ALA 2009: What Happens in Chicago…Will Be Talked About All Over the Internet

I spent the weekend (a long weekend; left this past Thursday, came home Sunday) at the 2009 national conference of the American Library Association.  I was there because of activities going on relevant to the grant I helped my library win.

I learned a great deal about games and gaming programs we can implement into our services.  At one meeting, we talked a great deal about “big games;” games that involve a series of activities that you do in real life.  If you’ve played a scavenger hunt, you’ve played a big game.  If you participated in either of the marketing campaigns for Halo 2 or Halo 3,  you’ve played a big game.

As with most things library, big games in libraries are intended to teach information literacy.  We did one at Wayne County Public a couple of years ago that has its roots in my best friend and I goofing off with the library video recorder after-hours (we were there for a program, I swear).  Since I had to justify this so as to keep my job, we turned the footage into a mystery in the tradition of The Blair Witch Project, with participants hunting down clues in our reference resources so as to solve the mystery of a library ghost.  It was fun; we didn’t get many participants, but we had a good time doing it.

I definitely want to do a big game again this year, maybe during Halloween.  I also want to incorporate the game “Werewolf,” which is a simple, no cost game that sounds like all kinds of fun.

In addition to all the networking and learning I did, I got to meet Neil Gaiman as well, which was so cool I can’t even describe it.

So I’ll be posting pics to my Flickr account, and I’ll be talking about all the cool things we do with games and gaming in the next year.  As a gamer on his way to becoming a full-fledged librarian (I’m only a Master’s degree away), I find it quite rewarding that I can use my job to explore my personal interests and vice-versa.  Perhaps this whole merging of games/gaming and libraries will eventually birth a video game in which you play as librarian on a whirlwind adventure off to solve some great mystery or recover some grand artifact, much in the fashion of Indiana Jones.  That would be pretty cool.

And So It Begins: My Dungeons and Dragons career is underway.

Today (or rather, I suppose at this hour, yesterday), I had my first Dungeons and Dragons session.  It was only me, my Dungeon Master (DM), a single dungeon tile from the starter game, the dice, and the rulebooks.  It was brief–a single encoutner with only two goblins–but my was it fun.

I’m proud to say that I used a character I made myself, and not a sample character from the starter game.  I spent a good three hours toiling over the Player’s Handbook, making first a rogue and then a ranger.  I chose Human as the class because I found it to be most versatile and have the best starting powers and abilities.  If my video game habits are anything to go by, I’m sure I’ll be making and playing several characters.  I also plan on doing some DM’ing as well, one day.

It felt good to actually use my hands and some real math skills to do things like swing a sword, as opposed to just pressing a button.  It felt more like I was really doing it, like I was actually there.  It also felt good to use the game to tell a story (as opposed to the game having a story through which I just kind of waded).  Just in case you’re curious, my character “Longstrides” Quinn McCree, a human orphan adopted by a kind dwarf, who had grown up amongst the stout and sturdy race (and thus shares their intense love of good food, good ale, and good company–as well as their ferocity in the fight) and was the friend of many elves who lived in a village near to his childhood home (and learned from them the bow and a love of nature), was given a job by his uncle, an innkeeper: go into the basement of the inn and get rid of whatever is scratching about down there.

Well, he did.  We made a few errors, but considering my DM only had three hours to prepare (while at work, no less) and we only had 30 minutes to play I think we did quite well.

Part of the fun (some might say that all of the fun) of D&D comes from the creative aspect: developing a backstory for your character, fleshing out his/her personality, speaking in character while at the table.  I’m inclined to agree.  I plan on writing out Longstrides’ story this weekend, what brought him to that inn where he meets his fellow adventurers.

