i’ve never claimed the effects of murdering hookers for 40 hours straight in Grand Theft Auto are 1:1. i don’t think that murdering video game hookers means you’re going to go out and murder a real hooker. i do however believe very strongly in the garbage in/garbage out concept: playing violent games may not turn you into a rampaging murderous psycho, but it’s not very far-fetched to believe they may turn you into a bit of a dick. Cutting people off on the highway, treating wait staff poorly, raising your voice more often … i think these are the results of practicing aggression and putting your brain on constant offense.

Four Dead in O-Hi-O

It looks like i may have my smoking gun to back up my wild claims. A study out of Ohio State shows that playing calming games may make you a better contributor to your society, while playing aggressive or violent games may make you more of an asswipe.

During the first experiment, participants were asked to compete against another player — who did not actually exist — in pushing a button as quickly as possible. The winner would be awarded a small financial sum; the loser would be punished with a brief noise blast. Before each trial, participants could determine how much their competitors would receive if they won, and how strong a noise blast they would receive if they lost.

“Those people who had played violent games punished their partners the most and rewarded them the least,” Bushman said. “Those who had played relaxing games gave the lowest levels of noise and most amount of money.”

Before you go all knee-jerk on this (as gamers are wont to do), chill out: no one’s going to take your crappy violent games away. You may still freely choose the way in which you feed your brain. It’s very satisfying to me, though, to have a study that not only extols the virtues of gentle fare, but also demonstrates the real risks involved in meditating on aggression.

A few people took exception to my saying that the stink over Zynga and the horrible scads of filthy cash they’re earning, perhaps at the expense of crazy people, was due to jealousy. “No!” cried The People. “It’s not because i’m jealous that they have more money than the Federal Reserve fresh off a print run. It’s that Zynga (Playdom, Playfish) develop games that are shallow.”

Shallow Is as Shallow Does

Oho! i see. The problem is not that social game developers have enough cash to make papier mache pinatas for their kids’ birthday parties out of fifty dollar bills. It’s that their games don’t deliver a satisfying experience. It’s that they’re shallow.

Let me tell you about some shallow games, because i’ve spent my life playing them. And it’s been most of them.

i’ve played a game called Blue Dragon, a Japanese RPG where you keep pressing the “A” button for about 40 hours until you win. (Blue Dragon is also known under its import titles “Final Fantasy”, “Dragon Quest”, “Phantasy Star”, “The Secret of Evermore”, “Earthbound”, “Pokemon”, “Star Ocean”, and a few hundred other names which escape me.)

I’ve played a game called Double Dragon, where you press the joystick button for about 2 hours until you win. (You may also know this game as “Final Fight”, “River City Ransom”, “BattleToads”, “The Simpsons Arcade”, “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles IV”, “Bad Dudes vs. Dragon Ninja”, and many more.)

I’ve even played a game where you continually pressed a button to win, which i think was called Zaxxon / Xevious / Centipede / Bangai-O / Silpheed / Commando / Rambo: First Blood Part II / Contra.

And all in the name of playing a game with a little more depth, i even tried a game where you’re a guy, and you have to punch another guy using a combination of buttons until the other guy falls down (or you murder him). That one was called Mortal Kombat / Marvel vs. Capcom / Street Fighter / Killer Instinct / Clay Fighter / Virtua Fighter / Tekken / Pit-Fighter / Bloodstorm / Time Killers.

And if i ever really wanted to blow the barn doors off, i’d play this game where you walk around a 3D maze with a gun, and you SHOOT enemies with it, until all the enemies are gone. Sometimes, i’d play that game with other people in a “death match”. That’s a game mode where sometimes i would kill the other players, and sometimes the other players would kill me. Then we’d get a score sheet of who killed who. Then we’d play again. The next time, i would kill the other players a number of times, and they would kill me a number of times. The numbers sometimes changed, you see? That one was great. It was called Wolfenstein 3D / DOOM / QUAKE / Serious Sam / Duke Nukem / Call of Duty / Halo / Shooty McBang-Shoot.

For 25 Points, Define “Shallow”

What’s shallow gameplay? Is it gameplay where you strategically place assets and efficiently use time and resources to maximize profits and dominate the game board, as you do in Farmville / Restaurant City / Cityville (or Dune II / Starcraft / Act Raiser / Populous / Age of Empires / Sim City)? Or is a “shallow” game one that you don’t enjoy?

When we think “film”, we think of the best-in-class examples, like Citizen Kane, The Shawshank Redemption, Taxi Driver, and Lawrence of Arabia. We don’t necessarily call to mind Dude Where’s My Car, The Hottie and the Nottie, and Good Burger (although i’d really like to put in a good word for Good Burger, because it’s awesome. Check your Netflix listings.)

Similarly, when we think of “games”, we think of Shadow of the Colossus, Braid, Super Mario Bros, Pac-Man, Metroid, The Legend of Zelda, and Tetris. We don’t necessarily call to mind Superman 64, Night Trap, E.T. the Extra Terrestrial, or the writing in Braid.

Starting with the Man in the Mirror

Can we be honest? Just as we’ve seen a lot of crappy movies over the years that weren’t really worth our time, we’ve played a LOT of horrendous games that we really should have passed on (except that we needed to beat the high score/get the last achievement/collect all the things). Sometimes, movies we dismiss as derivative or shallow get all kinds of money and attention (Steel Magnolias please?) Other times, we approve (Academy Award Winner Heath Ledger).

So you don’t approve of Farmville? Why troll out your film critic’s turtleneck and goatee and try to pontificate over the lackluster aesthetics or shallow gameplay? Why isn’t it just good enough to say you don’t like it? “It’s not for me, but it’s okay for them to make money from it because other people seem to enjoy it.” There. Try saying that. It’s therapeutic.

Cozy Up with Grandpa Ryan

Look, i went through this. i’ve been in your shoes. Back in the mid-90′s, i lived and breathed graphic adventure games. They were witty, they were story-based, and they had GREAT characters and beautiful graphics. Then somewhere along the way, we went from LOOM to DOOM – from Zak McKracken to crackin’ skulls. Suddenly, the kinds of games i enjoyed stopped being made, because everyone was into running around and shooting things and not having to think. This brought an influx of the wrong kind of people into games: jocks. The very people who tormented me in elementary school for liking video games were now the industry’s target demographic, and would be for decades.

Sure, i could rail against those games – talk about how they’re vapid and shallow and uninteresting. i could smoke my unfiltered cigarette through one of those long holders and sip red wine from a high-heeled shoe, and then splash it on some fashion model i keep around my studio apartment to brighten up that corner near the Bauhaus-designed furniture set. And i did, actually. i did just that.

But eventually, you just gotta say “that game is just not what i’m into.” Stop feeling threatened. Game genres fall in and out of favour. Are you worried that casual games become so popular that no one will make your empty-headed idiot shooters any more? It could happen. Then you’d become a niche player, like those of us who scour the bargain bins at Wal Mart looking for games that scored above a C- on JustAdventure.com. LOOK UPON ME: THIS IS YOUR FATE!

The bottom line is that social game developers have made a LOT of money creating games that you don’t enjoy, and you feel threatened and resentful (and perhaps a little jealous) because the games that are getting so much attention aren’t the ones you enjoy playing. Do you really think that convincing those Farmville-addicted moms to play a metroidvania platformer is the answer? How will you choose to articulate your feelings? i like collecting little lost cows, and you like shooting space demons in the head. Be very careful who you’re calling shallow.

