Idiotprogrammer Blog

Category: Games

  • Chicken for Losers

    I am embarrassed to say that I have never heard of Leroy Jenkins until yesterday. (Here’s the Internet video that made him worldfamous). Joel Warner wrote a great long profile about Leroy Jenkins and his reaction to his unexpected fame.

    “Alex Trebek said my name,” says Ben. “When I saw that, I realized it had gone beyond anything I could control.” He shakes his head, flabbergasted, and returns to the game — more Ghostly Essences to collect. Soon, however, there’s another whisper. “Was the video really on purpose?” a character named Lucifuge wants to know. People ask him this constantly. Did the movie capture Leeroy accidentally screwing up his guildmates’ plans? Is the rumor true that Ben was away from his computer, reheating some KFC, while his buddies planned the famous dragon attack — hence his imprudent charge and his enigmatic last line, “At least I got chicken”? Or was it all completely staged, a tongue-in-cheek commentary on the geekiness of World of Warcraft gamers? Ben smiles while reading Lucifuge’s message. “I like people to decide for themselves,” he responds. “It is more fun that way.” This is his patented response on the subject; it’s all he’ll ever say.

    Warner comments:

    That Leeroy is the game’s biggest failure rather than its highest achiever may explain why he’s transcended the self-referential sphere of World of Warcraft and moved into the realm of pop culture. Everyone everywhere has pulled a Leeroy. “There’s something more universal about this guy who screws things up for everybody than someone who is the best at something,” says Henry Lowood, curator for film and media collections at Stanford University. “If you’re not a player in the game, you are not going to be that interested in how spectacularly good a player is. But you can relate to someone who messes up.”

    These days, says Henry Jenkins, co-director of the Comparative Media Studies program at MIT, people don’t just identify with the lowly underachiever; they take subversive pleasure in using the Internet and other new social mediums to elevate him to a status previously reserved for the rich, talented or otherwise successful. As proof, Jenkins points to atrocious American Idol contestant William Hung scoring a record deal, Hank the Angry Drunken Dwarf winning the popular vote for People magazine’s most beautiful person and Leeroy Jenkins becoming enshrined in video-game history alongside Pac-Man and Mario. “For the first time, we as a society get to decide who’s famous,” he notes. “Having gained the right to project celebrities forward, we often choose losers, because in the past it was always success that connoted celebrity. If Leeroy Jenkins can become a celebrity, anybody can.”

    (BTW, it was okay to do when he wrote it in 2005, but isn’t it time for a moratorium on quotes from Henry Jenkins?)

    See also: South Park’s Make Love not Warcraft episode.

  • PS 2 Game Recommendations for Children Under 8? (As of 12/2006)

    Here’s a list of game recommendations for my nephew. Surprisingly, it took a long time to compile a kid-friendly game list. (Or I could have asked someone at a used game store–nah, that would have been too easy). He already owns Harry Potter (so so), Lego Star Wars (super great!), NBA Basketball (great!), Jak & Daxter, and a drag racing game. Feel free to add titles here. See also this discussion and this reference guide . Here’s a good list of child-friendly games. Of course, one great thing about doing the research is that I end up playing these games too.

    I ended up going with Kingdom Hearts 1. Simpsons Hit & Run and Stuart Little 3 Big Photo Adventure. Here is my list:

