G-News

The Playstation Store has had it’s weekly update and this time it aint too shabby.

Paradox Interactive announced today that their horror adventure title, Penumbra Black Plague, has gone gold. The title is shipping to stores in the US on February 15 and will be in most stores in Europe on February 15. Simultaneously, the publisher has released two more videos, ‘Atmosphere’ and ‘Flow’, demonstrating the importance of audio and lightning to create a horrifying atmosphere as well as an insight to puzzle solving and the physical interaction needed.

The standard PC version of Penumbra: Black Plague might be hitting stores in February, but those who are interested in the HaptX Edition will unfortunately have to wait until April 16th - this version of the game can be played with the Novint Falcon controller.

Both ‘Atmosphere‘ and ‘Flow‘ require you to go through an age gate to view them, so click on the respective links to view them. You can also get more information about Penumbra Black Plague by clicking here, and view new screens here.

Bioware’s Mass Effect has been popping up everywhere lately. One of the more elaborate Mass Effect spoofs is this YouTube live action video parodying those exploration side quests for the game. It’s got some great B movie flavor to it. I just want to know how they got the costume on the chimp.

From Blu-ray.com:

“National Geographic has confirmed that they will only be releasing high definition titles on the Blu-ray format. The decision to go format exclusive comes after Warner Brothers, the company which distributes their content, decided to go Blu-ray exclusive earlier this month. While no official press release will be issued on the subject by National Geographic, all future releases will fall under this new policy.

The first title to fall under this new policy will be the April release of ‘Sharkwater’ which should get an officially announced soon. National Geographic is the latest studio to switch to Blu-ray exclusivity, and the third to do so under the Warner umbrella (joining ranks with New Line and HBO). The only Warner holdout left is BBC, who remains format neutral and will continue to release on both formats.”

The long awaited/much anticipated/much welcomed release of Rez HD has finally occurred; the game is now available on the Xbox Live Marketplace for 800 Microsoft Points. Chessmaster Live is also now available for 800 points, although I’m going to continue saying that Spyglass Board Games seems like the better option at half the price and with more games included.

Check out yesterday’s post for official descriptions of both games.

Will you be buying either of these new XBLA titles?

Recently NPR (National Public Radio) featured a segment during its Talk of the Nation program with Kay Hymowitz, a writer and lecturer regarding her recent Op Ed piece from City Journal that was cut down and run in a recent Dallas Morning News Sunday Editorial space. Hymowitz espoused her view that something had changed in our society with young men. Something had allowed them to become less driven to fulfill the traditionally defined role of a male adult - namely marriage and procreation - instead she claimed young men in the 20’s and 30’s were delaying true adulthood and commitment favoring instead the proliferation of media like Maxim magazine, 24 hour cartoon channels and video games.

Hymowitz dubbed this new generation of young men with the derogatory title “Child-men”, saying that because of their attraction to these entertainment forms and their seeming lack of strong commitment skills that we had a maturity gap emerging within society. Young men were no longer rushing to the alter or marrying childhood sweethearts and she seems to place the cause of this on games for one. These “Child-men” came to light because she had spoken with a number of young women and these ladies had decried the lack of good candidates for marriage on the traditional timescale.

Now I won’t refute that there has been a change in our society. I won’t argue that people (male and female) seem to be entering into traditional adulthood later with the average of married men aged 30 dropping 27% in the last 30 years, but I think she is examining the results not the causes and placing blame in the wrong place.

Do young men spend 2-3 hours an evening playing video games? Statistically yes, the rise in game play has said as much. Are they doing this in addition to the other “traditional” activities like watching sports or network television? The numbers say they are not. So instead of being the great catalyst of the man-slacker as she infers, I think we’re seeing a transition in the leisure activities and their content.

Hymmowitz writes:

Not so long ago, the average mid-twentysomething had achieved most of adulthood’s milestones—high school degree, financial independence, marriage, and children. These days, he lingers—happily—in a new hybrid state of semi-hormonal adolescence and responsible self-reliance. Decades in unfolding, this limbo may not seem like news to many, but in fact it is to the early twenty-first century what adolescence was to the early twentieth: a momentous sociological development of profound economic and cultural import.

