I don't know how they did it.

The ESRB, it seemed, had a perfect test case in the Motion Picture Association of America -- a readymade guidebook on what to do and what not to do when establishing a ratings system. They no doubt saw the trouble the movie industry had with the X, then later NC-17, rating. The way everyone avoided it like the plague, rendering it less a rating and more a mark of death. The way it inevitably became associated with pornography -- hell, that's what prompted the change to NC-17 in the first place, but attitudes towards the rating stayed the same. Any reasonable amount of analysis would've shown that a different tact needed to be taken for the new video game ratings system.

But they didn't. The ESRB blindly galloped into the same quagmire the MPAA had been stewing in for decades by creating an Adults Only rating that almost immediately mirrored the NC-17 situation exactly. Stores won't carry it, magazines won't advertise it, and the people making the really filthy stuff are two-bit operations running out of a garage that don't bother to get their games rated anyway. Of the handful of games ever to receive the AO rating, the only one on consoles is the Hot Coffee edition of GTA: San Andreas, and that was only applied after the fact. Just as with NC-17, AO exists less as a rating defining a certain category of games and more as a bottomless abyss at the end of the road, into which is shoved anything deemed to go "a little too far." The definition of "too far", naturally, gets to change with the winds -- winds that are most usually emanating from bloated gas sacs lodged in the gullets of wailing parents and knee-jerking politicians.

I talk about this now because, in case you haven't heard, Manhunt 2 received a preliminary rating of Adults Only on Tuesday. After the announcement, Nintendo was quick to point out that they don't allow AO content on their systems, and later, more surprisingly, Sony said the same. Thus Rockstar is left with absolutely no alternative to but to censor their game and get it re-rated.

Now let's ignore the debate on whether Manhunt 2 should get to play the "artistic merit" card on this, because I don't care. The bigger issue is that any game should be put into such a position, where the developer is forced to change their content or be left with no avenue to release their work. I know, Rockstar should be and no doubt was aware of Sony and Nintendo's policies on AO ratings. But they can't know what rating they're going to get before they even begin.

But big deal. So they shorten some scenes or remove a few animations and get it re-rated. Why make a thing out of it. The problem is that we don't have an answer to the larger question, which is what happens when (not if) the games industry's Requiem for a Dream comes along. Requiem was given an NC-17 by the MPAA, but director Darren Aronofsky refused to edit the film, arguing that the intensity and offensive nature of the scenes in question were central to the message of the entire movie. (Having seen the movie, I agree with him.) Showing fortitude rarely witnessed in movie studios, Artisan Entertainment agreed to release the movie unrated. This obviously posed a challenge to distribution, but they did have the art house circuit and later home video to support them. Video stores especially are more forgiving about unrated movies, with the exception of some family-oriented outlets like Blockbuster.

Video games, on the other hand, practically live and die by their ESRB rating, as it is generally treated as the one and only reason adult content is allowed in games at all. Can you imagine if a game with adult themes was found to be sold unrated at a Gamestop? The same place where little Jimmy buys the latest Spyro game? He might catch sex madness! There was even a bill recently proposed in New York to permit the seizure of unrated games. So clearly even the work-around developed by the movie business is closed to game developers. How can we want the industry to grow and mature and tackle more important, serious, disturbing and even dangerous topics while also not giving them any outlet for their work if it crosses some arbitrary line in the sand?

Some people will attempt to counter this by saying that video games will never reach that point of artistic maturity, which is rather depressing. More because of what it says about public opinion than anything else, because I have no doubt we will reach that point someday (again, I won't argue whether Manhunt 2 is it) and we will have to deal with this. And once, just once, it would be nice to have a rational, sensible solution before we get there.

Posted by Will at 11:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (20)

Part 1
Part 2

With the major news out of the way, all that's left is to pick up on little side stories and commentary on smaller sites. You're not going to be getting any earth-shattering news out of these sites (even they had any, you would probably have seen it other places first), but they each provide something unique in their own way.

I can't use the Horror Vision™ icon here, because none of these sites are ugly and they're generally too small to have gaudy Flash ad campaigns on them. None of them, with one possible exception, are even bad, so I'm mostly just going to run through and give quick descriptions and you can take them from there. I know, I'm disappointed too.

