Jolt Country

I touched on this on my website, but it bears repeating here:

http://www.nando.com/technology/story/3 ... 0283c.html

And you know... there are games that are little more than "board games or sports games." I mean, they turn them into video games after all, so that would go without saying. But to so ignorantly throw down a judgment on the entire industry after playing (according to the article) four random games... unbelievable.

I linked to a lot of text adventures on that aforementioned response of mine, but more commercial ventures have stepped it up in recent years as well. Though admittedly a lot of games out there have not. While there will always be time for some random, mindless, Doom or Quake funnin' of it, I hope that such a legal smackdown can help serve to wake the entertainment software industry up.

(Along those lines, maybe some commercial text adventures *are* necessary again, in 2002 and beyond, after all. Dunno.)

Ah, you read that too, I see.
Yes, it does suck, as does this first appempt at colouring the base.
I have to highlight anything I read so I don't get a migrane.

There was a great article written about this over on Penny Arcade. By their lawyerish guy, whose name I cannot currently recall. In fact, I read it after posting my the update on my main site and was a bit dejected: dude essentially said it all.

Ah, here it is:

http://www.penny-arcade.com/lod3.php3

...That's fresh content ya wish ya wrote yourself.

I know. I did.


Okay, not exactly, but I was there when we were all shouting FUCKEM! in #Penny-Arcade.
And CELERY, natch. Can't forget we were shouting CELERY.

I’m not a lawyer thank God but since I do a lot of legal writing I get to read this kind of bullshit too often. Legal “reasoning” is pretty much like military “intelligence.”

Years ago, when I worked in a courthouse library, it was common knowledge that some of the district judges just told their law clerks what they wanted the decision to be and the clerk was supposed to find some legal pretext. The law is so complicated and open to subjective interpretation that it is more a system for justification than reasoning.

As for judges -- a lot of people have this elevated notion of judges. You’ll see polls where judges are ranked right at the top for respect, while lawyers and politicians are right at the bottom. But what’s a judge – first a lawyer, and worse, a lawyer who is a favorite of the local politicians who are the ones who have to either appoint judges or put them up for election. Besides which, lawyers and judges both are experts at only one thing – the law – their own byzantine game, which might have started out to bear some relation to the real world but now basically serves its own ends. So you get judges endlessly making decisions about important issues – of which they know fuck all. Of course, if you’re a judge then a “fact” is what you say it is.

So judicial decisions are often pure crap but part of the game is everyone has to pretend otherwise. Basing a decision on four video games is – well, using a less than reliable statistical sample. Wait, let’s rephrase that -- it’s just fucking moronic!

But, look – so what if you choose one game and it is just a blast one monster after another game? That isn’t expression? Give me a break. If the storyline in a novel or movie involved nothing more than trying to overcome an onslaught of monsters who would say there was *no* speech involved. The essence of literature, of storytelling, is conflict. Fighting for your life is the most basic form of conflict. Does reducing it to its simplest terms make it somehow not a story, not expressive of anything?

But enough of this – here’s the real opportunity. What you do is whip up a CD of text IF and then get yourself booked on the Today Show or something, while the issue’s hot, and then we’ll all be rich when you start selling the CD – even if only lawyers buy it. So, OK, my games suck too much to go on the CD but I get a cut for thinking of the idea.

Eric wrote:But enough of this – here’s the real opportunity. What you do is whip up a CD of text IF and then get yourself booked on the Today Show or something, while the issue’s hot, and then we’ll all be rich when you start selling the CD – even if only lawyers buy it. So, OK, my games suck too much to go on the CD but I get a cut for thinking of the idea.

Well, I think you do yourself a disservice here -- certainly Lost would fit the bill in this regard.

If I were feeling particularly ambitious, I would try to contact five or six IF and homebrew RPG authors and put together the "Judge Limbaugh Action Fun Pak (TM)" and attempt to distribute it on compact disc (for free) to anyone who wants it. As a kind of promotional venture to say, hey, we're not all like Mortal Kombat over here. (We could maybe put the "Don't Tread On Me" image on the jewel case as well or something.)

The other thing that bugged me was that they managed to trot out a copy of Doom for their little test there. Where on earth are these guys still finding Doom? If memory serves, the last few Doom games would be Doom 64 for the Nintendo 64 and maybe Final Doom for the original Playstation. Both of those are around four or five years old. Isn't the last PC release called Ultimate Doom for Windows 95 where they went and made it W95 native? Again, that's comparatively ancient.

I'm surprised they didn't bring out the 2600 version of frigging Combat or Circus Atari to cement their little "books and movies rule, games drool, QED" synopsis.

OK. OK. I admit it. I like my own games better than Circus Atari. Call me arrogant...

Eric wrote:OK. OK. I admit it. I like my own games better than Circus Atari. Call me arrogant...

No, no not at all. I think you are well within your rights.

Eric may have too much respect for the now defunt Atari corporation, but I will tell the full story -- Atari attempted to squish him within their mighty legal armada back in 1979. Eric was putting the finishing touches of his *original* version of Lost, which at first contained an extended flashback scene within a circus. There was, if I remember right, a puzzle involving the fruit loop dressed in red on the cover of the box that was particularly clever. At any rate, he had the game's art commisioned to display this, as back in the day game developers would use drawn pictures rather than graphics or whatnot for the game's box. One of Jack Tramiel's sons happened to be at the processing plant when boxes for Lost were being constructed, and he stole the idea. They eventually created the mediocre "Circus Atari" and used Eric's box design for most of their first-generation games.

The Digital Millenium Copyright Act makes the display of those early "lost" Lost boxes a crime, but I am willing to break the law and present the proof:



(Notable is the "CX 2630" designation in the lower right hand corner, which Atari arrogantly used for Circus Atari, the "Warner" logo at the bottom which foretold Atari's acquision by Warner before it even happened, and the different font used to denote the author of the game which, ah, Atari changed when they got their evil hands on the box design.)

Lucky for us, Atari doesn't exist any more and Eric released his game in updated form, using today's technology in 2001.

Holy Shit!

Today I am an Atari author!

This is seriously cool. Now if I can only find someone to impress. Oh, yeah, the other old crocks here at the nursing home are all crazed on Atari (not to mention all the meds) – brings back memories -- at least since Medicare won’t cough up enough pay for an XBOX. I’ll just print this up, glue it on the Circus cartridge and right on Daddy-O!

Wait, I’m just kidding. I was what -– five in 1979?. OK, I lie, I was 9. Or something nine. That’s why I wanted that circus interlude in there. Plus, better for marketing.

But then. as it turned out, the game really suffered from losing the circus bit because I got inspiration for LOST from my first marriage – otherwise known as Circus of the Damned.

So this will go into my Hall of Small Ersatz Accomplishments, like when Mark Martin stuck my mini-comic character on a crate label in a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle comic Eastman and Laird hired him to draw when they were gettng too famous to do it themselves. (Sorry, I just was trying to find info on him on the web and recalled that.)

--

Eric

Too old for a handle, too young to die.