Two weeks ago, a storm hit this blog.

We interviewed Newsweek reporter N’Gai Croal for a series about black professionals involved with video games, and we selected his comments on the “Resident Evil 5″ trailer for a standalone post.

We knew the post would be contentious. Last summer I had written about my own uneasiness with the trailer and the response to that piece had been spirited.

Croal talked to our writer Tracey John about racial imagery in the trailer. He made a cogent if not airtight argument. The line that drew the most reaction was the one that suggested his gut reflex to first seeing the trailer: “Wow, clearly no one black worked on this game.”

In response, some agreed. Some called him a racist. Some said he was ignoring the legitimate conventions of zombie horror. One person encouraged him to shut up, go to Africa and start overthrowing dictators. And some people produced an old chestnut: “It’s just a video game.”

“It’s just a video game.”

Really?

I don’t think that’s a valid response in 2008.

Not if you care about video games.

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Take-Two chairman Strauss Zelnick, speaking at the 2008 Smid Cap Conference today, is explaining why his company is rejecting EA’s offer to purchase the company for $26/share. In the process, he is detailing Take-Two developers’ past successes, current projects and future opportunities.

Gamers, let me direct you to slide 24 of Zelnick’s presentation, “Potential Untapped Opportunities.”

• Next to “MMOG/Online Gaming” we’ve got “Civilization” and “BioShock” listed under the column “Potential Take-Two Opportunities.

• Next to “Traditional Media (Film/DVD)” we’ve got “BioShock” as a “Potential Take-Two Opportunity.”

So… should those opportunities remain untapped, “BioShock” and “Civ” fans? Or do you want Take-Two to tap away?

At long last I’ve transcribed my GDC interview with Peter Molyneux, head of Lionhead Studios and chief architect of the Xbox 360 fall exclusive “Fable 2.”

I teased a video excerpt earlier this week. Now you can read my conversation with him about:

• What people ask him about at GDC.
• What the most ambitious element of “Fable 2″ is.
• How you can steal his wife in his game.
• How to punish your “Fable 2″ family with an apple pie.
• Why you might want to live in a town called Bloodstone.
• What lessoned he learned not to repeat from “BioShock.“
• How he left me completely perplexed at the end of our interview.

And more! Read on. It’s Molyneux, so, you will be both informed and entertained…

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Today in a conference call held by the Take-Two Interactive to discuss financial results for the first quarter of fiscal 2008, the company revealed that “BioShock 2” will be released in 2009, courtesy of a team that’s not quite the one that made the first “BioShock.”

Ken Levine, lead creator of the original will have a hand in 2009’s “BioShock 2.” Primary development of the game, however, won’t be done by Levine’s team at 2K Boston, but by the newly formed 2K Marin.

“Ken is a terrific asset in the company,” CEO Ben Feder stated. “He’s a brilliant game developer. We’re really excited to have him. He will be working on ‘BioShock 2′ and he will be working on a new IP. A lot of the work will be done at 2K Marin, but that’s not to say that Ken is not involved. We think he’s critical to ‘BioShock’ and he’s critical to new IP in the company.”

On 2K Boston and 2K Australia, the studios behind the first game: “They’re working on another game.”

Other news from Take-Two’s earnings call, including bits about Rockstar and the EA buy-out attempt follow…

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“We have a powerful medium, and we can do more. We should do more, and we may be able to do more than only entertain.”
–Rusel DeMaria, Author/Analyst at GDC 2008

It’s not uncommon for GDC attendees to start scratching off end-of-day sessions after sitting in panels for hours on end. Unfortunately, anyone who decided to passed on DeMaria’s panel as day one of GDC closed missed out.

The ambitious panel asked whether games were capable of achieving more than sheer entertainment, and while everyone there had something interesting to say, it was Gas Powered Games‘ Chris Taylor and 2K Boston’s Ken Levine that found themselves at opposite ends of the spectrum, yet on surprisingly common ground in regard to what designers bring to their games.

Taylor kicked things off with an untold tidbit about his breakthrough RTS game, “Total Annihilation”: he purposely removed blood from its art direction. In his eyes, war wasn’t meant to be cool, and even though his passion was to develop war games, real war involved young soldiers dying and never coming back. He kept this part of the design a secret. “I don’t think anybody cared. I was on my own little thing,” he said.

Later in the panel, Levine would come to defend the use of blood in games from an artistic standpoint. “For the healthy mind, for the thinking mind, the advantage of blood, the advantage of gore, the advantage of keeping it on a level that makes it true is powerful. [In "BioShock"] if you didn’t have that level of pain and realism and nastiness, people wouldn’t think about it.”

