No idea whose photo credit this is.

Been listening to Stateless again the last couple of days.  But listening once now triggers a memory from – ooh – 2006 I’d guess, around the time the album came out.

They’re playing at Leeds Rio’s, on its launch night, when it looked like it might be a really good venue.  It ended up not being, but that’s not the point.  It’s launch night, everyone’s excited, and I’m there with a good friend.  I’m on crutches, my leg in a big strap cast, having been dislocated at The Cockpit a few weeks earlier.  It’s probably my first night out since then.

Stateless come onstage.  They launch into Prism #1, which swells and grows around us.  We’re – um – not exactly sober.  The music’s dreamy and ethereal, dancing around the air of the club.  We’re about half-way back, on a riser, hands on the railings, holding on.  The lights swirl.  The music drifts.  I catch my friend’s eye.  We both smile a big, stupid, teeth-grinding smile.  And then dance.  Oh, man, we dance.

Right now, feeling rather ill with a nasty cold, certainly not under the influence of anything (actually not true – have taken some Morrisons Cold Relief Capsules), I listen to the album.  Prism’s just finished playing.  Now Exit is on.  I can’t wait for This Language, ’cause that’s totally another that sends me right back to that night.  And in this state, this state that’s so completely opposite to the one I was in then, all I want to do is dance, alone, in my bedroom.

That’s good music, y’know?

Later that night we headed over to the now defunct Trash and watched some RAWK bands strut their stuff.  We nodded along, still in the mood.  I think I ended up doing a horrible all-nighter at another friend’s house, actually, if it is indeed the same night I’m thinking off.  But it was always totally about Stateless.  What a tremendous record.  It is some of the most beautiful music I’ve ever heard.

EDIT: It occurs to me I should probably link to some of their music.

The aftermath of Modern Warfare 2's 'No Russian' scene.

If you’re into games, you’d be hard pressed to have been able to avoid the super-mega-enormo-release of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 this week.  This is the first game ever to have a full-blown premiere event, a la the movies.  It is, according to initial stats, the fastest selling computer game ever. The hype train’s been miraculous. And, as you may know if you’re into this sort of thing, the game contains a level, called ‘No Russian’, in which you murder people in an airport.

Okay, more context than that’s required.  You’re a secret CIA operative infiltrating a known terrorist group.  Doing so, you tag along on an attack on an airport, which… well, I just cannot fathom in my mind at all.  But that’s what happens. “Are you sure you want to play this bit?” the game asks you, twice? It could be disturbing for some players, we’re informed. Yes. You can only hope that was the point.

There’s a big debate about this level, in which the terrorist group fires assault weapons into multiple crowds of unarmed civilians.  You can shoot too, if you want, though it’s never necessary.  The game doesn’t acknowledge whether you do or not, though.  That, depending on your viewpoint, might be a big problem.

Below the jump: the scene in question, and some thoughts.  Is it the most horrible, offensive nonsense in the world of gaming?  Is it a brave step for developers Infinity Ward to take?  Read on to find out what I reckon.

[Er, actually, the video's too wide to embed. Bloody template. It's here.]

Right. Crikey. Let’s discuss.

My initial reaction is to be, well, horrified.  Of course, the video was leaked some time before the game’s release on Tuesday, but I’d not bothered watching it because, well, it seemed like another videogame controversy thing a la Grand Theft Auto.  So when I finally saw this a few days ago, I was pretty shocked.  I mean, man!  It’s vicious, brutal and unpleasant.  I showed it to my girlfriend, who sat down before it and said “I doubt it’s as bad as people are saying. I’ve never felt that shocked at anything in a game before.”  She ended up sitting with her hand over her mouth, finding it deeply disturbing.  That was kinda my reaction too.  It’s fucking horrible, y’know?

My reaction after that has been to sway madly between two points of view.  Because first, I thought it was wonderful.  Really wonderful.  Film, literature, television, whatever – they’ve all been doing unpleasant stuff for decades, attemping to instil a sense of genuine horror into the consumer for an aesthetic effect or otherwise.  Art and entertainment have an amazing ability to evoke emotions and thought-processes that might not crop up otherwise in our day-to-day lives.  As I watched this scene unfold, I felt awful.  Really awful.  I hated that I was having to watch it all unfold.  And I really, really love that.

