My Experience With The New iPad (3)

I'm not a big fan of tablets. I think that the "post-PC' era isn't post-anything. I don't like Apple. Truly, I am a massive curmudgeon. As such, my following, short criticisms of the iPad should be seen through that lens. Still, I hope to explain myself.

I got a chance to play with a new iPad today. The beefiest version of it, loaded with LTE internet access. As is always the case with Apple products, it felt nice to hold. It was firm, with an excellent tactile quality to it that absolutely every other company on the planet lacks.

The screen is very cool. At normal holding distances, the resolution gels in such a way as to make it a perfectly-solid, moving image. Colors and contrast are the best that I've ever seen out of an LCD. In fact, I loved the screen so much, I wish that it was slightly bigger and attached to a laptop.

Other than that, the thing that struck me as I caressed this beautiful thing, and as I swiped around and jumped in and out of programs, is that it is a toy. Pure and simple, it is a toy. I see potential for it to be used for other things (a medical environment really sticks in my mind), but other than potential, it is an expensive toy.

I could never imagine writing on this. Doing graphics work on it. Editing photos. Creating a presentation. Doing deep, serious research. In fact, aside from casual media consumption, I could not see myself using this for much of anything.

That's not to say that I won't ever. The platform works. The platform is popular. With those two variables accounted for, cool things will undoubtedly happen in the future. For example, whether Microsoft, Sony, and Nintendo want to admit it, I think that the New iPad, more than anything else that I have held, screams loud and clear that this is the future of gaming.

Yes, we will always have dedicated gaming systems for people, but that will be a comparable niche. The Playstation Vita, Nintendo 3DS, and any future home gaming systems will need to make massive strides in every element of their business model to compete with this.

This again confirms my belief that tablets are not the future. The argument that they are the future is essentially a marketing pitch, fueled by magazine writers searching for something, anything, to write about. This damned iPad cost nearly $1,000 after all was said and done, thus allowing me to play old Playstation games and browse the web. Both are things that I can do on a $400 laptop... and much more.

I understand that tablets can do many things that laptops aren't terribly good at. They conserve power. They turn on instantly. They can be thrown into a bag more easily. But even then, with a cell phone that sports a 4.5" screen,  I already have a tablet. The always-with-me computer that acts as my clock, planner, navigator, and impromptu gaming device is already with me. I don't need another one.

I wasn't impressed with the iPad, the iPad 2, or any of the two million Android tablets littering the market. They don't feel like a step forward for me; they feel like a step back. A step back to an era when computers were obsolete two days after you bought them and everything about their use was a concession of some sort. I don't want that. It took us a long time to get our computers to the point where they are at, today. The desperate need for the next shiny thing from Apple distracts people from the cheap, useful, powerful tools that modern computers have become. They are epic, life-changing tools. Tablets are not.

And why get up in arms? Why not let people spend their money as they see fit? Because we already are rocking more personal debt than any other country on Earth. We are already consuming more resources than any other country on Earth. It is annoying to see an entire industry geared up to seduce the market with yet another product that it doesn't need, and if sales of Android tablets are any indication, doesn't even really want.

Is The Games/Art Debate Possibly Moot?

In my previous post, I simply uploaded a discussion thread from another website in which I argued that Roger Ebert was correct in saying that a game will never be art. I have perfectly defined what I mean.

A game is a rule set. That's all. It is a rule set applied to corporeal things. Checkers is a rule set applied to small plastic disks and a board. Checkers is not the disks and board themselves. Halo is a rule set applied to digital information and a controller. It's remarkable how this comes back to Wittgenstein so well, because he used this very example in Philosophical Investigations. But where Wittgenstein was concerned with the absolute meaning of the word game, I am only interested in the usage of the word that applies to the sorts of games that we're discussing. Video games must have rules. Truly, the very fact that they are programmed requires underlying rules for the programming itself to work.

So, in this sense, of course games can't be art of any kind, because that's all a game is: rules applied to something. Those rules can be part of art, but not art themselves. A decent example is the game A Force More Powerful, where you overthrow governments with peaceful demonstrations. The game is nothing amazing. It's essentially a real-time-strategy game where you use protesters instead of tanks. But the message the game carries is arguably art.