Both designers are 41-years old. A key difference between the two, however, is that Taylor is the father of four boys. “As a father, there’s this genetic sort of trigger that [tells me] I have four boys, and when I make games and I come home every night, I want my boys to see my work. It would really suck if they couldn’t see what I did every day. That’s probably got more to do with [my beliefs] than I care to admit,” confessed Taylor.

One of Taylor’s favorite shows growing up was “The Brady Bunch,” but he found himself annoyed with the preachy tone of some episodes. As an adult, he understands why the writers took that route: they were “slipping medicine” to kids in an attempt to give back to society through their creative work. “Here I am, 41, I’m kind of slippin’ a little medicine into my games and I’m hoping that kids will play the stuff that I create and they become better kids.”

On the other hand, there’s Levine. “I’m not the guy you want to look towards for a teaching moment,” he said. Read on to find out why that is.

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A horse is a horse, of course, of course…

But not these horses.

Two weeks ago, we announced our year-long quest to find the Greatest Animal In Video Game History. First, we proposed a list of the best virtual horses and asked you, the readers, to tell us if we missed any. Then comes phase two today: the official vote.

Now this is serious business, folks. For our Blue Ribbon Panel, we went to straight to the top:

• A pretty good game creator – Ken Levine, President and Creative Director of 2K Boston and chief creative force behind the 2007 GOTGOTY

• A pretty good artist — Mike “Gabe” Krahulik, illustrator of the “Penny Arcade” webcomic

• A pretty good writer — Leigh Alexander, editor of Worlds in Motion, writer at Gamasutra and her blog Sexy Videogameland

• A pretty knowledgeable person about animals –Tofuburger, co-founder of cultural phenomenon/funny animal picture blog I Can Has Cheezburger

After weighting each judge’s top three choices — many of which, were, uh, shocking — the winner turned out to be…

Epona from the “Legend of Zelda” series. Pokemon’s Rapidash came in at a close second. The horses from “World of Warcraft” tied with Hannah the Horse from “Zoo Race” for third place.

And the Readers’ Choice winner: Agro from “Shadow of the Colossus.” (Epona was a distant second.)

Are the judges out of touch? Or do they know something the rest of us don’t? They are pros, after all. You’ve got to see what they picked and their justifications (provided in words and pictures). So read on.

Take it away, Ken Levine… Read more…

(UPDATE: More Outlets Added)

Are you also tired about reading other people’s 2007 Game Of The Year lists?

Do you yearn to learn something of greater significance?

Well then I’d like to tell you what the Game Of The Game Of The Year is for 2007. See, in gaming, all accolades are measured as averages. So it is with Metacritic. So it is with the GOTGOTY. It matters not what any single outlet chose as the 2007 Game Of They Year winner was. It matters what, on average, they picked as GOTY.

You will find that out below. And then you will commend us on the wisdom of this new system.

So never mind that everyone isn’t done naming their GOTYs. I am sorry, Game Developers Choice awards, but I can’t wait until late February. I apologize, Interactive Achievement Awards. Early February is too soon as well. My best wishes to the Game Critics Game Of The Year Awards, for which even I participated. EGM, I’m sure you’ll announce your winners someday.

But time’s up and the law of averages is kicking in.

So, which 2007 video game was awarded GOTY status the most times? It was a close call…

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Since Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal is altogether incapable of defeating me in our Vs. Mode exchanges, he is now bringing along some friends: Chris Suellentrop of Slate and Seth Schiesel of the New York Times.

Well, kind of.

He and I are taking a month off from Vs. Mode in order to accept the flattering offer to participate in Slate.com’s first-ever end-of-year Gaming Club. Over at Slate you can read the beginnings of a weeklong debate/discussion about the year’s best video games (and “God Hand“). In year’s past they’ve done this for movies, inviting the biggest names of movie reviewing to talk about the year in film. Now they’re doing the same for games.

Suellentrop kicks off, declaring that “BioShock is not just the best game I played in 2007. I think it’s the best game I’ve ever played.” He cites developer Clint Hocking, stating that the game might not be the medium’s Citizen Kane, but at least a good step toward it.

Then there’s me, once again touting the virtues of “Desktop Tower Defense“:

My critics would be right to point out that there isn’t much of a story in “Desktop Tower Defense.” There is no grandeur. And there is no apparent philosophical critique. “Desktop Tower Defense” does nothing to propel the medium toward a video game Citizen Kane. It simply presents sport. Let’s find room to praise games like that. Has the medium produced a Citizen Kane or a Schindler’s List or even a Jaws? Maybe not. Maybe never. But it sure has created its own basketballs, footballs, and baseballs.

Plenty more where that came from, today and throughout the week, over at Slate.

Enjoy! Count the number of references to Jonathan Blow. And cheer for me to win. That’s the point of a critical exchange, right?

Two weeks in and things are not going as well as I had expected.

