Cool Shit Alert: simulating a 3D environment on the Wii

THE COOL SHIT ALERT:

Johnny Chung Lee, a Carnegie Melon student and known Wii-hacking supergenius, has developed something that's not only an amazing technology hack, but simply an amazing concept in general. It strikes me that this would be revolutionary, no matter what technology it was exhibited on... the fact that the Wii makes it easy is just a testament to the versatility of Nintendo's hardware.

Here's the video. Be patient for the first minute and a half, as Johnny zips through a short explanation. Once you get to the demo of the display, it becomes rather mind-blowing.



When we think of 3D displays, we usually think of filtered glasses, allowing a screen to split an image into a "left-eye" version and a "right-eye" version. This creates the illusion of depth as the brain synthesizes the two images. Though it's also a two-dimensional take on 3D, Lee's display is working from a completely different paradigm.

Instead of simulating depth from a fixed point of view, Lee's program is simulating space by adapting a 2-D image to the position of the viewer. This is, in fact, more advanced than the traditional fixed-point approach used in movies like Beowulf. Here, the user can interact with the simulated space by moving around the frame and processing multiple viewing angles.

This could really be the next generation of displays for consoles and simulation. Even from the video, you can tell that it's mind-blowingly immersive, and it promises new heights of simulation and interaction.

I think it's also a testament to technology that this could be developed and disseminated by a man who is essentially an amateur, working with pre-existing tools and an incredibly innovative brain. He didn't need a room full of engineers to sit around and develop this with him, nor a corporate sponsor to give him financial backing and public exposure... he created it and publicized it himself, and nobody can ever take that credit away from him. That's a kind of visionary independence that's never been possible in any other culture or era.

Quickly, I'd like to throw in my own thought for expanding on this innovation. Perhaps somebody else has already suggested this, but I figure I may as well record it for posterity.

MY IDEA:

Okay, at the end of the segment, Johnny mentions that this will only work for one person at a time. This is because the display has to adapt to the user's position and adjust the image accordingly, and the same image can't accommodate two different points of view simultaneously. I'm not an inventor, and for me this is all speculative, but I have an idea of how to solve this particular problem.

I've heard of a technology that uses interlacing and wavelength filtering (i.e. through filtering glasses) to display two different images on the same screen at the same time. The screen would just interlace two images (image A and image B) that are projected for two different wavelengths, and the users (user A and user B) would each wear a different pair of glasses (glasses A and glasses B). The final result: user A would only see image A, and user B would only see image B. This would be a lovely alternative to split-screen viewing in two-player video games. Both players would be able to use the entire screen to steer their Kart.

Combining this technology with Lee's head-tracking wouldn't be difficult. He himself used a pair of safety goggles to track his head movement. If you just put filtering lenses in two pairs of goggles, you could give each of two users their own individualized content on the same screen. Thus, you could have the same scene, adapting to the positions of two different people at the same time, and you could create two-player games where each player got their own unique 3D experience.

COME ON, NINTENDO!!! DO EET!!! This is the future!

Metroid, Feminism, and a Bunch of Other Stuff

As promised, I'm going to continue with the "Feminintendo" train of thought and talk a little about Metroid. As I discussed this idea with some friends, one of them brought up a good comparison to a certain series of movies, which I'll get to in a second. First off, though, why does Metroid warrant a little criticism?

Metroid is arguably one of, if not THE first video game to enact progressive gender politics. Samus Aran is an amazing character, the type almost unheard of in ANY media, much less in video games, which (according to my best buddy Roger Ebert) are deeply inferior to film. Samus, the main character of Metroid, a bounty hunter hired by the Galactic Federation, started the series as a rare example of a female without even a trace of femininity. In fact, the 80's Nintendo player didn't know Samus was a female until they beat the original Metroid.

Sean Bouchard points this out in his article "Beyond Good and Evil as a cultural critique," and he takes some issue with it:

"Although Metroid can be viewed as a cultural critique in that it puts a woman in a role typically reserved exclusively for men (indeed, in its day it was hailed as a great step forward), it does Samus a disservice by stripping her of all feminine characteristics. The message, in fact, is not that women can be as strong and powerful as men, but that in order to be strong or powerful a woman must become like a man."