If the Zombie Apocalypse is a real concern for you (and it should be), bone up on your zombie-killing skillz at ZombieGameWorld.com (Twitter: @zombiegameworld), the best source of free zombie games on the Internet.

Identifying Tortfeasors and Causes of Action in the Probable Event of a Zombie Apocalypse

Sean P. Bawden, B.A. (Hons), LL.B.
Barrister, Solicitor and Notary Public in and for the Province of Ontario

According to an article published in the American newspaper USA Today, “Zombie hordes are everywhere!… There’s no stopping the zombie invasion.” The risk of personal and property damage due to zombie attack has never been higher.

Given the number of exclusion clauses currently being inserted into many homeowners’ insurance policies, the chance that you are covered in the event of a zombie uprising is steadily decreasing.

What, then, is an innocent party, suffering damage due to zombie uprising, to do?

The “Ghostbusters” were known for asking “Who ya gonna call?” Certainly to rid oneself of the ghost in question, the answer would be “a ghost buster.” But what if the ghost caused property damage? The Ghostbusters, while concededly learned in the ways of engineering, would be of no value in a court of law. The answer to the latter question therefore must be “a lawyer!” The answer is equally true if the cause of the damage was a zombie and not a ghost.

This research memorandum therefore canvasses the topic of possible common law tortfeasors against which one could bring a civil action for recovery of damages due to zombie uprising and the causes of action one could advance against such wrongdoers.

This paper starts by considering against whom one could even consider an action. Once the possible defendants are set out, one must also consider on what possible grounds one would be able to advance any such case.

Understandings and Assumptions

For the purposes of this memorandum the author has assumed that the presumptive plaintiff would not have insurance coverage. One should of course consult his or her own insurance policy to ensure whether or not coverage actually exists.

For the purposes of this memorandum, “zombies” will be defined to mean a reanimated human corpse, not controlled by another. Although the actual reanimation itself will by necessity be the result of a living being’s actions, this research will assume that the zombies’ actions following reanimation are the result of the zombies’ own freewill.

Furthermore, this memorandum only considers the issue of liability, not damages. Quanta of damages would have to be assessed on an individual basis.

Defendants

In the event that one suffered “damages”, as the term is defined and understood in law, as the result of a zombie uprising, plaintiffs’ lawyers would be called upon to identify not only likely defendants, but defendants against whom recovery is probable.

Given the operation of joint and several liability, and section 1 of the Ontario Negligence Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. N.1, plaintiffs would only have to establish that a defendant was partially responsible for their damages in order to recover the entire amount of their damages from that defendant. This is to say that provided that one could establish liability against one defendant with the means to satisfy the damages’ award, the plaintiff would be able to be made whole.

For the purposes of this section, the author puts forward possible defendants without consideration of whether or not an action could actually be maintained. Certainly in the case of some, if not all, of the proposed defendants, the defence of remoteness could easily be maintained.

1. Zombies

Joint and several liability is reassuring, as the most obvious defendant to any such action would the zombie itself. Given the novelty of the action, and the uncertainty of the law surrounding this issue, plaintiffs would be wise to name not only the zombie, but also the estate of the person so reanimated when issuing any action. For example, if zombie Ryan Creighton caused property damage, one would be prudent to name all of “Ryan Creighton”; “The Zombie formerly known as Ryan Creighton”; and “The Estate of Ryan Creighton”. By operation of Rules 7 and 9 of the Ontario Rules of Civil Procedure, R.R.O. 1990, Reg. 194, one would also be prudent to name a litigation guardian for the zombie and estate.

Whether or not one’s estate could be liable for damages caused by zombie actions is yet unresolved in Canadian law.

2. Re-animator

Creating life has its consequences. Indeed even if one does not bring the life itself into creation, having care and control of a living being is enough to ground liability if that creature causes damage to another: c.f. Dog Owners’ Liability Act, R.S.O. 1990, c. D. 16. Bringing people back from the dead is inherently risky.

It is this author’s considered opinion that any person who reanimates the dead must be considered a party to any action in which, as a result of that reanimated corpse’s actions, damages result.

3. Family of the Deceased

Zombies only result from reanimated corpses. By logical extension, where there is no corpse there cannot be any zombie. Cremation removes this possibility. By failing to cremate the deceased, families burying their dead have created an undue risk to the living.

Of all the defendants considered in this memorandum, the defence of remoteness is strongest for these defendants.

4. Cemeteries and all those Working at Cemeteries

The geographical starting point for any Ontario zombie uprising will be a cemetery. Home to, in some cases, thousands of corpses, cemeteries are fertile ground for the coming horde. Intuitively one considers the failure to keep zombies within their gates as the grounds upon which one would advance a case for zombie damage. Why else do they build those fences if not to keep the zombies in?

5. Casket Manufacturers

Of course, cemeteries would have less to worry about if casket manufacturers would simply make a sturdier product. The failure to design a casket that would contain a zombie surely puts these parties in the spotlight in any product liability action.

Causes of Action

The rule in Rylands v. Fletcher

When thinking about zombies rushing out of cemetery gates, the first cause of action that comes to one’s mind is the rule in Rylands and Fletcher.

In Rylands v Fletcher, [1868] UKHL 1 the House of Lords established that,

The person who for his own purpose brings on his lands and collects and keeps there anything likely to do mischief, if it escapes, must keep it in at his peril, and if he does not do so, is prima facie answerable for all the damage which is the natural consequence of its escape

Zombies are likely to do mischief if they escape. However, cemeteries do not bring zombies onto their land. Cemeteries bring the dead – not the undead – onto their land. And it is not the escape of the dead about which one is concerned.

As such it is this author’s opinion that one could not successfully use the rule in Rylands and Fletcher to maintain an action against a cemetery for damages resulting from a zombie uprising.

Intentional Torts

It is questionable whether or not the zombies would be committing “intentional” torts. In order to establish liability one would have to establish, likely via expert evidence, that the zombies were capable of understanding the consequences of their actions. It is difficult to comment on whether or not one would be successful in this regard. Furthermore it is questionable against whom one would have the right, or ability, to collect.

Negligence

Without question, the general heading of negligence is the most likely cause of action to be advanced in any such case.

In general, the elements of negligence are duty, standard, and causation. Remoteness, although a defence to the allegation and not a ‘true’ element, must also always be considered in the analysis.

For reasons of remoteness, the family of deceased persons must be stricken from the list of potential defendants. Clearly it is too remote, at least at this time, to hold someone liable for failing to cremate his or her loved one when there is yet to be a single reported case of zombies causing property damage. Similarly, even if one could defeat the remoteness argument, policy reasons would invariably defeat the suit.

Interestingly, one must consider what the standard of care expected of a zombie is. If the movies provide us any indication, it is that we must expect that zombies will cause damage. No action would therefore lie against the zombie in negligence.

Clearly persons choosing to reanimate the dead have a duty to the public to ensure that, if successful in their attempts, zombies do no harm. The failure to properly ensure proper safeguards for the public would fail to meet the standard expected of them, the result of which is that if damages result, liability should follow.

