‘Videogame’ Is One Word

A short passage from the Qur’an finds its way into a game – in seemingly innocent, artistic circumstances – and the (videogame) world goes properly mental.

I don’t quite understand the current furor over the Little BIG Planet ”scandal”.  Fair enough, we don’t have many (i.e. any) mainstream games tootling out Christian hymns on a regular basis.  But it’s a bit beyond me why this particular incident has caused quite the stir it has.

It seems no-one still knows exactly what the sung passage from the Qur’an actually translates as.  But, assuming common sense prevents its meaning from being twisted into something vaguely perceptable as inflammatory, I don’t have any issue with this – as a gamer – whatsoever.

However, in perspective, there’s a question of context and appropriateness here.  And I think it’s that aspect which, ultimately, has compelled Sony to withdraw the game and ask creators Media Molecule to substitute the content in question.

So, finally – and some might fairly say “inevitably” – after almost 2 years of near-faultless videogaming on a first generation Xbox 360, those dreaded three lights have appeared.  And this time they won’t go away again.

I had my first encounter with Microsoft’s infernal “red ring” about 6 weeks ago, in the middle of playing then-recently-purchased Burnout Paradise.  It’s quite a weird thing when it happens, driving around one moment before the 360 lets out a screech of pain as everything comes to a sudden, flickering stop.  (Interesting faux moire effect from the crashed graphics buffer, too.)

So you get up, switch the machine off and switch it back on again, praying it was just a software glitch.  But, after a moment’s normal boot process, there they flash.  Like tiny crimson prophets of videogaming doom.  You hastily switch the machine off again, give a it few minutes to calm down and try again.  And on that occasion, it did come back to life for me.

I phoned Microsoft immediately anyway, just to report it.  They advised me to try the cache clearing trick, which seemed to drag a few more weeks’ sporadic use out of the machine.  But it finally crapped out again for good on Friday night, when I’d invited a friend over especially for some gaming.  Fortunately, my Dreamcast has never had any such issues, so Under Defeat, Virtua Fighter 3tb and Soul Calibur all got a good airing instead.

Satruday morning, on the phone, they assure me it’ll be fixed “in 2-3 weeks” at no cost.  Strip it of all cables, controllers and harddrives; “send nothing but the base unit” they said.  No charge for postage either, which is nice; didn’t wait for me to arrange a convenient collection time either though, which is slightly stupid.

So I have the big, cardboard-wrapped brick – all ~3.5 kilos of it – on my desk at work now, awaiting a second collection attempt.  Fingers crossed I’ll be furnished with at least a latest-generation DVD drive, if not a completely new main board too.  In some ways I’m quite glad the machine’s carked it, as it was insufferably noisy and should be a lot quieter with the updated hardware.  It’s more than slightly ridiculous when you can’t hear the game you’re quietly trying to play, while your kids sleep upstairs and your wife is watching Katy Price and Peter Andre flap about in the next room, but can’t make out the game’s audio for the turbine under the telly.

With the unveiling of the new DSi, a cut-and-shut update to Nintendo’s deservingly popular dual-screen handheld, Nintendo have announced they are – after 20 years of manufacturing portable consoles – introducing region locking to their software.

Why?  Having been the bastion of the hardcore for so long via the Game Boy line of machines, why Nintendo suddenly sees fit to artificially lock out buyers from different territories seems utterly ridiculous.  It doesn’t matter how you spin it: a sale is a sale is a sale.

Now, granted, the amount of profit platform holders like Nintendo can skim off the top of each sale is known to fluctuate quite wildly between retail territories.  This has always been the case and I’m not going on some “rip-off Britain” crusade with it here either.  If you don’t like it, sell your consoles, because nothing’s changed in the 20 years I’ve been playing videogames.

What’s most beguiling about this is that, in this pathetic effort to defeat “lost sales” via grey importers short-circuiting (often painfully) staggered territorial releases, companies like Nintendo are actually accellerating the problem.  They’re also contributing directly to mass piracy.  If you, as a publisher, can’t – or simply don’t care to – properly organise worldwide software releases, your potential customers will not wait.