Game Politics

The name pretty much says it all -- GP reports all the political news of the gaming world, including the progress of violent game bills and government hearings (like the one currently underway concerning the VA Tech shootings), whatever Jack Thompson decides to crap out this week, mainstream media reports on games, and basically anything else related to the public perception of gaming.

Politics have never really interested me in video games or in general, but if you consider yourself any kind of gamer, you should really keep tabs on these things.

Lost Levels

I keep checking this site to see if it has updated again, but I guess Frank Cifaldi has gotten busy with having an actual job now. Anyway, this is a site dedicated to games that, for whatever reason, never saw the light of day, with information about the games pieced together from interviews, old magazine previews, and beta ROMs. Even though it doesn't look like there's anything new coming down the pipe, you should still check it out if you haven't before and read about things like the sordid history of Sonic X-Treme or the Final Fantasy SGI demo for the N64.

In lieu of new site content, you can check in with the Lost Treasures forum to find out about new discoveries in the realm of unreleased and beta games. The ASSEMblerGames forums are also useful for this. And by "this" I mean getting distracted from your work by early footage of Chrono Trigger and the NiGHTS engine Sonic X-Treme tech demo.

PC Games You Can't Find At Wal-Mart: GameTunnel and Fun-Motion

I must admit I never got around to using GameTunnel. Not because they're bad, but because I never had time to really look into independent games. But it's a handy resource if you're interested in finding some indie games to play, with reviews and yearly awards to the best titles to sort out the good from the bad. Some of the most interesting game concepts come from the indie scene, because the developers can afford to experiment.

Fun Motion covers the growing field of physics-based games, usually in the form of small indie productions like Armadillo Run and Line Rider. Physics games are almost always fun to goof around with, so it's worth checking in every once in a while to see what new titles have come up. Some are free, some aren't, but they always have a demo of some sort. The site also includes a video of each game they review, so you don't actually have to download each demo just to find out whether or not some game that sounds interesting actually is.

Video Game Media Watch

This site keeps petering out for a couple months and then coming back, but their most recent post assures readers that they will "return to form shortly" thanks to recent staff expansions. I seem to recall them saying this once already, but whatever.

VGMW is unique among game sites as it is purely about the video game media itself. They follow trends in game journalism as well as call out cases of sloppy reporting, such as IGN announcing a game based on a fake press release on the NeoGAF forums. Not terribly necessary to the average gamer, but worth keeping an eye on out of curiosity.

Insert Credit

You can't get much more niche than this (well, you can, but you have to try really hard, like having a site dedicated solely to Windjammers fanart or something). Insert Credit manages to always talk about things nobody else does, usually by focusing on obscure Japanese games and news. You should be able to find something that interests you here, even if you don't care about dating sims and Cave shmups. If you can't, maybe you're not nerdy enough.

Retro Gaming with Racketboy

It's a guy named Racketboy and he discusses retro gaming. Boy, these are a lot easier when people don't choose nonsensical names like "Error Macro." Old games are covered, of course, like the guides to undiscovered gems on various consoles, but there's also stuff more related to the hobby itself, like guides to the cheapest good games to build up your collection. And sometimes he just posts naked ladies for no reason.

That last part might not actually be true, I don't know.

GameSetWatch

I'm not quite sure how to encapsulate what GSW is. Their own description simply says "an alt.video game weblog from the people who run Game Developer and Gamasutra," which isn't very helpful, but at least gives you a clue that these are not the sorts to post "top 10 racks in gaming" articles.

Like Insert Credit, it's a lot of off-the-beaten-path type content, with a focus on the industry and game design instead of weird Japanese crap. If you like Gamasutra, you'll probably like this. That's the best summary I can come up with.

The Escapist

If you were wondering which one was going to be the "one possible exception", here you are. On one hand, I can appreciate what the Escapist tries to do. It tries to be thoughtful, in-depth and analytical, to be an intelligent examination of games and gaming. They want you to think about why we are what we are and play what we play; why games "work" and what they say about us. This is all fine and I think it's worth investigating.