Casket makers must be alive, no pun intended, to the chance of corpse reanimation. Given that the intended user of their product is dead, their duty of care in manufacturing must attach to the living. The living expect that caskets will keep the dead within the confines of the casket. What other purpose is there for a casket if not to keep the dead within it? The failure to manufacture a product that can withstand not only the weight of the deceased during transportation, but also a ravenous zombie hell-bent on destruction fails, in this author’s opinion, to meet the standard expected of a reasonable casket manufacturer.

Similarly, cemeteries must owe a duty to the public to ensure that zombies cannot escape from their grounds. Although conceptually similar to the rule in Rylands and Fletcher, the duty here is different. In negligence the cemetery is asked to foresee the possibility of zombies and then protect against them, even though they are not expressly inviting zombies onto their land. Furthermore, given the fact that most cemeteries already guard against zombie escape (recall earlier comments about fences), the failure to build an adequate containment system may sound in negligence.

Conclusions and Recommendations

It is never too early to be prepared, and knowledge is power. The purpose of this memorandum has been to consider, in advance of a zombie uprising, against whom to bring an action for property damage in the event of property damage due to zombie.

This memorandum has canvassed both possible defendants and possible causes of action.

Having considered both, this author has reached the conclusion that in the event that one suffers damage at the hands of a zombie, the party so aggrieved should invariably bring suit against the person responsible for the uprising. (With any luck that person will work within a well-insured laboratory against which one could establish vicarious liability.) Out of an abundance of caution, one must also consider bringing suit against both the manufacturer of the casket from which the zombie escapes, and the cemetery that similarly fails to contain it. Both are likely well-funded defendants capable of satisfying any costs award.

Although counter-intuitive, this author does not recommend bringing any action against the zombie itself. The uncertainties that would envelope the litigation would only serve to bog down the process and the chances of recovery seem slim at best. Furthermore, this author has no interest in cross-examining a zombie.

The State of California wants to ban violent video games. That’s the take-away many gamers are carrying around with them after entirely misunderstanding and misinterpreting the latest news about violence in gaming.

There’s an incredibly ugly and empty-headed collective knee-jerk reaction among gamers that you can provoke by stringing the words “violent” and “video games” together in a sentence. The moment you do that, comment threads and boards fill up with angry, reactive comments from gamers shouting down the argument, denying up and down that real-life anything is connected to the video game world … unless of course video games are shown to produce positive benefits like improved hand-eye co-ordination and visual-spatial skills.

Relax, gamers: no one’s trying to take your video games away. California does not want to ban violent video games. If you’re the age of majority, you can purchase and play all the violent video games you like. You can smoke, drink, lease a house, rent a car, and crank your joystick to an alarming array of pornography until you pump yourself into a pulp on your rec room floor. If that’s how you want to live your life, go nuts. The world is your sleazy oyster.

[watch local news outfit CityTV interview me on a segment about aggression and gaming]

Wait Until You’re Older to Destroy Your Brain

California figures that perhaps allowing minors to purchase products that essentially have them chainsaw-murdering innocent bystanders and hookers for forty hours straight may not be such a hot idea. They’re looking to prohibit the sale of violent video games to minors. Prohibiting the sale of harmful materials to minors and outright banning it for all citizens are two very different things.

Are Violent Video Games Really Harmful?

But wait – are video games that have the player ripping characters’ heads off with their spinal columns still attached, setting other characters on fire and urinating on them, and dry-humping the corpses of their amputated enemies really harmful to impressionable minors whose brains are still forming?

Yes. Yes they are. Now let’s move on.

Sex Kills

i think what’s really interesting about what California’s trying to do is that for seemingly the first time in their blood-soaked history, Americans are waking up to the idea that maybe violence should be treated like sex? They prohibit the sale of Nasty Cumsluts 4: The Sluttening to little kids, because it’s harmful to minors. Maybe a game where you kill a guy bare-handed with a plastic bag, or one where you punch someone in the face so hard his head explodes, is similarly detrimental to our youngfolk?

In Canada, we have a history of restricting violent material more vigorously than sexual content. Growing up, any movie that had as much as a single boob in it would get an R rating in the USA. In Canada, a movie like Road Trip, where Amy Smart flashes her funbags for a solid five minutes, gets a 14A rating. (That means if you’re 14, and your name begins with the letter “A”, you’re good to go.) In the USA, Road Trip was rated Restricted. i think it’s because Canadians recognize that handguns and chainsaws are far more dangerous than a cute 20-year-old’s tits.

The Yanks haven’t quite reached that conclusion yet. In a country where a teenager was shot to death for egging a guy’s Mercedes on Hallowe’en, they’re still puzzling over the concept that racking up a high score by murdering pedestrians with your car may not be such a hot way for an 8-year-old to spend an afternoon.

Pubic Enemy

There are no bewbz in gaming. Game developers don’t draw nipples on their character models, because breasts are deadly weapons, and guns are sexy objects of adoration. Seems a bit backwards to me … in real life, breasts are life-giving, and guns are life-removing. Game developers are clearly terrified of landing an ESRB Adults Only rating for their title, which means that 8-year-olds can’t buy their game in Wal Mart or other major retailers, and their games won’t be made available on major consoles. They’re so afraid of that punitive rating that nipples are furtively doled out like notes being passed around in class. God of War has nipples, but the sex is off-screen. No on-screen simulated Skinemax-style gyrating for poor old Kratos. There are a few other exceedingly rare examples of nudity in other titles. i don’t know if i’ve ever heard of a dude’s wang on parade in a mainstream video game title. Anyone have an example? (Oh, wait – i just came up with one. And surprise – it’s in a Grand Theft Auto sequel.)

[read about how the FTC got their knickers in a bunch when they discovered ta-ta's in virtual worlds]

You also rarely hear a video game developer say “we really had to tone down the violence, because we were worried about getting an AO rating.” It’s never the violence – always the boobs. Manhunt 2 is the only example i can really bring to mind where the team received an AO rating due to violent content. There was also a big stink over Bully. For the most part, it’s business as usual with swords and guns and dismemberment, but heaven help us if Lara Croft lets slip some sweater meat. And vagina? Vagina is right out. Don’t even ASK me about vagina.

(Note that both Bully and Manhunt 2 were by developer R*, creators of Grand Theft Auto. The Manhunt 2 AO debacle was likely due to the company’s Hot Coffee scandal in GTA: San Andreas which shook confidence in the industry’s ESRB self-rating system. What happened with Manhunt 2 was political – a response engineered specifically to restore confidence in the ESRB system, and to keep the ratings power within the industry. The industry doesn’t want the government involved in legislating content, because they will not be able to peddle as many copies if fewer people are able to buy games. It’s also worth noting that the Hot Coffee mini-game contained absolutely zero nudity – just low-poly character models grinding against each other like those puppets in Team America: World Police. More on the South Park guys later.)

[read about gory game sameness at Microsoft's Christmas preview event]

Here’s the Part You Scrolled Down to Look At

Just to compare the film and video game industries with respect to their content ratings, here’s a screengrab from a movie that was released twenty six years ago that was rated PG in America:

i would have liked to have embedded a YouTube version of that scene from Sheena: Queen of the Jungle, but you won’t find any nudity on the American-owned YouTube. That shit gets banned. What you WILL find on YouTube, and in abundant supply, is stuff like this montage of gore from Fallout 3:

Show this video to almost any teenaged boy, and what reaction will you get? Smiles.

