Culture

It's said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder; it is a completely subjective experience, dependent upon the taste of each particular viewer. This is palpably evident in the video game industry, where one man's trash is another man's treasure. One need only review the relatively recent controversy over Diablo 3's color palette to realize the truth of this.

Have we evolved a different set of standards for the concept of beauty in a video game? Is there ever one prevailing standard, apparent and provable to all? Why is beauty so hard to define?

There's been a lot less pressure on the game industry in the past year or so about their ratings system as lawmakers and media watchdog groups have backed off somewhat about their criticisms about such ratings. However that doesn't mean some parents may not be aware of how the Entertainment Software Ratings Board works.

Publisher Activision has decided to launch their own public service program called "Ratings are not a game". The program consists of seven videos that Activision helped to develop with Dr. Cheryl Olson, co-director for the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital. The videos are designed to educate parents and teachers about the ESRB ratings and how to use them along with tips of how games can actually be beneficial to parents and children.

We have seen games license music from others but soon you may hear game music tunes in other areas like movies and TV shows. Variety reports that Electronic Arts has signed a five year deal with Extreme Music to have them represent over 2,000 music cues from EA's game music library to other companies.

That means you could be hearing that classic theme from the Battlefield games in, say, an action movie trailer or TV show. EA's music includes work from renowned movie composers like Michael Giacchino (who created the terrific music for the Medal of Honor games) and Hans Zimmer.

Warren Spector, despite the fact that he has (temporarily we hope) left the PC game space to work on some Wii game called Epic Mick-something-or-other, is still in love with the Deus Ex game franchise. How much? So much that, according to a new Variety article, he tried to buy the rights to the series from its current owners Eidos. Unfortunately for us, he failed.

Spector clearly wants to work on the franchise saying, "There were and still are 'Deus Ex' stories I would like to tell. That story is not done for me." Eidos' Montreal studios are currently working on Deus Ex 3 but they have been extremely quiet for the most part on their progress since the game was announced two years ago.

While id Software's classic first person shooter Doom was a huge hit mostly on the game alone it didn't hurt that the box cover artwork for the game was incredible as well. Last month, the artist for the box art, Don Ivan Punchatz, died at the age of 73.

While Punchatz had a huge career as a mainstream artist, handling covers for magazines like Time and Rolling Stone, his work on the Doom box art is instantly recognizable to a generation who played the game. In his obituary on the Spectrum Fantastic Art web site, there is a quote from him saying id offered him a flat fee or a percentage of the game's profits for his work. He took the flat fee (which was actually lower than his normal fee) but soon afterward realized his mistake, saying, ""So how was I to know this thing called Doom would make a jillion smackers?"

[Via Kotaku]

As we start to make the move to the Christmas holiday/gift giving season, thoughts are turning to getting your loved ones (and maybe just people you see at work) what they might like for presents. Random House's upcoming novel The Infernal City might work if your target is a fan of Bethesda Softworks' Elder Scrolls series.

But just in case you want to make sure the novel from author Greg Keyes is, you know, good, the Random House web site now has an exerpt from the novel that takes place sometime after the events of Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. The trade paperback will be released on November 24.

The economic recession has caused a number of pro PC gaming leagues in the past few years to close their operations but one that has stayed afloat is the World Cyber Games. This week the league, which started out in and is still based in Korea, announced that their grand finals, which is held in a different city each year, will be hosted by Los Angeles for the 2010 edition. The event will be held at the LA Convention Center, home of E3.

The World Cyber Games previously came to the US to hold its grand finals in 2004 (San Francisco) and 2007 (Seattle). The 2009 grand finals will be held on November 11-15 in Chengdu, China as hundred of players from around the world are expected to compete in a number of PC and Xbox 360 game tournaments. There's no word yet on exactly when the 2010 Los Angeles grand finals will be held.

Oh boy. Here we go again. First, Infinity Ward manages to make lots of hardcore PC gamers upset by not supporting dedicated servers for the PC version of Modern Warfare 2. Then a pretty brutal scene from the upcoming FPS (that has a plot point that we won't go into here) is leaked into the Internet. Now a new promo video for the game on YouTube has a statement that may (or may not) have some homophobic connotations.

The video itself is just a bit of a goof as it shows a virtual version of Philadelphia Phillis pitcher Cole Hamels (a known fan of Infinity Ward's previous games) getting blown up by a hailstorm of grenades. However the "sponsor" that is written out at the end of the video can be taken to be . . . something else when you use the first letter of each word.

Naturally we have emailed Activision and Infinity Ward to find out if that "hidden" message was intentional.

