Goo

Wisdom from a 6-year-old:

“Dad, if you want to know goo, you’ve got to taste goo.”

Music tagging

Here is a complaint I have about every music program I’ve ever used, from WinAmp and MusicMatch back in the day, through Windows Media Player and now iTunes: Why isn’t it possible to label music genres in a more taxonomic fashion? What I mean is, these program have dozens of labels for music, from bebop to surf rock.

The problem I have is that I don’t want to balkanize my music collection like that. A lot of my music falls under multiple genres. Led Zeppelin is classic rock, metal, folk and blues. Ben Harper is rock, soul, funk, blues, R&B and folk. Sometimes I want to make an automatic playlist of blues, but I want that to include bluesy songs from Zep, The Black Crowes and The White Stripes. But sometimes I might want a catch-all playlist that will capture any 5-star rock songs and don’t care if it’s blues rock, alternative, grunge, or metal. Unfortunately, the single label system used in all this software makes that impossible.

So here’s what someone needs to do: make song labeling hierarchical and give users the power to control that hierarchy. For me, I would have a very few top-level genres: rock, folk, easy listening, jazz, rap and classical. Within rock I’d have classic rock, alternative, southern rock, metal, etc. You could even go a level deeper, for example by breaking down metal into speed, death, doom, and so on.

This would allow for easier playlist generation. Under the current system, a song tagged as metal isn’t going to show up in a rock playlist. Under my system, it would, as well as allow for a separate metal playlist.

Does anyone know if this has already been done somewhere?

Latest column: Ben Heck

Here’s my Gameworld column that ran today. It’s about one Mr. Benjamin Heckendorn, known to many gamers simply as Ben Heck. He takes gaming consoles — old or new — and does things to them that are downright, well, unnatural. Unnatural, and very, very cool.

He’s been on my radar for a few years now. Every few months, one of the gaming or tech blogs would link to his latest project. Finally I said wait a minute, I don’t think any mainstream media outlet has written about this guy yet, who is essentially a one-man Pimp My Ride for game consoles. For the record, he was an incredibly nice dude, totally keen to talk, quick with a witty remark, and full of interesting ideas.

For a while this morning the story was the most-recommended article on Yahoo News (it’s currently No. 6) and even got a little love from BoingBoing.

Read on or hit the link to learn more about this remarkable modder:

By Scott Hillis

SAN FRANCISCO, March 27 (Reuters) – If you ever thought it would be cool to have an Xbox laptop, or wished those old Atari games in your attic could be reborn on a retro handheld device, you might want to talk to Benjamin Heckendorn.

Better known as Ben Heck, the 32-year-old Wisconsin native has attained legendary status among “modders”, hobbyists who tinker with video-game hardware to make it do things the original designers never intended.

Technology Web sites enthusiastically track Heckendorn’s latest projects, which are marked by workmanship that makes the finished products look they rolled off a factory line instead of a basement workbench.

“That’s the American way, right? Start in your basement, garage, or whatever. You’re supposed to get out of it someday, but I still have to listen to my clothes drier sometimes,” Heckendorn said in an interview.

Forty-two inches of sweetness

No, that’s not a nickname for my right bicep. It’s what happens when you run the following equation:

Craigslist + large tax refund + business expense + economies of scale (manufacturing + retail) = this.

Better

Sorry the posting’s been light this week. We’ve had a slew of Japanese friends packing up and going home, which has made for some busy evenings and teary farewells.

On the upside, my bronchitis is gone thanks to the miracle of antibiotics. Yup, I sure do love me some azithromycin.

How the DMV is like a role-playing game

Keep that headline in mind. I have a tale of DMV woe to relate first, but it will circle back around to make a gaming related point.

I finally resolved to get Tala her learner’s permit. The first step in that process is to take the written test. I had today off (Good Friday as a work holiday is about the best thing $1,000 in annual union dues buys me) and told her I would take her to the DMV and set her up with the test. Should be easy, right?

We got to the DMV around 10:30 and the wait wasn’t that bad. We were called to the counter in about 20 minutes. In the meantime we had filled out the application. The only thing that had me a little worried was that they needed her Social Security number, which I didn’t have. Oh well, I figured that if they needed that, at worst Tala could start taking the test and I would drive back home and get it. Silly me.