[read my condemnation of Fallout 3]

Currently, any kid in the second grade can walk into a video game store, plop down sixty bucks’ worth of birthday money and, if the store so chooses, that kid can walk out with a copy of Fallout 3. He can’t do the same with the Blu-Ray re-release of Ass-Eaters in the Sexth Dimension. He’s too young. The State of California wants to make it illegal for stores to sell this kid harmful content like Fallout 3. Any store that breaks the proposed law can be fined up to $1000. An ill-informed parent could still buy the game and give it to his child. That would still be legal.

I Reject Your Parental Responsibility Argument

Please, folks: before you pipe up and troll out the ancient argument that parents should be responsible for monitoring the content that their children blah blah blah, please look around you. i grew up in numerous poor neighbourhoods, and spent some time as a child in a women’s shelter. i am the son of a father who abandoned his family, the child of a physically abusive stepfather, and the product of single parent mom who worked for 25 years with the Children’s Aid Society (child social services), the clients of which saw far worse things than i ever did. It doesn’t take a rational thinking person very long to recall that there’s no such thing as a parents’ license, and that not all parents can be relied upon to raise their children responsibly. It takes a village. Often, in matters of public protection and the protection of minors, the government acts as our village.

[read about how kids wished their parents would play video games with them]

Excessive Violence is Beneficial for Teenaged Boys Only

The gamers who argue the most vehemently against perceived attacks like California’s proposed law, i suspect, are teenaged boys who really want to be able to play these games without restriction. They don’t want adults to know what really goes on in these games, because they won’t be allowed to play them any more, and instead they’ll be forced to play horrible bargain-basement titles like Super Mario Galaxy 2, Braid, Rock Band, Geometry Wars, Puzzle Quest, Portal, and any number of garbage games that aren’t worth their time or money. Their minds are fully formed, they argue! They’re not impressionable! They won’t be psychologically screwed up in any way, shape, or form if they play an overtly violent video game.

[read about a study that found gore does not make a game more enjoyable]

There was an episode of South Park called Ginger Kids in which Cartman decided he was prejudiced against “gingers” (red-headed kids), and spent the episode tormenting them. It was satire. It was funny. The aim of the episode was to lampoon racism and bigotry.

After the episode aired, numerous schools across the country reported that red-headed kids had been physically assaulted on “Kick a Ginger Day”. The movement was led by a 14-year-old with a Facebook page, and it had 20 000 followers. Kick a Ginger Day was an idea that minors, their brains not yet fully-formed, cooked up after watching South Park. They didn’t get it. They couldn’t piece together that the show was satirical, and that the creators were hoping to effect the opposite behaviour.

No adults were reported to have participated in Kick a Ginger Day.

[read about how a violent video game cost one game development team its Sigourney Weaver voice over]

What Have We Learned?

In summation:

• Certain gratuitous depictions of violence are as age-inappropriate for minors as certain gratuitous depictions of sex.
• Love triggers AO ratings, not war.
• According to vocal gamers on the Internet, video games are only allowed to affect people in positive ways. Spatial reasoning yes, murderous rage no.
• Teenagers apparently can’t be trusted to understand satire, or to grasp the difference between a content ban and a prohibition to protect children like themselves.
• It’s better to have a loaded penis aimed at your face than a loaded gun.

ZombieGameWorld.com is the newest portal in Untold Entertainment’s growing Game World Network, a group of sites packed with free-to-play web games catering to niche audiences. The key difference between ZombieGameWorld.com and WordGameWorld.com is quality: WordGameWorld.com is a curated site, where we hand-pick only the best or most enjoyable word games available online.

But we’ll throw any old piece of trash on ZombieGameWorld.com. Our reasoning is that zombie fans historically have a lower quality bar than the rest of us. With a few notable exceptions, their favourite movies and books are largely low-budget schlocky affairs where concept trumps execution. An audience accustomed to consuming entertainment that’s a little rough around the edges may be interested in the more … strained attempts of amateur game developers trying to cobble together a zombie game. The Featured section of the site highlights the rare online zombie games that are good-looking and great fun to play.

All new game content is cross-posted to the ZombieGameWorld.com Facebook fan page, as well as the ZombieGameWorld Twitter feed. The Twitter feed adds zombie-related news that gets cross-posted back to the main site.

Future plans for the site include community-based game-on-game elimination battles, badges, and possibly even an online loyalty system. The current model is advertising rev share through MochiAds and Google Adsense. Our immediate business goal is to earn enough ad revenue to cover hosting – both ZombieGameWorld.com and WordGameWorld.com are currently operating at a loss.

If you know zombie fans, or you have a GREAT idea for how we can promote the site without spending any money or digging up any corpses, i’d love to hear from you! Leave a comment and tell me if you think ZombieGameWorld.com has any potential, or if we’re just not using our braaaaaains.

i’m old.

i’ve been going to these events for at least five years now, and with every passing year, i am reminded with more and more clarity that the big video game titles are not for me. i’m a father of two now, and i run my own bidness. i spend my evenings working on great stuff to entertain you nice people – and that’s after i play with my kids, eat dinner with the family, tuck the tiny little girls safely into bed, and sit vigil for a few hours perched on the roof of my condo scanning the streets of Toronto for evil-doers. i do not have time for your Fable Threes, your Calls of Duty, your Fallout 3 New Vegases, or your Halo Reaches.

Not only that, but i don’t like those games. i can’t get past the cut-scenes. i know many people skip those, but i really like to be told a good story by well-animated figures. After the bar set by Pixar and others for 3D animated movies, the emotionless mannequins mugging and mouthing through toneless, dry dialogue just don’t do it for me. One glance around the room, and all of these games are starting to look more and more the same.

i really like a game with a bold art direction. Give me Wind Waker over Twilight Princess any day. i enjoyed Crackdown, partly because they tried to do something unique and interesting with the style. When i saddled up to game after game at X’10, i couldn’t figure out what each game was by looking at it. Is that a knock against art directors? Identity and branding specialists? You’d think that games with these million dollar budgets would drop a few bones trying to differentiate themselves from the competition.

The one game on the mostly hardcore show floor that stood out for me was Shank. i’m not a fan of bloody, M-Rated games, but Shank has style. The new Mortal Kombat game also turned my head, because of a feature where you could pull off a special move and, in addition to the slow-mo shot of you hurting your opponent, you’d see an X-Ray view inside the opponents body depicting cracking ribs and rupturing organs. Definitely not my cup of meat, but at least it’s an interesting visual addition to a stylistically bland landscape.

Rock Band 3 FTFW

Because i have very little time to enjoy gOnames these days, Rock Band really turns my crank. i can get in and out in under 10 minutes, make a dent in the story mode, and enjoy myself. i got a chance to try out the RB3 keytar (which you should NEVER use as an actual keytar because it’s hella complicated). On Pro mode, you’re playing the piano line note-for-note. i thought i’d have a leg up because i’ve been playing piano most of my life, but the trickiest thing is that it’s very easy to lose where your hands are on the keys … and in order to fit the whole highway on the screen, the viewable area shifts around from left to right, making it even more difficult and confusing.

