movie, part video game, part choose your own adventure book. Hesitation, self doubt, remorse, guilt, frustration - they are all a part of Mass Effect. Not because the game builds them in. But rather because your choices demand it. You don't feel bad because character X dies. You feel bad because you chose to send character X to that death and you wonder if you needed to. Or maybe you don't feel bad at all. Maybe you are confident that you made the decision that needed to be made. But when you play the game, you do feel something because you are directly responsible for whatever it is that happens. Its absolutely fascinating, though I'm sure all you non gamers out there are wondering how much medication I should be taking =) Regardless, the fact remains that Mass Effect is a game filled with humanity, and that makes for a compelling and emotionally charged experience. The talents of Tom Hanks or Stephen King are not required to convey meaning to you - because the meaning comes THROUGH you, comes because of you. The barrier of artificially is torn down because its not an artificial character anymore. Its you.

Now obviously Mass Effect is not the game that has revolutionized everything. I consider it to be a tremendous title and a tremendous opportunity to expand the genre into one with far more depth than it currently posses. But it is still a program that must live within its own limitations. Every option must be programmed, every branching decision must be accounted for by someone, so I should be clear that Mass Effect is not some sort of utopian, organic experience. There are finite limits to the things you can do and say, and to suggest that they scratch the surface of the possibilities of the human response would be tom foolery. The greatest strength of Mass Effect is not that it accounts for everything the human mind could conceive, but rather allows for you to create a meaningful story with human decisions, even if those decisions are finite. It demands you to ask yourself "what would I do", in a way that no other form of media can.

Despite my attempt to explain, I have no illusions about the fact that for most of you, this post will make little to no sense. To be honest, I'm not even sure it makes sense to me yet. Why is any of this meaningful and why in the name of all things good have I wasted so much time thinking about it? =)

Maybe I've had some sort of existentialist brain washing. Maybe I have emotional repression issues. Maybe I'm just tired of watching challenging movies and then playing "hollow" games. But maybe, just maybe, its something more.

Video games are touted for their interactivity - for their exploratory nature. So when you look to the future of gaming, or when someone else 100 years from now looks back, maybe its not about better graphics and better sound and cooler levels and infinitely more cowbell. Maybe its about using an exploratory medium to explore ourselves. About questioning or exploring the nature of our own humanity, our own morals, in a made world where nothing is real and nothing matters beyond the boundaries of your television set. The choices we make in life are part of what makes us who we are. And even if recreated in a scripted way, if video games can allow us to explore those choices, then they offer us an opportunity to answer questions about who we really are. My mind is teaming with sociological studies waiting to happen....

Or maybe all of this is nothing more than the most unbelievably ridiculous thing you've ever read. Maybe you don't want your games to make you question anything. Maybe their mindlessness, their ability to make you question nothing rather than question everything is what gives them their appeal. But maybe not...

The best part is, you get to choose.

Image from filefront.com

P.S. I should also mention that Mass Effect is not the first RPG by the game studio Bioware - they are also responsible for the two Knights of the Old Republic Games and Jade Empire among others if this sort of stuff interests you.