I understand the postmodern feminism perspective here, I really do, but let's give some credit. Metroid was working within a subculture of violence and hero worship, the interactive equivalent to classic sci-fi, and first and foremost, Samus managed to do something critical: she represented the player (presumably a male, based on the demographic) through a whole game, and then pulled an acute identity reversal on them, right at the end. There were probably some kids out there who gained a new respect for the role of gender in their fantasy world, whether consciously or not. And by-and-by, I'd LOVE to see a fantasy or sci-fi novel that placed a female in a male role in such an uncompromising manner as Samus. The supposedly infantile video game industry took a shot at this gender hurdle when sci-fi writing was still in the throes of machismo cyberpunk plotting.

So Samus turned the gamer's ideas of the male hero upside-down by taking on a fully masculine role. Still, she couldn't escape the gender issues that tend to come as a subtext to storytelling. Even in the original game, Samus was pitted against "Mother Brain," a bizarre alien enemy that, for some reason, was gendered as a female. In a way, it seems that the whole game was a play of gender reversals... girl-on-girl action, 100%.

Since then, Samus has continued to be the badass we need to defend us against Metroids, but motherhood issues keep following her around. [METROID spoiler warning] In Metroid II, released for old-school Game Boy, Samus destroys the entire species of Metroids, except for one egg, which she witnesses hatching. The newborn Metroid assumes Samus is its mother and helps her escape the dying planet; this Metroid reappears in Super Metroid, the next installment of the series, and continues treating Samus as a parent. [end spoiler] Samus herself never buys in or relinquishes her bounty hunter role, but the Metroid's attachment reminds us that even a genderless warrior can be called upon to fill a nurturing role.

The original Metroid was released in August 1986, just a month after another media phenomenon hit the United States. This phenomenon was Aliens, sequel to the 1979 feature Alien, and according to some sources, this original movie provided Metroid with some of its inspiration. That point aside, there are some undeniable parallels between Ripley and Samus, in particular their shared Female Warrior archetype. Ripley, like Samus, is removed from her gender characteristics, so much that she seems strangely genderless; in Aliens, Ripley, like Samus, is confronting a terrifying counterpart to the Mother figure, the Alien Queen. Eventually, in Alien 3, Ripley reaches the same point that Samus reached in Super Metroid: she is the tentative mother figure to the alien itself, the eternal enemy.

Alien: Resurrection was so weird and discontinuous that I don't really want to discuss it here, but yes, it definitely deals with some motherhood issues. I'll say it again: issues.

I think, based on some of these observations, we can make some connections between Nintendo's characters and feminism at large. We discussed Zelda in the previous post, pointing out that she retains her femininity and "wisdom"-bearing role, even as she becomes a stronger, more confrontational character. In this role, she is the Feminine Mystique, the woman struggling to negotiate power while respecting her feminine identity. In Zelda, femaleness is interrogated and politicized, but it remains feminine at the core.

Samus Aran is different. Samus has kept the sex, but she's discarded the gender... a female who isn't feminine, even as she's chased around by specters of motherhood. In terms of feminist theory, she's the Cyborg Manifesto, the tract by Donna Haraway that advocates for the complete collapse and reconstruction of gender identity. The femininity that remains in play with Zelda is rendered meaningless in Samus, because she chooses to take on a man's role... and if her technology allows her to do that, what it is that makes it a man's role any more? In Samus's world, and perhaps in our own future, masculinity and femininity are mixed in such a stew that it doesn't make much sense to set them apart any more.

There are levels of meaning to video games that belie the youth and charisma of the medium, and they make it a prospect for a new great social forum. By bringing these issues to light, I work toward the critical goal of justifying twelve straight hours on my goddamn couch.

Zelda as Feminist Icon

I'm trying to finish up Twilight Princess so I can get more involved in Bioshock and, eventually, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption. My gaming list is starting to look like my reading list. Both Zelda and Bioshock have gotten me thinking, though... transhumanism, referentiality, world-building, storytelling, the aesthetic possibilities of the medium. And just as Bioshock is going a long way towards proving the versatility and intelligence of the medium, Zelda has made its own contributions to culture, too.

Though the series' protagonist is really Link, the brave young fool you tend to control, the series gravitates around Zelda, the princess who's always the motivating factor, a critical element behind the scenes of the game. The disconnected continuity of the series has given her the opportunity to play a lot of roles... after all, every Hyrule is essentially a different universe, built on different rules and assumptions than the previous incarnations, but they all deal with three iconic characters--Zelda, Link, and Ganon--representing three fundamental forces--wisdom, courage, and power--the three parts of the triforce. Each Hyrule, and each great adventure, is a reincarnation of these themes, instantiated in these characters.

