I�ve been playing Kingpin. It�s a well-designed game, but it keeps doing things that make me dislike it. Stupid, gratuitous stuff. Take away the naughty language and it�s just another shooter; unlike Half-Life, which I played with sweaty hands and thumping heart, this is just the same old walk-shoot-kill-save-powerup-repeat. Great graphics. But you could say the same about the Nazis, I suppose.

No, I�m not comparing it to the Nazis. Just that graphics alone don�t compensate for ethical shortcomings. Which ought to be self-evident. But I guarantee most gamer mag reviews of the game will say the same thing: it�s deplorable that the game allows you to shoot women�s heads off, but man, what incredible graphics. I�m playing it because I�m reviewing it; this is one of my jobs. But it�s not much fun, and it�s a great waste of talent. Oddly enough, the game�s designer seems to sense this - the game is preceded by an editorial about violence and adult content, and you have to read the edit before you can play the game. As I said to a friend, it�s not a ReadMe, it�s a ForgiveMe.

The novelty of shoot-em-ups wears off quickly for me. I prefer Civilization II (and will probably prefer Alpha Centauri when I finally buy it).

--Baloo

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"Someday your ship will come in...and you'll be at the airport "
www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/8641/

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HMS White Star (your local friendly agent of Chaos:-) )

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"I would be delighted to offer any advice I can on understanding women. When I have some, I'll let you know."
--Picard to Data, "In Theory"

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"Its origin and purpose, still a total mystery."

-Dedication Plaque quote from the U.S.S. Odyssey

I quote the fiollowing from his website at http://www.scalzi.com/ (add it to your bookmarks!):

Speaking of beating people to death with a lead pipe, over the weekend I played "Kingpin," a new video game that really takes the cake when it comes to disturbing violence. In the game, you play a thug who moves up the ranks of thugdom (cleverly disguised as South Chicago).

Moving up in thugdom, of course, involves killing people, usually in a horrifically bloody fashion. Literally the first thing you have to do in this game is beat some relatively innocent schmoe to death with a lead pipe, so you can steal enough money to buy a crowbar, which you then use to beat someone else to death so you can steal his pistol. Yeah, you're a real sweetheart in this one.

It's so violent that the guy who created the game felt the need to write an editorial about it; you have to read the editorial before you can install the game. In it, the guy talks about how he never intended the game to be for kids; it's for adults. The game also comes with a "low violence" install (which, by the way, it is emphatically not -- the "low violence" version strips away the blood and profanity, but you still have to bludgeon people to death for a dollar). Both the editorial and the "low violence" install are ways for this guy to cover his ass. He, like everybody else making games out there, is worried that the government is going to step in and do something. This is his way of saying, see, I'm doing something.

I dunno. "Kingpin," as a piece of technology, is pretty darn impressive, and the game itself moves along. But personally speaking, I don't like it much. James Lileks and I were talking about it, and he mentioned that the problem with the game is that it packages some truly reprehensible behavior and sells it as "fun." The thing is, somewhere along the line, you realize you're just not having any fun at all. There's something wrong with this game, on a fundamental moral level.

Let me put it this way: When I realized that I would have to beat some innocent person to death in the game, just to get a dollar, I was actually shocked. There is a difference between watching a movie where someone does this, and you passively witness the action, and this game, in which you control your onscreen character to sneak up behind someone who's just standing there, raise a lead pipe, and bring it down on his virtual skull. You're not fighting Nazis, or space aliens, and you're not defending yourself. Your motivation is not to save the world. You're playing a criminal, and you're killing innocents to "win." It's wrong.

I don't think there's a need to stop selling the game, though I'd be perfectly content if stores didn't sell this game to anyone under 18. But I don't think I'll go out of my way to recommend it to anyone I know. It's a bad game, in the moral sense of the term, and I'm happy I know enough to make that distinction.

I know for certain I will not purchase this game.

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"Someday your ship will come in...and you'll be at the airport "
www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/8641/

You can build entire worlds... raise civilization from primitive live forms.. guide them to higher advances...

Or, cause earthquakes, wars, natural disasters, mass extinctions, meteor attacks, sudden polar shifts, unstable sun activity...

The closest to "Playing God" it is possible to get.

We'd either starve or live on nothing but apples (the only crop I could coax into continuous productivity).

--Baloo

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I'm not uncouth.
I'm differently mannered.
www.geocities.com/Area51/Shire/8641/

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