But it’s still a must-buy. It has drop-in, drop-out – a sorely needed feature. i played Bohemian Rhapody (finally!) and The Power of Love by Huey Lewis and the News. Both were very fun. i fully expect Bat Out of Hell, with its crazy keyboard intro, to appear on the platform now that there’s a piano instrument.

Windows Phone 7? Tasty.

The Windows 7 mobile platform was very enticing. Seeing the excellent Xbox Live social features, including ‘Cheeves, appear on a mobile phone raised my lusty dev hackles. i want in.

Kinect Will Bomb.

i got a chance to try a few Kinect motion-sensing games. i say it’ll bomb. i’m not saying it won’t sell well – it actually might – but i think that, like the Wii before it, there will be this big media scramble and we’ll hear a lot about it, but the technology is doomed to collect dust in a corner.

The first game i tried was Kinect Sports. My friend Emily and i limbered up for the track & field event, and when the starter pistol was fired, the demo jockey said “run!” So of course, we both started doing this weak little jog, pantomiming the act of running. Our characters weren’t really going anywhere. The demo jockey said “No – actually run. Get those knees up in the air.”

Uh … there i was in a light-coloured shirt, because i was out of black ones, and it showed off my natural curves a little more than i usually like them to be shown. i started running on the spot – hauling actual ass, trying to get my on-screen character to move. It was a lot of effort. And then came the hurdles. That’s right, friends – hurdles. i did a feeble little hop, and my character tripped over the hurdle, knocking it over. i ran on the spot some more, feeling like a kid at fat camp, and tried to jump the second hurdle. No good. This went on for more hurdles and more running and more grunting … and then, eventually, the sweat came. It came first in small rivulets trickling from my temples, and soon started gushing out of my armpits like the levee broke. My repressed memories of gym class came flooding back to me, and all i wanted to do was escape to the safety of my rec room and play some video games.

Oh, wait – i was playing a video game.

In my youth, when i went to my friend’s house after his mom bought him the Nintendo dance pad because he was a fat f*cker, we learned how to game the system by sitting on the floor and slapping the dance pad sensors with our palms. It became an exercise in speed drumming. (And i’m sorry, but no human being is able to run as fast as Nintendo’s track & field game demanded.) There’s no obvious way for fat kids to cheat at Kinect, which i count as a victory for disapproving moms everywhere. Maybe wheel a paint shaker machine into the living room? i’m not sure.

Ubi Soft has a fitness game that looks interesting. i never liked how the exercises in Wii Fit worked. It would tell you to do push-ups, but since the game could only sense when you were applying pressure to the balance board, you may as well have been enthusiastically humping the device. (At times, i know i was.) The Ubi game puts you alongside a yoga guru. The shape of your on-screen character is exactly what Kinect “sees” – a purply blob more or less shaped like you, down to details like the flared hems of your shorts. When you follow the guru’s motions, the game overlays a skeletal system that turns white when you’re doing it wrong, and green when you’re on the money. It looked interesting, because if one leg is out of place, you can nudge your knee into a better position to correct your posture.

i asked the demo jockeys if the game was accessible to amputees (or freaks of nature). They didn’t know. i was surprised to learn that i was the first to ask the question.

i took a brief look at Kinectimals. A player was running as a lion cub through an obstacle course. Same story there – she was doing a gimpy sort of pretend jog-run, and the lion cub was stumbling around like it was drunk. i called out from the sidelines “you gotta haul ass!” She did, and the game went better for her.

Here are my main concerns with Kinect:

1. You need a 10×10 square feet of floor space. The track & field game kept telling me to “move back” … i couldn’t help but think that if i was in my tiny condo right now, moving back would put me inside the concrete wall.
2. Even if i did have the space, i’ve got two tiny little girls who litter our living room floor with jacks and Legos and other foot-demolishing traps and hazards that would land me in the hospital faster than the balls-out sprinting that the game required of me.
3. Very tiny kids, like my murderous toy-strewing daughters, may not be able to play, because there’s a certain degree of calibration and patience required to start games. There are moments when you need to stop moving, or to move slowly and deliberately – two skills my 2- and 4-year olds are nowhere near mastering.
4. A few times, while we were trying the bowling game in Kinect Sports, some wait staff crossed the room behind us, causing our characters to throw their bowling balls up in the air. Depending on your game room setup, you could be primed for some background interference douchebaggery from your so-called friends.
5. The system allows me to run, jump, throw, box, dance, catch, and gesture wildly. When i finally do eke out some come-down time, my chosen activities more often encourage me to sit, scratch, space, munch, and snooze.

Much like the Wii, the technology is promising, but it’s not quite there. It’s juuust inaccurate enough to be unfun. Just as game critics have taken to using the word “waggle” to derisively describe interactions with the WiiMote, i predict that the new watchword for the Kinect era will be “flail”.

explicit sexual content exists “free of charge, in online virtual worlds that minors are able to access.”

i hate to break it to the FTC, but the Internet also happens to offer explicit sexual content that minors are able to access. And that content goes far beyond the mostly “low-level”, text-based content found in half of the kid-targeted virtual worlds that the FTC studied. i’ll dismiss out of hand the report’s revelation that there is “a greater amount of explicit content in worlds that were geared towards teens or adults.” Really? Pray tell, if the report is about protecting kids and youth, why did the FTC bother looking at worlds aimed at an older audience? It’s like saying “pornography was found to contain material that was unsuitable for minors.”

It’s For Kids

The implication must be that, like comic books and cartoons, some people associate virtual worlds primarily with children. When Ralph Bakshi released Fritz the Cat, an animated pornographic movie, in 1972 – or indeed, when Watership Down came out a few years later and the adorable bunnies drew blood from each other’s necks – parents raised a hue and cry because they did not expect the animated film medium to contain explicit material. After all, cartoons are for kids. Right? Ditto those parents who brought their kids to see Watchmen last summer because it was about superheroes, without bothering to check the rating to determine the intended audience.

It looks as though the virtual worlds medium is suffering from the same poorly-informed people holding it to a standard it was never meant to meet. There’s nothing inherent in the concept of a virtual world that suggests it is a strictly kids’ medium, or that it will appeal expressly to children. The trouble here is that the most successful virtual worlds to date, including Neopets and Club Penguin, have been kid- and teen-targeted. Does that mean that all virtual worlds will appeal to all young people? Of course not. And does it mean that virtual worlds that serve the needs of teens and adults should beef up their security to keep kids out? Emphatically, no.

Forget one or two virtual worlds members typing “i want to touch you on your nay-nays” in open chat – the amount of full-colour, HD titties n’ schlongs available at the click of a button to any child on the Internet is staggering, and it’s all without benefit of a membership wall and registration process. It’s actually far more difficult to sign up, create an avatar, learn the virtual world’s navigation and go hunting for text-only “sexually explicit” material than it is to type “mouth on bum” in Google Image Search to call up a gallery of pics that’ll turn your hair white. Whatever Google serves up will be far more psychologically damaging to a child’s psyche than the “shocking” content the FTC discovered in any virtual world.