They need the number right then and there to even register you for the test. Okay, it’s still not really a big deal as we live less than 10 minutes away. I drive home and pull the number off our tax returns. I don’t think she ever had an actual Social Security card, or if she did, we lost it right away.

I was back within 20 minutes and it was another 20 minute wait or so to get back to the counter. Same clerk. Give him the number, and he goes off to validate it. Five minutes later he comes back and says the number doesn’t match her name. Turns out her SocSec number is under her maiden name while her green card, the ID we used to fill out the form, is under her married name. Never mind that we are waving both her green card and her Chinese passport, which has her maiden name, under the nose of the clerk. The rules say the names have to match, and the only way to do that is to go to the SocSec office and change the name.

At least they have directions to the nearest SocSec office, which is about 6 miles away. So we tool on up there. 

“Well,” Tala said, “at least this should be easy. We’ll show my ID and get it changed, and go back to the DMV.”

To which I replied: “Don’t underestimate the government’s ability to complicate even the simplest tasks.”

After another 20-minute wait, we get up to the counter. I tell the pleasant young woman on the other side that my wife’s Social number is registered under her maiden name and she wants to change it to her married name. I give her the number, the green card and her passport. She scans everything for a moment, then looks up and says:

“And where’s your marriage certificate?”

Marriage certificate?

“Yes, we need the marriage certificate to confirm you are married.”

Well, the green card proves we are married because in order to get the green card — issued under her married name — we had to prove to Immigration and Naturalization Service that we did indeed get married. That proof entailed showing them our marriage certificate.

But of course the INS database doesn’t talk to the SSA database, or at least what you do in one realm doesn’t matter to the other. So, our next task is to come up with the marriage certificate. I am reasonably sure I have a copy in our home files, but if not, we’ll have to contact the records office of King County, Washington, 900 miles away, and get a copy sent to us.

And anyway, I don’t have any time off from work to go through this rigamarole for another two weeks, when I take some vacation during Harlan’s Spring Break. Apart from the massive inconvenience, there’s something that just chafes at the revolutionary American character to have to provide a federal identification number in order to just take the first step of obtaining a state driver’s license. Sigh.

Back to the title of this post. Chances are, if you’re a fan of role-playing games you already know where this is going. The comparison is high in my mind because I’ve finally been working through Mass Effect, the sci-fi RPG for the Xbox 360 that came out late last year to much critical acclaim.

A main feature of RPGs is the quest system. The player has a goal, but to achieve that goal and push the story forward, there are a number of hoops the game makes the player jump through.

For instance, in Mass Effect, my character recently arrived at a spaceport on a remote planet that services a system of privately run research labs. I was on the trail of a person who has crucial information needed to make sense of the larger mystery I’m ensnared in. But my status as an elite intelligence agent gives me little authority in this private facility and I have to seek a way to leave the spaceport and gain access to the lab where my quarry is holed up.

I learn from an official who greets me off my starship that I need a permit to leave. She suggests I seek out an administrator. I track him down and he gives me the brush-off. Fortunately, on my way out his assistant drops hints about a couple alternative avenues.

I opt to talk to a merchant who asks me to smuggle something. It requires a trip back to my ship to retrieve the item, which I then carry back to the station administrator. He thanks me by granting me a pass to leave the spaceport.

So here are two thoughts. It actually helped me a little to think of this DMV goose-chase as just another quest in a real-life role-playing game. I was just going through the 2008 California-resident version of trying to leave the spaceport.

That thought was immediately followed by one wondering if Mass Effectis at its core just a series of mundane, frustruating tasks when stripped of its 720p graphics, biotic implants, vast universe of worlds and detailed character development. When I plant my butt on the couch for an hour trying to figure out how to leave the spaceport, am I not really just trying to take the driver’s test?

