Why can't it be both?

It's interesting to note that in a society where all women have practically the same physical 'attractive' appearance, someone that in our culture wouldn't be top model material would probably be more desireable.

Beauty is subjective.

Yay! Somebody understands what I'm trying to get across!  Just wait until you see the rest of the story. All I'll say is there will be plastic surgery.

Also, Muku, you rock. 

Awesome video!

New page for The Prince of the Island of Beautiful Women!

...Exclamation point!

Hell, I played a game with a bunch of those Halo ActionClix and some Monopoly pieces (all shall bow to the Almighty Top Hat!). I even have this box of these really old wooden train track pieces, so my friend and I (same dude from the creativity debate) set up a track around the battlefield and blew up the cars. We guesstimated where the car would land (physics was never my strong suit, and it crushed a couple soldiers in its wake. We had so much caffeine that night. It was awesome.

I figured TIGSource would probably be interested in this.

This is probably the funnest tabletop game I've ever played. Granted, it's the only tabletop game I've ever played, but whatever. The basic gist is more or less the same as your average wargame, except that everything you play with and on is made from your own toys- preferably Legos. The rulebook is incredibly long and needlessly complex, but all you need to read are the rules for basic games at the very beginning. There are a couple rules for how your miniatures can move and attack (measured by inches instead of spaces since you don't necessarily play it on a grid), but after that it's all up to the players.

It's not something that is meant to be taken too seriously; after all, it's basically a slightly more organized version of all those times you and your best friend fought with your action figures. But that's the beauty of it.

In any case, if you've still got some toys or board game pieces, check it out. Your inner child will thank you.

But then again, couldn't you say the same thing about most entertainment? God knows how many artists spent time watching movies or reading books when they could have been working on their own craft. Not that games can't be 'addicting', but there's always been the balance between viewing other people's creative work and working on your own. It's just a lot easier to upset the balance now that we have entertainment at our fingertips everywhere we go.

And if games aren't a worthwhile past-time, then why should any other medium be considered as such? After all, it's arguable that games actually encourage more creativity simply by the notion that the person experiencing the finished product is continually asked to provide input, even if it's as simple as pressing the jump button at the right time.

And as for my friend, he likes to push my buttons a lot, especially when it comes to games. We had an argument over the value of Guitar Hero and whether it encourage more players to learn music that lasted for days. I'll give you three guesses to figure out which side I was on.

On a side note, my AP English teacher held a 'Four Corners' Debate on video-game violence. Four Corners, if you've never heard of it, asks the participants to stand at one of four walls, each labeled "Agree", "Strongly Agree", "Disagree", or "Strongly Disagree". The majority of the  boys in my class were in the "Strongly Disagree" section (i.e. we stated that video-game violence did NOT cause real-life violence), while all of the girls were in either "Agree" or simply sat in the middle of the room (supposedly neutral- not totally sure if that was even allowed).

I stood up the most to argue, though I often got off track and ranted a bit about the depiction of games in mass media and such, but I did my best to persuade the non-believers. One of the girls recounted her experience watching her guy friends play Call of Duty 4, and said that she couldn't understand why we thought killing each other would be fun, even in digital form. I retorted by asking them if they watched any sports. They mentioned that they were all big football fans. I then asked, "Why do you enjoy watching real people hurt each other?" I went on to describe how football was essentially a scaled-down representation of war, with the two teams representing opposing armies and the yardlines representing territory gained and lost. I argued that the vast majority of gamers don't see FPS games as the violent bloodbaths non-gamers assume them to be; rather, they see them as a sport- a game, if you will. The avatars may die, but they respawn in an instant, as if they were simply tagged out or were sent to the bench.

We also had to provide a single article providing evidence for our opinion. I brought in a copy of the Byron Report. Another girl brought in  an article covering the Virginia Tech massacre, claiming that the killer had trained himself on Counterstrike. I later told her that the article was wrong; according to reports from his roommate, the only game the killer played was Sonic the Hedgehog.

For great justice.