There is another creative aspect as well, one born of invention.  I’m fine with spending money on rulebooks, power cards, dice, and a sweet DM screen.  However, considering that conceiveably we could be running multiple games at once (this whole thing is part of our Play Me a Story campaign at Wayne County Public Library), I’m not keen on buying dungeon tiles and miniatures for every character and monster.  So it seems that some hands-on projects making our own miniatures and tiles is in order.  Somehow, I think that will make it even more fun and personal (and a better teaching opportunity for our kids).

ALA/Verizon Libraries, Literacy, and Gaming Grant: A Winner Are We!

About a month ago, the American Library Association (ALA), in partnership with Verizon, named the winners of the Libraries, Literacy, and Gaming grant.  Out of 390 applicants, 10 libraries were chosen to receive $5,000 to create programs that will use games (video or otherwise) to help kids and teens learn how to use technology, think critically and creatively, and explore concepts in a hands-on manner.

I am proud to say that Wayne County Public Library, my employer, was one of the 10 libraries.  I am equally proud to say that I was the primary author of the grant proposal and will serve as Project Coordinator on our grant-funded project: Play Me a Story, a series of programs that use games as a springboard for creating narratives.

It’s going to be a great year for libraries as the ten grant winners implement their programs.  It’s also going to be a great year for gamers.  With libraries embracing games as a way to teach, the non-gaming public will (hopefully) begin to appreciate video games as something more than a recreational pursuit, and will see the educational value of good, old-fashioned play.

I want to thank the great team I have to work with at Wayne County Public Library (names withheld because I don’t have their permission and it’s way too late to call them) and the great experts giving us their advice and guidance throughout this initiative (WARNING–SHAMELESS NAME-CHECK: Beth Gallaway, Dale Lipschultz, Eli Neiburger, Scott Nicholson, plus a bunch of others).  I want to give a special wave to my friend and guild leader  Liz Danforth.

By the way, let me say again: 10 winners out of 390 applicants.  Pretty freakin’ mind-blowing.  It’s like going through Left 4 Dead on Expert without dying.

How Should I Spend My Tax Return?

Either this week or next week, I should be filing my taxes and finding how much money I’ll be getting back from where Uncle Sam overcharged me for being an American citizen.  The questions is: how should I spend it?

Before you start going on about how I should pay my credit card debt or bolster my savings account, let me say this:

Now that that’s out the way, on to my options.

I was going to buy a custom arcade stick from Arcade-in-a-Box, but the more I think about the fact that I’ll be purchasing a $165 controller that I’ll be using for one game (for now at least) the less excited I am about it.  If I was a tournament player, then fine–it would be an investment, not just a purchase.  But there are other things that money could go towards.  Besides, the que is up to about 9 weeks now.  If I buy something like that, I want to use it now.

I could get a Playstation 3, but if I did I would one doubt make David Jaffe more wealthy and I really don’t want to do that.

I could get an iPod touch, but I have a perfectly good iPod that plays music just fine and a Blackberry that does everything else the iPod touch does.  Yes, there are some halfway-decent gaming options on the iPod touch, but I’d rather take the money I would be spending on them and just, you know, buy games for consoles I already own.

I’m almost ready to put together my computer.  I just need the crowning jewel of any gaming PC, the video card, and I’ll be set.  I’ll probably finish with that before I get the tax money back in fact.  I could go ahead and do something like get another video card to run them in Crossfire mode.  That would still leave me with a good deal of money left over to spend on things like action figures and comics.

Or I could just spend it all on hoookers and blow.

Wow, is this how rich people feel all the time?

NPR steals music

You know, I respect copyright.  I have downloaded content using means of questionable legality in the past, but now that I’m all grown up and make my own money and I have a bit stronger of a moral core, I purchase my music, movies, and games.  Hey, I even buy most of the books I read so that the writer will benefit, and I work in a freakin’ library.

So it saddens me when a person or organization so blatantly desecrates copyright, and in turn blatantly denies an artist–be they musical, visual, or literary–opportunity and payment.