    1. Ratchet & Clank Up Your Arsenal (well-regarded and cheap; other games in the series are supposed to be good too). One advantage is that it allows multiple players.
    2. Jak & Daxter, cheap, 3 in the series. also highly regarded. Start with the first episode if you can. Update: They say to avoid Part 2 and Part 3.
    3. A Dog’s Life (definitely the most interesting sounding game, but also $30). You play a dog roaming through the city. Recommended, but some felt the game was too short, and way too much bathroom humor for young people.
    4. Stuart Little 3 Big Photo Adventure (based on the famous children’s novel by EB White). I eventually bought this. Some expressed reservations about the gameplay.
    5. Cookie & Cream; innovative game that needs 2 players. One is a bunny, the other is a teddy bear, and together they must solve problems. Might be a little above an 8 year old’s level, but doesn’t sound too much above. Update: This probably is NOT a good game for an 8 year old.
    6. Madagascar (well regarded, $25),
    7. simpsons hit n run ((somewhat mature and based on cartoon, but very imaginative and intellectual). Recommended. I bought this. Update: My nephew loves this game, but I didn’t find it particularly interesting. There’s a lot of movement and crashing, not much strategizing. Still, there’s a lot of complexity which is not too challenging. One player only.
    8. Sonic Mega Collection plus–not too stimulating intellectually, but very fun; classic games from the 1990s.
    9. shrek 2 (well-regarded, but some disagreement, cheap!)
    10. Godzilla Saves The Earth (rated teen, but supposed to be good clean fun suitable for younger ages,). expensive $30
    11. Kingdom Hearts & Kingdom Hearts 2, a cross between Final Fantasy using Disney characters. Supposed to be innovative and fun, though gaming purists decry the merging of these two disparate worlds. (the original was supposed to be more fun, though the sequel has better graphics and was shorter). Update: Even though I ended up buying it, I later found out it is too complex for a child of that age. I looked at it again; it is a decent game, but you have to do a lot of reading–which might weary a child who cannot read well. Also, there were a lot of cut scenes–this grew old quickly! One player only!
    12. Mega Man Anniversary Collection, a collection of several games popular in the 90s.
    13. Ico, a visually rich game about a boy trapped inside a castle who needs to solve puzzles to escape. More of a puzzle game than a twitch game. Update: A person who played it said it is too hard for an 8 year old.
    14. Mister Mosquito, innovative premise where the character is a mosquito who sucks/bites members of a Japanese family. Reviewers applaud the overall concept, though they say the novelty quickly wears off and gameplay is limited. Update: A person who played it said it is too hard for an 8 year old.
    15. Magic Pengel, innovative game with a cool effect where a creature you draw will appear to come alive and be your pet throughout the game. Some have complained about gameplay, though overall it has positive reviews.
    16. Spyro (any). Young dragon has to save friends/world from various meanies. Platformer like Mario, and perfect for the under-10 set.
    17. Worms 3D
    18. SSX. first is best.
    19. Katamari Dimacy

  • Mechanics of Sex in Second Life

    This is definitely NOT safe for work (there’s graphic images), but here’s an essay about how to program your avatar to have sex in various video games:

    First, some terminology. In Second Life, your character can be put into “poses”. Basically, this is an animation created in Poser or some other movement/animation program. You create the animation, loop it, and upload it to Second Life. These poses can be attached to what are known as Pose Balls. By having your character touch a pose ball (basically, clicking on it), you character will being using the animation that was contained in the pose ball. This is how sex is played out visually in Second Life. You touch one pose ball, your partner touches the other, and all of the sudden one is banging the other. Don’t you wish it was that easy in real life?

    Now, you’ve got to remember, when I said you could do anything in Second Life, I meant ANYTHING. This game has some of the weirdest BDSM equipment I’ve ever seen, much of which really wouldn’t work in real life. Putting a stompy industrial boy in all of it is just hours of stupid, giggly fun.

    Animations will run you somewhere between 200L$ and 500L$ ($.50-2US), sometimes upwards of 1000L$ (~$4US) depending on how drawn out they are. As with all aspects of the world, your body is scriptable. That’s right, you can program your nuts. They can do a happy little nut dance. There’s also erections and pumping and all that, but I’m totally fixated on the happy little nut dance idea now. There goes another 2 weeks of my life.

    Animations can be speed controlled by writing a script that binds animations to buttons, and hitting those buttons to change what animation is displaying. This is how sex progresses.

    From Eyder Peralta’s post about SXSW.

  • Cookies for Sisyphus

    favorite games of Jane MacGonigal

    View Jane game projects. She writes a lot about gaming and theatre (but alas only in PDF) .

    Her latest project:

    the artist will spell out Camus’ existential essay “The Myth of Sisyphus” in cookies, one word at a time. each word will be installed in a public location and constructed from a different kind of cookie, locally-purchased or prepared. each word of the essay, 1406 in total, will appear in a different city. the project will continue indefinitely until the improbable event of its completion.

    Also fascinating: a blog/course about Performance and Play (” investigating the connections between contemporary theater and games”). It’s a classroom in a blog.

  • Interactive Fiction Games

    Favorite Interactive Fiction/ Games: by Nick Montfort. Another list. More here.

    Here’s Emily Short’s Catalog of Best Interactive Fiction Games, sorted by genre. Great find, not “short” at all.

    This (like Edward Picot’s in my previous post) are games in search of a form factor. Playing on PC’s really suck; It would really be nice to be able to play them on portable devices or to have an emulator to make this possible. Update: Apparently Nick Montfort has written up how to run IF on different platforms.