Why is it bad to entertain aspects of childhood in adults? Must becoming an adult be all about responsibility and social pressure and nothing of fun? It seems to me she is judging the behaviors of a generation beyond her with the standards that no longer apply or are in flux. She says to put down the toys and accept your role but why is there no discussion of accepting your role and enjoying the toys along with that? She seems to indicate that these are unrelated possibilities.. that to be a full member of the community you must marry and have children because men do not engage in or become useful to society otherwise.. which seems a narrow view to me and one I see broken in my friends and acquaintances all the time.

I can speak from personal experience here about the changes in society toward marriage and adulthood. I was married at 18, I had my first child by 21. I was a social pariah for many years and both my wife and I suffered social backlash because we had taken a more traditional route to adulthood. Many of our friends waited until their 30’s to even begin dating and having children. Sometimes merely because they felt societal pressure to be successful instead of happy. They placed the drive to be professionals and career focused on the top of the pile before becoming family oriented. In fact it often feels like in this day and age there is a stigma against those who marry young. The change in society is often attributed to the 80’s generation and their career obsession. This has become accepted to a large extent - especially when you consider that those same career obsessed yuppies waited until their mid-30s and beyond to procreate and “embrace adulthood” by Hymowitz’s definition.

Single Young Males, or SYMs, by contrast, often seem to hang out in a playground of drinking, hooking up, playing Halo 3, and, in many cases, underachieving. With them, adulthood looks as though it’s receding.

We see her proclaim that young men needed to put down the controller and grow up. Why is the controller the catalyst here? Isn’t it a good thing that men in society are stepping back from the burden of responsibility that drove many of our forefathers to an early grave and enjoying the fruits of our labor while we labor? Doesn’t this lead to happier men with longer lives because they are not resentful and angry at the responsibilities thrust upon them artificially by a society driving them to reproduce and become cogs in the social wheel?

Why is her ire so squarely focused on men and not women as well? Are these trends any different from the activities of young women who are often unwilling to surrender personal freedoms to be “shackled” by motherhood? The Sex and the City generation who see marriage as an anchor and drag on their personal lives, who embrace disposable relationships and are obsessed with designer clothing?

I think she is only looking at half the equation and drawing erroneous conclusions. She mentions that underachieving is a mark of these “Child-men” but I wonder if she’s using the same scale of achievement as the people she’s analyzing. Maybe we’re seeing a backlash in this generation after living with parents who were so focused on money and personal accomplishment that children were often a check in the box rather than the center of the family’s focus.

Hymowitz also equates the stunted Child-man growth with the emergence and popularity of Maxim and social comedies featuring immature male characters in the vein of The Forty-Year Old Virgin and Knocked Up, but it is her focus on video games that of course is relevant to this editorial.

Nothing attests more to the SYM’s growing economic and cultural might than video games do. Once upon a time, video games were for little boys and girls—well, mostly little boys—who loved their Nintendos so much, the lament went, that they no longer played ball outside. Those boys have grown up to become child-man gamers, turning a niche industry into a $12 billion powerhouse. Men between the ages of 18 and 34 are now the biggest gamers; according to Nielsen Media, almost half—48.2 percent—of American males in that age bracket had used a console during the last quarter of 2006, and did so, on average, two hours and 43 minutes per day. (That’s 13 minutes longer than 12- to 17-year-olds, who evidently have more responsibilities than today’s twentysomethings.) Gaming—online games, as well as news and information about games—often registers as the top category in monthly surveys of Internet usage.

Unfortunately it is with statements like this that Hymowitz shows her cultural bias. She is of a generation before the proliferation and acceptance of gaming as an adult recreation. She admits that in her world view games are a child’s play activity. But the same considerations be said of the Television and its impact on children who grew up during the “Wonder Days” generations of the 50’s and 60’s.

We see entertainment forms change between generations and society adapts. Today most people would laugh if you tried to claim that it was silly for an adult to stop listening to the news on the radio and move over to the television set. We are simply seeing the transition of recreation and the acceptance of video games as a medium for recreation for all ages - just as we accept that fact when we examine television viewing.

Ironically, Hymowitz concludes her editorial with something that bothers me more than it likely should. She claims that Child-men are unable to form long term commitments… but isn’t that a long standing cultural stereotype? The man afraid to commit? How is it related to this latest social crisis? Responsibility is not generally something that comes without pressure and expectations. Then she wraps it all up in broad generalities that honestly apply to both men and women in modern society:

The SYM doesn’t read much, remember, and he certainly doesn’t read anything prescribing personal transformation. The child-man may be into self-mockery; self-reflection is something else entirely.