So now I come to the crux of my post; video games are a medium almost beyond comparison. As technology advances, the rules will always be there, but the experience will become ever-more immersive, allowing for art to come forward. The game is not the art, because the game is not part of the expression, but after awhile, does it become moot?

What I mean to say is, take a sculpture made of stone. Now take a sculpture made of polygons. One is a digital simulacrum, but is no less artistic. The process of creation is identical, only the material has changed. A virtual sculpture can be just as artistic as a real one. The same goes for music in a game, or paintings, or dialog. The rules, and thus the game are not art, but once we get to a point where everything in the game is art, does it become pointless to distinguish between games not being art and games being filled with art? Does it just become more efficient and more sensible to say that the games are art?

I am actually inclined to say so. I consider it beyond contest that rules cannot be art, and as such games cannot be art. But if everything to which the rules apply are art, we might as well not split hairs and just call the game art.

Of Games and Art

I recently participated in a comment thread on Gizmodo instigated by a post about Roger Ebert and his comments about games. Ebert said that games will never by high art, and unlike many of my internet-dwelling, tech-addled, male contemporaries, I agreed.

ME: I still support Ebert. He's right. High art is an expression of the artist. The demands of a game put limits on the artists expression separate from the inherent limitations of any sensory experience. That negates a game ever being high art.

I think games can get very close, but they have to take an increasing degree of control away from the player, reducing its status as a game. Like Myst, which was very artistic, but was nothing more than clicking through images.

HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.: Don't the demands of film put limitations on the artist? How about the demands of prose? The demands of paint on canvas? Any artist is limited by his medium; that doesn't make the final product not art.

ME: @HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.: That's what I mean by the inherent limitations of any expression. For example, I can't express sound with a painting. But INSOFAR as it is a visual expression of an idea, I as the artist have complete control. Even though a game has sounds and visuals, the angle of view, the course of events, the drama are all at the mercy of player control.

High art can be interactive, certainly. In fact many art installation involve interaction, but that interaction is an optional element that communicates something deliberate. The interaction of a game is a requirement, not an option, and as such the interactive element is a non-communicative part of the sensory construct.

KBlack: As Tycho from Penny Arcade said, consider this: how can a few dozen people make art for 4 years and the result not be called art?

Napilopez: You make interesting points, but it's such a difficult thing to assess, that at this point I feel like the argument has devolved into semantics, revolving around the essential question of "what is art?"

I have many ideas to elaborate on for this argument, so as to possibly take pages, but I will try to summarize as best I can while still remaining clear. I don't pretend to be an expert art connoisseur, but I have long thought about this debate. Forgive me if I am not so concise though, as I wrote this as a sort of stream of consciousness.

From my perspective, what I believe your definition of art is, is rather limiting. It limits the number of media through which art is allowed to be expressed, similarly to the way you say games are limiting to an artist's individual expression.

I currently prefer the definition of art as given by wikipedia. "Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging symbolic elements in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect".

Many videogames nowadays do all of this.

Let me start with a rather vague and simple example that will hopefully convey my point. Say an artist wants to convey the theme on individuality and personal choice. Or fun? What better way to convey such a message than through a videogame?

You mention that things such as angle, course of events, and drama are at the mercy of the player in a videogame. Yet in a sculpture, the angle of view is often largely up to the person viewing. In some interactive art pieces, which you have acknowledged as existing, you can control the course of events.

Also, can a medium not be two things at once? Why can videogame not be both entertainment and art? Certainly, entertainment and interaction are necessary constituents of videogames, but the way I see it, those simply help define games as a category of art. And sometimes the inter-category distinctions can become hazy. We define cubism, surrealism, and impressionism by certain characteristics of their presentation or construction, and sometimes these categorical distinctions might seem blurry. As I think you would agree, sometimes art can have a function or role outside of solely being aesthetically pleasing. Is the Sagrada Familia more work of art or church? Furthermore, why does it even matter? That it is such an aesthetic beauty does not significantly remove from it's religious role. Nor form the fact that it is a building, a shelter, a gathering place, and whatever other roles it may play. It's eccentric shapes may not be the best form of for any of these actions, yet it is still regarded as having all the qualities I mentioned. Likewise, videogames can entertain and be aesthetically pleasing at the same time. I disagree with you and hold that a videogame does not by necessity become less entertaining or interactive for being more artistic.