What accounts for the difference between the two? Is it just in the graphics, story and rich background of Mass Effect? That’s exciting to me, but for my character who is living in that future, wouldn’t this just be the kind of craptastic bureaucracy that frustruates us today? Are Mass Effectand other RPGs just bureaucracy simulators? Or does this sort of thing become more interesting when you know it’s part of saving the galaxy and not just trying to satisfy a very basic part of living in modern society?

A nod to a blogger, and to “Super Mario Galaxy”

Dubious Quality has quickly become one of my must-read blogs. Written by a fellow in Austin named Bill Harris, his interests and views eerily match mine, as evidenced by this post about why he liked Super Mario Galaxy so much. If someone were to ask me what I liked about the game, this is pretty much exactly what I would have written, even down to the bits about playing it with my 6-year-old son.

Like Bill, I’ve never been a Mario guy. As I wrote in my post about Smash Bros., the whole Nintendo phenom passed me by. I was an Atari gamer as a kid, a PC gamer in high school, and then when I hit college, I dropped games completely for the next decade, the very decade that Nintendo rose as a home gaming powerhouse.

Super Mario Galaxy was a major revelation, to me anyway, as to what a game could be. The game just oozes joy from every pixel. The graphics are low fidelity compared to stuff like Call of Duty 4 or BioShock, but the vibrant color palate and simplicity of the overall art design render the game simply gorgeous. The characters are cute, yet tinged with just enough melancholy to grant them depth and feeling.

And oh, the music! The orchestral soundtrack is as good as that of any movie, and I would consider buying it on CD were it to be made available. There is some fascinating reading on how the music was selected. Here is a nice overview from Wikipedia, and here is a link to a Nintendo pagewhere the company president, Satoru Iwata, interviews the guys who did the game’s audio. It’s incredible the lengths they went through to obtain live orchestral recordings that would not only evoke different atmospheres but that could also be synchronized with Mario’s movements as a player guided him through the game.

For me, it was really the music that unified all the game’s elements and propelled it to that legendary ”next level” sought by so many but achieved by so few. At one point it struck me that what I was experiencing was what someone in 1940 probably felt when they saw Disney’s Fantasia for the first time. Galaxy’s wildly varied levels, challenges, and bosses are an updated version of the different styles, stories and music that made Fantasia such a memorable experience.

Old Walt may have ruled animation on the Silver Screen, but Galaxyproves that Miyamoto is a Grand Master of the ascendant medium of interactive entertainment.

Yup, still sick

Man, this has been one of the worst colds I’ve suffered through in a while. I stayed home yesterday, today, and it looks like I will quite possibly stay home tomorrow.

Moreover, this bug seems to be impervious against extra-strength Tylenol, offering little prospect of relief. I don’t have a serious cough, but at night it’s frequent enough so that neither I nor Tala get a good rest.

Meanwhile, everyone else is enjoying some of the finest weather we’ve had this year, with bright blue skies and balmy temperatures. I enviously eyed all the joggers I saw in my brief forays out of doors today.

The only good thing about staying home is that I’ve been able to get some good reading in. I finished Discover Your Inner Economist by Tyler Cowen, and started an advance copy of an upcoming book on video games. I plan on writing a feature on it when it comes in about a month, so more on that later.

I’ve also finally had a chance to sit down and play a couple hours of Mass Effect. I’ve only logged about 6.5 hours in it so far, but I think the story is finally sucking me in. I don’t know why I’ve had trouble getting into the game but it just hadn’t grabbed me in the same way Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic or Oblivion did.

One last mope: I’m bummed because I finally found a place selling Mama Lil’s hot peppers, which are fantastic on nachos. I instantly bought a jar, but realized tonight that we are out of tortilla chips. We are never out of tortilla chips. And it’s too late, and I’m too sick, to do anything about it now.

Latest column: “Super Smash Bros. Brawl”

Here’s my column from last week, about Nintendo’s Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I’ve been thinking of it as the Kill Billof video games. Just as Tarantino paid homage to all his cinema favorites in that movie, Nintendo has crammed this game full of references to its past titles and franchises.

Sadly, most of these insider  lost on me since the Golden Age of Nintendo (I mean, prior to this current one) coincided with my decade-long video game interregnum.