There are a few problems with it, though.  Friend and game critic Phill Cameron found the whole thing to be so ludicrously out of place in what is otherwise a no-brainer shooter that it came to represent “war porn” rather than anything truly poignant.  Others note the suspicious pre-release leak of the video, and suggest it might be a straight-up marketing campaign.  Another writer-of-games-related-stuff, Quintin “Quinns” Smith, noted that it may have worked to then, as a different character, arrive at the airport too late, and be forced to soak up the bloody atmosphere of the aftermath of what you’ve just done.

I’ve considered all these ideas, and agree to an extent.  To bounce off Quinns’ idea, I found myself thinking it would be nice to play as the CIA operative, barricaded into a room somewhere with a group of civilians, watching on in horror as the scene unfolded, powerless to do anything.  I find the agency troubling in a way: that I have to partake in this, rather than watching from afar.  Yet at the same time, this agency is sort of key to why it works.

Indie game Edmund also features a particularly disturbing sequence. Do the low-res graphics make a difference?

‘No Russian’ makes me feel guilty for even watching it, let alone playing it.  With that gun in hand, whether you shoot or not, you’re forced to be complicit with this terrible massacre.  It does not have to be a statement of intent from the player – this is a scripted event, after all – but it is placing you in the shoes of someone doing something unthinkably horrible.  And the feelings that emerge from this enslaved act are beyond what a great majority of videogames are capable of.

That’s why I think ‘No Russian’ marks an important and significant moment in the history of gaming.  Tuesday 10th November was the date on which a piece of mainstream interactive entertainment had you gun down unarmed, innocent civilians, with no tongue in cheek, with a look of deadly seriousness, and in a way that made you feel utterly horrible.  It is a step towards the unthinkable in videogames, a real boundary of taste demolished, and I can only get behind that.

Do works of art have to be morally sound to stand up?  That’s been a great dillema in a few media.  Consider the Triumph of the Will, a film that glorified the Nazi party, condemned by critics but lauded by cinematographers as one of the most beautifully crafted, intentionally uneasy works of cinema in all of the medium’s history.  I wouldn’t want to hold Modern Warfare 2 on the same pillar as that, but the parallel’s there.  If The Path did it for indie games back in March, asking that you marched young girls into the woods in order for them to be “ravaged” by “wolves”, Modern Warfare 2 is doing it for the mainstream gaming hardcore today.  I’m going to give Infinity Ward the benefit of the doubt, as for this, I really want to praise them for being fantastically brave.

Interestingly, another indie game played with a similarly repugnant act and the agency thing a while back.  It’s called Edmund, and features a scene in which your character rapes a woman at a bus stop.  I’d be interested to hear from people who’ve played both (Edmund is free, incidentally, and will run on everyone’s computers) what they thought of the comparison.  Obviously, Edmund is pixel-art whereas Modern Warfare 2’s animations are almost uncomfortably realistic.  I mean, check out the bit in ‘No Russian’ where the guy sits, obviously panicking, bleeding from the stomach.  I have no doubt that this added to my repulsion.  So is it because of the agency that we aren’t comfortable with this, or is it a realism thing too?  Are we pushing it too far?

Yeah, we probably are.  But I’ll defend devs’ right to do so for all time.

Yeah. Innovative.

Hunting Frenzy is a hunting game.  Or, as the title of its press release calls it, “a downloadable animal-blaster aimed at youngsters.”  Yeah, that’s what I thought too.

Ordinarily when an unspeakably awful press release lands in my inbox, I’ll ignore it.  But something about the tremendousness with which this one defies all belief compelled me to finish reading.

It’s obviously translated.  But I can’t help but assume it was written in a completely broken form of its mother-tongue, then translated verbatim.  Which is presumably why its developers claim it to have “completely unique gameplay mechanics,” when actually it’s the sort of thing we’ve seen before a hundred times, and a lot better.

“The game has innovative twist that breaks apart of what has seen until now,” says the press release.  And the twist is… that… “The audience of this game are kids but the adult can enjoy this game as well.”  Tremendous!  So, it’s not just aimed at kids!  Adults can have fun killing innocent animals as well!  I don’t want to get all activist on everyone – and sure, the game is about animals killing other animals, rather than the dispicable man versus beast kind of hunting – but it strikes me as impossibly strange to market a hunting game at children.  A really, really strange idea.

