On September 9th, 2008 the United Nations announced they would be launching a probe into outer-space. Its main goal would be to take photos of several of Jupiter’s moons, do a closer fly-by of Pluto, and eventually launch itself into the heliosphere that lies on the outskirts of our solar system. As with the original Voyager satellites, several discs and storage devices would be equipped on it so that anyone who found it could gain a better understanding of our species. Thanks to advances in data storage, several terabytes worth of data could now be stored on the Satellite that would be christened ‘Cheng Ho One’ after the famous Chinese explorer. In addition to the thousands of songs, photos, movies, and books being stored on the satellite, it has been decided by the committee that a video game should be stored on it. As with all the other media on the satellite, public internet forums were opened in all great nations so that the entire global community could decide which game would be placed on the satellite. The following is various excerpts from the transcript of those debates.

12:24:32

PudgePacket : Firsties! And Call of Duty 4 is defenetly what we shuld put on there!

DukeMa : I don’t see why we should have to do just one game. Some games I love: Ico, Shadow of the Colossus, Mass Effect, Psychonauts, and Final Fantasy should definitely all be on there!

PudgePacket : wtf, no one has ever heard of those games and even if they do they suck becuase no one has heard of them

Frank D : I think we should remember that this is the game by which an alien species is going to judge our entire race. How do we even explain the nature of a game to another species? How do we explain that violence as recreation is not the same thing as actual war? We don’t want to gi- COMMENT EXCEEDS FORUM POSTING LIMIT

DukeMa : @ PudgePacket  
They’re all great games and would definitely be great if an alien species saw them. They’re all perfect classics and just because they’re old doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be good picks for going into Cheng Ho.

JoeBlow : @ DukeMa  
Good God, those games are considered old? What about Duke Nukem, Populous, or just plain old Super Mario Brothers? We also can’t rule out something like the original SpaceWar! It was the first video game after all.

Frank D : Actually, SpaceWar wasn’t necessarily the first game ever made. If we look at the pure ludological and anthropological history of games then we ca- COMMENT EXCEEDS FORUM POSTING LIMIT

4:15:54

MegaMagi224 : Look, I’m not saying Halo 3 is a bad game. But you yourself said I wouldn’t truly appreciate the game unless I played the entire trilogy, read all the backstory, and the thrown-away screenplays.

PudgePacket : Screw the fanboys! And did someone up there say Tomb Raider? Rolling on floor. Laughing my ass off. 

Frank D : Pudge, Tomb Raider may be a bit ridiculous in terms of Lara’s physical proportions but she’s also a strong, independent woman in a sea of games about saving the Princess.

PudgePacket : COMMENT DELETED DUE TO PROFANITY

xxgirltankxx Hey, I’m a girl and I don’t think that! I think we should put Fallout on there. Their the best RPG’s around because you could do anything you wanted!

Megator99 @ xxgirltankxx  
A game about how we nuked ourselves into oblivion and then kept fighting and nuking ourselves anyways? I’m not really sure that’s what we want on a satellite that an alien species might pick up. I’m with whoever up above said Halo.

JoeBlow9943 : Oh right, a video game about our war with the first alien species we ever met. That’d be great. Dumbass. These are some of my favorite games: Ico, Road Rage, Pain Killer, and definitely Psychonauts.

10:19:04

Frank D : Look, I’m sure we all appreciate the suggestion of PacMan. But sockpuppeting the forums and voting for it over and over again isn’t getting us anywhere.

CrapTalk33 : Has anyone said Shadow of the Colossus yet? Because that game is amazing.

xxgirltankxx : Dude, most of the people who play that game who are human don’t understand what the Hell is going on, why would a space alien? I think it should be Psychonauts.

Frank D : OH FOR THE LOVE OF GOD! IT’S JUST A QUIRKY AND INTERESTING GAME. The necessity of an acrimonious army of fans supporting it can’t change that fact. It’s just the gaming equivalent of the wacky B movie. We need something that is representative of the entire glo- COMMENT EXCEEDS FORUM POSTING LIMIT

TechMachek : Maybe we should have the most technologically advanced game? I think Crysis is the best looking game out there.