For.... the win.

FOR... TRAN.

For... love! 0_0

Rock Band- One of the best music/party games (I'm on Vocals Expert, for the record. )

The Legend of Zelda: Wind Waker- I'm a sucker for cel-shading and sailing, especially together. Look at those waves! So prettiful.

Grim Fandango- Best adventure game. Ever.

Cave Story- It would probably make more nostalgic if I had actually grown up with an NES, but oh well.

Rayman 2: The Great Escape- The very first game to show me how beautiful games could be, and my favorite platformer. I had to play it on a PC (this was before my family could afford a game console), but my cramped fingers loved it all the same.

solution: make all games zombies games?

Fish: 1
Game Developers Trapped in the Uncanny Valley: 0

This thread is becoming the sole source of new manbabies here at TIGsource. We should rename the menu at the top to something like "TIGForums / Independent Gaming Discussion / Also Robots.

Or rather:

TIGForums: We have robots. There's games too.

TIRDForums: The Incredible Robot Drawing Forums.

TIRSource. That is all.

It's funny how your friend said that "blaa blaa are naturally restricted by the parameters that the game's creators envision", considering other forms of media are affected by this as well, more so than games.

So, would you consider films (or whatever), killers of creativity?

Nope. Like I said, anything can inspire creativity. All the games that I mentioned inspired me when I was a little kid, and I know that the movies and books that I was exposed to also inspired me. My friend is the one who (initially, at least) didn't think so.

But not realistic human movement. That's the thing about the Uncanny Valley- it's all about how much an object looks like us.

I thought it was cool, not relevant.
But yeah, the uncanny valley exists, I've watched cg and got weired out by its closeness to humans.

Sorry about that. As an apology, here's another awesome robo-animal video.

So my friend and I had a bit of a debate last night. He claimed that some study had determined that video games were proven to destroy creativity in small children. I called bull on it, and argued that certain games not only inspire creativity, but depend on it. Since we were arguing about games for young children (as young as five years old), my first example was Animal Crossing. A game with no real set goals means that the player has to devise his own, choosing which activities he/she will take part in. The MS Paint-style programs also encourage creativity by allowing the player to adorn themselves with their own designs. I also mentioned games like Graffiti Kingdom and Drawn To Life, which depend specifically on user-created content to be entertaining. I also mentioned Spore, for the hell of it.

My friend then argued that those creations are naturally restricted by the parameters that the game's creators envision. That is, very few games allow the player to make content that the developer had not envisioned. I countered with the thriving mod community, as well as the availability of cheap game development software such as Game Maker. With more tools than ever, a child could try and make a game of his own. He argued that a child wouldn't really be interested in making his own games, and would just be content to play the ones that were already available. I countered with my own personal anecdote: Even when I was in elementary school, I wanted to make my own games. I fiddled around with GameMaker (way back when it was first released in '99) and wrote hundreds of concepts and characters down; I still have all of my old doodles in an overflowing box in my basement. Granted, a lot of the ideas were rip-offs of movies and other games, but you gotta start somewhere.

Somehow we also debated about the merits of the medium. I claimed that games were still trying to become a mature art form, noting that it still borrows far too much from cinema- indeed, most games today are spliced with cinema. Therefore, a game with great cutscenes can't really be called a great game narrative; it's just a game that has a great movie stuck in it. Titles like Half-Life are trying to utilize the strengths of an interactive medium, I proposed, but just like every medium before it, games are still too reliant on the tricks of the other art forms.

To explain this, I presented the very beginning of cinema. If you look at the earliest of films, you'll notice that they are extremely simple. They are almost always looking straight ahead at the action, as if you were merely looking through a box at a stage. Films used the tricks of live theatre to develop itself. It wasn't until filmmakers began utilizing the strengths of the medium- camera cuts, pans, close-ups, etc.- that film became an art form all its own.