“In this game the hunter should urgently rush & invade the hunt & all of a sudden hunt the same,” screams the press release.  Man!  It sounds urgent.  Presumably too urgent to bother paying a translator.

“But hunter should be very careful because the hunt my escape but in liue of the same the sharp cactus and the cactus encounter and face cactus & be killed.”

I have no idea what that means.

So, of course, I played the game.  Which, by the way, costs $20.

In it, you play as one of various animals, for some reason perched on a wire, suspended in the countryside.  In the first level, I was a lion.  Perched on a wire.  Yes.  My objective was to swoop down and eat sheep as they appeared out of thin air.  Then, um, somehow launch fifteen metres back up into the air to the wire.

A clock ticked down from one minute in the bottom right corner.  After 23 seconds, apparently completely at random, the level ended.  And I moved onto level 2.  Where exactly the same thing happened, only with more sheep and, this time, cacti to pose as an obstacle.  In the middle of a field of grass.  The third level added bombs.  The fourth level is where I switched off.

It’s astonishingly, impossibly rubbish.  To think this is being marketed as a full-price downloadable game is baffling.  It’s of the quality of those Flash games you find on utterly terrible websites, that provide a 30-second diversion before you forget about them forever.  Only it’s worse, because there’s no semblence of a rule-set or structure whatsoever, the menus are littered with typos, and there’s no way to quit the game after you’ve started a level except to bring up the task manager.

It’s quite special.  You should totally try out the demo.

Even the cover art's more abstract than ever before.

Zero 7 must be pretty annoyed by the majority’s reaction to their new record, Yeah Ghost.  Released last week to a collection of relatively decent reviews, there’s a thread running through both the critical and consumer commentary.  Zero 7 has always been the baby of Henry Binns and Sam Hardaker, and there’s no change to that formula now, but the concensus seems to be the same either way: it just isn’t the same without Sia.

Sia, of course, now has a lucrative solo career, and with good reason.  Her soulful voice combined with more commercial pop songs has been going down a treat for a few years now, with her ear for a good melody shining through everything she writes and performs.  But while she was never even a full-time member of Zero 7, it would be silly to claim her departure to be irrelevant.  Her distinctive tones lent themselves perfectly to a sizealbe chunk of the renowned electronica band’s first three albums, something this outing lacks.  And, y’know, it’s noticeable.  The vocal talent on display here is more than strong enough, but there’s little escaping the facts.  It isn’t the same without her.

But I can’t help but feel that’s more to do with the core duo’s shift than the lack of their previous lead vocalist.  It’s very different.  Where previous records took on a warm, dreamlike, almost ecstatic vibe, Yeah Ghost is colder, more mechanical, more calculated.  There are definite shades 0f both Massive Attack and Radiohead here, though none of it is ever quite as good, and it’s also littered with up-tempo segments that struggle to sit neatly into the formula.  It retains a lot of Zero 7’s soulfulness, but it manifests in a different way; it’s more subtle, more restrained but more abstract.  Certainly less immediate.

There’s a reason why the band proved so popular in the past.  The way the vocals, keyboards and general production flowed was so masterfully cohesive that their output ended up feeling almost improvised, always thoroughly natural and hugely evocative.  That’s not the case any more, and it’s easy to see why die-hard fans are upset. Only Swing sounds much like you’d expect from the act, with Martha Tilston (who I’ll namedrop as the sister of a friend of a friend, which sounded much more impressive before I just wrote that) acting as a fitting replacement for Sia.  And there’s always the sense that there have been other artists making this sort of music for years, a lot of whom continue to do it just that little bit better.

But Yeah Ghost is more than strong enough to stand up high via its own merits.  It’s a solid record, perfect for idle nodding-along, and one I imagine could be quite a grower.  There’s a splendid attention to detail in the production, and those of a more typical trip-hop ilk will find a lot to love.  And I’ll never bemoan an artist maturing and experimenting with different approaches.  I’ll tip my hat to that any day.  I would if I wore one, at least.

But secretly?  I’d love to hear a new Destiny, or In The Waiting Line, or Somersault.  I can’t escape my own fandom.

I hope there aren't any kids in the way of these cars...