So hit the link above or the jump below to get the full skinny on the game.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Do you have childhood memories of having G.I. Joe fight Luke Skywalker, or throwing Superman into battle against the Bionic Man?

Nintendo is giving its fans a similar feeling this week with “Super Smash Bros. Brawl”, a fighting game for its Wii console that pits dozens of its cherished characters against each other in frenetic free-for-alls.

Fans have waited more than six years for “Brawl”, the third in the “Smash Bros.” series that began in 1999 and has been the only place where Mario can lay down the hurt on Pikachu.

“This game is the only time Nintendo worlds are allowed to collide,” said Nate Bihldorff, a localization producer for the U.S. version of the game.

Financial data as a game?

Or at least a virtual world. That’s what my boss (many times up the chain of command), Reuters CEO Tom Glocer, has to say over at his blog. Tom tells a nice anecdote about grokking from his kids that in-game achievements can sometimes be as significant as real-world ones.

Tom has earned a reputation as the most technologically savvy CEO our venerable British newswire has yet had. He is fascinated in new technologies and what they mean for journalism and financial data, the twin engines of the Reuters ship. He famously opened a Reuters bureau in the Second Life virtual world and has embraced official Reuters blogs.

In this new post, he gives a glimpse into why he thinks this stuff is important for the future of Reuters. First, a bit of background: I mentioned above that journalism and data are the key businesses for Reuters. In fact, as much as we journalists like to believe we’re the heart of the company, the data and trading side of things accounts for the lion’s share of profits. Financial clients use Reuters terminals not only to read news reports, but to obtain data feeds of all sorts, and to chart, graph and analyze that data in useful ways.

One of the reasons I thought such experimentation would benefit the company was that the generation of gamers today would expect far more participatory graphics environments when they came of age professionally.  So for example, I imagine that the current generation of teenagers reared on World of Warcraft, the Sims and Second Life, would find 2D financial graphics pretty lame.  What I overlooked was the wonderful focus group growing up in my own house.

Just in the way that some military systems have been designed to resemble the video-game controls that young recruits are familiar with, Tom seems to suggest that its possible that future financial analysts will find it easier working with 3D models of data rather than Flatlandish spreadsheets and charts.

Personally I think it would be awesome if Reuters partnered with a game developer to make a financial MMO. Towns and geographical areas would be named for and tied to real-world financial instruments — the Options Ocean, or Fort Forex. You’d gain experience and, of course gold, by making real-world profits. Traders could take the roles of rangers or rogues depending on their trading style. Technical traders could be magic-users. Automatic trading systems would be NPCs, or the equivalent of procedurally-generated opponents. Regulators could ride around as paladins, or even assassins. Analysts could be monks (Sling of Downgrading, anyone?) and journalists could be bards.

It’s a scenario rich in possibilities, at least for a science-fiction story if not an actual business product.

Sick again

I wish I were talking about the Zep song, but no, I’m actually sick. For the third time this year. Actually the second, because I think this is just a flare-up of something I’ve had for a couple weeks now.

Back in February I came down with a typical cold for a couple days, and it has persisted as a low-level cough for nearly three weeks now. I haven’t felt sick at all — I’ve been able to run, go to the gym, go to work, etc. But I’ve lived with this mild, annoying cough.

Last night the bug asserted itself again and promoted itself into my sinuses. Now I have a phlegmy cough and a runny nose, and I actually feel sick. Not fun. I’ve now been sick more in the first 2-1/2 months of this year than I was in all of 2007.

As I said, not fun.

Grateful for new Dead tunes in “Rock Band”

Last week, Rock Band offered a six-pack of Grateful Dead songs for download. I’ve never been a Deadhead. They never really grabbed me. Sure, I like the oft-played stuff like ”Truckin” and “Uncle John’s Band”. I also understand that those radio-friendly numbers are not really reflective of the band’s versatility and talent. Sort of like judging the Allman Brothers Band based just on “Ramblin’ Man”.

When I worked in Beijing in the late ’90s, I drove a company car that was an ’80s-model grey Peugeot made in Guangzhou. I inherited a pile of cassette tapes left by my predecessors. One of them was a Dead mix tape. It was good stuff. I remember it being one of the only tapes I listened to, though part of that was because even at that point I’d converted completely to CDs and no longer had any way of making or listening to tapes at home. Like I said, the Dead tape was good stuff, but I can’t for the life of me remember a single song on it. None of it stuck.