On the other hand, The Escapist is ten pounds of bullshit in a five pound sack. The danger in analysis of this sort is taking it too far; not realizing that Mario punches blocks not because he is an avatar of the proletariat representing their unending struggle to achieve a greater goal that is ultimately illusory (and replaced with a midget), but because that is how you make the mushroom come out. These are the people who write seriously and at great length about things like ludology. I'm not saying there aren't concepts here worth being explored, but it should be done with one eye always watching the ground to see how detached from reality you're getting.

The magazine format, which can thankfully be skipped in favor of a simple article layout, only adds to the ridiculous pomposity of the articles. It came close to making me drag out the Horror Vision™ icon, but it's not ugly or obtrusive so much as damned silly. Each feature is designed with your average 15 year-old DeviantArtist's sense of drama and proportion. Quotes are taken out of the article and then BOLDED and CAPITALIZED RANDOMLY to give them more punch, accompanied by images meant to emphasize the tone and subject of the article. Got an article about Pirates of the Burning Sea? Throw in a picture of a pirate ship on the ocean with fire laid over it. Perfect! One of my favorite examples is an article on the Out of Hell mod for UT2K4; the visual theme is dark and firey and industrial, as you would expect, up to the last page which includes the phrase "time to kick the baby out of the nest." Naturally, then, this page had to be illustrated with what can only be described as the hell chicken. Never has a baby bird looked so sinister.

A Penny Saved is a Penny Spent on Another Game: Cheap Ass Gamer, Amazon's Game Outlet, Movers and Shakers and Deal of the Day

Cheap Ass Gamer is a source of deals, sales, and coupons on video games. The site layout is kind of messy and most of the deals are in the forums (which require a free registration), but such are the sacrifices of being a cheapskate.

Amazon's outlet is simply a list of games that have been marked down, which you can glance over to see if there's some old game you skipped over at release that you might want to give a shot at its new price. Movers and Shakers is a list of games that have hit sales spikes recently, either due to recent release, hype or (the reason for its inclusion here) a sale. Finally, the Deal of the Day is one game each day that gets put on sale for 24 hours. I can't link directly to it since it changes every day, of course, so the link above leads to Amazon's video game category page. The Deal of the Day link is in the upper right.

This is all terribly self-explanatory, but I'm sure there would be someone who couldn't figure it out if I didn't explain. The only other thing to note is that sometimes the Deal of the Day seems to fluctuate; it'll be $14.99 at first and then $9.99 a few hours later. I don't know why.

That's it. You now know everything I know. Pick out a handful and skim over them every day, or wallow in ignorance. Me, I'm finally going to get back to writing my own stuff instead of linking to other people.

Posted by Will at 5:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (9)

Read part 1 here.

Those who can, do. Those who can't, link. The second tier includes lesser known and slightly more specialized sites, as well as the guys who do nothing but point to everybody else. For some reason, even when a site is dedicated to only linking other sites' stuff, no one seems to catch it all, so once again you have to pick and choose the right combination. Or find a sap to dig through all of it five hours a day. I should reiterate that I'm just naming off what I personally used in creating newsposts every day. I realize there are dozens of well-known websites that I'm skipping over, but apparently I got along without them.

"Second tier" doesn't necessarily refer to quality, of course. Some of these sites are much worse than that.

The Flesh of Fallen Angels! Continue to look out for the patented Horror Vision™ icon, letting you know that at least one element of a site's design is an infernal engine of the Netherworld powered by your tears!

For We Are Many: Digg

Remember the part in the old Carmen Sandiego game show when the host would stick his head out the door and ask Rockapella what the word on the street was? Replace the host with you, and replace the charming a cappella quintet in primary color '30s throwbacks with the writhing mass of psychotic red ants from SimAnt's lose screen, and you understand how Digg works.

Commander Keen confirmed as secret character in Final Fantasy XIII! Yes! Digg! DIGG!!

I guess most items show up there eventually, meaning you could theoretically use it for your news needs. But it's not actually much of a time saver because you have to read each article to know whether the headline is accurate or if Bobby No Thumbs just wanted to direct some traffic to his Geocities page. On the plus side, the teeming masses are sometimes good for catching obscure things, often a thread on some forum or an article on a small-time website, that would've escaped the attention of other sites.