There I was getting wound up about one semi-games-related thing, and my girlfriend shouts through from the other room with another.  Seems, in this week’s edition of women’s real-life mag Take A Break, the editor’s mounting a campaign (along with the more motherly of the magazine’s readership) to ban the Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt series.

Predictably, much of it is nonsense, and clearly written by someone who’s never even had the slightest interest in playing the games in question, not even for the sake of journalistic integrity.  Here are a few choice quotes:

“The magazine’s philosophy? Bringing mum’s together, taking back our streets from yobs, campaigning to end violence against women” – all of which, the article claims, are supported by Rockstar’s GTA and Manhunt titles.

“Rockstar stood for women as victims, prostitutes and sexual objects,” the article subsequently claims. “Take A Break stood for women as campaigners, mothers and a force for good.”

And eventually, with some conviction, “We’re happy to go on record on behalf of our readers to say we think that such games should be censored.”

But it gets worse.  Oh, how it gets worse.

“We asked via our website for you to vote for Take A Break if you felt that Rockstar Games shouldn’t be on the list of those who have the power to shape young minds.”

Oh, of course, it’s about young minds.  Because the great big whopping red 18 on the front cover means this is a product aimed at our poor iccle children, not sane, sensible adults with a legal and moral right to make their own choices about the entertainment they consume.

“These games are sickening in their violence and corruption of young minds,” the article reiterates, before claiming that they “encourage kids to think that violence against women is cool. That being a criminal is something to aspire to.  They glorify drug use and drug dealing.” Again, it’s all about our poor little children, being corrupted by an evil force that is not legally available to them.  Which means… could it mean… that Take A Break’s army of mums have actually contributed to the breaking of UK law by purchasing this sick, twisted product for their children to enjoy?  BBFC 18-rated products cannot be legally sold to or for a minor.

It gets worse still.  I ranted about ITV’s gaming addiction documentary a bit ago, and much of what angered me there can be applied here.  Check this shit out:

“[The games'] defenders claim that players can easily tell the difference between sordid fantasy and cold reality. But a steady stream of crimes have been linked to violent video games since they first went on sale.  Only last August yet another murder was linked to Grand Theft Auto – this time after an 18-year-old stabbed a taxi driver in Thailand.  He wanted money to play the game” (??) “and said it made killing ’seem easy’.”

And, amazingly, this:

“Authorities in Thailand immediately banned [Grand Theft Auto]. Sadly the UK doesn’t take the mental health of its children as seriously.”

Wow.

So.  I thought I’d blog about it.  And then copy-and-paste the letter I’ve emailed to the magazine tonight, and plan to send in paper-form tomorrow.  If you feel strongly, you could pick up a copy of this week’s Take A Break (it’s shit, but less than a quid), read the article, and do the same.  You can get in touch via email at tab.features@bauer.co.uk, or by post at Letters, Take A Break, Freepost LON12043, H Bauer Publishing, London, NW1 1YU.  Here’s what I’ve written:

***

RE: “Mums’ Army vs Rockstar Games”

Dear Editor,

I felt compelled to write to you after spotting the above report in my partner’s copy of your magazine.

I myself am a journalist, specialising in the fields of computer and video games. As such, I was astonished at the complete lack of fair, reasoned and accurate journalism displayed by Take A Break in the article in question.

I am not familiar with your initial campaign or the “victory” to which you mysteriously refer. But I am familiar with the Grand Theft Auto series, and the surrounding controversy. Yet even concerning such a hotly-debated game franchise, I have never seen such a flagrant disregard for unbiased, accurate reporting. Littered with out-of-context remarks and outright fabrications, it is a piece to which I absolutely had to respond.

The whole thing smacks of either a disturbing hidden agenda or a complete lack of research. Most notably, the constant referral to the ways in which Rockstar Games’ titles are somehow corrupting the minds of our poor children is alarming. Perhaps your campaign should not be rallying your motherly readers in a preposterously misleading and scaremongering charade of nonsense, but in fact rallying against them, as presumably each and every one of these horrified parents has illegally purchased the game for their children, or allowed them to purchase it illegally for themselves. The BBFC certified every single Grand Theft Auto and Manhunt game as ‘18′, which in UK law cannot be supplied to a minor, or to an adult who intends to in turn supply it to a minor. Are you suggesting in this article that developing creative, forward-thinking products of entertainment aimed at responsible adults is more of a crime than breaking UK law? Are you sure?