A couple years later, back in the States, I bought a double-CD of Dead hits, based mainly on the fact that I at least recognized a couple of the tracks. I’ve had it for years now and still have no idea what other songs are on it. It just wasn’t memorable stuff.

So Rock Band, which has a deal to offer a total of 18 Dead songs, put the first tranche up for download last week. I downloaded it right away but only got the chance to play the songs tonight. Of course, they rocked. This is what is so great about Rock Band creator Harmonix — they have an absolute knack for picking great songs. Not necessarily popular songs, best-selling songs, or well-known songs, but great songs.

I downloaded five of the six songs on iTunes right after playing. The sixth was “Truckin”, which I already had. This just continues a pattern of these games being a conduit to discover new music. It’s better than radio these days, that’s for sure. Turn on classic rock radio and there’s very little you haven’t heard before. Part of the genius of Rock Band and Guitar Hero is that not only do they pick great songs from a wide variety of bands, but their ability to let you pseudo-play the songs forces you to pay attention and appreciate the intricacies of the music in a way you wouldn’t get by just passively listening.

Now, if I could only get an Allman download pack…  

More kites

We bought another kite over the weekend. One modeled after a U.S. Navy Blue Angel F/A-18 Hornet. It’s pretty sweet. The wind was a lot stronger that day. You could just hold the kite aloft, let it go, and — woosh! — it would zip up into the sky. For the first time, we could let out all the string on our kites. Here’s a picture of our new kite buzzing a jet that just took off from the Oakland airport.

Assembling the thing was about as complicated as building a real F-18. There were about half a dozen struts: two that snapped together to form the rigid spine of the jet, two small ones that held the vertical tail fins upright, and one for each of the wings. Cheap kites have sure come a long way, a point driven home forcefully by something else we saw there.

When we first arrived at the park, we walked past a 50s-ish couple messing around with a small kite. As I got closer, I could see that they had fashioned their craft out of brown paper shopping bags and wooden dowels. It was shaped as a deltoid, that is to say, a quadrilateral with two disjoint pairs of congruent adjacent sides; that is to say, a classic kite.

Wow. I had forgotten all about those kite projects. I can remember making shopping-bag kites as a kid, though I’m not sure exactly when or where. If it wasn’t at home, it was probably at school or at one of the numerous summer camps I attended.

It took them about as long to prepare their kite for flight as it for me to assemble the Blue Angel. When they did get it up, it sort of veered wildly from side to side. After a few minutes, it crashed, and though they stayed at the park for quite a while, I never saw them go airborne again. So, mega points for retro-style, not so much for actual air-worthiness.

Oh, and there was a pretty cool sunset, too. You can see the Golden Gate Bridge on the left.

Chuck Norris: Iraqi hero

This may be the single best story I’ve ever read on the Reuters wire. I mean, it’s about Chuck Norris, so right there it’s pretty much ahead of 99 percent of everything else.

Here’s the intro, but it’s worth clicking the link above to read through to the end, which has a great kicker quote — no pun intended — from an Iraqi police trainer.

FALLUJA, Iraq (Reuters) – Hollywood action star Chuck Norris, known for his martial arts prowess and tough-guy image, has become a cult figure among the U.S. military in Iraq and an unlikely hero for some in Iraq’s security forces.

A small cardboard shrine is dedicated to Norris at a U.S. military helicopter hub in Baghdad, and comments lauding the manliness and virility of the actor have been left on toilet walls across Iraq and even in neighboring Kuwait, soldiers say.

“The fastest way to a man’s heart is with Chuck Norris’s fist,” reads one message at the shrine, which consists of a signed photo of the actor surrounded by similar statements.

“Chuck Norris puts the laughter in manslaughter,” reads one and “Chuck Norris divides by zero,” reads another.

Interior decorator

So Tala took Harlan to the Asian shopping center down the street after school today.

They were moseying along when Harlan suddenly went: “Mom, I have to go to the bathroom really bad.”