Link and Ganon have become more complex over the course of the series, but their roles haven't changed on an essential level. Link has always been a warrior-adventurer, representing the possibilities of the growth of spirit, struggling to resolve Hyrule's troubles and liberating its constituent kingdoms in the process. Ganon has always been the destructive element, breaking down the balance in the kingdom and precipitating its fall into chaos. Link versus Gannon, the eternal struggle, with Zelda always lingering, doing... what... ?

Well, in the beginning of the series, Zelda is a fairy-tale figure, usually a victim or a captive of Ganon. Her soul is the soul of Hyrule, and when Link saves Zelda, he is also saving Hyrule from collapse and ruin. In Zelda II, you start the game in a mythical castle chamber with Zelda behind you, sleeping the slumber of death. In Zelda: A Link to the Past, the Super Nintendo entry into the series, Zelda is a guide and an icon, but she still requires the rescue of the hero. Wisdom (in this case, a feminine attribute, represented by Zelda) may be the key to control of the kingdom, but the struggle to win it (her) is still between the aggressors, the forces of noble Courage and destructive Power.

It's a powerful metaphor, and it will undergo some serious reconstruction.

Zelda's true feminist evolution occurs in Zelda: Ocarina of Time. This game, the N64 entry in the series, is still considered one of the greatest in the Zelda cycle, and one of the greatest adventure video games. Aside from the transition into 3D, Zelda performs her own form of transcendence: she becomes an ally of Link's, a warrior instead of a victim or a prize, a champion of her kingdom. She appears as what appears to be a ninja, though she acts as more of a spiritualist; her guidance and the power implied by her abilities and her secrecy signal a profound change in her character.

Since Ocarina, Zelda's role has been permanently changed. In Windwaker, the Zelda game for the GameCube, Zelda appears [censored censored spoilers censored]. In Twilight Princess, she is a sage trapped in Hyrule Castle, a force that antagonist Zant keeps imprisoned in order to control Hyrule; you respond to her call, and in a series of critical cut-scenes, she proves that only her power can keep Link safe on his quest.

Zelda's new status as a potent ally changes the nature of the Triforce metaphor, as well... it becomes a metaphor for control and autonomy, with Power as the unstable attractor and Wisdom and Courage working together as its counterpoint. The metaphor rings true: great power in the hands of an authority is dangerous and unstable, and without reason and virtue binding it, it tends to spiral out of control.

Consider that through all this, Zelda keeps a gender identity. She's consistently the only non-violent aspect of the triforce, and even at her most powerful, she keeps sort of a "Queen Mother" role as protector of her kingdom. Through her, Nintendo has been exploring the level of power they can attribute to their feminine archetype: how is she as a child? Can she be a violent character? How does it play out when her character becomes the rescuer, rather than the victim? Whether this is for better or for worse... whether Zelda is an emblem or a stereotype... isn't for me to decide right now. But she's still representing a feminine force.

This is worth contrasting with Samus's role in Metroid, which more or less turns masculinity and femininity inside-out. I think Samus may become the subject of another blog post coming in the near future.

At any rate, I'm eager to see where Zelda goes, as a character and as a series, and Jesus, I need to finish Twilight Princess. Argorok, here I come.

Finding the PoMo in Super Paper Mario (a Postmodern statement)

I'm gonna confess... I've been playing a video game quite a bit. Or at least, I've been facilitating and observing its being-playedness by a passing resident of the household. That game is called Super Paper Mario.

Okay, so in the history of Mario, we've gone from a fully-restricted two-dimensional world (Donkey Kong) to a non-restricted two-dimensional world (Super Mario Bros. through Super Mario World and beyond) to a three-dimensional world (Super Mario 64 through the forthcoming Super Mario Galaxy). Paper Mario is, in a sense, a reflection on the history of the two-dimensional Marios, which the game undertakes by offering a third dimension.

Now, because it's oriented around a two-dimensional game, the third dimension isn't that well developed. That's why it's called Paper Mario... the game is conscious of, and in a sense apologetic for, its two-dimensionality. However, for what it lacks as a three-dimensional game, Paper Mario makes up for as Postmodern Mario. Meta-Mario -- that's what we've been playing, and it's a fascinating experience.