You subsequently cite the tragic case of an 18-year-old’s stabbing of a taxi driver in Thailand. The act was indeed initially attributed to Grand Theft Auto, but I have yet to read the reports of a single psychological professional who confirmed a direct, isolated, causal relationship between the game and the terrible act of knife crime. Every report is the same: the young man was obviously deeply mentally disturbed, and while it is perhaps possible that Grand Theft Auto was the trigger, it was in no way solely to blame for his actions. The government’s subsequent banning of the game was an example of reactionary panic, a shameless plea for people to believe they were making moves to combat such crimes. Equally, the links between the games and “a steady stream of crimes” have been largely discredited by professionals, and only supported by a mass of uninformed popular opinion by those who have conducted little or no basic research into the matter. I guess you had a reason for choosing not to report on this side of the case, though I haven’t been able to decypher it from your article.

It goes on. Accusations of sexism could well be founded, were the violence and other sensitive matters exclusive to female victims, or even weighted that way. Had you spent any time with the games (I assume you haven’t spent any time with the games, or else you’re simply lying rather than being unfortunately misinformed), you would see that the vast majority of violent acts were committed both by and to males (prostitutes do feature peripherally, and had you restricted your argument to this, I’d have been more inclined to understand).

As for worries about promoting drug dealing and a general life of crime, it should be noted that the latest game in the series, Grand Theft Auto 4, went some way in its elegantly and artistically presented narrative to ensuring the lasting message was that crime does not in fact pay. Its protagonist finished the game regretting many of his actions over the course of it, and having arrived in the USA chasing the American dream, began to long for his simpler life back home. You claim Grand Theft Auto glamorises these atrocities, and at a glance it perhaps does. But I find such claims entirely unsupportable by the game, should it be played for any reasonable amount of time.

I’d be extremely interested to know more about your campaign and ensuing victory, as it would help me put the report in a little more context. I’d also ask you to question exactly why you are demanding the censorship of human expression and entertainment. I would entirely agree: children should not be playing the Grand Theft Auto games at all. It is totally unsuitable. But your pleas appear to be part of some sort of misdirected campaign for the protection of children, yet you a collection of games exclusively available to an adult audience as your ammunition. Currently, none of it adds up. I assume, as a professional journalist, you have your reasons, so I would love to hear them.

Please do get in contact via this email address, or via my postal address below, as I would be happy to discuss this matter further.

Kind Regards,

Lewis Denby
Editor
Resolution Magazine

***

Take A Break says its readers voices will not go unheard.  Make sure yours don’t either.

We're all lowercase now, apparently.

Here’s a fact: Paramore vocalist Hayley Williams and I share a birthdate.  Not just a birthday, you understand, but an actual, proper, full-fucking-on birthdate.  I like to think we’re actually estranged twins and one day we’re going to meet, in some sort of hugely emotional embrace, and she’ll somehow imbue on me her power to become an incredibly famous musician by the time she was in her late teens.  Which, um, would actually be a little too late, thinking about it.

Anyway, the point is, here’s a woman in her early twenties whose band has already had a string of successful singles, two huge albums, and a third that’s very likely to reach the same level of stratospheric fandom.  And for the first time – the first proper time, at least – here’s a woman and a band and a record that absolutely deserves just that.

Rewind, then.  Paramore’s first record, All We Know Is Falling, was a fiesty little pop-punk record with plentiful aggression and huge promise for a stunningly angry red-haired teenage singer.  It was immature and a little naive, though, holding it back from enormous brilliance.  Next came 2007’s Riot!, which was the one to really propel the band into the limelight, here in the UK at least.  Driven by lead single Misery Business, it was a more finely crafted, carefully produced record, but the songwriting had edged away from the angry punk niceness and into the realms of – dare we say the horrible word? – emo…

And now, thankfully, Paramore seem to have absolutely cracked the formula that made them so almost-brilliant since their inception.  It’s still whiney to the extreme at times, but on far more occasions it’s a masterful display of controlled anger.  And even then, the band finds time to drop out into a couple of subdued numbers, including – incredibly – an acoustic track.  Less impressively, it’s one of the album’s weaker moments.

This is Paramore after their Left 4 Dead tournament. They had a Left 4 Dead tournament. Are you not totally sold?