That was quickly followed by, “We’d better go now, otherwise I’m doing to redecorate my pants.”

I think he got it off TV somewhere, but he insisted it was his own joke. 

Best American rock band ever

I told a buddy recently that I was increasingly certain that The Allman Brothers Band was the greatest American rock band of all time. It’s a question I hadn’t really considered before, seeing as how most of the really legendary acts have been British: the Beatles, Zeppelin, the Stones, etc.

In terms of sales, Aerosmith is the top U.S. band, with something like 65 million records sold. But if sales were our sole judge, we’d all agree that “Titanic” is the greatest film of all time.

Elvis certainly deserves consideration, as does Creedence and Hendrix. More modern picks might be The Ramones, Guns ‘N’ Roses and Metallica. The ’90s brought us Nirvana, Pearl Jam, Soundgarden and The Smashing Pumpkins.

But I’ve been listening to the Allmans as part of a Southern Rock kick I’ve been on (there’s a story in that, too, that I’ll get to sometime) and have been blown away. The band had it all: virtuoso musicianship, masterful songwriting, a legendary live act, and an unmistakable American feel.

I mentioned my thinking to a friend who instantly rained derision on me as though I’d claimed New Kids on the Block were the kings of American rock. He then rattled off a list of other and, in his mind, better candidates: Neil Young, Fleetwood Mac, Bob Dylan, Prince, Tom Petty, and Van Halen. All worthy choices in some regards, but ones that fall ultimately fall short in my reckoning. And then when he suggested The Pretenders, I knew he’d veered off into crack-smoking territory.

Here is a summary of my thinking in bestowing title of Greatest American Rock Band ever on The Allman Brothers Band:

–They boasted two of the top guitarists of all time in Duane Allman and Dickey Betts

–They single-handedly created the entire genre of southern rock

–Their ratio of 5-star songs (as rated by me in a totally objective and authoritative fashion) to total output equals that of Led Zeppelin’s, and they have far fewer low-ranking songs.

–Their ground-breaking Fillmore East show not only created the concept of the double live album but set the gold standard performance-wise

–Songs like “Rambling Man”, “Jessica”, “Midnight Rider” and “In Memory of Elizabeth Reed” feature an unmistakeably American sound, melding blues, rock, country and jazz

–Their best-of-breed muttonchop sideburns

So what’s your take? Which homegrown band do you think was the best of the best? Here’s a USAToday column in which readers voted and decided the winner was… well, check for yourself. I think it’s wrong, though the list overall isn’t a bad one.

Latest column: “Frontlines: Fuel of War”

Here is my latest Gameworld column. This one feels a bit different because it’s about a game that is expected to do only moderately well. But it’s one of those titles that becomes more interesting the more you learn about it, or the more you play it.

First, the cool backstory. In 2002, Electronic Arts released Battlefield 1942, a World War II-era multiplayer shooter for the PC. It was wildly successful because it allowed for huge battles involving up to 64 players fighting at a time. Not only that, but it gave players the option of picking a “class” such as medic, engineer, etc. Each class had special abilities that were needed for a team to be successful. Moreover, BF1942let players drive tanks and fly airplanes. It was a radical shift away from the run-and-gun deathmatch, every-man-for-himself style that had been standard fare for multiplayer shooters. Instead, the game encouraged teams to work together and utilize a range of skills in order to win.

One other thing the game allowed was for people to create modified versions, or “mods”. One group of guys spent weekends and evenings fooling around and retooling BF1942 with modern weapons and set in the Middle East. The game basically still played the same but instead of Browning machine guns and B-17 bombers, players were handling M-16s and AC-130 gunships.

This “Desert Combat” mod proved wildly popular, a fact not lost on Digital Illusions CE, the studio behind the original game. They worked with the Desert Combat guys, by then organized as Trauma Studios, on the next Battlefield game, Battlefield 2, which not surprisingly was set in the modern era in fictional Middle East locales. Soon, DICE, which was partly owned by EA, bought Trauma. But the match was short-lived and DICE ended up shutting down Trauma in 2005. The fellow I interviewed for my piece said the issue was that they wanted the Trauma team to move to Sweden, where DICE was located.