That’s too bad. Men are “more unfinished as people,” Kunkel has neatly observed. Young men especially need a culture that can help them define worthy aspirations. Adults don’t emerge. They’re made.

Unfortunately, there is some truth in this - literature is not the common entertainment form of this generation - video games, television and the Internet are. However, I don’t think the lack of “Less than Zero” being a cultural icon of the generation’s culture reflects a lack of self-reflection.

Men and women in the 20’s and 30’s all face the same harsh realization and reflection regarding their role in society, their personal goals, hopes and dreams - they just are not happening on the old timescale. We are healthy and prosperous as a society. Men and women are living much longer than even two generations ago because of healthcare advances and societal changes, isn’t it natural that these stages of growth would expand?

I don’t think any generation can sit in judgment on the former or the later with a fair eye. Our society is evolving exponentially as we deal with technological changes at an accelerating rate and it is pressures like that which force us to adapt on a scale unseen at any other point in human history.

Is there really a “Child-man” problem or is this more broad than Hymowitz suggests?

Sony just managed to squeeze this into the month, as promised, but the new PSP firmware – version 3.90 – is now online and brings Skype support with it. To take advantage of the feature, you’ll need a PSP Lite 2000 (the newer model system that has a TV out port) and two peripherals: the PSP Headset and Remote Control. As of now, you have to buy the two individually (Amazon’s got them for $35.98 total), but as the video above lets us know, Sony will soon be releasing the two in one package.

Here are the basic instructions for what to do to get Skype up and running:

• Download and install the 3.90 firmware upgrade to the PSP-2000 system.
• Connect the PSP to the Internet at a Wi-Fi hotspot.
• Attach a PSP Headset and the Remote Control from the PSP-2000 Headphones to the system, and insert a Memory Stick Duo to save the Skype application software.
• Access the Skype/Sign In icon within the Network category of the XMB menu. If you’ve never used Skype on your PC, you can create a free account directly on your PSP. If you already have a Skype account, you can simply enter your username/password.
• To make a call, either access the Contacts icon and click on a name or scroll to the Dial icon and use the keypad.

Simple enough. The video above illustrates exactly how it works, in case you want to take a look. Just be sure that your battery is charged before you try installing the new firmware, otherwise you’ll be stuck waiting for your system to charge like I am right now.

Here’s a game that has “national news” written all over it – Saw, the gruesome film that revolves almost entirely around extreme violence, is set to have a game adaptation of it released in October 2009. Brash Entertainment will be developing the title, which will be running on Unreal Engine 3. That immediately screams of an Xbox 360 and/or PlayStation 3 version of the game, but nothing has been announced on that front as of yet.

You can check out the official website here and opt to get email updates on the game. You can also treat yourself to some pictures of Jigsaw, the movie’s freaky-psychotic-protagonist-clown-on-a-bike… thing.

We really don’t know anything about the game, but we’ll be keeping an eye on this.

Alexander Sliwinski of Joystiq writes:

“Do you wake up in the morning and say to yourself, “Boy, I have all these fabulous clothes, but I don’t know how to wear them in an ensemble?” Perhaps you’ll need to import a Japanese DS title that teaches you how to dress properly. We’re still not exactly sure what the name of game is, but we reckon our trusty comment crew translation squad can help.”

While I admittedly have a fairly limited scope of experience with MMOs, I do know that the Shadowbane team’s decision to completely reboot the game is a rather anomalous event. A post on the game’s official website describes in fairly lengthy fashion just why this is happening.

Here’s an excerpt:

The Shadowbane Team decided that it would be best for the longevity of the game to reset all server and character data and start from scratch. By doing so, the game benefits in a variety of ways. First, we feel the community will be better served by being more consolidated and less fragmented. Second, resetting the game removes items that have accumulated over the years that have caused imbalances to the game. In addition, numerous updates and enhancements have been made to the Shadowbane service to improve the performance. Some of the changes were not as effective due to preexisting data and resetting the service will allow the servers to work under optimal conditions. Finally, this update also gives us a chance to address certain