An Unappealing Argument

The FTC’s excuse for profiling teen and adult virtual worlds is likely that these sites will appeal to younger players, perhaps due to their colourful graphics and similarity to Club Penguin, (the clueless adult might reason). You know what else appeals to young people? According to a survey by security firm Symantec, titties n’ schlongs. ReadWriteWeb reports that among the top ten most common search terms entered by children are “Sex” at number 4 and “Porn” at number 6, followed by “boobies” and an assortment of other interesting body parts in the ensuing slots.

i don’t buy the “appeal” excuse for a second. Children are sexual beings, and are just as entranced by All That Jiggles as we adults are. In its report, the FTC recommends more powerful age-screening mechanisms, enhanced age segragation techniques, stronger language filters and better training for moderators in virtual worlds. It all adds up to a completely imbalanced, unfair and unrealistic expectation of virtual worlds staff, an expectation that is not being levied against far worse “offendors” like Google. And sites like Google have far greater sex appeal than virtual worlds. Pictures speak louder than whatever naughty words the FTC uncovered.

Catcher in the Wry

You have to believe that i am all for protecting children from explicit content. In fact, i often go a step farther to point out that adults shouldn’t be viewing a lot of this content. The reason we don’t want kids to see it is often the same reason why grown-ups shouldn’t be looking. But having worked on a number of virtual worlds projects for kids under 13, i’ve seen the heavy-handed amount of legal hoops to jump through and protections you need to add to your product, and i assure you it’s excessive. As a parent, i only take exception to sites that claim absolute safety for young players and can’t deliver on that promise. This is why we sent Mr. McBadTouch into Green.com to see if he could find some new underage playmates.

Cracking the Safe

i’m far more comfortable with the ESRB’s blanket admission that “Game Experience May Change During Online Play”. This covers any number of sins, from someone asking my daughter if he can put his mouth on her bum over Xbox Live, to being called the N-word by some drunk Southerner (on Xbox Live), to someone simulating touching his scrotum to my corpse’s forehead in a death match (… again, on Xbox Live). Chris Rock said that a father’s most important duty is “keeping his daughter off the pole”. i’d like to add that a responsible dad also keeps his daughter off Xbox Live.

The world, in short, is a dangerous place (not least of all over Xbox Live). i appreciate the steps that some people voluntarily take to help me raise my children in a safer environment. i even appreciate some of the precautions the government mandates to improve that safety, because Lord knows not all parents are responsible. But the Federal Trade Commission’s recommendations to tighten up virtual world security are over-reaching and unfair. Virtual worlds are not the sole territory of children and youth, and parents should take the same precaution with them that they should take with any medium, including comic books, cartoons and animated films.

The correct answer is “SEX”.

It annoys me to no end to see “GENDER” on a form asking me whether i have a penis or a vagina, because gender is not determined by that factor alone. Gender – masculinity and femininity/maleness and femaleness – is determined by a number of factors, and is not solely influenced by the amount of testosterone / progesterone / estrogen / Legolas / pepperoni in your body. i reflected on this while i read guest author Julia Barry’s How to Create/Market Games for Women article on Taylan Kay’s “The Selling Game” blog.

Sissy Boy

i comment a lot on violence in gaming, often complaining about it, as i would if i were a filmmaker who wanted to create great films, but the dominant genre in my industry was porn. Or if i was a television producer, and the top-ranking shows were fishing shows, and you couldn’t get any considerable love or attention unless you created a fishing show. It’s depressing.

But i was reminded throughout Julia’s article that i have had a far different upbringing than most men. i was raised the only child of a single mother who abhorred violence of any kind. Most of the men in my life were baddies. And today, i am the only male in my family unit save for the two cats, and we cut off their testicles years ago.

So when i rail against violence – when i commit to non-violence in my company credo – i’m doing so from a unique position where, through my upbringing and conditioning, i skew further toward the feminine end of the gender spectrum than the masculine end. And i’m okay with that. It helps me to appreciate and understand Julia’s perspective far more than if i’d been raised on a steady diet of blood n’ tits.

Barbarians at the Gate

With many videogames, we are entrenching a world of values where boys impress each other by being violent, and girls impress boys (and compete with other girls) in being pretty and inviting of sexual encounter.

i agree with Julia here, as long as we replace “are entrenching” with “have entrenched”. It feels like this attitude of betterment-through-beheading has been firmly set, and we are enslaved to it. This value system was already in place in other media while the pioneers of video games were creating Space War!, Pong and Zork on monstrous machines at the turn-of-the-80′s. Video games were far less visceral while i was growing up – not because we lacked the technology to depict dismemberment and disembowling, but because i believe the people creating games were kinder, gentler and more thoughtful. Dare i say it? More feminine.

It wasn’t until the 90′s that jocks got involved in gaming in a big way, thanks mostly to id software. Suddenly, there was an influx of customers whose needs were being catered to – in this case, manly red-meat-eating macho MEN with back hair and cocks the size of SUVs who wanted to kill, compete, maim, humiliate, screw, devour, shoot, mock, explode and teabag their way to that thrillingly blunt endorphin release that the more reasoned among us can achieve with a particularly stimulating crossword puzzle. Simply put, dumb, base males aged 18-35 hijacked the video game industry in the early 1990s, and they remain the ruling customer class to this very day.

But Julia’s article gave me hope: hope of a day when we see a similar shift as the jock renaissance of the early 90′s, and game developers figure out how to best appeal to women – how to reliably give ladies their endorphin release (hint: it takes longer, but they can experience it multiple times). Then – who knows? We might see another complete shift that sees the game industry dominated with games about buying and selling real estate, improving situations through the power of colour and texture, nurturing the growth of plants and animals, stealing each others’ friends, and other more feminine pursuits.

Hope Only Exists in an Alternate Universe

Realistically, though, i don’t see this happening, unless we see a major shift in the way electronic entertainment is designed and built. The dominant programming languages, techniques and methodologies, hardware and software have all been designed by certain types of men, so that the same types of men can understand and use them to create more tools and technology, which beget more tools and technology, and so on. All of these created elements play to the strengths of an analytical, scientific mind – the type of mind that is most often found pulsating inside a body that has a penis. PLEASE DO NOT EMAIL ME INSISTING THAT WOMEN CAN ALSO BE ANALYTICAL AND SCIENTIFIC. i’m speaking generally here. And generally, the tools and technologies have been built by nerdy males and for nerdy males, and now that the beget-ball is rolling, it’ll be very difficult to stop.

In trying to create “girl” games … companies pander even more to gender stereotypes. Marketing games to girls shouldn’t mean making everything gossipy and pink, yet there are countless products in that vein. Games and toys aimed at the female population are often shallow, fluffy screen versions of dress-up and shopping.

The challenge here is that women – and men, for that matter – don’t know what’s good for them. i remember sitting at a panel discussion on this topic, where the game developer said that they tested a number of themes and concepts on little girls and female gamers, and the results that consistently scored the highest involved pink, shopping, dress-up, baking, and pets. The OOO (Three Rings) crew defended the sexy, skimpy female pirate clothing in their Puzzle Pirates online game by revealing that not only did pirate bikini tops sell better than other female characters’ clothing, but that they started the game with more modest attire and were hounded by their female players requesting sexier clothing options.

So this begs the question: are less-sexualized, more thoughtful and more “3-dimensional” (as Julia puts it) games something that:

1. all women want
2. some women want
3. all women should want, but don’t know it
4. some women want on behalf of all women, who should really know better?