I have no knowledge of Zoe Keating, but I recently read of her plight via the blog of Wil Wheaton.  You see, NPR used some of her music for All Things Considered.  I’m sure Zoe was very happy that such a popular program used her music, but there is just one problem: they didn’t pay here for it.  They didn’t even say give her attribution.

Wil (I should probably call him Mr. Wheaton, but it feels so awesome to call him Wil) explained it far better than I could, and made a far better case for this woman’s talent than I could hope to make–seeing that he actually has knowledge of her work.  This doesn’t mean that I am any less disheartened by it.  NPR is the kind of network that promotes such enlightened ideals as, I don’t know, promoting the arts and artists–you can hardly do so if you don’t take the time to say “By the way, the music you’re listening to is from this amazing one-woman band named Zoe Keating.  Check her out.  Her music is on iTunes.”

Really NPR, is it that hard?

Why don’t you all who enjoy cello music (not my cuppay, but hey) do the right thing and buy some of this young lady’s music?  I might just as a show of support.

EDIT: Zoe may be getting paid for her music after all.  As was pointed out to me, if she is a member of ASCAP or BMI, then she will receive payment for NPR using her work.  The issue of attribution, however, is still there.

In other news, Wil Wheaton commented on my blog.  Say again: Wil Wheaton commented on my blog.  \m/

Uncle Tim

Tomorrow marks the one=year anniversary of the day that my Uncle Tim left this world.  He was a great guy and an awesome gamer.

On paper, he married into the family: he and my aunt tied the knot in 1996.  As far as I’m concerned, he was family blood.

It’s been a tough year without him.  Holidays ofcourse are a living hell, but he was my friend and that makes it especially hard.  I can’t tell him about the awesome new games that have come out, I can’t race go-karts with him anymore at Adventure Landing, and I can’t go to turkey shoots with him during the holidays.  It makes me sad and angry.

Angrier still because he died due to corporate irresponsibility, and the company he worked for receive a slap on the wrist by OSHA and little else.  While I will gladly tell the whole story to anyone who will listen in reality (so to speak), I’d rather not give any permanence to it even on this insignificant blog: I wouldn’t put it past the piles of talking excrement and bile that run the construction company that employed my uncle to take me and my family to court for smearing their ill-gotten good name.  Just know that my uncle’s death taught me a valuable lesson: there is no justice in this world, and the best we can hope for is a sad imitation of revenge.

Alas, the real issue here is that I don’t have my Uncle Tim anymore.  It doesn’t matter that I’m angry or that the very people who caused his death are wiping their butts with hundred-dollar bills right now: my Uncle Tim is gone.  I miss him and I want him back.

The last video game we played together was Halo 3.  I had just gotten my Xbox 360 shortly after Christmas.  He had had one for a while.

The game we played together the most has got to be Goldeneye for the Nintendo 64.  Even though we had not played it in years, we spent so much time playing it together that I doubt we had played any game more.

His favorite game was Donkey Kong.  He also was addicted to Bejeweled for some time.

One time, he came home and had just bought a new car–well, new to him and my aunt anyway.  It was a big old car–a Chrysler–and it really did look like something that a pimp would drive.  So I immediately christened it the Pimpmobile, and him Big Pimp Daddy.  Big Pimp Daddy was eventually shortened to Big Daddy; my little brother and I called him that.  He acted like it annoyed him, but he always smiled when we teasingly called out “Love ya Big Daddy!” as he left the house.

Love ya Big Daddy.

I’ll go back to writing about games tomorrow or the next day, but I wanted to write this today.

Joe Baca thinks that video games are like cigarettes.

That’s right; a politician (meaning: not exactly a great thinker) wants labels on video games warning parents that if little Johnny plays Saints Row 2 he might go on a meth-fueled killing spree.  Read the full story here.

Is the ratings on video games not enough?  We already have somewhat arbitrarily placed labels slapped on games telling us if we’re going to see blood, boobies, or a combination of both: do we really need to go one step further and slap a freakin’ WARNING LABEL on them?

