Disclaimer: The opinions expressed within this column are those of the participants and the moderator, and do not necessarily reflect those of the GIA. There is coarse language and potentially offensive material afoot. Woke up in the middle of the night, unsure if it was heat lightning in the clouds above or the radiation flashbulb pop of nukes in low orbit. Don't say we didn't warn you.

Howdy, good to be back. The Sears/M-rated games/censorship issue seems to be getting some good debate, so we'll mostly be covering that today. Actually, there's not a lot to cover, since I didn't get much email. And in keeping with AK's email link, I'm crying my eyes out over it. *sniff* You insensitive jerks, I thought you loved me!

Um, anyway. Two comments I wanted to make on the weekend's columns, in case I don't get a chance ahead: I very highly doubt the government will target a tax on M-rated games, or video games of any sort, because doing so would be a hindrance on freedom of expression. To tax games specifically because of their content would mean the government is acting as a moral or aesthetic watchdog, which is double plus ungood. And to tax games at all would beg the question of why games should be separate from the same laws as books, music, and movies. In that case it would be very easy to make an argument that Final Fantasy 7 or 8 has the same merits as an acknowledged work of art like "Titanic." (Ok, maybe not the best example movie to use.) 

Second, I don't see MGS2 being censored by Konami. There are no legal issues here, but there are a couple of solid reasons why this probably won't happen. Most importantly, Sony is not Nintendo. This has been amply demonstrated by now, that the censorship rules and outlooks of the two companies are entirely different. Metal Gear on the GBC is also a much less important game than MGS2 on the PS2. MGS2 could be a major selling point for the console, and would thus receive much more attention as far as marketing and translation goes. The GBC hardly needs to be pushed on the country at this point. And finally, I don't think Kojima-san would put up with it. With the amount of care and detail he put into translating the first MGS, I can't see him putting up with changes in the sequel. And I can't see Konami wanting to tick him off about it.

Arch Nemesis contest: get those votes in, fools. And just to make it worth your while, I've decided to add some incentive, namely a FREE GIA T-SHIRT for the winner. Other prizes may be forthcoming, but read and decide who really deserves that shirt.

Onward.

While I don't agree with the censorship policy in general, I can see the logic in this. Whatever your stance on alcohol is, it should be pretty obvious that society as a whole doesn't thing there's anything wrong with a martini at the end of the day. On the other hand, smoking in American society is a Bad Thing at the moment, and it makes sense that Nintendo would want to avoid sending even slightly ambiguous messages to kids about it. Even though Snake's a fratricide and trained killer, he's still nominally the hero and thus the good guy, and good guys shouldn't smoke. Or so Nintendo probably thinks.

I think everybody might sleep a little easier if they stopped thinking of MGS on the GBC as being at the same level as MGS on the PSX. I still haven't played it, and from what I've heard it is indeed excellent, but I can't get as worked up about a little handheld game being an incredible narrative experience as I can a real console game. That's probably a bigoted statement, but whatever.

I kind of like not having an editorial section, since it keeps the column from becoming totally pointless and keeps the rants from going totally off the deep end. Peer review, and all that.

I sympathize with your views, I really do, but there is a difference between a title designed to be consumed for everyone on a system geared more towards kids, and a title designed to be the video game equivalent of a John Woo movie. I'm not a kid, and damned if anyone's going to try and protect me from the evils of smoking, or violence, or what have you, but I can see the point of it for younger people. Of course, even when I was 12 I had the same attitude, but now people actually listen to me. Go figure.

The crawfish were indeed exceedingly tasty. For those of you unclear on the concept of a crawfish boil, let me give an explanation:

Start with a 20-gallon steel pot or so. Fill it with water and put it on top of a big gas burner. The one we used this weekend was rated at 200,000 BTU, and sounded like a jet engine when it was running. Then start to add spices. Lots and lots of spices. (Zataran's is what we used, but it's really your call.) Once the water is boiling, throw in 20 pounds or so of live crawfish. (Crawfish are like very small lobsters, you only eat the tail, sans shell.) Watch them thrash around as they die a quick, painful death. (Cruelty seems to be a key part of the process.) You may also want to put in a string bag of new potatoes, corn on the cob, and/or mushrooms. Let it boil for about 10-20 minutes, stirring occasionally with a small oar, then use a strainer to remove the crawfish and veggies without draining the water. (This is key.) Throw the bright red carcasses on a table, then turn the place into a crustacean abattoir as you dismember the tails for the nugget of meat inside and suck out the tasty, tasty brains.

