video game culture

Why Isn’t There A Video Game About The Notebook?

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Love is the most popular subject matter in virtually every medium across every culture. Much of the music we listen to, television shows we watch and books we read deal with the subjects of love, dating and romance. Personally, I’m a sucker for a good love song, though I can pass on most chick flicks and romance novels.

With that said, where are the video games about love, dating and romance? Why hasn’t the most universal subject matter made a splash in the medium of video games? I acknowledge the fact that Mass Effect has a relationship mechanic, but its a small part in a big game about shooting aliens. Final Fantasy VIII tells a love story, but its wrapped around a fantasy world where you kill monsters and level up. I am also aware of the dating simulators in Japan, but cultural differences wouldn’t allow for direct ports of those games to other regions. My question is, where is the video game equivalent of The Notebook?

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I’d Raging Demon For These Akuma Kicks

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Last year at the Clash of the Customizers shoe battle, Diversitile designed these Nike Dunks with Street Fighter’s Akuma serving as the inspiration. I may have a huge bias towards these shoes, due to the fact that Akuma is my favourite Street Fighter character, but these shoes are hot.

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Super Street Fighter IV’s Absence On PC and the Bigger Discussion About Piracy

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For all of those PC gamers anxiously awaiting the follow-up to the great PC Street Fighter IV port, you’re out of luck. A few days ago, Capcom Producer Yoshinori Ono during an interview with 4gamer revealed that there are no plans to bring Super Street Fighter IV to the PC due to piracy. Even though the original sold great, it also was a pirate favourite.

I know there are a lot of people who feel that video game piracy is a victimless crime because they feel like they’re only one person taking a product away from a faceless, multi-billion dollar corporation. However, there are consequences to pirating, and this is one of them. Not only does it hurt legitimate gamers that actually wanted to pay for it, but now pirates can’t even pirate it.

Don’t blame Capcom for this. They’re not here to just give away all of their work for us to enjoy. They run a business, and their purpose as a business is to make money. Releasing that type of game on the platform that is a pirate-haven such as the PC has proven time and time again to be bad business. I’m sure that the potential sales they lost due to piracy far outweighs the money they made on legitimate sales. To be honest, from a business perspective, I don’t know why any major companies would want to put out their big budget games in the traditional fashion on PC.

Where paying gamers can complain is the fact that Capcom doesn’t want to distribute this digitally through a protected system like Steam, which they feel is unfair to gamers who don’t have the service and limiting to gamers. Maybe someday they’ll change their mind on this decision.

Say what you will about much cheaper it is to pirate games rather than pay for them, but this is the end result of rampant piracy. The catalogue from which to pirate from will disappear and everyone loses. I sympathize for the PC only crowd that would have to buy new hardware to play Super Street Fighter IV in some form. As for the pirates that ruined everything…

In Third Person Gets Featured on Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog

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Getting featured on the front page of WordPress.com was awesome. Getting featured on the Marquette University Law School Faculty Blog? Highly unexpected, but also awesome. Why would a university law school want anything to do with In Third Person?

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Let’s Talk About Collector’s Editions of Video Games

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Back in 2007, the hype surrounding Halo 3 was massive. This was going to be the biggest and best-selling media launch of all-time. In particular, the hardest of hardcore gamers were salivating over the Legendary Edition of Halo 3, which featured of all things, a miniature replica of Master Chief’s helmet. Video game collector’s editions were still new at the time, and we’d never seen anything this epic (or expensive) before.

Part of the appeal in the Legendary Edition was the fact that it was supposed to be super rare. Instead, it stands as one of the biggest jokes in the short history of video game collector’s editions. I can name multiple stores in my city that have these in stock right now, collecting dust on the shelf at 1/3 of the original asking price. Even at that price point, retailers still can’t rid of them. If you paid $150 for it at launch in hopes of getting something truly special, I bet you’re bitter that the monetary and financial value of this set has dropped dramatically.

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Video Game Characters Worth Dating If They Existed In Real Life

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Months after I posted my initial impressions of Mass Effect 2, this post continues to drive a lot of traffic to my site. Not because people want to read about how the game plays, but because they want to find sexy pictures of Shepherd’s crew member and possible love interest, Miranda. I know this because my search engine metrics always have Miranda’s name at or near the top of the list. I am well aware of the stigma that goes with those who are attracted to fictional, digitized characters. If you’re here for those reasons, I’m not here to judge.

Instead, I thought it would be fun to write about video game characters worth dating if they existed in real life. Video game characters of male, female, robot, alien or whatever orientation are often hyper–sexualized in appearance, but are paper thin in terms of character and personality. Most characters would make for a great fling, but a terrible significant other. With this post, I wanted to highlight a few characters that may be worth more than a one night stand.

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Hiding My Video Game ‘Shame’

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Imagine yourself at a job interview. You’re nearing the end of the process, and this question (or a version of it) is asked to you: “What do you do in your spare time?”

I’m all for pushing towards mass acceptance of the video game medium, but would you tell this potential employer that you play video games? Having been through a number of interviews at ad agencies over the past year, I can tell you exactly what I say. I start by saying that I like to spend time with my family. Then I talk about how I play musical instruments. Then I talk about how I like to blog. Then, should the employer want to know more, I mention video games in passing, usually in the context of, “The video game Rock Band helped me learn how to play real drums.” All of these statements are true, but I admit to being a bit…selective.

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Girlfriend Gaming: Knockin’ Boots

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Usually, when I’m in the car alone, I listen to video game podcasts. I usually spend about two hours a day driving, so it’s a great time to catch up on the latest and greatest in gaming. When my girlfriend is in the car though, I recognize that she doesn’t care to listen to nerds talking about StarCraft II or NPD sales.

She has listened to a few episodes of the Giant Bombcast, which she does enjoy to some extent. However, there is one sort of gaming podcast that she absolutely loves to listen to and one we now listen to together: Game Scoop! Presents Knockin’ Boots.

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Labour Day Special: Games About Working Real-Life Jobs

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Labour Day weekend is meant to be a day where we celebrate the economic and social achievements of workers. As far as video games go, regular occupations in video games include space marine, normal boy who doesn’t know he’s destined to save the world and all-powerful  being with the ability to create farms from the heavens.

The following post highlights a few games worthy of a Labour Day of their own. These video games bravely go into the real-world for inspiration and do their best to make ‘every day’ jobs fun.

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Fan Expo Day 3: Victory Lap

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Unlike the first two days of the show, there weren’t any must-do events or things we needed to do driving us to the show. Having completed all of that stuff in the last two days, we figured our final day at the expo would be a victory lap of sorts. We’d take on the day as it comes and enjoy what was left at the show.

Because of this, we didn’t rush to get there. We arrived just as the doors were opening. Not the best move. This time, the lineup literally wrapped around the block, and was more than double the length of the line we stood in the day before.

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