Update: The video has now been pulled from YouTube

Scenario: The zombie apocalypse is at hand. What do you do? What DO you do? If you the four person teams in Left 4 Dead and its upcoming sequel Left 4 Dead 2, you run around and start shooting as many of the undead as you can as you move from place to place.

The original game from Valve takes place in areas of Pennsylvania while Left 4 Dead 2 is in New Orleans and the surrounding Louisiana area. But what if the zombie apocalypse hit other US cities like they did in Valve's games? We decided to look at 10 such cities and postulate what would be the good, the bad and the worse thing that could happen to those cities if flesh-eating folks invaded. For how other cities around the world would do the same thing check out Game Daily's sister feature.

We've been waiting a long time for a movie based on PC or video game to actually be good and next May's adaptation of the Prince of Persia game franchise is going to give it a shot. The first trailer to the movie will be released in theaters on November 13 (alongside 2012) and our sister site Joystiq got a chance to check it out beforehand.

The extensive impressions are mixed, saying the movie retains the Prince's platforming action moves but may rely on CGI effects too much. The article states the trailer will be released online on Tuesday ahead of its theatrical debut.

For the past few weeks we have been learning more about Epic Mickey, the upcoming Wii exclusive RPG that's being developer at Warren Spector's Junction Point Studios. Yet the man behind the Thief and Deus Ex series said that the game actually started out a a PC game (alongside the Xbox 360 and PS3 consoles).

So what happened? According to a chat with Spector at the Official Nintendo Magazine he didn't want to make a Wii port that wouldn't be as good as the other versions. He would also like to concentrate on one platform. The solution turned out to be simple. Just make the game for the Wii and the Wii only. Still, it will be great when and if Spector decides to return to PC game making. One can only hope.

A while back Valve's Gabe Newell stated they were thinking about creating some comic books based on their multiplayer shooter Team Fortress 2. In August Newell announced that artist Michael Avon Oeming, best know for his work on the Powers comic, would be assisting Valve in their comic book efforts.

Now it looks like Valve is giving folks a preview of what's to come. Apparently a lucky few gamrers who sent in a coupon that Valve printed during that whole "Sniper Vs Spy" dealie got back some postcards this week featuring covers of the classic "Saxton Hale" comic, the head of the mysterious Mann Co that's shown up in a few of Team Fortress 2's fictional notes. You can see the examples at the TF2maps.net message board post. The art is done in Avon Oeming's style and he even mentions the postcards (published by "TF Industries") in a message board. Now all we have to do is wait for the actual comics. If they are half as funny as the cover they should be worth it.

[Via Rock Paper Shotgun]

Ubisoft is a company based in France, a country that has a solid respect for comic books. French comics include creations that are even known in the US including Tintin, Asterix and XIII (which Ubisoft adapted into a cel-shaded shooter a few years ago). Now their upcoming sequel Assassin's Creed 2 will be getting some marketing back-up from a French-made comic.

Bleeding Cool has three pages from the upcoming Assassin's Creed comic which will be published in France on November 13, a few days before Assassin's Creed 2 ships to stores on November 17. The preview pages from the comic, written by Eric Corbeyran and drawn by Djilalli Defaux, seem to show the assassin in the days of the Roman Empire rather than the Middle Ages setting of the game sequel. Hopefully some comic book publisher in the US can bring this comic to our shores.

I well remember the days of the early 80's, spending a lot of my free time in the local arcade. My excitement over playing the latest and greatest machines was tempered by my limited finances. Getting to a certain level of proficiency in those days was often a costly endeavor. Fortunately, a high school friend of mine would soon purchase his first home computer, an Apple IIe. I ended up transferring my arcade time to time spent at his house, playing some of the greatest games I've ever had the privilege to encounter.

Thinking back to those games, one phenomenon stands out: their inherent difficulty, compared with that of today's games. It seems as though games in general were just more challenging then -- but surely that's just due to my poor recollection? Could games really have been getting easier since their humble origins? Have we lowered the barrier of entry to the point of making things too easy?

While Ken Levine is still working on his top secret next project at 2K Boston following the release of the original BioShock over two years ago, he's apparently got some time to reveal his top 10 favorite games of all time to IndustryGamers. As one might expect, Levine's picks include several PC exclusives.

Among the games picked are Master of Magic ("It's Civilization with dragons. And spell making. And giant armies of Dwarves and stuff. Why is there no sequel? Is there no God?"), Baldur's Gate 2 ("I play it for the combats") and Company of Heroes ("The RTS that reminded me I could still love RTS."). And his number one pick is not much of a shock but still funny to read. You can check out the entire list at IndustryGamers right now.