December 1994
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december 1994 GAME DEVELOPER MAGAZINE GAME PLAN GGAMEAEM A Rant Editor Larry O’Brien [email protected] on Ratings Senior Editor Nicole Freeman [email protected] Production Editors Barbara Hanscome [email protected] “The true danger is when liberty is nibbled the software companies. So much for the Nicole Claro away, for expedience, and by parts.” garage-based entrepreneurs trying to pull [email protected] —Edmund Burke themselves up by their bootstraps with Editorial Assistant Diane Anderson shareware games. [email protected] ating systems are crap. With the Rating systems impede creativity. Contributing Editors Alex Dunne entire entertainment industry They do so in a perverse way, where bru- [email protected] rolling over whenever Congress talities are traded off against each other. I David Sieks [email protected] calls a hearing, it’s fallen on us can personally attest to the kinds of dis- Wayne Sikes to denounce these initiatives for cussions that happen all the time in Holly- [email protected] what they are—cynical postur- wood: “Page 48, you’ve got the forcible Editor-at-Large Alexander Antoniades ing and electioneering with no injection of drugs. That’s an X, rewrite it. [email protected] substance. Rating systems, Page 72—the rape scene. That’s O.K.” Rwhether for movies, television, video This dehumanization is fine, that dehu- Cover Photography Charles Ingram Photography games, or any other form of communica- manization isn’t, let’s do lunch. tion, don’t work, cost money, and impede But the refrain is always, “We need Publisher Veronica Constanza creativity. Everyone at those hearings, ratings systems to control what our chil- Group Director Regina Starr Ridley politicians and witnesses alike, knows that. dren are exposed to.” A parent in a video But there’s nothing politicians love more store once told me that her child might Advertising Sales Staff than “standing up for the family” and want to see R movies, but when she says West/Southwest blaming America’s cultural violence on no, the child knew not to argue. The Yvonne Labat (415) 905-2353 Hollywood. So the entertainment indus- corollary, I imagine, is that when she says [email protected] New England/Midwest try submissively pisses all over itself and no to a PG movie, the child argues. The proposes “voluntary” systems from the favorite argument of “but all the other kids Kristin Morgan (212) 626-2498 [email protected] pathetic to the laughable. are watching it” is used by the child to What are rating systems supposed to subvert the very point of the rating system. Marketing Manager Susan McDonald do? Curb the glorification of violence and And ultimately, the incident holds Art Director/Marketing Christopher H. Clarke sex. But “glorification” cannot be quanti- the right answer to controlling what chil- Advertising Production Coordinator Denise Temple fied. Which of the movies True Lies, Nat- dren are exposed to. Parents should Director of Production Andrew A. Mickus ural Born Killers, Schindler’s List, and Wes decide. If parents don’t want their kids to Vice President/Circulation Jerry M. Okabe Craven’s New Nightmare, glorifies violence play X-Com or see Terminator 2, they Group Circulation Director Gina Oh and which denounces it? The rating sys- should say “No” and put up with the ensu- Circulation Manager Philip Payton [email protected] tem doesn’t make a distinction—they’re all ing argument. They don’t need and Newsstand Manager Pam Santoro rated R. shouldn’t get a ratings system to supple- Reprints Krista Hiser (415) 905-2783 In the face of the failure of the ment their authority. The government has MPAA rating system to control our no right to help parents say “No” at the MillerFreeman national psyche, the ratings advocates video store if that governmental interfer- A MEMBER OF THE UNITED NEWSPAPERS GROUP don’t make the logical conclusion that rat- ence impedes your rights to develop what- Chairman of the Board Graham J.S. Wilson ing systems are bogus, but instead say that ever content you feel appropriate. President/CEO Marshall W. Freeman the problem is that not enough things are We all have responsibilities. To cre- Executive Vice President/COO Thomas L. Kemp rated! If our culture’s general level of sex- ate responsibly, to control the viewing and Senior Vice Presidents H. Vern Packer, Donald A. ual frankness and violence has risen gaming habits of our own children, and to Pazour, Wini D. Ragus despite the movie rating system, it’s only call the government’s ratings initiatives Vice President/CFO Warren (Andy) Ambrose because other forms of entertainment have what they are. Cynical, ineffective, Vice President/Administration