Whatever the reason, the former Trauma guys didn’t have to wait long for their next gig. Within months, they were hired by THQ and renamed themselves Kaos Studios. THQ was and is a company known mainly for its licensed games based on properties like WWE, Nickelodeon shows, and Pixar movies. It has been trying, with mixed success, to come up with more original games and the evergreen popularity of shooters probably seemed like a safe bet.

Two years later, Frontlines: Fuel of War is out. My impression, having played the multiplayer for a few hours this week, is that it’s the closest thing yet to Battlefield 2 on a console. The weapons variety is good and the soldier classes are varied enough that it’s a different experience playing with each one. My favorite trick is play as the drone expert and fly remote controlled drones to take out unsuspecting enemies. I was surprised, however, at how quickly the opposing team could spot my drone and take it down.

Read on or click through to Reuters to get the details:

Frontlines aims to break out of shooter pack

By Scott Hillis

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – At first blush, THQ’s Frontlines: Fuel of Warseems like just another entrant in a recent string of military-themed shooter video games. But a few tricks could set it apart enough to turn it into a sorely needed success for THQ, which struggled last year with lackluster reviews and poor sales.

The game is set in 2024, and a “peak oil” energy crisis has sparked a global war over resources with Russia and China in one corner and the United States and Europe in the other.

“We started researching it and we were blown away by how real these theories could be and how dependent our modern society is on that affordable, cheap oil,” David Votypka, the game’s design director, said in an interview.

The single-player portion of the game drops the player in a combat zone with a constantly updated list of missions. Where many games, like last year’s hit Call of Duty 4, have players follow a set path, Frontlines chose an “open-world” model.

Anyone got a Scroll of Resurrection? Now would be a good time to use it

It’s a sad day for geeks everywhere: Gary Gygax, creator of Dungeons & Dragons, has died at age 69 of an abdominal aneurysm. As my friend Joetold me via IM: “I sensed a great disturbance in the Force, as if millions of geeks in their parents’ basements cried out in mourning…” That strikes the perfect balance of respect and geeky homage this event calls for. It’s probably than joking about running out of hit points or failing a saving throw.

I certainly knew my way around a 20-sided diewhen I was a kid and remember clearly my first in-depth contact with the game. I remember sitting in on some dungeon-crawling sessions in early early grade school when the D&D phenomenon first broke in the mid-late ’70s. But it wasn’t until 6th grade that I rolled my first character, thanks to my social studies teacher Mr. Schuster (not his real name).

Thinking back on it, it was pretty edgy for him to start an extracurricular D&D club at a Catholic school where nuns still strolled the halls and the game was in the headlines for turning kids into devil-worshipping slackers. I distinctly remember rolling a pretty crappy character. I think his highest attribute was 13 or 14, and his lowest was 3 or 4. Mr. Schuster advised me to assign the low score to charisma, then made him a half-orc to explain how he got walloped with the business end of the ugly stick. To make me feel better about having an unattractive and weak character, Mr. Schuster made him an assassin and told me to keep that secret from the rest of the players. Unfortunately, I never got a chance to see my hatchet-faced killer in action because, a couple weeks later, Mr. Schuster was fired. It was nothing to do with D&D. The rumor was that he threw chalk at a student and cursed him with obscene language.

But I kept my fascination for D&D through grade school and part of high school. The weird thing is that I never actually played it that much. Few of my friends were into it, so I mostly just spent hours poring over the rules laid forth in The Dungeon Master’s Guide and The Player’s Handbook, dreaming up new characters, and absorbing the mythology of the Monster Manual andDieties and Demigods. Thanks to D&D, I had sterling instruction in fantasy taxonomy long before I read Tolkien. I learned the defining characteristics of elves, dwarves and halflings, and got schooled in the mundane nuisances of bugbears and hobgoblins. D&D introduced me to the more exotic menaces of ocre jellies, undead liches and floating, wide-eyed beholders, and taught me the names of powerful ancient evils like Asmodeus, Beelzebub, and Tiamat.