To start, there's a level of historicism in Mario that's been a defining feature of postmodernism for a long time. Just as pop-art brought kitsch and self-conscious reference to art, SPM brings to the Wii a salvo of self-conscious references to Mario history, from the enormous 8-bit Mario you become when you grab a star, to the Princess's ability to float... it's sort of futile for me to list them. There are millions.

There are also references to the world outside the game. Occasionally, the characters mention you, the player, in order to explain their discussions of controller buttons, which Mario himself apparently doesn't understand. One of the enemies even has the Wii "processing" animation playing in its eye. These are discursive and semantic break-downs of the fourth wall that parallel Mario's own breaking of the fourth wall when he "flips" from 2-D space into 3-D space.

And about that "flipping" action, which takes Mario beyond the standard platform game world . He reveals hidden enemies, items, and landscapes that are on other two-dimensional planes, thus retreiving a certain more literal meaning of the phrase "parallel dimension." Most NPC's in SPM can't sense or interact within these alternate planes, making Mario unique, a sort of bodhisattva... come on, doesn't anyone else read a certain Eastern mysticism in that move? A moment of transcendence, perhaps? The same theme that appealed to Heidegger and Jung seems to have appealed to the Nintendo developers. Mario even learns it from a sage.

PoMario. That's the game, my friends. PLAY IT.

Street Fighter II is still King

My roommate just drew my attention to this remarkably simple video, featuring a fully stationary female guitarist rocking a song from one of my favorite games of all time, Street Fighter II: The World Warrior:




She's pretty awesome. This is what glam-riff guitar rock was made for, and she does it right... standing still, not giving us anything but that gorgeous post-disco soundtrack riff from the American Military Base in all our 14-year-old imaginations. At that age, I could beat my Super Nintendo version with Guile, Chun-Li, Ryu, Ken, and Blanka, and along with a couple other exceptional games, it was one of the only ones I could play over and over and over again. SF II deserves every homage made for it.

SPECIAL REPORT: Follow-Up on Literature: Suspicious links to video games?

Literature linked to more dangerous behavior for your children. Brutally maladjusted past-time of “playing video computer games” has long been recognized as one of predominant social ills among youngens. However, recent research at miksimum has linked this scourge to the older, more ubiquitous execration of LITERATURE, first profiled in our most recent post. Our sources have linked literature to dangerous video games like WoW (acronym for World of Warcraft, unrelated to the diarrhea-causing potato chips), which is rife with themes and references to “classics” like Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings and Sir Thomas Malory’s Morte d'Arthur (a French title, no less! Pfffttt!). These kindred rituals share with video games more than the merely cosmetic devices of “swords,” “goblins,” “magic” and “epic romance”… they’re linked to insidious patterns that have plagued the youth for generations, including “getting lost for hours in a vibrant fantasy world” and “having a wild imagination.” After we follow Jack Thompson’s lead and neutralize all the video games, we must take the next step to assure that no more will ever be made: we must burn the books that inspire us! Err, them!

Video Game Violence: Joe Lieberman is a goddamn comedian

I'm going to have to interrupt my gushing about Casino Royale to draw attention to an absurd example of propagandistic political cinema. I'm drawing attention to it because of my social libertarian tendencies, but more importantly, I want to bring it up because it's so under-argued and overdramatic that it's laughable.

It's a trailer for a new movie, I guess along the lines of new political-issue documentaries, like Inconvenient Truth, Who Killed the Electric Car?, and The U.S. Versus John Lennon. This one is positioned to attack video games as the pivotal gateway for violence to enter our culture. The video in question can be found here.

For the sake of rational argument (I put that concept in italics so you can wave goodbye to it for the duration of the clip), I'm going to look at this trailer on a point-by-point basis. They have four, maybe five soundbites, and not ONE of them stands up to the least scrutiny.

Let's take a few. I'm paraphrasing... the quotes are just to make it clear that I'm pulling a point from the video. My commentary is going to be minimal, because you're all individually capable of thinking about these points and recognizing them as farcical.

1 - "In the past, violence has been seen as a vice, rather than a virtue."
Every society in the history of civilization has valued its warriors over its lay-people. Samurais, Knights, army generals, kids play-fighting since the beginning of time... if anything, we live in perhaps the LEAST violent global culture in history.