Charles H. Benz not yet been purified. oppressive, and wrong-headed. ■ Vice President/Production Andrew A. Mickus Rating systems cost money. A ratings Vice President/Circulation Jerry Okabe “board” (actually, a sizable and bureaucrat- Larry O’Brien Vice President/Software Development Division Regina ic institution) and its cost will be borne by Editor Starr Ridley 2 GAME DEVELOPER • DECEMBER 1994 SEZ U! Client/Server Gaming? by Our Readers Dear Editor: Recently, a new game called Earth was very excited when I saw your new Invasion for Windows came out. It proves magazine. Oddly, it’s not because I quite nicely that you can have arcade We‘ve only been Iever hope to write a game per se. action in a “slow” graphical environment My job function is aptly described (I can spell that word because I was once (using someone else’s words) as a corpo- a COBOL programmer). How much I would rate cubbyhole programmer. I’ve been love to splice some of that action into my around a little while, using Toolbook and Multimedia Toolbook applications! Just to keep them eager to for a couple years. I know it isn’t as go on, of course. manly as C++ or even Visual Basic, but I Your article about OLE 2.0 (“Let’s Go can pretty much do all the things, in 60 Embed,” Premier 1994) was right on, and scripting seconds, that take a Dr. Dobb’s I hope someday it will allow me all sorts but we‘re already guy six nitty-gritty pages of text and code of opportunities to use interesting game- to describe. creating authoring tools. Multimedia has Using Toolbook, calling Q+E as my caused everybody to buy faster PCs. Cer- database access and Pinnacle’s Graphics tainly, they run Windows fast enough for hearing from readers. Server SDK, I can really get fast access to something more than Solitaire now. Let’s CSV datafiles and plot everything from replace drag-and-drop with aim-and-fire. bar charts to interactive (hot spot) bubble Twitch spreadsheets? Dbase thumb? charts. I create transformed reports The more I read about desktop virtu- In this, the first install- (transports) from my customers that give al reality, the more I see myself running good GUI, good drill-down, and good through my relational database like in graphical constructs of their data. Wolfenstein 3D, past orthogonal buildings Using Multimedia Toolbook, I cap- (disguised as three-dimensional bar ment of our forum for ture mainframe screens and add neat charts) of my data looking for the evil odd postage-stamp video to accomplish CBT. piece of data. Not as compelling as I My fuzzy-grey cubbyhole for a better com- would like, but maybe Comptons has pression algorithm (or a horse)! already patented it. your opinions, we‘ve So why am I telling this to Game I get a small taste of this in Virtus Developer editors? Well, you’ve heard of VR, but they’re more interested in show- infotainment and edutainment? Why not ing off real buildings with real wire frame busutainment? Aside from its neat name? fireplaces and are not into anthropomor- My son plays Math Blaster for Win- phizing bad data (with TrueType labels) got a sampling of dows. It rewards him with a spaceship into gun-toting Nazis—yet. launch or trash to zap after accomplish- Edward Saur ing certain goals. Adults may be more Flemington, N.J. amused if surprised by some Easter egg queries, criticism, and they stumble across. I have been known Editor Larry O’Brien responds: to make a user chase a normal looking Heaven forbid that we talk about busi- button that jumps away randomly on ness software development in Game mouseEnter. If you are very quick, you can Developer. But since you did bring it up: suggestions. nail it. humans have a set of evolutionary talents GAME DEVELOPER • DECEMBER 1994 5 SEZ YOU! that include competing, gathering, and plicity in mind (that is, they should not Also, I was hoping Game Developer hunting in a visually complex environ- focus too heavily on it). could get down and dirty on comparing ment. The computer game industry makes I object to a simplistic level rating the new consoles coming out and out billions off the fact that these are so system (especially the one Dunne men- already. For example, comparing the awe- wired into the wetware that humans will tioned that was proposed by someone on some Doom on the Jaguar vs. the Sega pay for the privilege of exercising them. A CompuServe) because it does not work. 32X version. I think readers would really business program that took advantage of Using the groups presented, Lemmings like this. these evolutionary strengths would proba- would possibly qualify as a 5. While Ray Rivera bly gain accolades for its “intuitive” and laughing about how absurd this sounds, Norfolk, Va. “friendly” interface.