A Month Of Exciting Events! (Sort Of.)

Image courtesy of Fat Chicks In Party Hats.

I didn’t look forward to March for about a bajillion reasons. One such reason was that my calendar was awfully blank — no exciting game launches, no big industry nights, no fun dates, and no truly mind-blowing game releases that I could actually afford. You see, I get paid in beans and, while they’re a fantastic source of folate and fibre, I’ve been told that they’re not a valid form of currency in Australia. Anyway, as it turns out, my calendar lied. While there were indeed no fun dates or game releases I could afford, I did find myself in the company of a brand-spanking new, white DSi…

I Need Your Help.

I painted Pip Boy's face on with a toothpick and Nutella. How tragic.

Those who know me may or may not know that I bake a lot. Well, I used to bake a lot. I haven’t made anything worthy of writing home about since last Christmas when I baked Lumines cupcakes (picture above) for a “games industry” drinking event. They were the most time-consuming cupcakes I’d ever made, and it was the first time I’d had fun with fondant as well. [I've been meaning to put that recipe up, but I only documented half of it. I stopped taking photos as soon as I started using food colouring.]  At the event, I overheard someone say that the cakes were “too dry”,  that hurt my feelings; I cried for days and vowed to never bake again, so I stopped baking for a while.

Anyway, I’m undertaking another baking adventure over the next few days. The journalism society at my university is holding a tea party fundraiser so that we can fund our own drunken shenanigans various journalistic events that all students on campus can enjoy. Not that I particularly care about other students — I just don’t like seeing a society that I’m an executive member of being in the red.  I’ve volunteered to make cupcakes, brownies, and shortbread, but I’m not sure what gaming theme I should use. So I’m taking requests!

What kind of videogame cupcake/shortbread/chocolate brownie thing would you like to see me make? I’m ready to take suggestions on board. Keep in mind that if you suggest something to the effect of “bake the final cut-scene in Metal Gear Solid 4!” I will not even bother because, well, I’m a journalist, not a cakist*.

So yeah… GO GO GO!

• Does this word even exist? I’ve been told by someone, I don’t remember who, that it is a real word, but I’m skeptical.

The Highlight Of My Week…

Aside from scoring some sweet by-lines, stepping out of the AAP office and encountering this bus made my day.

When Bad Journalism Gets Really Bad

I carry a copy of the Media and Entertainment Arts Alliance Code of Ethics in my wallet at all times. It’s been with me since I started my journalism degree, and I have it with me partly out of habit, partly because it reminds me that — as inexperienced as I may be — I am a journalist and there are rules I need to follow, and also because having a fat wallet makes me feel wealthier than I actually am.

It serves as a constant reminder that no matter what I write about, my work – and I’m referring to things I do in a journalistic capacity as opposed to my rants on this blog — will be read and it will be judged, so I owe it to my audience to write as well and as fairly as I can.

One of the first things I was taught when I started my journalism degree was what not to do. My peers and I would spend hours upon hours talking to our lecturers – all of whom were practicing journalists – about what constituted good journalism and how we needed to conduct ourselves when we finally became reporters in The Real World. We were each given a copy of the Code of Ethics on our first day of university and, so seriously did my lecturers take ethical reporting that some classes were made to recite the code aloud.

I like to think that it was an effective method because my friends and I have turned out alright, even though we still have a bit to go before we get the piece of paper that certifies us as being pretentious, self-righteous know-it-alls who are supposedly more employable than those without the piece of paper.

That said, there may be another method of teaching students about what not to do that doesn’t require reciting codes or years of study. If it were left to me, I’d write a course document that reads:

“HAI KIDS, YOU KNOW TEH JOURNALISMS? DON’T DO IT LIKE DIS!”

WORK: Videogame Violence

I came across a story on page three of the Telegraph yesterday, boasting of the benefits of gaming. While the article conceded that violent gaming could lead to violent behaviour, it also quoted Professor Craig Anderson of Iowa State University as saying that pro-social games – games with a positive message that encourage positive behaviour – could have positive effects on those who played them. Conveniently, Anderson was giving a lecture that night at Macquarie University, a lecture that the newspaper touted as being a “must see for any parent”. So, being the parent of an Xbox 360 and numerous other consoles, I decided to head along to this lecture after finishing up my work at the newswire. While I was at it, I also agreed to cover the lecture for IGN Australia and Kotaku AU.

Not knowing exactly what the lecture would be about, I walked in with an open mind. I must confess that, as open as my mind was, I was hoping I’d get a good hour and a half of some academic telling me how good videogames were, because that’s what I wanted to hear. But that’s not what I heard. Well, not really.

