I now pronounce you man and pixel.

Aah, remember how romantic your first date was? Your first kiss? How about your first level up? Well, apparently that last one holds more significance for some than it does for others. Brad Smith thought of a creative way to ask his girlfriend Lisa to marry him by reprogramming a Super Mario Brothers level so a series of coins spelled “Will You Marry Me?” Lisa must like Mario, because her answer was yes. All together now: Awwwwww!

As unique as this might seem, it isn’t the first time someone’s proposed via video game. Another couple got hitched via the classic RPG Chrono Trigger. According to the man’s Youtube video, she said yes as well.

But why stop there when World of Warcraft offers a great selection of dresses and rings? They even have specific guidelines as to how you can get married in WoW like this lovely Korean couple did a while back.

So, to all you bachelor gamers out there, how would you propose to your dream bride?

Mods: Internet Play-Doh

Who makes the games? The developers right? But who makes the games fun? I would say the players do that. While the developers choose what your restrictions are, but it’s the players who decide how to play. At first this meant things like glitches and secrets, with people seeing how fast they can play, or seeing if they can fight the last boss before even beating the first one, but game developers now recognize this and are starting to offer choice in their games. From games like Bioshock, simply choosing whether you’re the nicest goody-two-shoes to grace the land or the most monstrous horror in the pixilated realm, to games like Grand Theft Auto, full do-anything sandbox games, developers recognize that letting people play their own way is important in a game. And the best way to do this is with modding.

For a long time mods have been a part of gaming. Modifying game files for download is so popular there are entire sites (FPSbanana.com, moddb.com)dedicated to nothing but having lots and lots and lots of mods for download. From simple skins, like making your grenades look like watermelons, to full-blown brand new games, user-created content is becoming increasingly respected by game developers. The Playstation 3’s hit game LittleBigPlanet is proof of this, a simple platformer whose main selling point was the ability to easily create your own maps and make them available for online download. Before even that was Halo 3 with its Forge map editor, allowing you to create custom maps and game types. Back before console online, in the days where PC gaming was king, games like the 1998 Starcraft had deep map editors allowing people to create their own battlefields and even make new game types. In the professional Starcraft leagues in Korea, the only maps used are user created, since the developer Blizzard didn’t make their maps very fair to all three different races you could play. Some games actually started out as simple mods before being picked up by big name developers and made into official releases. Team Fortress was a Quake mod, Counter-Strike was a Half-life mod, and Defense of the Ancients (DOTA) is a popular professional game made from modding Warcraft III. The game Garry’s Mod is a game that allows you to put any item from any game on the Steam gaming platform in any setting from said games. The entire purpose of the game is to give user-created content an easy interface to use. Kind of a “baby’s first modding” if you will.

Of all the game developers, VALVe has probably been the most receptive of user-created content, as they damn well should be considering a significant chunk of their games (Counter-Strike: Source, Day of Defeat: Source, Garry’s Mod, Team Fortress 2) started as mods. They’re well known for making their source coding readily available and easy to find for anyone who wants to mod. They’re also very supportive of it, with their updates for games like Team Fortress 2 consisting of mostly fan-made content they decided to make official.

As people become more computer literate and games become more mod-friendly, I think we can expect to see some really innovative stuff start coming out. From minor time-wasters to the next big gaming revolution, the modding community keeps biggering and biggering and biggering and I think we can expect to see a lot more cool stuff to come.

Error 404: Post not found.

Bah, my Microsoft Office decided now would be a good time to not let me access any of my work. So sorry about the delays. I’ll have new posts up as soon as I get access to my files again.

Project Natal: The next big leap in gaming or the newest letdown?

At the most recent Electronic Entertainment Expo (E3) in Los Angeles, Microsoft revealed its newest innovation, an attachment, or peripheral, titled Project Natal (pronounced Na-taal). Microsoft promises a brand-new gaming experience, calling it “a revolutionary new way to play: no controller required.” According to the website, http://www.xbox.com, “the only experience needed is life experience.” With a variety of uses planned, including full-motion sensing games, voice recognition, even a webcam chat, and what looks like some pretty advanced technology, this could be a fantastic leap for the gaming medium.

However, I am still rather skeptical. I can’t help but be reminded of the EyeToy for Playstation 2. Don’t remember it? That’s the point. It was very similar to Project Natal – full-motion sensing, face recognition, lots of fun minigames – but it ended up failing pretty hard. As one of the few people who bought one, I can say it was mildly fun, if just for the gimmick value, but it got old quickly and didn’t work nearly as well as advertised. Come to think of it, when that came out people were comparing it to the Nintendo Powerglove, a SNES peripheral that supposedly allowed full-motion sensing. That’s still considered one of Nintendo’s biggest failures, considering it couldn’t sense anything at all. I suppose the reason I’m so skeptical is because motion sensing has a history of not working as planned. But forever the optimist, I’d like to highlight some of the reasons why we shouldn’t write it off immediately.

Nintendo’s most recent console is the Wii, which boasted full-motion sensing controllers. Though it hasn’t been a colossal success, the motion-sensing works well enough, especially with games such as Wii Sports, the free series of minigames that comes with the console. Additionally, Sony thought it would be fun to steal Nintendo’s idea and added in a motion-sensing ability to the Playstation 3. While this was hardly used, it seemed functional in the few situations where a game included the option. Perhaps the technology has advanced to the point where a motion-sensor could actually be a viable option. At the very least, the webcam and face/voice recognitions probably won’t be too bad. A bold move on Microsoft’s part to be sure, Project Natal may show some promise yet, perhaps expanding on the old idea, making interactive gaming practical. Whether or not it’s the future of gaming though remains to be seen.