Just don't read the comments. For God's sake, don't read the comments. These are the kinds of people who read my World of Nintendo catalog and responded with gems like

I find it very hard to believe that Nintendo, the company that removed blood from Mortal Kombat, would produce a catalog that talks about your girlfriend "leaving a wet spot" on the couch.

Fake - No Digg

JUMPING JESUS INSPECTOR YOU CRACKED THE CASE

All Purpose Nerd News: Blue's News and Slashdot

Blue's News and Slashdot have both been around since the Internet was made of twigs and mud, so they must be doing something right. Blue's News is more PC focused, with a small sub-section on console news, but they are a good source of new previews and interviews about PC games if you're really into that sort of thing. The one thing to note about them is that they just copy the headline of the story they're linking to without any editing, and sometimes said headlines are sensationalized, exagerated or just plain wrong.

Slashdot only has a new item or two per day on average, but they occassionally had something I missed elsewhere. To be honest, that's the problem I have in recommending any particular site on the secondary tier -- almost all of them had something "occassionally," but none of them are necessary or even good well-rounded sources of news on their own. The only way to really get any use out of these sites is to put them all in a big folder and read them all together, but that's going far beyond what most people are willing to do. I don't know anything about del.icio.us or any of these other bookmarking and tagging websites, maybe there's something out there they can combine all their feeds into something useful.

Otherwise, just assume a "sometimes interesting but in no way vital" comment on pretty much every site on this list.

Where the History Comes From: Eurogamer, British Gaming Blog and Computer and Video Games

After extensive tests, I have come to the conclusion that I am not European, so these sites weren't of terribly great use to me. But Eurogamer is one of the biggest video game sites in the UK, so this is probably a place you want to keep tabs on if you happen to be from that place over there. With the tea.

British Gaming Blog unfortunately doesn't update very much, but it's a clean design filled with big screenshots and their own hosted versions of various gameplay videos and trailers.

LOOK AT ALL THE THINGS THAT ARE MOVING PLEASE PAY ATTENTION TO THEM Computer and Video Games wasn't even on my list of sites, but I'd get linked to it regularly enough. I put it here solely so I can complain about this Godforsaken design. It recently took the title of worst "multimedia experience" you'll see in the gaming news circuit, ever since MTV's all-Flash site experiment came to a blessedly quick end.

The title banner cycles through images of several stories, a news ticker scrolls above it, there's a Flash ad above that, there's another block Flash ad in the middle of each category page, and every single page of the site has a video player to the left side running some useless thumbnail clip. Right now it keeps looping the camera pull out of the bus from the Fallout 3 teaser trailer, which would be completely meaningless to me if I didn't already know it was from Fallout 3, in which case I have no need to see it. Adblock to the rescue again.

The Nintendo Fun Club: Infendo, 4 color rebellion and Go Nintendo

Infendo is the Fox News of Nintendo reporting. They've even got the same sort of slogan intended to make them sound even-handed in the face of their rampant bias: "Intelligent passion for all things Nintendo." That bizarre compulsion some people have to ally themselves with a corporate entity is in full effect here, with "I told you so" smirks behind every new report of the Wii's success or the PS3's troubles. When the real world isn't providing the juice they need, they'll skew some statistics or evangelize Nintendo Christ's healing of the crippled game industry, possibly while masturbating, to provide that all important jolt of self-righteousness. And then, sometimes, they just make a post with a picture of poop on it.

4 color rebellion has a more light-hearted approach, going less for the "I MUST CARRY REGGIE FILS-AIME'S MANSEED" tact and more the "gee Nintendo games sure are swell aren't they?" path. Still fanboyism, but less aggressive and aggrandized (and, as such, less aggravating). If you still play your NES more than a 360, 4cr is probably your site. If you own a "Know Your Roots" t-shirt with an NES controller on it, you're probably a Hot Topic poseur and need to drop out of a window.

Go Nintendo avoids both options by being not much more than a Nintendo infodump with little to no commentary either way. In fact, if you only came here for Nintendo news, this might be your best surrogate, with tons of screenshots and links to IGN, Gamespot, Game Videos and Game Trailers. In fact, the one downside may be there's a little too much updating.. I'm writing this right now in the afternoon of June 5, and posts dated for the 5th go back four pages already. But using the RSS feed would clear up that issue.