I completely understand that 10,000 achievement points in twelve weeks is a bit of a lofty goal, but I figured I’d be able to squeak out about 1,000 points a week for the first 10 weeks, and then be done with a fortnight to spare. It’s not looking like that’s going to happen. But, really, what difference does that make? You’re playing “Halo 3.”

I’ve spent the last two weeks working my way through “BioShock.” While it is easily one of the best games that I’ve played this year, it took me about a week longer than I expected to finish, and I didn’t even get the full 1,000 points, finishing with a respectable 950. I also chalked up a small handful of extra points from the Genesis classic, “Sonic the Hedgehog 2,” and I ended the week with a meagerly fruitful hour or so of “Halo 3.”

My total for the week clocks in at 690, and over the past two weeks I have a total of 1,250 points, which is clearly under my 2,000 point expectation, and which is resulting in me being forced reexamine my gameplay plan for the next 10 weeks.

These are the strategies I used:

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In yesterday’s third round of Vs Mode, Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal trashed the idea of 3D, first-person “Metroid.” Such games shouldn’t exist, he told me.

It was a strong opinion, one I already knew he held. My first temptation was to issue a strong reply.

I reject the idea that any game shouldn’t exist and that any idea shouldn’t at least be tried. But while I offered my own stern words about why I think “Metroid” has been successful in 3D, I thought it was also a good time to talk about the whole break between 2D and 3D gaming, how that affected those of us gamers who didn’t leave the hobby but learned (or consented) to shift our tastes.

N’Gai and I talk about a lot of things in our Final Round today, but if there’s anything I hope gets people speaking, it’s these words that I wrote:

What’s it like to watch a great 2D game series go to 3D, have the masses praise it, and yet see it abandon key aspects in the process? I’m trying to put myself in your shoes which don’t feel altogether unfamiliar. Do we praise this situation or shake our heads? Did no one notice what happened to the “Mario” platforming series? Should anyone mind? None of the three 3D “Mario” games I’ve played (”64,” Sunshine,” or preview versions of “Galaxy“) feels as combative as the old 2D games. This has bugged me. In the “Mario” side-scrollers I was always wading in enemies. I could jump from the top of one enemy to the next, knock down rows of them with Koopa shells, and blitz through a whole bunch while invincible with star power. “Mario” 3D games are desolate by comparison. There are barely any Goombas and Koopas to fight. How many do you get on the screen at once? How many do you see in the average game minute? Very few.
…
There’s a very real argument to be made that something was lost in the transition from 2D to 3D, which is what the Wii’s backers have been happy to talk about. While it’s worth exploring why the transition ruined things for some gamers, I think little has been discussed about why other gamers didn’t lose touch and what kind of tastes may have developed in those of us who stayed hardcore on both sides of the break. What do such gamers have to add to a discussion that so often deals only with the lapsed 2D gamers and the children of the 3D era, to say nothing of the outsider casuals?

The rest of our exchange is posted below, as it is on N’Gai’s “Level Up” blog. He and I will be back at it next month, in our first Vs. Mode dedicated to a handheld game. Read more…

If you’ve been following the exchanges this week between me and N’Gai Croal about “BioShock” and “Metroid Prime 3: Corruption” you may have noticed that he and I had some difficulties.

We had issues with the morality system in “BioShock” and in today’s exchanges explore some other ways the acclaimed game’s developers could have tackled them. For instance, I ask why not make it really hard to be “good”?

But if you’re anything like me you’ll find one sentence below that kind of wipes away all the other ideas. It highlights the “Metroid” problem we’ve had in this exchange. Here’s the comment, from N’Gai’s letter below.

He states:

…the reason that I haven’t gotten further in “Metroid Prime 3″ is that because while the game does many, many terrific and admirable things, “Metroid” is a franchise that should never have made the jump from 2-D third-person to 3-D first-person.

Yes, he said that. Click through for more.

(As always, these exchanges are also on N’Gai’s “Level Up” blog)

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Newsweek’s N’Gai Croal and I continue our debate about “BioShock” and “Metroid Prime 3: Corruption” in today’s second round of Vs. Mode. (Round 1 was yesterday)

And get this: today we actually talk about “Metroid” a bit. In fact, I said…:

…despite my gut instinct that “BioShock” is the better game (it’s more original, more thought-provoking, more heavily populated with awesome Big Daddies), I’ve been more thrilled playing “Metroid Prime 3.” Why? Because “Metroid” games deliver on the empowerment fantasy.

Ah, nothing like quoting yourself out of context. Read on to see what I’m talking about and why N’Gai has some big problems with the “bad” path in “BioShock.”‘

This post is mirrored on N’Gai’s “Level Up” blog. Vs. Mode continues later this week. Also, check today’s bonus Vs. Mode IM exchange, in which I get angry.

(MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!!)

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