You said that myst was "artistic", but yet was nothing more than clicking through images. In such a case, it's distinctions between art and game are becoming blurry, but I don't that makes it any less of either. Additionally Myst isn't just about clicking through images, it's about clicking through them in the right ways. You cannot complete the game, unless you click the correct images. Clicking through images alone would be nothing more than a slideshow. Additionally, I think there re games that are much more interactive that myst, such as shadow of the colossus or kingdom hearts, that are also much more "artsy" than myst.

Finally, I'd like to assess the point of "high" art. I don't know what your definition of high art is, but I think it's agreeable in a crude sense that it involves those works of art that are placed in the highest regard in a culture, perhaps as a sort of consensus. It might seem like a circular argument, but to me, the simple fact that the subject of this article is being displayed so prominently at MoMa, one of the most renown institutios for the display of modern art, demonstrates that videogames can be high art.

If art is indeed about using deliberately placing elements to affect the senses, emotions, or intellect, then I do not see how interaction takes away from that, and in fact I believe it usually strengthens it. Even though videogames are made to allow human interaction, all the elements the player interacts with are deliberately placed by the developers. In my opinion, a videogame, as art, is both medium and "synergistic container". Medium, by being able to affect emotions through the happenings in the game. What does it matter if it happens slightly differently for each player, if they will still generally be receiving the same themes, going through the same story? "Synergistic Container" in the sense that it brings together different kinds of art. In the way a movie brings together static images, kinetic ones, and music, videogames can do all this and more.

Wow that was much longer than I thought lol.

Joonbug: @napilopez: I will write more on this to address your points as I'm on a time constraint at the moment, but just a few things:

Art isn't just about the aesthetics.

High Art (think Velazquez' "Las Meninas" and the interpretations thereof, or Courbet's "The Painter's Studio", or even Balthus' works) is about the complexity and nuance of the works, as opposed to Low Art which is immediate, shallow (WYSIWYG).

As a container and medium, it's not that the elements that consist of 'video games' (which is an extremely broad amalgam of technology) cannot be used as "art" -- look at Nam Jun Paik's works in pushing the boundaries of performance/video art -- but that it has yet to break the mold of its own devising in narrative, interpretation, and experience.

Even though a painting only has two dimensions and by nature is limited in the way you physically view it, the fact that there can be multitudes of interpretation and understanding beyond the physical attributes (color, style, composition) into the metaphysical (theme, allegory, emotions) is what makes it so amazing (with that said, we as the public look at art with a very reactionary, immediate perspective which is a goddamn shame).

Games have yet to give that sense of awe or resonance in my soul.

True art is hard. It takes complete dedication from an individual to create something that speaks to the contemporary yet transcends the time, place, and culture.

CommanderK: @Joonbug: And this is why most movies, and most books are also NOT art.

They don't really transcent time and place.

Video games have the potential, but I think that too much has to be taken away from the player in terms of what we expect in a game, to make them more like art.

A game is primarily for competition. Art is primarily for reflection.

Boundaries are blurry, but you won't find Final Fantasy VII in an art museum. Hell, Final Fantasy VII hasn't even aged very well. It's slow, the graphics, like most 3D games, don't age well, and the story, as moving as it was to a 13 year old (my age when I played it) is really kind of weak compared to what we consider good literature or good cinema.

Video Games are amazing fun, but the primary reason for creation, is for profit these days.

HeartBurnKid: Agent of R.O.A.C.H.: @Aaron Martin-Colby: Prose has a similar element, as it's up to the reader to imagine the visual element from the description he's given. In fact, I'd say a video game is the opposite of a novel in that way; whereas a novel supplies the narrative, and relies on the reader to supply the visuals, a game provides the visuals and the environment, and relies on the player to move the narrative forward.

ME: @KBlack: I'm not saying that it isn't art. I'm saying that Roger Ebert was right in saying that it's not HIGH art.

ME: @napilopez: I agree that we're getting tied up with words. I am not referring to art. I am referring to HIGH art. The perfection of artistic expression. There's some stuff on this in Wikipedia under High Culture. High art is the communication of something through a particular medium, while being limited only by the nature of that medium, nothing else.

All aspects of high art are communicative. Every aspect says something that the artist wants to say. A good analogy would be an illustration for a book. It can never be high art because it must necessarily communicate what it is

illustrating. Compare this to the works of Jackson Pollock, which wildly explore the potential of the visual medium.

