We posted an article one month ago that invited readers to do a little thought exercise. Here's what we said: "On the 5th of November we're going to post an article or two about video games, gadgets, technology, and general geekness ... the things about video gaming and technology that ought not be forgotten."

So here's our list of some video gaming and technology moments worth remembering. Hope this gets you thinking (and feeling nostalgic too!). And we look forward to your comments (and arguments). What do you remember and wish that the world will never forget?

Today is October 5. That means that November 5, Guy Fawkes Night, is one month away.

While we don't celebrate this day in the US (it's not even a public holiday in the United Kingdom - it's only a yearly celebration), many of us know of this day thanks to the DC Comics / Vertigo graphic novel (comic book) series V for Vendetta by Alan Moore and David Lloyd and its movie adaptation (with inimitable performances by Natalie Portman as Evey and Hugo Weaving as V).

Still, any "holiday" that gives people an excuse to light fireworks and go door-to-door begging for spare change sounds like something worth celebrating. So we at QJ.NET invite you to get into the spirit of things to remember, remember the 5th of November.

On the 5th of November we're going to post an article or two about video games, gadgets, technology, and general geekness - what moves us and affects us and touches us, and all the things about video gaming and technology that ought not be forgotten. Pretty much like the QuickJump QuickList articles in our Opinions & Analysis section at the front page and the other articles in the Opinions & Analysis sections of our many video game, science, and gadget blogs.

We invite you to plan ahead and consider what you want to remember on that day - because our articles obviously can't be the final word - that's what comments and the QJ.NET Forums are for. (Besides, now that we've turned off anonymous comments - and now that comments are smarter, funnier, and more meaningful - you have a good venue to share your reactions.)

We look forward to your thoughts. See you on the 5th of November.

 

This is the second part of QJ.NET's Alter Ego interview (you can read the first part here). We had to split it, because there were two people answering our questions about this concept book / art project / MMORPG documentary. That meant twice the fascinating details and twice the thought-provoking answers.

So here are Robbie Cooper (project originator and photographer) and Tracy Spaight (project writer / researcher) of Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators as they tell us more about their journey to create this book.

   

Here's a sneak peek (click on the Full Article link below to read the full interview):

Tracy Spaight: In his "Song of Myself," Walt Whitman penned the wonderful verse "I am large, I contain multitudes." The same could be said for the gaming community.

Tracy Spaight: In Asia, few people were willing to talk candidly about what their avatar meant to them, or to discuss what they found so compelling about life in virtual worlds. Many didn't want to be photographed because they feared their parents, teachers, or colleagues would see them and disapprove.

Click on the Full Article link below to read the full interview. And to all gamers, you princes and paupers, you superheroes and spaghetti monsters, look for Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators in bookstores - and museums - near you. For more information, go to www.alteregobook.com.



Buy: [Alter Ego: Avatars and their Creators]

 

What is Alter Ego? MTV, CNN, The New York Times, and various MMORPG sites have introduced us to the concept: Alter Ego is an intriguing concept book presenting the phenomenon of the contemporary avatar - the virtual characters we gamers create to play online.

In Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators, you see pictures of gamers from all over the world (including leading figures in the gaming world) alongside their avatars. Add to that a short and interesting biography, and you have a visual testimony of who and what we are as gamers.

Now QJ.NET takes a closer look at the book: from its successful launch and its reception, and going back to its creative roots. We also get a glimpse into the minds and visions of Robbie Cooper (the project originator and photographer) and Tracy Spaight (the project writer / researcher).

Here's a sneak peek (click on the Full Article link below to read the full interview):

Tracy Spaight: The images and stories that make up Alter Ego are easy for people to relate to, even if they've never logged into Second Life or EverQuest. They speak to the modern condition.

Robbie Cooper: I met one person online, for example, who told me she played these games because she had been facially disfigured in car crash. She refused to be photographed. I bet there are thousands of more stories out there that we never came across.

"I used to be a satanic priest,
but then I got a girlfriend."

Read the full interview by clicking on the Full Article link below. There's also a second part because this interview is extra-long: go to QJ.NET interview- Alter Ego: Avatars and Their Creators (Part 2).