But, I mean, think of the children, right?  So let’s do it.  And while we’re at it, let’s have parents sign an affa-davit stating they understand that little Johnny might turn into a ‘roid chompin’ wife beater if he plays football, and he might be a total douchebag if he joins a fraternity, and he might turn into a lonely and depressed man who is mad at the world if he becomes a public librarian at a poorly-run library.

(Sorry, bad day at the bill-paying job.)

First, this is the old case of causation vs. correlation.  Just because little Johnny plays a violent video game and acts out violently doesn’t mean the game caused his violent behavior; maybe little Johnny is attracted to violent video games because he’s a violent person, or maybe he would have acted out violently regardless of what his entertainment choice was.  Or hey: maybe the video game did inspire his violent acts, but who is to say that hearing his dad say “I’m so mad I could just hit somebody!” didn’t have the same effect?

I live on a diet of meat, sugary snacks, and Cherry Coke; I don’t exercise; I’m fat.  It’s fair to say that my diet and lack of activity caused my physical state.  My Papa smoked for forty years, developed emphesema and later lung cancer, and passed away five-and-a-half years ago; I’m fairly certain his pack-a-day habit was a major contributing factor in his death.  However, a person’s personality is the result of the collection of their experiences.  To blame any one thing above all others is ridiculous.

Second, why aren’t there ever any studies done on the benefit that video games have, the good things they do, the things kids learn from them?  How many kids have discovered the great music beyond MTV and VH1 because of Guitar Hero, or picked up the drums because of Rock Band, or wanted to learn how to skateboard because of the Tony Hawk series?  How many people have a new found respect for the tension and danger our military faces in urban combat situations because of Call of Duty 4?  How many people are bright and happy and helpful because they love Animal Crossing?  Why isn’t there any talk of all the leadership and social skills one learns playing World of Warcraft?  WII FIT ANYBODY?

Third, how is this going to fix irresponsible parenting?

Fourth, he speaks of holding the games industry “accountable.”  Yes, because Peter Molyneuax put a sword in my hand and told me to kill innocent villagers.  Cliffy B whispered in my ear that people needed to die.  Shigeru Miyamoto bought me heroine and hookers and said that he would take me places I ain’t never been if I just iced a few people he didn’t like so good.  Accountability is not only a concept that escapes Mr. Baca, but something that no politician is in any position to speak on; when is the last time our government actually had to pay for their mistakes?

Finally, our economy is in the crapper, we’re stuck in a war that isn’t really a war but is a war but isn’t and a great number of people are dying every day, and there are still countless people who can’t afford a college education or to improve their health, and the Honroable Baca from California thinks we should start slapping labels on video games warning parents that they could induce an insatiable bloodlust in their children.

Ladies and gentlemen, your tax dollars at work.

Hollywood is populated by gutless petunias.

I’m going to discuss something I typically try to avoid: politics.

NO WAIT!  COME BACK!  YOU’LL LIKE THIS, REALLY!

John Scott Lewinski from Wired wrote an interesing piece examining why The Dark Knight has not been hailed as the single greatest movie ever made by all major critical outlets nominated for a major Best Picture award (namely, the Golden Globes and New York Film Critics).

Yes, it seems that it’s true what “they” say.  Everyone in Hollywood is a bleeding heart liberal and can’t stomach the sight of a fictional character who wears body armor and a cape so that he looks like a bat roughing up another fictional character (who wears clown make-up) in a fictional interrogation room in a fictional police precinct in a fictional city in a fictional version of the world in which we live.

Two fictional gay cowboys going at it in a tent is fine, but when Batman goes old school on the Joker we have to draw the line.*

WTF?

Yes, this is one man’s theory, but I can see it holding water: a great amount of water.  Most artsy folks do tend to lean liberal and are offended by any kind of conservative notion or idea.**  Hell, one of the guys I went to this movie with whispered “I’m not sure about that…” when Batman unveiled his incredibly awesome cell-phone spy network.