"your definition of art is, is rather limiting. It limits the number of media through which art is allowed to be expressed."

I completely admit to that. High art does have a limited number of mediums through which it can be expressed. For example, painting, performance art, and music can all be high art, but architecture cannot. Architecture must achieve some end, be it heat, shelter, defense, or acoustics. Architecture as high art simply becomes sculpture.

"Say an artist wants to convey the theme on individuality and personal choice. Or fun? What better way to convey such a message than through a videogame?"

You're right, but say an artist wants to convey loss of control. They cannot do that within a game, because control is part of the game. Imagine a game where people always lose. It ceases to be a game at this point. That boundary of expression, beyond which it ceases to be a game, prevents games from being high art. Moreover, the fact that the artist chose a game to communicate something means that the game is not iself art, but part of an over-arching artistc construct. The artist made the explicit decision to say something with a game, but it is the expression, not the game that is high art. In the same way that a wonderful painting is not necessarily high art, only if that painting is part of a statement. For example, if I copy, stroke for stroke, Leonardo's "Madonna of the Rocks," it is not high art, but Leonardo's original is.

"You mention that things such as angle, course of events, and drama are at the mercy of the player in a videogame.

Yet in a sculpture, the angle of view is often largely up to the person viewing. In some interactive art pieces, which you have acknowledged as existing, you can control the course of events."

This is an interesting point. PARTS OF a game can be high art, but that's because they are virtual analogs of high art in the real world. A sculpture in a game can be high art just as a sculpture in real life can be high art. But that is not the game. The gestalt of the game cannot be high art in the way that the gestalt of a movie can be high art, though.

I do acknowledge the existence of interactive art, but that interactivity is part of the art. The artist is saying something explicit with the art insofar as it is interactive. The artist can take the interactivity away to say something else and it remains art. Take the interactivity away from a game and it ceases being a game.

"As I think you would agree, sometimes art can have a function or role outside of solely being aesthetically pleasing."

I vehemently disagree. In fact, high art is the absolute antithesis of this. High art, by definition, exists for its own sake. It is in this way that I go so far as to say that many, if not most, movies do not achieve high art, because they are themselves beholden to the requirement of entertainment. When movies become completely artistic, they can easily turn into bizzare audio-visual contructs like "Un Chien Andalou" by Salvador Dali, or some of the works of early Soviet directors like Sergei Eisenstein, who in movies like "October," used the medium almost exclusively to communicate abstract concepts through images. More modern movies like David Lynch's "Eraserhead" fit this bill rather well, too. But this is beyond the point. We are discussing the inherent limits of an endeavor, and movies have proven that they CAN BE high art, even if most are not.

"Is the Sagrada Familia more work of art or church?"

It doesn't matter. It is certainly a work of art, but it is not high art. It has a purpose outside of the art.

"I disagree with you and hold that a videogame does not by necessity become less entertaining or interactive for being more artistic."

We do not disagree. I'm saying that as a game moves closer towards HIGH art, it must necessarily become less a video game because the transition to high art requires the perfection of the artistic expression. A game can be incredibly artistic, much like a building can have incredibly artistic flourishes, but the gestalt of the game, same as the building, cannot be high art because it does not exist for its own sake.

PARTS OF the game can conceivably be high art, much as a sculpture adorning the outside of a building can be high art, but we're not arguing about the textures, or the 3d models in the game, which are just virtual representations of things that are certainly high art, namely painting and scuplpting.

"I think there re games that are much more interactive that myst, such as shadow of the colossus or kingdom hearts, that are also much more "artsy" than myst."

I used Myst to illustrate that it was closer to high art than games with higher degrees of control. It is still NOT high art, but since the angles and positions were all pre-chosen and rendered by the programmers, Myst is closer to high art than a game like Halo, which provides freedom that exceeds the expectations of the programmer. For example, in Halo, I can break out of the game map and wander around in un-programmed nether space outside of the map. This is impossible in a painting or music. I cannot break out of what the artist intended me to see.

Even high art that is interactive, if I succesfully break out of the pre-programmed area, its status as high art is not lost because the very control that allowed me to break out is PART OF the art. In Halo, the control was required to maintain its status as a game.