Eventually, cars, girls and stereos took over my spare time. Probably more than a decade passed before I encountered D&D again, in 1999, and this time it had been thoroughly updated for the computer age in the form of role-playing games like Baldur’s Gate IIthat featured epic 40-hour-long stories, rich characters and lush, cutting-edge graphics. Amazingly, Gygax’s 6-attribute character creation system, turn-based combat and byzantine system of bonuses and penalties affecting almost every action could be ported perfectly to computers. Given that I had been a kid who often had to play D&D — the ultimate geek social network of its day — by myself, this ability to play through a detailed campaign alone was instantly appealing.

It’s amazing the D&D still thrives today through dice, pencils and lead figurines despite the wild popularity of video games and how easy, compelling and accessible they made fantasy worlds. Gygax and his crew hit upon a magical formula that fired the imagination of generations of geeks and, along with Tolkien, is pretty much entirely responsible for the state of fantasy role-playing games today.

Kite is game

You know something? Kites rock. The past few weekends, Tala and I have taken Harlan to kite heaven, otherwise known as Cesar Chavez Park at the Berkeley marina.

The park is perfectly sited for flying kites. Check it out on Google Maps. Not only does it jut out into the bay for maximum wind exposure, but if you zoom out on the map, you’ll see that there’s only about a 2-mile finger of terra firma that lays between it and the entire Pacific Ocean. The wind today was rather mild but even so it had flags and banners snapping. Moreover, the park has several gentle hills and valleys, all carpeted in lush, shin-high green grass.

It really is a delight to walk, and we’ve gone over on several weekends to admire the squadrons of kites that always seem to be patrolling the park’s airspace. The place has such ideal conditions that it’s the site of the annual Berkeley Kite Festival, which features some amazing kites. So last weekend, Costco had a deal on big kites spanning 6′. We picked up one that looks like a dragon and today was our first chance to try it out. There’s Harlan, above, performing some corrective action.

At one point, Tala and Harlan had wandered off, leaving me in sole custody of the dragon. As I stood there, back to the setting sun, letting string out or taking it in, and occasionally jerking my hands from side to side, it struck me what a similar sensation it was to playing a video game. Gripped in my two hands, the kite reel felt not unlike a game controller of some sort (Wii kite peripheral, anyone?), and my mental state seemed similar to what I feel sometimes while playing — a sort of detached focus on the objective at hand, with hands and eyes working together sort of quasi-automatically while a portion of my brain thinks about other stuff.

In a way it’s not really surprising because both activities are a form of play. I’m sure there are many other pastimes have similar effects on people, but I’ve never before felt such a close association between two pretty different activities. I found kite-flying sort of hypnotically addictive, and Tala mentioned that maybe it’s what draws people to fishing as well. I can definitely see getting into kites, especially with this world-class proving ground just two miles down the highway from us.

My latest column: Patapon and Professor Layton

My latest video game column is out. Usually, console games suck up all my reporting energy but two new portable titles — Patapon for the PSP and Professor Layton and the Curious Village for the DS — made me think it’s time I turned my attention to handhelds for once.

I’ve been playing both of them over the past few days. Pataponis actually quite challenging because it’s up to you to explore the Patapon world and find the things you need to advance. Professor Layton is cute. But I’ve worked through about 1/5 of the puzzles and have yet to feel really challenged. There have only been one or two that have required me to use all three hints. Believe me, this is not attributable to me being some sort of brainiac. I just think so far the puzzles have been pretty easy.

I picked these games to write about because they are bizarre mash-ups of different gaming genres. They aren’t without their flaws, but they definitely deliver unique experiences and are worth checking out.

You can click here to see the article on the Reuters Web site, or read on below:

By Scott Hillis

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) – Bizarre little creatures that look like walking eyeballs and a puzzle-cracking professor may not seem to have much in common at first glance.

But they are the stars of two new vastly different hand-held video games that are winning praise for the ways they combine different genres to produce quirky new experiences.

“Patapon”, out this week for Sony’s PSP, is being hailed as one of the system’s best games. It is perhaps best characterized as a rhythm-based, side-scrolling real-time strategy game.

Confused? Here’s how it works.