But what really shines is how finely tuned the band’s songwriting has become.  This is pristine aggro-pop.  There’s an added complexity to the musicianship, which alone is worth the asking price.  But the construction of each tune, filled with memorable melodies, inch-perfect pacing and real head-banging, foot-stomping statements of young, smug defiance.  Even in the actual structuring and performance of each song, totally disregarding the lyrics (mainly because I’ve paid precisely fuck all attention to them), has made a bold jump away from heart-on-sleeve angsting to complete, utter fuck-you.  It’s brilliant.

Poor the-rest-of-the-band, though: smart, just-a-little-bit-cute Williams has already completely stolen the limelight, and here’s she’s only likely to disappear further into the sky, heralded as some sort of teen-rocker heart-throb who can actually really fucking sing.  Seriously.  This woman has an absolute command over her voice these days, with astonishing power combined with wholly impressive precision throughout.  She can tone it down, too, though, and there are a few moments of delightful fragility.  Only a few, though, and it’s always a great moment when she’s back to screaming her little heart out – but it shows really bright things for Williams, who seems to have completely come into her own for this outing.  I’d say she’s a star in the making, but she’s totally already there.

And, y’know?  Fuck this guilty pleasure thing I’ve had going on for Paramore for the last couple of years.  There’s nothing guilty about this.  It’s passionate, clever and immensely enjoyable pop music.  Only a couple of isolated moments let it down – the last couple of tracks are decent but slightly forgettable, and the bonus track – Decode, from the Twighlight film – is Paramore straying way too far into Evanescence territory.  But bloody hell, this is good, man!  It’s an album I’m dead proud of liking, and one Paramore should absolutely be dead proud of themselves.  By far their brightest hour.

J.D. Richardson.

Thank goodness for multiple categories, eh?  After a fairly long wait, Charlie Brooker’s Gameswipe airs tonight, tragically relegated to BBC4 at 10pm BST.  Charlie Brooker is a very funny man who used to be a games journalist and now is all famous and on the telly.  You’ll have probably seen him before.  Some people think he looks a bit like J.D.  I couldn’t possibly comment.  Because he’s coming round tomorrow to record a podcast and I imagine he’ll beat me up.

It’s a one-off this time, disappointingly, though I guess the -Wipe series has always relied on the continuity of things like the news for it to actually work.  A weekly Gameswipe would just be… well, it’d be Zero Punctuation, stretched out to an hour.  Or that’s how I imagine it, anyway.

Typically I’m actually going out tonight, but thankfully – for us UK TV License-paying lot – it’s going to be on iPlayer.  Which means I can watch it in a drunken stupor when I get home, then forget whether it was any good or not.  Exquisite!  The rest of you should totally watch it.

Afterwards, I head on over to Metacritic to get an idea of whether I was a bit crazy for thinking it’s one of the most fabulous, important children’s films I’ve seen in years.  It’s on a 77 average, as little as that means – but, y’know, generally a really good reception.  But I notice the user reviews rate it a lot lower.  So I start to thumb through, and honestly?  Some of the stuff there is just disgraceful.

Okay, plenty of people like it.  Plenty of people appreciate its elegance; the stunningly organic CGI and the fantastic messages encoded subtly within the film.  Others… well, I basically worry for some children being brought up these days.

Some of the complaints are awkward, but understandable.  There’s a scene that heavily implies sexual themes.  Heck, there’s a character that’s built around them.  And, sure, I commented during the film that I was surprised to see the U certificate on the box.  Parts of it are distinctly grown-up.  Its biggest triumphs are often things that would float over the little uns’ heads, and other bits are maybe slightly inappropriate for the nippers.  So, sure, I get that anxiety.  It’s not one to show your kids if you don’t want to be asked what those two penguins are doing, mummy.

Others complained about the preachiness of its environmentalism.  For the record, I didn’t find it preachy, but can see why people would.  As in, it’s totally overt about it.  The big bad humans are ruining the environment – that’s pretty much the order of the day.  And, y’know, I can see why people would find it preachy… but on the other hand, am totally aghast about it.  You don’t want your kids understanding it’s bad to drop plastic in the sea?  Really?