"Finally, I'd like to assess the point of "high" art. I don't know what your definition of high art is, but I think it's agreeable in a crude sense that it involves those works of art that are placed in the highest regard in a culture, perhaps as a sort of consensus. It might seem like a circular argument, but to me, the simple fact that the subject of this article is being displayed so prominently at MoMa, one of the most renown institutios for the display of modern art, demonstrates that videogames can be high art."

High art is art that exists for its own sake. That is essentially the definition of high art. Cultural acceptance or recognition has nothing to do with it, since high art is frequently seen as trash by the culture that spawned it, and only recognized as masterworks years, or even generations later.

"It might seem like a circular argument, but to me, the simple fact that the subject of this article is being displayed so prominently at MoMa, one of the most renown institutios for the display of modern art, demonstrates that videogames can be high art."

Yes, but the fact that it is a game is saying something explicit. He could have said what he wanted to say in some other way, but he chose a game. That means that the control itself MEANS SOMETHING outside of simply being a game. It stops being merely a video game and becomes an interactive art installation. Ubisoft does not have the choice of making the next Splinter Cell as something other than a game, like, say, an enormous flip-book.

Similarly, I can take a game like Halo and present it as art, but it's not the game that I want to communicate. As the artist, I'm saying that something about this is art to me, and I am trying to communicate that. Perhaps it's the time in which the game was made. Perhaps I want to make a statement about agression. Regardless, the art lies above the game in this scenario where the game merely becomes part of the greater statement.

"If art is indeed about using deliberately placing elements to affect the senses, emotions, or intellect, then I do not see how interaction takes away from that, and in fact I believe it usually strengthens it. Even though videogames are made to allow human interaction, all the elements the player interacts with are deliberately placed by the developers. In my opinion, a videogame, as art, is both medium and "synergistic container". Medium, by being able to affect emotions through the happenings in the game. What does it matter if it happens slightly differently for each player, if they will still generally be receiving the same themes, going through the same story?"

The interaction can certainly strengthen certain things, but the fact that the interaction is REQUIRED negates games as a perfectly communicative medium. The fact that every person experiences the game differently, while seemingly innocuous,is actually the killing blow to games as high art. Unless that difference in experience is purposely put in, it's not high art. High art requires the, at least, theoretical perfection of an expression. Because games require interaction, that theoretical limit is negated.

Love for the Nintendo Wii.

I Love the Nintendo Wii. I don't play it very often, but I love it. I love it because it is a video game system. You play games on it. You don't stream movies, or sign into massive online communities of eight-year-olds that can destroy you in Halo. You don't form Nintendo guilds of people who all play Mario together online. You just play a fucking game.

I love the success of the Wii because I see it as a celebration and vindication of the GAME. Microsoft and Sony, and even PC developers like Blizzard with World of Warcraft, have abandoned the casual gamer. The gamer who isn't willing to dedicate hundreds of hours of game time and spend stupid amounts of money on the "it" games every month.

I've felt so abandoned by the companies. I don't want to join guilds to avoid shit-head teenagers in online Gears of War matches. I don't want to spend nine hours raiding in Warcraft to get any good equipment. I don't want to play nothing but another damned first person shooter when one comes out every fucking month.

And I don't with Nintendo. They keep me rooted in the 1980's and 90's, when I simply bought a game, put it in, and played. No signing in. No leader boards dominated by guys against whom I have ZERO chance. That's what I like. You cannot just put a game into the Xbox. You cannot simply open a save file. You cannot simply jump in and out of games. Oh no! You need to create an avatar, and an Xbox Live name, and sign into the Xbox to access any save files. And if you're playing multiplayer, the person who originally signed in and pressed "start" must then be the person who signs in and presses start every time you start the game if you want to access the save file. Why not just have a simple save file that anyone can play? Because Microsoft wants to remove as much control as possible from you, because they've got designs on turning the Xbox into a set-top-box and being the Apple of the living room, where you control nothing, they control everything, and they charge you lots of money for it.