Buy: [Alter Ego: Avatars and their Creators]

Orson Scott Card, author of Ender's Game (the Hugo Award winner and Nebula Award winner), is a recovering game addict - or at least that's one interpretation you can give his interview over at Gaming Today. Ender's Game is being turned into a movie by Warner Brothers, and at the same time Orson Scott Card is open to the possibility of his book becoming a video game.

For those not familiar with Ender's Game, just understand that it's one of the best sci-fi books ever written (in our honest opinions). A fast-paced story about violence, evil, war, and leadership. It's required reading, or so Wikipedia claims, at the Marine Corps University at Quantico.

And if it's good enough for the US Marines, it should be good enough for you gamers out there, right? Anyway, back to the interview. Orson Scott Card talked about being addicted to gaming:

The weird thing was that even when I wasn't playing, I felt a tremendous anxiety. I had responsibilities - there were cities waiting for me to tell them what to build! Now, I'm not insane. My conscious mind knew that it was just a game, and when I wasn't running the program, nothing was happening at all. But I invested so much tension in the playing of the game that it didn't go away when I left the computer. The call of duty was still there.

The interview also tackled what goes into writing a story for video games. Card said:

Games CAN'T have the kind of storylines that movies and books have, or they wouldn't be playable. ... What makes a game work is the opposite of what makes a story work. In a story, you are seeking to find out what really happened - why people do what they do, what the results of their choices are. ... In a game, the opposite illusion must be created. Even though most games absolutely force you to follow preset paths, the gamewrights try to give you the illusion that you are making free choices (even though you are actually, in almost all games, still being channeled through certain puzzles with fixed solutions).

As for Ender's Game, it won't just be one game in Card's vision:

• The Battle Room. This pivotal set in the book can be several game modules in real life.
• Space war games. The three wars (back in Mazer's time all the way to Ender's time).
• Story-based games. Ender's Game and Ender's Shadow.
• MMORPG. This one is based on the Battle School in Ender's Game.
• The Fantasy Game. The "mind game" from the novel.
• The Hive Queen. It's like Civilization (a game franchise that Card was addicted to).
• Post-war war. Card describes this as being like Risk.

Well, Mr. Card, there are quite a few fans here at QJ.NET who would be first in line to get a game that follows the Hegemon.

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare (CoD4) is the fourth installment in the Call of Duty series. It'll be released for PS3, Xbox 360, and Windows / PC. This "Modern Warfare" version is the first Call of Duty game that isn't set in World War II. Instead, it's set in a fictional modern-day conflict in the Middle East and Eastern Europe.

   

The Call of Duty games stood out as WWII games - that was the franchise's niche, and the franchise did very well. The first Call of Duty game (made by Infinity Ward) won the 2003 Game of the Year award from the Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences. Call of Duty 2 (also by Infinity Ward) received near-perfect and perfect ratings from the major gaming news sites.

Heck, even Call of Duty 3 (this time developed by Treyarch) came out as a good game that was worth playing - and that was despite the bugs and glitches (that is, bugs and glitches would've made most gamers throw out the game, but we still played and finished Call of Duty 3 despite it all because it was that good).

So let's look at Call of Duty 4. Will branching out to modern warfare reduce the CoD franchise into nothing more than a clone of other modern warfare games? We think not. Far from being a clone of other modern warfare games, Infinity Ward's Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is already setting out to carve its own niche in the image of the earlier CoD games.

   

Read the rest of this article by clicking on the Full Article link below. (Sorry, this article was just too long to fit on the front page.)

Activision Publishing Inc. (a part of the fast-growing Activision Inc.) has signed an agreement with Live Nation, the creators of the Monster Jam series of monster truck competitions which include racing and freestyle events. According to the multi-year agreement, Activision now has exclusive rights to develop and distribute video games based on Live Nation's Monster Jam series.

We're not yet sure what the official title of the games will be, but the first Monster Jam game should be ready by the end of 2007. It will feature 20 of the world's top monster trucks on the Monster Jam circuit, including Grave Digger, Maximum Destruction, Monster Mutt, and El Toro Loco. (If the cute floppy ears and tail-like extension don't make it obvious, that image to the right is Monster Mutt.)

Charlie Mancuso, President of Live Nation - Motor Sports has this to say about the new partnership:

We feel we have found a partner in Activision that shares our vision for both an authentic Monster Jam game that will appeal to the core Monster Jam fans, and a game which will also appeal to gamers by going above and way beyond anything we could do at the live events; it will have it all.