It’s a shame when real-world politics stifles the artistic greatness of a movie (or book, or album, or game).  Refusing a movie its due accolades because of the presence of unwarranted spying, torture, and vigilante justice is present in the film is no better than conservatives trashing Grand Theft Auto IV because it has prostitutes in it or the His Dark Materials series because it challenges notions of religion and the existence of God.  It’s not okay to complain about the close-mindedness of right wingers and then get all whiny when you see guns.

In short: The Dark Knight was a great movie, one of the best I’ve ever seen and the best one to be released in a year full of great films that also happened to be popular.  Give it a shot; this movie deserves it.

And let’s pretend for a moment that The Dark Knight “really did happen.”  Let’s pretend that an extremely well-connected, manipulative, elusive, homicidal maniac was on the loose.  Let’s pretend that he has proven to be entirely closed to negotiation.  Let’s pretend that he will not stop until everyone is just as crazy as he is.  Now let’s pretend that there’s a man who is willing to step up and take him down without compromising a single human life, not even the one of this most evil of all villains, and the only thing he needs is a temporary state of pseudo-martial law; and when it’s all done, everybody will have their privacy restored and every record of every wire-tapped conversation will be destroyed beyond recovery.

Does going old school sound so bad then?

*Just for the record, I saw Brokeback Mountain and I loved it.  It was well made movie, a genuine love story, and had two of the best characters ever in it.  It was very thought-provoking and very respectful of the challenges homosexuals face.  It deserved every Oscar it was nominated for and should have won Best Picture.

**Furthermore, this is nto a slam againstl liberals.  I have found that going too far in either direction is a quick way to go insane and eradicate all joy from your life.  If you want to know my personal politic stance, just know that I like guns, have no problem with gay marriage, think that nobody should have to pay for health care/education, and would really, really like to see our government STOP SPENDING MONEY THEY DON’T FREAKING HAVE ON CRAP THAT THIS COUNTRY DOESN’T FREAKING NEED.

Wow, I feel kind of…cleansed…after that.

My New Year’s Resolution for 2009

Can I get personal for a moment?

I don’t want to be doing what I do to earn my keep for the rest of my life.  I want to be doing something creative, something artistic, something a bit more fulfilling than public service.  For some people, public service is fulfilling; not so for me.

I majored in English in college because, well, it’s what I was good at it and I wanted to write novels.  I had no idea on how to pursue professional novel writing career, and when I found out later in my college years I suffered the disillusion that I had the stuff to do it, that I was talented enough to be a best-selling author right out of the gate.

Boy was I wrong.  I wrote a novel (not a very good one; in fact, it’s rather bad) and had my query letter turned down by five agents.  That’s right.  My query.  So I kind of gave up on that.  I came to miss it, and started writing again.  Not intensely, but every once in a while.  This blog is part of my writing habits.  I focus now (or try to, anyway) on craft and not just story-telling.  I try to be more aware of how I’m writing.  It’s all well and good to write for yourself, but you should not write in a bubble–there is also something to be said for dropping pretension.  You see, a good deal of young writers tend to try and present themselves as worldly, sophisticated, literary types when in truth they are basement-dwelling geeks (I’m one of those–check out some of the stuff I wrote on my old blog before I figured out that it was games I knew best, so games would be the focus of what I wrote).

Recently, I’ve been thinking of pursuing a career as a game designer, and I will be starting another Bachelor’s degree hoping to learn how to do that.  That does not mean that I want to forsake writing (I do kind of have a blog you know).  I would not mind being known as a game designer and a writer.

So I’m going to school for game design, but what about this writing thing?  Simple: next year, I’m going to write another novel.

I’ll be planning/outlining it this month, and starting in January, I’m going for 10,000 words a month.  Hopefully by this time next year, I will be nearly done with a 120,000 word manuscript.  And hopefully by 2010, I will be able to call myself a novelist.

Wish me luck, I guess.