I think it no surprise, then, that Wii is outselling everyone else combined, and that I and all of my friends with whom I remember playing games back in the 80's and 90's all primarily play the Wii. I only have one friend who plays the Xbox primarily, and he is that super-gamer. He buys and sells games by the dozens every year, belongs to a gaming clan, and lives on Xbox Live. My Xbox isn't even connected to the internet and all I play is Street Fighter IV. Is the Wii for that hardcore gamer? No. Not nearly enough shooters (he says with a sly sarcasm). Obviously, Microsoft has found a model that works very well for that market. That market loves the network, the leaderboards, the sign-ins, and all of the other trappings of the Xbox. I don't. Those very same trappings do nothing but piss me off.

I could spin that market negatively. For example, World of Warcraft. The people there are similar to the people on Xbox Live. They're hardcore and the Warcraft world is their world. They derive a great deal of satisfaction, self confidence, and social interaction from this world. Is that necessarily a bad thing? Not at all. But when someone who doesn't mesh with that world comes in, they clash. Do you remember the movie Christine? It's Stephen King's evil car story. Basically, an evil car is purchased by this timid, teenaged milquetoast, and he begins to become infected by it and turns into a total asshole. One of the underlying themes is that the car didn't actually infect or possess him, thus turning him into an asshole, it's that the kid was always an asshole, he was just too much of a coward to let it come out. Emboldened with his car, we discover that the kid was never a nice kid, and our earlier empathy is replaced with disgust.

Think of World of Warcraft and other online games as Christine. There are very few nice twelve-year-olds, so just imagine the pricks that they turn into when given an epic fantasy world. As such, the consistency of this fantasy world is important. They feel badass, here, and when that is threatened, they get angry (I'm here referring to not only the tweens and teens, but anyone with that profile). I'm reminded of this trenchant comic by the guys over at Penny Arcade.


So yeah, as I think I've explained, the ever-growing online world is one that has basically abandoned me. Instead of playing World of Warcraft, I play through Final Fantasy V for the tenth time. Instead of playing Bioshock II, I play Doom II. The only new games that I'm playing are New Mario, Mario Galaxy, and Street Fighter IV. Games that have basically been around since the beginning of games.

I like games. I LOVE games. And that's why I like Nintendo. They're a game company. They make games. I appreciate that and their quasi-old-style view of the industry very much. Go Nintendo.

Video Games and Art

Roger Ebert has recently apologized for saying that video games can never be high art. I have no idea why.

He's right, 100%. Video games can never be high art as a function of their nature as video games.

A good example of this is the Halo games and Halo books. I was a HUGE halo player back in the day, so I read some of the Halo books. In the books, the star, the Master Chief, also the character that the player controls, is a near-unstoppable juggernaut who can run 50mph, lift cars, and pull off Matrix-like movies. In the game, he can barely keep up with ordinary soldiers, and if he kills enough of his own guys, they turn into super-soldiers and kill him.

Why the difference? Because the perfect narrative of the book allows things that the game doesn't. This isn't a deficit that better game design is going to overcome. The game will always be limited by the interactive aspect, which necessitates rules and consistency. A purely artistic narrative allows things like Finnegan's Wake. Just imagine something like that as a game!

Games as far as the narrative goes can be high art, but that's not the game, that's the controlled narrative. Games can be artistic, but there's a huge difference between artistic and high art. High art is the perfected expression of the artist, something that rules and controls render impossible.

Roger Ebert Apologizes: 'I Was A Fool For Mentioning Video Games' (The Huffington Post)

MMORPG Economics

I'm always saying that the various online games are stuck in the old economics of game play. Namely, they're still operating on the concept that you make a game, package it on some kind of medium, sell it, and then count your money. Even World of Warcraft is basically that. The only difference is that you then have to pay for access to a service.

Dungeons and Dragons Online has discovered the profits possible from opening the game entirely. Previously, they were trying to operate under the same business model as WoW, which I thought was dumb then, and has since been proven to be dumb. D&D-O was heading towards oblivion until they opened the game, which immediately sent user numbers through the roof.

Still, they then followed Farmville and any number of games from Aeria in a business model built on restricting access to certain parts of the game unless you pay up. I've nailed why this doesn't work, and why Farmville and all of Zynga makes almost none of their money from direct sales, all the while gold and items in World of Warcraft sell for, in some cases, hundreds of dollars.

In WoW, everything people are buying is attainable in-game. When someone buys, there's no way to tell if they bought their way through or if they earned it. That's important. In Farmville, many items can only be purchased with real money, they thus hold no value since they represent nothing but the money behind them.