It's not yet clear which platforms will jam to the smoke and rumble of Monster Jam's world-famous monster trucks, but Activision said that the agreement is for "video games on all platforms." We'll post this article as an off-topic bit of news in QJ.NET's Windows/PC, PS3, Wii, and Xbox 360 sub-blogs for now, until Activision releases more concrete details.

Codemasters, a UK-based video game publisher, earlier confirmed Colin McrRae: DIRT as the official title of the latest addition to the Colin McRae series of racing games. Codemasters has also releaved that DIRT will add races from the US-based Championship Off-Road Racing (CORR) series to its usual Rally, Hill Climb, Rally Raid, Rally Cross, and Crossover racing events.

DIRT's CORR events. The CORR races will have up to 10 drivers going head-to-head in off-road circuit races. Vehicles include Super Buggies and Pro 4 Trucks, and the racetracks will have tabletop jumps, drop-offs, and moguls.

Replay feature. The game will also have a replay feature so you can relive the best moments. DIRT's replay system includes dynamic cameras that follow, capture, and focus on the most exciting moments during each race, and for the first time in the series players are given full control over the replay's action.

ESRB and PEGI ratings. A press release dated March 21 says the game is currently still awaiting to receive a rating from ESRB; the packshots revealed earlier this month show that the game got a "12+" rating in the Pan-European Game Information (PEGI) age rating system.

DIRT is planned to launch this June for Microsoft's Xbox 360 and Windows / PC. The Sony PlayStation 3 version will follow soon after that.

This video requires you to be 18 years old or older to watch it. But even if you're old enough, you shouldn't watch it if you're faint of heart. Never in my 22 years of life have I gotten used to horror and gore, and while this video wasn't particularly scary or disturbing, it wasn't full of happy thoughts either.

Clive Barker's Jericho is a creepy and rather bloody FPS / survival-and-horror / action video game from developer MercurySteam and publisher Codemasters. Of course, the designer is horror author Clive Barker.

The game will be released in the fourth quarter of 2007 for Microsoft Windows / PC, Xbox 360, and Sony's PS3.

Game Informer Magazine has three images of the Video Games Live (VGL) concert that closed the Game Developers Conference (GDC) 2007 at San Fransisco. VGL is a concert tour that features music from video games, and each concert is a treat: the music is combined with video presentations, light and laser effects, and other special effects.

Having a VGL concert at the GDC made perfect sense, and the GDC concert was a star-studded one (we earlier published a list of all the composers and artists at the GDC VGL).

VGL: a multimedia concert. Like any Video Games Live concert, the music was amazing. There was an orchestra and a 16-member choir conducted by game composer Jack Wall (Myst, Splinter Cell, Jade Empire). There was a screen that showed synchronized video footage. Audience members were brought up to play Space Invaders and Frogger on the big screen - the orchestra provided live music (complete with tempo changes!).

As usual, during the Metal Gear Solid portion of the program, an actor dressed as a guard walked onto the stage - and the infamous alert exclamation mark (!) appeared over his head - much to the amusement of the audience (the poor guard didn't notice a large box sneaking past him). (An earlier QJ.NET article on VGL concert dates has a video of a similar scene from another concert.)

Other musical highlights included "Baba Yetu" from Civilization IV, the explosive "Liberi Fatali" from Final Fantasy VIII, and the World of Warcraft suite - all three masterpieces got huge reactions from the audience.

A night of video game music artists. As reported earlier, there were also performances by LucasArts composers Peter McConnell, Michael Land, and Clint Bajakian. "VertexGuy" powered the stirring electric guitar anthems of Contra and the Halo 3 grand finale. The "Video Game Pianist" was also there to play Dig Dug and Pac-Man music on the piano.

Super Mario and Zelda composer Koji Kondo (who received a lifetime achievement award at the GDC earlier in the week) played a piano solo of music from Super Mario Bros. (the audience went wild, taking out their Nintendo DS units and mobile phones to wave them in the air as lights).

Let the world know: video games are a legitimate art form. Having the VGL grace the GDC with its presence is a statement to the industry and to industry-watchers and critics. "I think what tonight helps prove is how legitimate video games have become as an art form," said Tommy Tallarico, a game composer and the co-creator of VGL.