There’s another theme that’s plenty obvious, and that’s the one that seems to have really riled people.  That’s certain religious denominations’ rejection of homosexuality.  This one’s more subtly encoded, but it’s still there, in the congregations of the empire penguins and their rejection of the dancing protagonist Mumbles.  Later, Mumbles rejects a female’s advances, instead heading off with a group of male penguins (although the pair do eventually hook up).

Again, I can appreciate the views of those who feel it’s anti-religious.  I disagree, but I can see it.  But it says nothing about anything other than the nastiness of homophobia.  And that, incredibly, is something plenty of Metacritic users are complaining about.

There are genuinely horrified parents complaining that the film promotes homosexuality.  I find that completely unsupportable by the movie itself – it cements it as acceptable, and that’s kind of the point: it’s okay to not be “normal” is what the whole thing’s about.  Which, of course, is an absolutely brlliant thing to convey in a children’s film.  Yet people are angry, genuinely outraged, that this film might be some terrible gay propaganda turning all their little ones into… what, exactly?  Dancing, environmentalist penguins who may or may not be gay?  It’s absurd.  It’s frankly really worrying.

People have other problems.  A few complain it’s racist, which again, is something I find totally unsupportable by the film.  It plays on racial prejudices, but by the end, all the different penguin factions – as well as the humans – are working together for the same cause.  It’s about bringing people together!  What are these people talking about?

As a film, it’s a beautifully crafted and tremendously organic visual masterpiece.  Thematically, I’m sure I appreciate it more as an adult, but there’s a lot of valuable advice in there for kids.  It’s utterly brilliant.  And I can’t help but feel utterly saddened by this absurd reaction by so many disgruntled parents, who are terrified that it’s a picture of hideous propaganda.  It’s a film I hope to show my kids one day, assuming I have them.  It contains all the stuff I hope I would raise them understanding.

Don't snatch.

Last night, British television station ITV aired a frightening documentary on gaming addiction, and the terrifying results it can apparently have.

Maybe I was naive to expect an interesting, balanced report on the long-debated nature of an addiction that many still feel does not even exist.  Or maybe it’s just the mainstream media stooping to a new low.  Either way, interesting and balanced it was not.

Those living in the UK can catch the programme on ITV Player for the next month.  I’d highly recommend you do watch it, even though if you know anything about the subject (or watch closely) you’ll find yourself becoming increasingly angry at the horrendousness of the whole thing.  It’s a striking example of how not to approach this sort of subject, yet sadly an all-too-common occurrence.  If you’re not in the UK, or otherwise can’t watch it, a brief summary:

Three years ago, a trio of kids – aged nine to 15 – who spent between nine and 20 hours per day playing games were analysed in a sort of mock-scientific test.  Each had his games machine removed from his room, while a psychologist watched video footage and analysed the children’s resulting behaviour.  Each child showed troubling behavioural patterns, said the psychologist.  For each child, the presenter asked the pscyhologist if she thought they showed signs of addiction.  She did this repeatedly until she got something resembling the answer she was hoping for: yes, perhaps they were addicted to gaming.

One mother was interviewed.  She said one time she disconnected the computer from the mains while her son was playing.  His reaction was to be incredibly angry with her.  The programme decided this was demonstrative of addiction.  Frankly, I’d react in the same way if someone UNPLUGGED MY PC WHILE I WAS IN THE MIDDLE OF SOMETHING, THUS DESTROYING MY PROGRESS.  Whether it was a game or a piece of work, my reaction would be the same.  You have interrupted and disrupted something I was in the middle of.  That’s pretty bloody annoying.

I’ll try to skim over the rest, as A) I’ll only get increasingly angry if I think about it too much, and B) I don’t want to waste words.  A Dutch man was interviewed, who runs a gaming addiction clinic in Holland.  His choice quote: “Gaming addiction could well be more dangerous than regular, chemical addiction.”  Based on what?  Nothing, we assume, as he says nothing more on the matter.  One of the clinic’s patients is interviewed, too.  He’s a classic gaming addict, and his behaviour is proof, we’re assured.  In fact, according to one of my crafty sources, this young man was also featured on another programme, and was shown to be a heavy cocaine user.  Obviously, his behaviour is far more likely to be gaming-related than drug-related.

It gets phenomenally more problematic.  A distraught mother tells the story of her son’s suicide, in front of his computer.  He’d shot himself.  His mother remains convinced this was due to him feeling terrible about his apparent gaming addiction.  I don’t want to come down too harshly on the poor woman, as she’s experienced a tragedy no one deserves to go through.  But her choice quote?  “It just goes to show these games can be life-threatening.”