Now comes the fun part. If you remember, we still have the existing mixture of water and spices from the first batch. Some of the water has evaporated, and some of the spice has gone to flavor the food. But most of the spice has stayed. Now we're going to do the same process all over again: add spice, crawfish, veggies, boil. Between the spice from before and the new spice we just added and the evaporating water, the overall spice to water ratio is significantly higher. (Actually, salt changes the boiling point of water, meaning the exact ratio is a funky differential equation, but we won't get into that here.) Needless to say, this next batch is tastes much hotter, same for batch after that, and the one after that. If you're doing it right, you end up with corn so spicy it burns your lips when you bite it, not to mention the crawfish themselves.

Swamp cooking at its finest, folks.

And to further the irony, you make an excellent case for the very thing you're ranting against. When, as you say, "little Johnny blows a couple of his classmate's brains out" it's not just the parents' problem, it's everybody's problem. And when it's everybody's problem, then it's the legitimate role of the government to step in and fix it, usually by the hamfisted but easily comprehensible method of getting rid of all the icky parts that kids might see. If there is a legitimate correlation between violence in the media and violence in the real world, as you seem to suggest, then everyone should care what other people's children ware doing.

Now for the caveats: the correlation between media violence and real world violence is a HUGE freaking if, and it's a long way from proven in my mind. There's also a substantial difference between deliberately blowing someone's head off in an FPS and watching a third person character take a smoke. I don't think the cigs in MGS needed to be taken out, but I don't think 6 year olds need to be playing Duke Nukem either. But as much as I hate to say it, if the core gameplay and enjoyment of a game can be preserved (as it apparently has been on the GBC) then I will put up with the one to achieve the other.

The strange part is, I came into this column with an anti-censorship leaning, but the strident arguments of my own side pushed me back towards center a bit. Must be an election year.

There are indeed such games, and they're called "next generation titles". Take a look at Soul Calibur on Dreamcast sometime, or the MGS2 movies. Enjoy the graphical goodness, and welcome to the 21st century. 

Calling MGS "the same action movie crap Hollywood's been bombarding us with for years" is actually a compliment in my book. See, I agree, I think MGS was about as solid plotwise as any good 90's action movie I've seen, although the game had the luxury of 12 hours of gameplay instead of 2 hours of screentime. And I like 90's action movies, because I remember 80's action movies which were much, much worse, with a few notable exceptions. And the fact that a game can match movies gives me hope that one day a game will exceed movies.

The gameplay and AI are both excellent. I'm not sure what you were smoking, but the enemy AI is vastly superior to anything else I've seen even now, with the possible exception of the PC Thief games. For the time the gameplay was lightyears ahead of anything else - you've got to remember that the concept of enemies having a cone of perception wasn't even known in most games until MGS. And from the looks of MGS2, the enemy AI is going to be even smarter still - I got hints that they may even perceive your shadow around corners. Good stuff.

Zelda's a great game, no question. I'd be hardpressed to pick a winner between MGS and OoT. But it's instructive to see what's been going on since the two respective games were released: Kojima has gone and built what looks to be a stunning new engine on cutting edge hardware, while Miyamoto has created a sequel on a dying system with a modified engine, seemingly just to milk a few more bucks out of the market. This wouldn't be so bad, except that it took them a year and a half to make some relatively minor changes to existing code. As a developer, I can state that this is not a good track record. The new Zelda may surprise me, but at the moment I don't think Miyamoto's living up to his potential.

Lots of people have written in to disparage the idea of a democratically elected Arch Nemesis. But when the writers in question are this incompetent, it doesn't bother me too much.

I mean, come on, he makes Team Rocket look competent...

Square will probably not delay FF9 here in the States, because: A)FF is much more well known over here than DQ, B) They seem intent on pushing out a title a month between now and October, presumably to get out of the PSX market and into the PS2 market as soon as possible, C) FF9 looks to be the far superior game, at least from my dumbass American graphics whore perspective.

As a side note, let me say that I'm very disappointed in Enix. I was all set to start debating DQ7 this week, and now they've gone and delayed it until August when I'll probably be way too busy with Chrono Cross to care. Unless that's the reason they delayed it... hmm.

Closing Comments:

Finally managed to get into Wild Arms 2 this weekend, and I'm pleasantly surprised. I don't know why, but I'm considerably more interested in playing this than Front Mission 3. Perhaps it's because it just feels like a completely regular, average RPG, done very well. Of course, it'll probably get shelved once Vagrant Story comes out this week, but I salute Contrail's effort so far.

We seem to have stumbled on to something with this censorship topic, so let's keep running with it. See you tomorrow.

-Chris Jones, eating mud-dwelling animals and proud of it