MegaMagi75 : Yeah right, I doubt even the space aliens have a computer that can run it. Has anyone checked the South Korean forums yet? They all unanimously voted for Starcraft. I don’t really like RTS games though. Has anyone said Call of Duty 4 yet? I think that should go.

Frank D : COMMENT DELETED DUE TO PROFANITY

The forums closed after three days of heated debate. The Cheng Ho committee, after reviewing the forums, were unable to conclude which game the video game discussion had selected. Having never played games themselves and no proper understanding of what games were considered good, they instead decided to save space and put the complete collection of Everybody Loves Raymond where the video game would’ve gone. Not wanting the gaming community to be left out, they did include a game that the committee itself selected: the Flying Toaster Screensaver.

When I got an Xbox 360 last year, it was for one reason: Guitar Hero III—yes, I could have played it on my Wii, but that would have taken downloadable content out of the equation.  It was a good decision, as it turned out.  The last rhythm game I’d played and enjoyed, honestly, was Harmonix’s excellent Frequency on the PlayStation 2, and despite all of the hype and the positive reviews, the Guitar Hero series, to that point, had passed me by.

Now, I’m a “Raining Blood” away from five-starring every expert song in Guitar Hero III, I’ve played through expert careers on Guitar Hero III, Guitar Hero II, Rock Band, Guitar Hero: On Tour and Guitar Hero: Aerosmith, I’ve talked smack in the online iterations of these games, and I’ve even created a Rock Band avatar with a mullet and a tattoo featuring the name of this illustrious website across his chest.  Does that make me an addict?  I think it might.

Electronic Arts’ Rock Band 2

Dispute the comparative quality of the various games in the series all you want, but there’s no denying the almost unexplainable pull that pounding out virtuosic solos on plastic guitars (and drums, not to mention microphones for those who can hold a tune) seems to have on people.  As such, there’s nothing that sticks out in this actually-pretty-decent release week quite like Rock Band 2 does.

Despite the above-and-beyond innovation of last year’s Rock Band, and also despite the apparent philosophy of “anything you can do I can do better” that the upcoming Guitar Hero: World Tour seems to be exhibiting toward its Harmonix-developed rival, the approach of Rock Band 2 seems to be that of refinement rather than overhaul.  Harmonix has developed a dedicated fanbase of Rock Band players, as evidenced by a bustling forum and the ever-important gauge of general internet favor, and Rock Band 2 was developed with that community of devoted players in mind.  An 80+ song setlist, the ability to import all but three of the original Rock Band‘s tracks, compatibility with the first Rock Band‘s DLC, and the ability to play band vs. band matches with any mix of local and online teammates and adversaries are only a few of the many tweaks and touch-ups that Rock Band has received on this go ‘round.  Sunday can’t get here fast enough.

Electronic Arts’ NHL 09

Elsewhere, 2K and EA are releasing their competing hockey games this week, and if you love sports games, any kinds of sports games, you should be picking one and buying it.  In a social sense, there is very, very little that competes with video game hockey in terms of the amount of control you have over the outcome and the level of competition that comes out in the people who are taking part.  Viva Piñata shows up on a Nintendo system with Pocket Paradise, which is sort of confusing in a good way, and Nintendo’s also offering up a portable mystery in the form of Mystery Case Files: MillionHeir, a potential sleeper hit in waiting.  Oh!  And there’s a PC exclusive: the video game tie-in for Righteous Kill.  It’s never too early to get your virtual De Niro or Pacino on.

How about you?  Will you be putting down Spore long enough to play anything this week?  The full release list, and a trailer for Rock Band 2, is after the jump!

There once was a game from Japan,
About a jumping Red Man.
With mushrooms he grew stronger, flowers made his life last longer,
and coins earned him many a fan.

But as the sequels went by,
players stopped wanting to die.
They made the game less tricky, they made the power-ups more nifty,
and now anyone can play as that Red Guy.

So they sent him into space,
such an amazing place.
So many stars to collect, the same old Princess to protect,
but little to explain the newfound pace.