We’re then told the incredibly awful tale of a murder, where a German gamer came over to the UK and killed a man after falling in love with his girlfriend.  All three posted on the same gaming forum.  An “expert” of some sort says – and get this – it was because he had spent so much time playing video games that he was unable to separate reality from fantasy, and the games had taught him to plan the murder strategically.

Eventually, the presenter of the show reveals that she believes her own son has an addiction to gaming.  Again, a source points us to an article she wrote for The Guardian, where she reveals her son reteated to videogames after being diagnosed with depression.  So none of that sticks.  It’s assuming a causal effect, but if there is one, it’s plainly the wrong way around.  He’s retreating into digital worlds because he is unhappy in his life.  He’s not unhappy with his life because of video games.

As a gamer, this obviously irks me – it’s irritating to have the mainstream media yet again claim our passtime, our work, whatever, is so damaging.  But what really offended me about ITV’s documentary was its complete disregard for thorough research or fair and balanced journalism.

Its sources were primarily people who had been affected by their own family’s behaviour in relation to games.  So, clearly, biased sources.  It’s so-called experts offered precisely no evidence or even reasoning to support their increasingly outlandish claims.  There was exactly no discussion about the nature or cause of this so-called addiction; it was just drilled home again and again: it exists, and it’s dangerous.

The programme offered one interview with a games industry representative.  He was given around 15 seconds of screen time, during which he was asked the obviously ridiculous question of whether all games should come pre-programmed with time limits.  Of course they shouldn’t, he says.  People should act responsibly.  The vast majority of players do.  And that was it; we cut to the programme’s presenter, once again expressing her concern at these terrible, monstrous games that are destroying people’s lives.

I’ve put in official complaints to both ITV and Ofcom, on the basis of biased reporting and deliberate misinformation without reasoning.  You might want to do the same, if you feel the same way (though I’d stress, ITV is perfectly within its rights to express an opinion about games and gaming addiction; complaints should be because you’re unhappy with the quality of the reporting, rather than the subject matter).

At best, the programme offered those who have experienced tragedy a platform for their unfortunate misplaced anger.  At worst, it actively set about to obscure facts and actual expert opinions, which is terribly worrying.  With its leading questions, its complete lack of evidence and impossibly awful research methodology, I found it actually insulting to watch.

Oh, those kids at the start?  They’re a bit more grown-up now.  Two of them no longer play for more than an hour a day, which seemed to be the programme’s “reasonable limit.”  Both are a lot happier as a result, they say.  The third still plays, but promises to get a job soon, so that he will play less.  He realises he has a problem, he says.

That’s all very nice, and wonderful that they’ve learnt to live a life free of the constraints of the computer or console.  But even they found themselves victims of loaded questions and hungry soundbite-hunting.  The programme was an absolute travesty, an ignorant, misinformed and holier-than-thou piece of nonsense masquerading as documentary research and evidence.  Stuff like this simply must be stamped out.

Yeah, it's that cute.

I’ve been playing Mini Ninjas for the past couple of days.  I’ve reviewed it for Resolution Magazine.  Go read.

Some further thoughts, though: when I played a demo of this a while back, I was certain it was going to be game of the year material.  It exuded this wonderful charm, and had an incredibly strong sense of identity.  Indeed, when I started playing the full game yesterday morning, I was still pretty sure we would be talking about a 9 out of 10.  Then I played more, and it became an 8.  Then more still, and it became a 7.  Then… well, you’ll have a look at the mark, I’m sure.

It just can’t keep up with any of its brilliant ideas.  Or, as I rather suspect, Io Interactive didn’t quite realise how brilliant some of the earlier section’s incidental bits are.  It thought it was making a family-friendly action game.  What it almost made was something vivid, artful and often evocative and beautiful.  But no.  It went for the action game.

That’s a real shame.  Parts of Mini Ninjas are absolutely gorgeous, but I became bored long before the end.  Hopefully Io won’t abandon this formula and go back to making gritty, stabby games just yet.  Or, I hope they do, but that they keep on ploughing down this route too.  Mini Ninjas isn’t the great game it nearly was, but there’s heaps of potential.