Turkey…and STREET FIGHTER II! And “Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down!”

I hope my readers (all two or three of them) had a great Thanksgiving.  If you’re not from the States, then I just plain hope you had a great day today.  While the jaded and cynical part of me says that the reasons behind observing Thanksgiving have more to do with the economy than actually, you know, giving thanks, the kid inside of me says that it would be really awesome if the whole world sat aside one day to rest, reconnect with friends and family, eat lots of food, and think about all the great things that have happened to us in the past year.

Such as Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix.  First of all, I don’t think that title is long enough.  Capcom should have tacked on “old school revival” there at the end.  Then, the acronym could be SSF2THDROSR; the greatest acronym ever.

I have, and always will, suck at fighting games, but since I grew up in the nineties I loved Street Fighter II (despite my suckiness).  Many a fourth-grade lunch period was spent arguing over which franchise was superior: Mortal Kombat or Street Fighter.  While I gladly concede that MK had a better story and a more fully-realized fantasy world, SF always had more depth and complexity when it came to mechanics; of course, in the fourth grade, what I said was more like “But all the guys in Street Fighter II, have like more moves and stuff!”  Ah, childhood innocence.

My friends all preferred MK, mostly because they had…issues…involving violence.  You see, while I was the glasses-wearing fat geek, all of my “friends” were the athletic types from rich families; in other words, bullies with an entitlement complex and sociopath tendencies.  Of course they liked MK better: you could rip out somebody’s spine in it!  You could totally set somebody on fire.  Sure, every character had the same basic move set–right down to how those basic moves worked–but it had BUCKETS OF BLOOD!  BLOOD BLOOD BLOOD!

I wonder what my friends are up to now?  I wonder how many of them needed counseling, are now abusive boyfriends/husbands, or finally came to peace with whatever demons they had wrestling inside of them.

I don’t know why I just told that story, except to say that SSF2THDROSR (I’m calling it that whether Capcom wants me to or not) is, for me, more of a trip down memory lane than Mega Man 9.  It brought back all those birthday parties at the skating rink, where my fat ass was stuck playing video games because I couldn’t skate.  It brought back one of my friends trying to convince me that Ryu was a “Shotokan ninja,” though his mastery of ninjitsu was not mentioned anywhere in the manual, the short-lived comics series, any video game magazine, or anywhere.  It brought back not-so-fond memories of CPU opponents being mind-reading machines that never, ever allowed for one single mistake (Easy just means you won’t be beaten quickly).  It’s all awesome, and I highly recommend this title, especially if you’re too young to remember the first time SF2 came around.

I do have to find fault with Capcom calling versus mode “multiplayer” however.  Seriously Capcom?  Multiplayer?  This is a one-on-one fighting game; it’s VERSUS MODE OR NOTHING.

Anyway, when I wasn’t playing SSF2THDROSR or Fallout 3, I was eating and watching TV.  First of all, Cartoon Network pulled off the greatest Rick Roll ever at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.  If you missed it, you can find a video here.  Second of all, I saw Jingle All the Way for, like, the zillionth time.  Really.  During the Holiday season at my house, that movie is weekly–sometimes daily–viewing.  I love it.  It’s not a good movie, not even a little, but it’s one of my favorite holiday movies simply because it’s so bizarre.  I mean, it seems like your typical holiday affair, but when you really let it sink in, you realize that it takes place in some alternate reality where the absurd is not just everyday, but people don’t even freaking notice it.  It’s not something easily described by words; if you’ve never seen it, please see it at least once (without the MST3K riff tracks!).

Well, I will not be getting up at 3 AM to hunt down sweet Black Friday deals.  If I want a GPS navigator bad enough, I’ll pony up the $10 I would save by standing in line for three hours, and all the video game deals are for stuff I either already have or don’t want, even at AMAZING DISCOUNTS!  So the plan for tonight is to play Left 4 Dead until my eyes bleed.

Happy Thanksgiving!