2 - "We didn't want to get into the regulation game; we invited the gaming industry to regulate itself."
Again, nonsensical. The video game industry is regulating itself; it would take some fast talking to claim that software companies, adopting the ESRB ratings voluntarily, aren't heeding the cautions of their critics.

3 - "We blame video games for teaching people how to fly planes into the World Trade Center."
Blaming non-violent video games rather than the CIA? An irrelevant and profoundly misdirective tangent. Mentioning 9/11 is nothing but shameless sensationalism.

4 - "We'll see Columbine etc. etc"
Again, sensationalism. Why can't we blame the alarmist media for glorifying violence by making every American crisis into a political buzzword?

5 - "We literally enter into a world that's so realistic, we forget that it's a make-believe world."
This isn't true for anyone I know, including 3 to 6-year old children. It's an absurdism that equates playing video games with a kind of psychopathic hallucination.

Alarmist is a comedic understatement. If this trailer suggested any kind of cogent argument, I might take an interest in watching the film. Instead, it shows that people who want to regulate our lifestyles can only justify their actions with bizarre misrepresentation of reality.

Semantics, Politics, and video games: Nintendo versus the world

In the spirit of mass market analysis, today's rant is going to be about the semantics of persuasion... in this case, I'm going to consider spin-doctoring in the marketplace. The free-market competition is for dominance in video game console sales, and the competitors are the X-Box 360, the Playstation 3, and the Nintendo Wii.

For the purposes of this discussion, I'm going to lump the X-Box and the PS3 into the same category. These are the old-guard game systems, competing on the basis of classic qualifications like franchise acquisition and processor speed. The Wii represents a different paradigm entirely, and at the moment, it seems to be shaping the debate over the next generation of consoles. Where the X-Box and the PS3 are in a race for power, the Wii is struggling to innovate... where the old-guards are selling their new processors, the Wii is selling its concept.

The unconventional Wii controller is at the nexus of this debate, and its success depends on whether it's cast as an innovation or as a novelty. This is a marketing game, and it's become a critical issue on gaming message boards. The old-guards claim that the gaming experience hasn't changed, and that it's based on good games, not on a gimmicky control scheme. Nintendo wants to prove that even in a die-hard realm like the gaming experience, the hegemony can be overthrown.

Thus, the primary semantic issue: novelty versus innovation. Novelties are attention-getting but transient, where innovations are ideas that produce lasting effects in their markets.

Most old-guard loyalists (read: fanboys) claim that a system withough an armor-piercing processor simply isn't "new generation," and their reliance on this term is telling: these gamers' criteria for games is established by the history of gaming, from the 8-bit Ataris to the dual-core 3.2 GHz PS3 powerhouse. These gamers expect an upgrade in graphics, speed, and dynamic simulation with every new system, and this means Nintendo has failed, because it's not building on the tradition of its supposed predecessors.

Nintendo isn't so concerned with the "generation" of this system, and in a sense, Nintendo has taken on the task of subverting this linear paradigm. Its new system was originally called the "Revolution," and this is another revealing semantic choice. "Next Generation" is progressive... "Revolution" is Marxist. Where Sony and Microsoft are competing to dominate an established field, Nintendo is attempting to redefine it entirely. Revolution is a risky business, but for the dedicated developers at Nintendo, it's the only way to overthrow the corporate video game hegemony.

I seem to be creating a political metaphor here, and I'm going to recognize it and dispense with it before it gets out of hand. The twentieth-century political environment was split into Communism (defined by socialism, revolution, and the enforcement of "equality") versus free capitalist democracy (defined by traditional individualism, competition, and the securing of "freedom"), and these two seemed irresolvable at times. Even so, they were united by a grand design, the ultimate struggle for social harmony and human happiness. Sometimes the only way to get perspective is to look at the total field, the ultimate domain that ties you and your opponent to the same end-goal.

What I'm trying to say is that all this stuff... innovation, progress, next-generation, and revolution... are taking place within a certain domain, and despite the fuzzy focus of the new marketing push, this is a total field that can't be bought, redefined, or subverted. This total environment is defined by the consumers themselves, the gamers, and its central term isn't "graphics," "development," "innovation," "market share," or "novelty"... its central term is gameplay, and it's something the three competitors have to keep sight of if they're going to win, or even survive, the next skirmish in video game politics.