I noted that film has been around for about 100 years now, to which my friend cried out, "Fine! Let's wait a hundred years for games to mature." "Not necessarily," I responded. "Games are developing at a faster rate than film because it is basing its storytelling skills off of cinema- albeit sometimes too much. Every art form advances more rapidly because it builds on what other art forms have discovered. Just as film advanced more quickly than live drama because it took the lessons drama had discovered, so are games advancing more quickly than cinema did."

We eventually got back on track, as my friend asked me what games he would recommend for a child to inspire creativity. I argued that pretty much anything can inspire creativity in a child. However, I did decide that games with extreme violent or sexual content would probably be out of the question, at least until they were old enough to comprehend the material. I threw in Mario, Zelda, and Rayman 2, while my friend suggested that certain strategy games, particularly the Medieval series, could be educational, if incredibly violent. I also suggested adventure games, specifically the ones made by Humongous Entertainment. Spy Fox, Pajama Sam, and Freddi Fish were all (from what I can remember) well-done adventure games with puzzles that were actually fairly clever, and not too hard for a young child to solve on his own.

So, the tl;dr version of this: We argued about games. I say they can inspire creativity. My friend says no. If you believe a game can inspire creativity, then which ones? If not, then why?

But not realistic human movement. That's the thing about the Uncanny Valley- it's all about how much an object looks like us.

The Polar Express is one that a lot of people seem to mention being creeped out by. I'm having a tricky time finding a good photo to illustrate this, but a common complaint was a suspicious 'soul-less' look to the character's eyes, which in combination with the remarkably life-like models made them offputting. They felt more like puppets, or animated corpses, than 'real' people.

The other important thing is that the Uncanny Valley was originally meant for robots, such as the Actroid here:



For added fun, try watching it move.

The Uncanny Valley also works in reverse. Ever wonder why R2D2 is such a popular character? Part of it is because the audience projects a personality on something that looks absolutely nothing like a human. Since it's as far away from humans as you can probably get, the mind tries to find similarities between it and the subject. This is where we get anthropomorphism, as seen in countless Disney films.

An even more recent example of the opposite end of the Uncanny Valley would be Pixar's latest (and possibly greatest) film, Wall-E.



Now look at him, for just a split second, as a machine. It's hard, isn't it? But really, Wall-E is a robot, not with eyes, but binoculars, and little metallic hands with only two fingers. He has no mouth, no ears, no feet, he doesn't even have proper hands! But, because the animators are able to make him 'act' like a human being, the emotional response is incredibly strong, for the simple fact that he doesn't look anything like a human. You can see it right here. Same thing goes for most animated characters. 

I don't play FPSes because they give me motion sickness (and Dramamine only helps by making me tired and reducing my reaction time speed to sloth), but isn't Gordon Freeman supposed to be one of those effeminate intellectual scientist types?  You know, a man with a brain bigger than his brawn?

Honestly, it's difficult for me to say. As everybody who's played Half-Life can tell you, Gordon's not that much of a talker, so it's hard to understand his personality outside of what we, the player, project onto him. That being said, he seems to have no qualms about using machine guns, rocket launchers, and gravity-defying mechanisms to lay waste to hundreds of nameless soldiers, all in the name of justice. So... somehwere in between?

I blame Casual Cammie for this E3

That woman scares the crap out of me. She's also not terribly good at her job, since she's just alienating us 'hardcorez'. I have to wonder what the rest of the world thinks of her.

Real-time dithering is going to be the new normal mapping. Just you watch. Awesome work, can't wait to see the final game!

light rays!

Awesome.

Seconded.

Quoted directly from the site:

"It all begins with the paranoid delusions of a half-insane hero called Rorschach. But is Rorschach really insane or has he in fact uncovered a plot to murder super-heroes and, even worse, millions of innocent civilians? On the run from the law, Rorschach reunites with his former teammates in a desperate attempt to save the world and their lives, but what they uncover will shock them to their very core and change the face of the planet! Following two generations of masked superheroes from the close of World War II to the icy shadow of the Cold War comes this groundbreaking comic story — the story of The Watchmen."

Wow. Did these guys even read the book?