Gamer Gone Missing

So while I'm in the hospital, I just learned about this missing gamer.

The story is that the father of Ontario teenager Brandon Crisp's Xbox and game Call of Duty 4 because he was too involved in it and in return, Brandon fled his home. Among the suspected reasons were that he ran away with someone he met or possibly even a sexual predator and even the father's parenting has become suspect, the last two theories his mom sticks to.

Yesterday Microsoft donated $25,000 to the reward fund, bringing the total to $50,000. Microsoft is now even loosening privacy details of Brandon's XBLA account and Xbox 360 harddrive to help with the search, hoping to uncover messages or logs about who he had contact with before he disappeared.

Today, Canadian "reality" tv show star Terry Grant of Manhunter has also joined the search. Manhunt is a race-based chase show airing on an outdoor canadian channel where Terry gives the contestants a headstart with their map and compass and releases them out to the  and Terry hunts them down on horseback.

Currently, that is where the search stands.

With such little information, it's hard to place blame or pose a solution for this kind of awful ordeal. I never would have thought of running away, at least past our 14 acre property, when I was a kid. It's easy to place the blame on an outside source, knowing how people can easily band together online with no possible reprocussion from their advice, not even knowing the person on the other end.

It will be interesting to see how this turns out, what happens to him when he's found (and sadly, if he's found) and what kind of effects this will have on gamers, local media, and more importantly, politics. Having such a rough time now being blamed for every youth incident you see on the news, video games aren't getting a better rep because of this, no matter how it turns out.

Mass Market Gaming Getting Stale

bcullers brought over DarkSector last night for the 360. As he started talking about it, he immediately brought up gameplay references like Gears of War and Army of TWO (which is a Gears of War wannabe in it's own right). We shared a sad laugh about yet another Gears clone and then we both said, "Well, if it works..."

It was something I hadn't thought about playing Army of TWO. Instead of the whole time playing the game with an angry cloud over my head because the gameplay in it wasn't original, should I have been more focused on what new things the game brought to the table instead of what it didn't? I'm not sure what other things like that exist in the world like this. When I buy a new game, unless it's a sequel, prequel or derivative IP, I want it to be genuine and different. Music is a possible comparison if you really like music and not a genre. Books too. But I think with games I always want the next game of that genre to fix the things that were broken in the last game.

I think, overall, I find it really hard to not reference other games when playing a new one. Unless it's a game like Katamari Damacy for the PS2 or Brain Training for the DS, your getting a game that is specifically set in a genre (football, driving, FPS) and there is little you can do to differentiate it from it's members.

But most of the games I own (and keep) I like very much. So getting a new game with elements of my old ones should be comforting. But I want new experiences from gaming constantly. I don't want another Gears of War game with a different set of characters, voices, and graphics. I don't want another Forza Motorsport that touts more cars and tracks. I want new experiences and games that make me think in a different perspective. Having sold on eBay Mass Effect (a mediocre space RPG) and Army of TWO (a clone of another game), I can tell my purchases are going to start getting far and few between and overly scrutinized.

A new hope in gaming recently is Penny-Arcade's The Greenhouse. This is a game related comic-drawing duo that has it's hands also in charity work, game expos, and now with Greenhouse, independent game developers. Not much has been said about Greenhouse other than right now it's a platform to release their new game (another hand) "On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness". But I wouldn't mind starting to play games on a PC or Mac if meant getting really good content.

Q&A: Gaming with kids

Alright, time for a little question. You supply the answer.

What's life like for a gamer with kids? Especially infants that demand your constant time and attention. Or are they that demanding? Or do you just save all your gaming until after they go to bed. Because we all know Dead Rising gives 5-year-olds nightmares.

On the Death of the Hero

The invention of 'lives' in gaming wasn't because video games had some morbid sense of accomplishment or denial. It was to make you spend quarters. Arcades being the first invention in electronic gaming had to have some way to keep you in the poor house, so 'lives' were created to give you three chances to resurrect yourself and complete your task.

But as games got older and moved away from spaceships and centipedes, people were introduced as the main characters and gave the meaning of 'life' a whole new purpose in games. They took on a resemblance of a cat's nine lives.

Man jumps. Falls in pit and dies. Tries again.

Before games were created, comics flourished as superheros wildly took over the imagination of children and adults everywhere. Virtually invincible heros that fight crime and save the world. Bullets riccochet. Punches glance. Danger is averted.

As the gaming picked up on the whole hero idea, gamers got to save princesses of imaginary worlds and stop evil from ruling the land. There were normal heroes; humans charged with super hero-like duties to save princesses from evil dinosaurs or returning the land from the creeping darkness of evil pigs. But there were also these superhero characters, still fighting their longtime battles from their comic book worlds, transported into digital form for us to experience with our two, human, mortal thumbs.

So why still have lives for these unbeatable heroes? Why should characters who span generations of our lives live any different in a video game.

To my knowledge, Superman Returns was the first game to address this issue. When it came out last November, Superman was indestructible. The mechanic of 'life' was removed. The paradigm was shifted. No matter what I did, nor what anyone else did, I was an indestructible superhero. Unbeatable. But then I realized what Superman Returns had done. It had gone and made things much more difficult.

Supes' objective was still the same: save the world. But this time, he had to save everyone else too. As destruction and evil rampaged across the map, Superman had to make sure that damage to the city and the lives of the people didn't reach epic proportions. Now, instead of a health meter for Superman, there's a health meter for the world.

As Halo 3 denies people everywhere the right to read books and go outdoors, again we are charged with the duty of controlling a hero. A super-human soldier. Not the virtually indestructible Superman we've come to know and love, but the protagonist of a story that inevitably will finish the fight and save humanity. Does dying as this character create a challenge is the game or does it take away from the experience we are meant to experience as the developers have intended?

Halo 3 is a short game, yet complex in it's story. Only on the easiest difficulty setting do most gamers get to experience the story as it was meant to be. But as gamers, we want a challenge. We want to be tested, yet we do not want to fail. We want to experience the hardships of our beloved Master Chief and still be protected by his armor and super abilities. We don't want to die.

So instead of creating immense levels and filling them with wave after wave of enemies armed to the teeth, is there some other way to test the mettle? To prove that I am capable of being a hero without suffering the mortal's death?

What Superman Returns did was just that. It created other factors to consider when fighting the generic enemy. You were faced with life altering changes that weren't meant for you, but for others. Choices that superheros make every day.

But maybe it's easier to program the destruction of your life than it is to create scenarios of lives to save or puzzles to solve or missions to complete in timely manners. With superhero games already having superhero-sized budgets, it could be too much to ask for every role playing game to have "next generation" ideas in gaming along with those "next generation" graphics and "next generation" prices.