My suspicion is that it’s that last point, in which case i suppose i am similarly one man in a minority of men who want something better on behalf of all men. Masculinity and manhood are not proven through achieving the most headshots, or ripping the most still-beating hearts out of digital characters’ chests, in the same way that femininity is not demonstrated by combing and washing the sparkling mane of your pink flying unicorn vagina pony. A better, more balanced world, both virtual and actual, lies somewhere between the extreme ends of the gender spectrum.

Microsoft usually wears its heart on its sleeve at the X events. You can tell by looking around the room where they’re hedging their bets for the holidays, how they’re hanging their hopes. One quick glance around the room at this year’s events spoke volumes about the company’s holiday strategy: no kids, no families, and no casual gamers: just pure, unbridled core players with a penchant for blood n’ tits. God help us.

In the past, i’ve written for Whoa! Magazine and GamePad, two Corus Entertainment kids’ properties, and The Magazine Not For Adults (formerly Disney Adventure magazine), so my kid-dar is pretty finely honed at this point. i’m pretty adept at sussing out which titles will be M-rated at launch, and which ones will be T-rated but still inappropriate for the audience (realistic war games never made the cut, by my insistence). i strolled down one wall of the This is London night club in Toronto dismissing each game in turn: first-person shooter, first-person shooter, South Park-themed tower defense game, first-person shooter, third person stealth espionage, first-person shooter, first person shooter. And so on.

And sequels! i caught a glimpse of Splinter Cell: Enough Already, and Grand Theft Auto: Repeatedly-Sodomizing-a-Dead-Horse City. And the game landscape was the blandest, most unoriginal i’ve ever seen it.

Variety Doesn’t Sell

In previous years, there had been Xbox Live Community Games (now Indie Games). There had been friendly characters like Spongebob Squarepants and Banjo Kazooie. There had been Scene It! and You’re in the Movies and Viva Piñata. It’s not that any of these more accessible titles were necessarily any good, but at the very least i got a sense that Microsoft was trying to court a broader audience, trying to sell a system that everyone could enjoy.

Well, we now see where that strategy has led them. Whether it’s because Microsoft itself has abandoned all hope, or whether the third party publishers saw abysmal financial returns on their family-oriented products (or indeed, whether the PR company wanted to look cool in front of the members of the gaming public who were invited for the first time this year), Xbox Live is no place for kids, families, or guys like me who don’t go in for blood n’ tits games.

Innovation Schminnovation

i counted on one hand the number of non-FPS, non-M-rated titles, and i had fingers left over:

1. Tony Hawk: Ride, the one with the skateboard peripheral
2. DJ Hero, the one with the turntable peripheral
3. Rock Band: The Beatles, the one with the guitar and drum peripherals

Aaaaaaaand … that’s about it.

So to you gamers who are slow to take a chance on innovative new franchises – you who want only more of the same, and who are happy with seeing a bigger number next for your favourite game’s title, you’re in for a real Christmas miracle this year.

You’ll run downstairs and slide on your knees to the foot of that tree, soft naked bottom peeping out of the bum flap on your pyjamas, and gaze with wonder at the gifts upon gifts that Santa left you. You’ll tear open the wrapping on each one in turn, eyes wide and mouth agape, imagining the thrills and unbridled delight each title will offer. And when the shredded paper has all been tossed to one side and the shrink-wrapped cases of your new Xbox 360 games sit glistening in the warm glow of the Christmas tree lights, you’ll marvel at the spectacle of a dozen or more new games to play for your Xbox 360 video game system.

And they’ll all be exactly the same game.

Newgrounds is an American Flash Portal created by the people, for the people … and by “people”, i mean mostly adolescent boys and similarly-minded men who revel in exploitative content created in Flash. This content includes pornographic, copyright-infringing, gratuitously violent and often morally insensitive (see the site’s various Virginia Tech massacre-inspired content) web games and animations.

The site frustratingly caters to the lowest common denominator, when the site’s founder Tom Fulp has actually turned out a very strong game with Castle Crashers, the sophomore follow-up to Alien Hominid, which was the first Flash game to appear on a major home video game console. i wasn’t such a big fan of Alien Hominid, and was actually pretty surprised that the ESRB would give it a Teen rating, what with all the decapitation. But to each his own, i suppose. Maybe the graphics were just too darn cute?

Submit!

The Newgrounds submission process is very painless – moreso than MochiAds or Kongregate. You fill out a form with a bunch of options to indicate authorship (the site encourages “collabs” – collaborations between site members), and credits for any audio you’ve used from the site’s audio repository. There’s also a section where you can self-rate your content. This is more in the spirit of reassuring viewers or players of all the dirty stuff they’re going to see, because there are no actual measures taken on the site to caution minors about viewing that content. So kids are free to watch, for example, the Teletubbies parody “Pojo Gets Wit a Ho”, or the action packed “Space Slut Slim”. Ssssuper.

The fact is that most of the Newgrounds content that is inappropriate for minors is actually created by the minors for whom the content is inappropriate.

The site does draw the line at uploading *real* pics of people having sex, a measure which it’s clear to point out is only “due to new laws.” Newgrounds also discourages users from uploading child pornography. It’s good to know that a site that hosts “Dirty C*nt”, “Donkey vs. Bitch”, and “Suicide Can Be Fun” draws that moral line somewhere.

So when it came to uploading Two By Two to Newgrounds, i didn’t expect much love for a light puzzle game that kicks off – unironically – with a Bible verse, on a site where animated debauchery reigns. In order to actually make money from posting your content to Newgrounds, you have to implement their advertising API. i believe i could have uploaded the MochiAds-enabled version of Two By Two, but Pimp My Game is all about putting different monetization methods through their paces. So off i went.

API API Joy Joy

Integrating the Newgrounds API was very painless in AS3. There are only three lines of code, which you place at the beginning of the movie, and then Bob’s your uncle. (This is to say that once you press the “Submit” button, a man named Robert actually marries your mother’s sister.)

The most time-consuming part of the NG API integration is setting up custom events. These are trigger points that you define on the Newgrounds site and activate with a single line of code for each event. Once these hooks are in, you can visit the site and see a report on how often each custom even was called. (This is all in theory – i never did figure out exactly where on the site i could view the data for these events.)

There are all kinds of things you could conceivably track in your game – anything from “Passed level x with y lives” to “pressed the Quit button during level x”. It’s all stuff that can help you to better understand the users’ experience with your game. For example, if you realize that 50% of your players are running out of time and dying in level two, perhaps you can re-jig level two and update the game?

The Newgrounds custom events are a nice idea, but if you’re going to pimp your game, you’re better off tracking events with a third party – Google Analytics, for example. That way, it won’t matter where your game is hosted – you can track events from anywhere on the Internatz. As you’ll see during our numbers round-up below, the time i spent setting up these custom events was not worth the exposure i received on Newgrounds.

The final step to rigging up your game with Newgrounds ads is to pass staff approval, where i assume a real live person scans your game for content that miscellaneous advertisers may not enjoy (ie “Tits in the Forest” or “Murder the Government”, both currently playing on Newgrounds.) A Newgrounds inspector apparently gave Two By Two the thumbs-up.

The Result

i’ve given Newgrounds more time than any other featured Pimp My Game monetization method. The game was uploaded in on December 21st 2008, and the date stamp on this article puts us near the end of April – a full four months to let the masses pour over the game and bathe it in hot sweaty ad rev-share cash.