And that's the key. When something is only attainable with money, they have no opportunity cost in the game. Obviously, classic opportunity cost applies, but not virtual. In WoW, for example, you want the Sword of a Thousand Truths. You can look up online and find that you need to go through a long quest called a raid to get it. You have a 10% chance of getting it on any given raid. The raid takes 3 hours to complete. That means that you can decide if buying the item is worth a possible 300 hours of game time required to get the item in-game.

Everything or nearly everything must be accessible in-game. Only then can a user apply a value to the things for which you are charging. The developer cannot lock up anything behind money or its value becomes nebulous.

WoW may want to consider this. They need to do something, because the population appears to have plateaued at about 11-12 million.

Results From Dungeons & Dragons Online Going Free: Revenue Up 500% (TechDirt.com)
World of Warcraft- Population 11.5 Million and shrinking? (RecklessGamer.net)

Oh, Men. What Will We Do With You?

This game doesn't euphemize at all. You don't even have to know what it's about and you know that it's meant for men. Big, hulking, bald men with big guns and big "guns," and women in battle bikinis with big guns and big "guns." I guess, kudos to them for knowing their market.

Lego: Helping Pedophiles Get Kids For Fifty Years.

Happy 50th LEGO! The first set I remember clearly was the big-ass castle set from the 1980's. Not the very first one, but the second one. I remember that it came in a big bucket and that I lost huge chunks of it within about five minutes of getting it. We got the original King's Castle not too long after that, but we started with what I think was the Black Falcon's Castle.

I don't know about any of you, but Lego has remained an interest of mine straight into adulthood. I love playing with Legos. I usually buy one set, maybe two, every year. Just for the sake of putting them together.

We had the castle and that was pretty badass, but I really wanted more. I don't blame my parents for not buying them. I was craptacular at that age and would have immediately broken/lost/eaten half the bits. I also would have left them lying about, pointy-and-really-friggin-painful side up, in the dark, in the middle of rooms. That way I could best hurt my barefoot parents at night. And OOOOOOooooohhhhh how I wanted that space monorail! 80's children, you know what I'm talking about.

Yeah, that monorail caused almost as many wet dreams in the 80's as Farrah Fawcett draped over that Lamborghini. It was kiddy-porn for the actual kiddy. Everyone wanted it. kids at school lied about having it. The one kid who had it was a huge geek no one liked, so no one knew he had it. Truth be told, my favorite kits were the pirate kits released in the late 80's. We had about 5 million pirate bits. I adored my pirate boat, my hideout, and my small pirate island. I had a whole friggin' pirate universe scattered about my floor. It was as glorious as it sounds.

On a side note, the two guys on the 4011 "Cabin Cruiser," yeah, they're totally gay.

1991 was also the year that Legos started becoming crack. They started kicking up their box design and introducing various sub-brands aside from just line names and "Legoland." They introduced Lego System, and around that time started really beefing up their general toy design. The monorail was only the beginning. Technic came out in '92, but I was never really taken with it. Don't know why. In retrospect, it was pretty badass. Probably because it didn't have some story to go along with it. Instead, all the new pirate releases were what got added to the growing Lego minefield on my floor.

It was around that time I kind of lost interest in Legos. I moved on to a few other, more complex building sets that allowed me to do more and feel a bit more adult. Erector sets, with their cool metal parts, are what really drew me away. But ohhhh man, back in my highschool days, I got drawn back in a big way when Lego introduced the first Mindstorms kit, HOLD ME BACK! Christ Almighty, it was expensive though.

I got to play with one at school, but that was it until a year or so later, 1999, I think, my parents got me the Star Wars AT-AT walker. Imagine my dismay when I discovered that it wasn't really a robot. Weee! I can shine a flashlight at it and have it move! This is fucking AMAZING! I wanted the badass kit you could program. Blasted thing of course had to cost, like, $300. Did you have $300 just kicking around at 17/18ish? If you did, I hate you. You probably had the kit and was one of those fuckers I never saw at school because you were too busy at home doing cool shit. Like have a robot walk... around... and maybe pick something up. Ohhhh yeah. Good stuff.

My love affair continues. I got a kit in my stocking for Christmas. A little race car. It was good.

Gotta' Love MIT

Them geeks never fail to impress.

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