National Gaming Day @ Your Library

I was not aware that there was a National Gaming Day @ Your Library until I saw some pictures from this site's Flickr feed at the top of the page that were posted by Cape May County Library. Apparently kids all over the country, from Kotzebue, AK to St. Thomas, VI, go to their public and school libraries and play video games, board games and even card games like Magic: The Gathering. The libraries even get to compete with one another in Rock Band, The Beatles: Rock Band and Super Smash Bros. Brawl competitions.

Special note: The closest library to me was in Goshen, VA. No Harrisonburg, Charlottesville or Staunton.

The goal of the program is to raise awareness about the uses of games in libraries and expose people to games they haven't played before. It looks like libraries are taken akin to these activities and including them with traditional media.

The website, ILoveLibraries.Org, details everything about it. To get your library involved, go to http://ngd.ala.org/.

Book: Halo Uprising

I've read all of the Halo paperback novels and the graphic novel. So I was a little surprised that 1) I'd never heard of Halo: Uprising from Marvel, and 2) that the whole collection is coming out in hardcover.

Apparently this comic series takes place between Halo 2 and Halo 3. It's 168 pages all together, what was normally four comic books. It comes out on my birthday, so I'm pretty pumped about that.

I have to give it up to video game novels (and sci-fi as well). I probably hadn't really read gotten into reading until the Lord of the Rings movies came out. I read all three before the first movie. Then my reading schedule was pretty much dictated by movie releases and upcoming video games. Whatever it takes right?

In fact, on our trip to Cairo next week, I bought Penny-Arcade's third volume of comics and the Star Wars book, Death Star. It's been hard to leave those books alone for over a week.

Ian Bogost on Colbert Report

Ian Bogost, who wrote a new book on persuasive games, makes a run on the Colbert Report, a bold move for any man (I'm a fan of the show).

Ian does a good job defending games as a medium and artistic expression. Colbert offers that Pac-Man is nothing more than a pill popping simulation, games Ian calls abstract.

Ian is interested in political and social issues in games. Oil God, for instance, is a game a lot of people might be interested in, while maybe shying away from the one about being a disgruntled copy store employee.

Games like Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas offer up true life situations like eating food. The only food you can eat in San Andreas is from fast food restaurants. A stab at life in the 'hood? I don't think that was the best argument he could have used, but he was able to make the point.

I'll offer another one: Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas also employs a fitness management model. Your character can go to a gym, work out over the course of a 5-10 gym sessions and see an increase in muscle mass, which makes your character run faster and longer. Or you could assume the roll of a fat guy, eat food all the time and be lazy by only getting around in vehicles.

What is interesting here is that while these types of simulation models work themselves into every game genre, gamers and game creators realize that the nature of gaming demands we have both types of games: games with simulation and games without. Some gamers like the meta-gaming built in so they can manipulate details and character statistics. Others don't want to deal with the hassle of management while gaming and just want to have fun.

Luckily the industry can support multiple types of games and the store shelves hold something for everyone.