597 plays, with an average score of 2.75/5.00. 38% of players rated the game. It’s worthwhile to note that all of these numbers were charted within the first three days of the game appearing on the site; the game has since dropped completely out of view, and has experienced four solid months of complete radio silence. One way to get extra love for your game on Newgrounds is to promote it within the site forums. But frankly, i’m above baselessly begging people to play Two By Two and talking about it ad nauseum to other people on the Internatz. Wink.

The game garnered three written reviews, which i repost here for your spiritual edification:

Score: 10 “Good!” Great game man , this one is going in my favs!

Score: 5 “Meh.” its not too great and very boring

Score: 3 “Only one level???” To be quite honest I thought this game was weak. I aint being harsh on you but puzzle games are not something that attracts alot of people unless it is very good and unique…. but overall this game is not that great. I am sorry for sounding very harsh but this aint gnna do well.

i’m not sure why, even with a meagre 500-odd plays, there were zero ad impressions for the game. Does the Newgrounds API even work? Do the Custom Events work? Are we using any of this stuff properly? Maybe Tom can pop on here and explain.

Meanwhile, let’s take a look at the overall numbers for Two By Two which, thanks entirely to MochiAds, have climbed steadily (and pathetically).

The Graph

With its forty hour TOJam development period, Two By Two has earned me an hourly wage of 56 cents – not counting the hours spent integrating APIs, creating thumbnails for each portal and uploading the game to their exacting and non-standardized standards.

Keep in mind that this is seventy virtual dollars that i’ve earned. Each different site has a payout cap – MochiAds doesn’t pay until you hit $100. So although my readers in Bangladesh must be idolizing me for the amazing wad of cash they imagine i’m rolling around in, bear in mind that i haven’t seen a penny of actual money yet. The MochiAds numbers come in at around $0.30/day … by my calculations, i should see a cheque from them after Tuesday August 4th of this year, roughly foour months from now.

Epilogue

Newgrounds is a site that caters mostly to young boys gettin’ their kicks, with tits n’ guns as their favourite subject matter. Kids’ shows are a favourite target; a conspicuous amount of the Newgrounds games and animations are of the “Kill Barney” variety. This is likely a rite of passage for the age group – putting aside childish things and adopting more “mature” forms of entertainment which include sex and violence. This denouncement of kid content is carried out very literally by having a character violently murder Elmo, or sodomize Thomas the Tank Engine.

It’s not my world. i don’t need to assert my adulthood by creating or watching this kind of content. i get all the sex and violence i need at home: first, by having sex with my wife and creating children, and second, by having said children stomp on my scrotum during independent play time. i need money to feed that family, and to pay for our mortgage, and to afford ice packs to soothe my swooning groin. That’s what Pimp My Game is all about – determining whether i can generate respectable income making original games.

i don’t have time to sit around designing a 7-part animated series about action heroes raping beloved childhood icons. The rewards on Newgrounds are community “glory” and no actual profit.

Newgrounds is not for me. And i’m not even sure it’s a decent also-ran in our growing list of monetization schemes. It’s a portal where content of a certain ilk will get noticed and talked about, while the creators of sanitized casual games should save their efforts for other sites.

Keep watching this feature for more info on monetizing your Flash games! If you missed the other articles, catch the rest of Pimp My Game here!

What i said to parents who were watching was “get involved in kids’ stuff”. The gist was that it’s not difficult to sit on the couch and watch what your kids are playing. i think a lot of parents worry that they won’t understand what’s going on. “Ooh! Video games? No – not for me. i mean, Daniel certainly seems to enjoy them, and i let him play them with his friends sometimes, but i’m usually out here in the dining room knitting toilet paper cozies.”

Survey Says … ?

Enter Microsoft with a survey where 60% of the youthful respondents say they wish their parents would become more involved with gaming:

http://www.joystiq.com/2009/03/06/study-kids-want-their-folks-involved-in-gaming/

This is obviously one of those surveys that Microsoft commissioned hoping it would translate into better XBox 360 game sales for the family demographic they’ve been pursuing (see Family Lame Night, XBox 360 Markets to Stay-At-Home Moms). But it punctuates a persistent peeve of mine. Count the number of times you’ve heard something like this:

i took my kids to see that new movie [Heavy Metal/Watership Down/Fritz the Cat/South Park: Bigger, Longer and Uncut/Final Fantasy/The Simpsons Movie], and i couldn’t believe that it contained [swearing/nudity/violence]. i mean, it’s a cartoon, right? It’s supposed to be for kids.

It reminds me of the time i went to see Taking Care of Business with Charles Grodin and James Belushi (i wasn’t actually with Charles Grodin and James Belushi … they were in the movie). A local radio DJ announced during the afternoon drive that there was nudity in the flick, so the theatre was packed with 12-year-old boys that night. One of them was sitting in front of me, and when Loryn Locklin took off her bikini top and i heard the sound of a hundred tiny erections springing up all around me like popcorn, the kid’s aunt/mother/babysitter shot him a furious look. i heard him whisper, defensively, “What?? i thought it was a comedy!”

It annoys me that people are dumb and confuse the medium with the message. Yes, you can film a claymation porno. Yes, you can print a Bible tract that drops the F-bomb. And yes, you can cram as much gratuitous gore and digital dry-humping and exploding faces into a video game as you can pack onto a DVD. No, you should not take your family to see The Watchmen just because it’s about superheroes, a subject which has traditionally been the territory of pre-pubescent boys. And would you like to know why? Because those boys grow into adulthood and start making cartoons and comic books and video games, yet they somehow haven’t left that pre-pubescent boy mentality behind.

That’s why we have a sequel to Crank, where the protagonist has to continually electrocute himself to keep from dying.

That’s why we have Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories, where you have to bribe picketing factory workers with prostitutes to appease a mob boss.

And that’s why your little boys are growing up borderline mentally retarded, worshipping gun violence and idolizing criminals: because you won’t sit your stupid ass down on the couch and watch what they’re playing.

Don’t let little boys raise your little boys. Get involved in kids’ stuff.

http://www.cbc.ca/consumer/story/2009/01/16/videogames.html

In the case of THIS GUY (points at self with thumbs), excessive gore actually deterred a purchase of Fallout 3, the ultra-bloody sequel to a pair of games i rather enjoyed back in the day, which were free of slow-motion exploding limbs and the opportunity to play as Jeffrey Dahmer.

During the study, researchers used two Half-Life 2 mods: one with heavy gore-porn enemy explosions, and one where foes are telekinetically floated into the air and “de-rezzed”, Tron-style. Most respondents did not rate the violent version of the game as being more enjoyable than the less-violent version. (i say “less violent”, because let’s face it: i would neither want to be exploded nor dissipated into the ether, thank you kindly)

The article goes on to say:

Still, violent content was preferred, though not enjoyed more, by a small subgroup of people who scored high in aggression traits.

This hints at what i’ve been suspecting, and to what large AAA console developers are now responding: GORE is ADORED by a MINORity. This very vocal, very abrasive minority is presently flooding online message boards lamenting the “death of hardcore”, and complaining about games that are built for moms and dogs to enjoy. This is the same minority who aggressively snap to the defense of video games, whenever researchers suggest that games lead to aggression. Irony, anyone?