WORK: Hyper – Disgaea DS and Don King Boxing

My goodness, it’s that time of the month again, and would you look at that cover! It’s like someone blew up a zebra and Hyper caught it on some paper. Stunning, if not slightly disturbing. In this issue, I previewed Don King Boxing for the Nintendo DS and reviewed Disgaea DS for the, well, DS. Read on for some excerpts!

WORK: Good Game – XTREME OVERCLOCKING

Dinos22 filming with the Good Game crew one evening.

I recently did a story for Good Game on extreme overclocking (although I can’t help by refer to it as XTREME OVERCLOCKING — capitals and all — most of the time), and learned an incredible amount about CPU tweaking.

Coming into this story, I wasn’t completely clueless. I had encountered overclocking a while ago at various tech demonstrations that I attended, and I attempted to overclock my own PC as research. While I didn’t have access to liquid nitrogen or other extreme cooling methods, I did go into the BIOS and change a few numbers to make everything run a little faster. In fact, I was so good at it that I somehow managed to destablise my system and had to quickly go back and undo all the work I did. Skillz.

It was great meeting the southern hemisphere’s best overclockers — they were all incredibly friendly and had a wealth of knowledge to share. While I don’t see myself being converted into an XTREME OVERCLOCKER any time soon, I am toying with the idea of learning to overclock properly so that I can run games faster on my PC without things destablising and freaking the shit out of me.

If you’d like to watch the complete story, head over to the Good Game website. Australian viewers can stream it directly; those outside of Australia will have to download the episode.  I’d be keen to hear about your own overclocking adventures. All tips and words of wisdom are more than welcome!

Work: Chrono Trigger (FULL REVIEW, AT LAST!)

This review appeared in issue #185 of Hyper magazine.

At some point in time, a group of gamers somewhere on the interwebs decided that it would be socially acceptable to roll their collective eyes at JRPGs. The eye-rolling business caught on fast and, before long, everyone was making fun of the genre. Perhaps it was because they were excruciatingly pretty in a very anime-stylised kind of way way, or because they constantly featured a male protagonist with spiky hair, or maybe even because they all were incredibly linear, with the player’s actions seldom causing any real effect. It was like the developers had removed the player – the real person – from the equation and, rather than involve us and make us feel that we were the ones behind the characters, we were merely asked to shuffle the characters along until the next cut-scene.

As a lover of JRPGS (and I swear it has nothing to do with my gender or race) and their never ending sameness, Chrono Trigger was a breath of fresh air. No, it was more than that – it was a foot to the face, and perhaps the most delightful foot to the face I have ever received.

While its gameplay mechanics are typical of JRPGs of the era (turn-based battles, moving from place to place exploring buildings, forests and dungeons, talking to people and opening up treasure chests filled with ether and potion), it’s the way the game involves the player that is its truly stand-out quality.

The focus of the game is on time travel and restoring balance to a world where balance has been lost at various points in time. Playing as Crono (that’s right, sans ‘h’), you travel through time with your nerdy friend Lucca and a princess named Marle to escape the wrath of Marle’s father. By travelling back and forth through time, you are exposed to the same kingdom at different stages in history, venturing thousands of years into the past and future. Perhaps it is this theme of time travel that gives the game a whole new dimension, not so much because time travel is anything new and unusual, but because actions and decisions made in the past will inevitably affect the future and, in Chrono Trigger’s brilliance, the player is held accountable for these actions.

Don’t Hate The Game, It’s You That Sucks.

Photo from Ozhadou website, taken on the night of tournament.

My first encounter with the idea of ‘e-sports’ was in mid-2008 when I covered the Australian finals of the World Cyber Games for PC Powerplay. At the time, the concept amused me because I’d never considered gaming to be a sport, no matter how competitive it got. My idea of ‘sport’ was shaped by years of getting footballs to the face and tripping over myself during games of primary school cricket. I supported the conventional definition of ‘sport’: an active diversion requiring physical exertion and competition.

Even after attending the WCG and seeing how heated the CS battles were and the seriousness in which people took their Halo 3, I was still skeptical. After all, these tournaments didn’t even involve real sports; it was just videogames. Surely these people knew that they were playing games and that the idea was to have fun, right? There was no way that, upon being defeated, they would feel the same levels of humiliation and soul-crushing disappointment that real athletes experienced, yeah?

I held onto that view for quite some time, refusing to accept that competitive gaming could be or should be taken seriously. That was, of course, until I took part in a Street Fighter IV tournament this week.