I should mention I also had N-Sider and The Wiire on my list, but I don't think I ever actually used them.

Forum Quorum: Evil Avatar and Something Awful

Something Awful's Games forum might be seen as a more intelligent Digg, with users submitting information but also being punished (through mockery or actual probation/banning) for stupidity and blatant misuse. I know there are people who have problems with Lowtax and/or the SA community as a whole -- hell, so do I and I've been there six years -- but thankfully little of that applies to subforums like Games. (Most of the idiots who define their lives by a message board stick to the general fourms.) While news can sometimes get lost in the shuffle, a forum is still generally the best place to follow events as they happen, find mirrors for recently released trailers and feeds for live conferences, and listen to 20,000 people analyze an issue and likely find something you missed.

The NeoGAF forums might also work for this too, but I've never used them so procede at your own risk.

Evil Avatar is really more of a half-way point between news sites and forums, with users submitting items that are then reviewed by an editor and posted. It's actually not a bad solution to the problem I had of having to find all the news myself. They do a fairly good job, with the one issue being that coverage is somewhat uneven. Someone might not work up a post on something until several days after other sites, and sometimes you get stuff posted as news that was talked about elsewhere six months ago.

Simple and Clean: Opposable Thumbs

I don't have a snazzy category to fit it in, just a poor Utada Hikaru reference, but I should mention Opposable Thumbs. While it doesn't update enough to be a "real" newsblog (and I don't think that's the intention), each post is intelligent and actually sounds like it was written by an adult. If there's commentary, it's almost always interesting and insightful. OT is an extension of Ars Technica, a long standing PC and general tech news site that I've always appreciated for being mature and in-depth.

I feel like I should counter this love-in with a negative to remain even-handed, but nothing's coming to mind.

Sites I Rarely Used... But Will You?

Text ads fit anywhere! Gamers Reports - An ugly website with too much text and those awful paid content links that pop up ads for crap with no relation to what you're reading when you dare to accidentally mouse over them. If you're looking for a website that does nothing but copy and paste press releases and link to articles you've seen elsewhere already, you can probably still find a better site for it than this.

Games Are Fun - A clean layout with a basic news column, and hey, games are fun, aren't they? Too bad they post an average of two news items a day, and both are usually several days old.

FiringSquad - A PC gamer site with all the hardware reviews and performance tests that go along with it. I must admit, my interaction with this site was limited mostly to occassional features and marvelling at how Goddamned big graphics cards are getting.

GameDaily Biz - The industry news section of Game Daily, and GameIndustry.biz's American doppelganger. As such, many things get repeated from GI, and since I always checked GI first, GameDaily didn't usually have much to tell me. But obviously I can't hold that against them, so if you like GD's design better or you prefer an American focus, by all means, consider them and GI.biz interchangable.

That's it for today. Next time is the final installment, with all the little niche sites that fill gaps only nerds can appreciate.

Posted by Will at 11:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (12)

IGN has word that two more songs have been announced for Guitar Hero III: Lay Down by Priestess and Even Flow by Pearl Jam. While any Pearl Jam is enough to make me even more excited for GH3's line-up than I was before, I feel it my duty to point out something that many people (especially radio DJs) are apparently unaware of:

Pearl Jam actually made albums after Ten. I know, it's crazy, but it really happened. There are a number of them, in fact. Albums of prose poems? Why, no! Albums of rock and roll music! The sort of music one might wish to hear on the radio or in a soundtrack. Music that doesn't involve playing Alive for the eight millionth Goddamn time

Ten is a fine album, we can all agree. But Jesus, guys, it's not their only fine album. Try to branch out just a little. I know Life Wasted was on the 360 version of GH2, but that doesn't count because it's little more than a promotion for the current album. Maybe you're afraid to dip into what some people consider PJ's "low years." Fine. At least pick something off Vs., they were still "cool" then.

But in other news:

The Living Colour song, Cult of Personality, is a track that people have been wanting in Guitar Hero for a long time. There was a slight hitch with it though. The master track was nowhere to be found. Instead of getting a cover, Living Colour came in and re-recorded the song just for the game. And they threw in a wicked solo that makes this song on expert just plain ridiculous.

That's awesome.

Posted by Will at 3:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (19)