You can ride on Manatees,
you can even talk to psychotic peas.
But at around Star Seventy, you’ll wonder about brevity,
and instead play something with Miis.

There once was a game from Japan,
About a jumping Red Man.
With mushrooms he grew stronger, flowers made his life last longer,
and coins earned him many a fan.

Level 70. Xbox Achievements. Leaderboards. These are common terms in the gamer lexicon and for many they signify something far greater than their digital existence. They have value. Something that exists in no other place but the virtual world has significance and meaning in the real one. Ray Kurzweil, a noted…I’m not actually sure what his official description would be but let’s just say he made a very lucrative business out of predicting technologies just before they came into existence, Kurzweil once commented that it will actually get to a point in society where the virtual and real world merge. That people will stop considering them different and think of them as the same thing. He also predicts that the place where this overlap will begin to occur is in video games. What does that mean? What are the signs that our fantasies in video games are becoming real?

Sadly, the first real indicators of the two worlds merging are when a traumatic event in the virtual world affects the life of someone in reality. An article in the Boston Globe highlights the growing field of therapy for people who have lost their virtual lives. The doctor interviewed, Dr. Block, proposes that the therapy needed goes far beyond mere remedies for addiction. He suggests that much of the problem is that the person has trouble just finding someone who will take their loss seriously. The subject often won’t be able to find an outlet until they are able to talk with someone who understands the game itself and the magnitude of the loss within those boundaries. Take the EVE Online player in the article. That was a part of his identity. He spent years deriving self-worth and personal esteem from being one of the most powerful people in that game. Should he be ashamed of that? Should he not feel loss when his entire digital empire gets taken from him? We all get self-worth and esteem from goofy things. Hell, you’re reading one of mine. That’s just what people to do to make themselves feel better. Why should someone’s prized armor collection be of any less value just because it’s virtual rather than destroying their garden if both prizes took the same amount of time to accrue?

Another sign is that people are starting to believe their interactions with real people in the virtual world have value. They are having have real debates online, far beyond just chatting in the comments. Academics long ago realized MMORPG’s gave them insights into how people would behave in real world conditions, but now they’re holding conferences there as well. The most interesting thing in that article about running an academic conference in World of Warcraft is that the people conducted themselves as if they were at a real academic meeting. Certain people run the forum, insights are noted, and the entire exchange is recorded for analysis later. They were able to do something in the Virtual World that would’ve taken months of planning and huge expenses in the real one. And it doesn’t stop there, businesses have started training their employees and holding meetings in digital environments. Whether it’s having people show the appropriate reactions to an oil rig fire or holding private gatherings on secluded islands, companies have embraced virtual reality for the low costs and the value the experience still provides in application to the real world. As one manager notes, people still bond even though they’re meeting online.

But perhaps the greatest sign that the boundaries have begun to blur is the fact that the real world has begun to spill back into the virtual. A place that was once reserved for acting out our fantasies and creating sense of accomplishment has finally begun to reflect back. There are now video games about real world events. There’s the groundbreaking Super Columbine Massacre RPG that forces the player to experience an intense documentary-like game and uses actual writings from the two killers to recreate the event. Or the unflattering McDonald’s simulation that doesn’t just show you how to run a successful fast food joint, it forces you to realize that the only way these companies can make money is through corruption. Or Audiosurf, which takes the music in the real world and converts it into a virtual level for the player to navigate. The fact that we’re starting to take virtual reality seriously is exciting and somewhat frightening. The fact that virtual reality has begun to reflect back at reality is where the real shift begins to occur.

I had a really interesting chat with a friend of mine who researches on lab rats about virtual reality a while back. The guy literally kills rats by suffocating them, gauges their heart status, the efficacy of the chemical he’s injected them with, and does this for months on end. He’s testing a medication that would save people’s lives if they were having a heart attack and were able to take it in time. What’s ironic is that he gets offended by violence in video games. His complaint is that the violence is totally meaningless. You gun down hundreds of people, yet there’s no meaning to that death. No value given to all that destruction beyond a score or reward. When I pointed out that his occupation involved a pretty horrific amount of violence as well, he disagreed. To him, killing the rats had purpose and utility for a greater good, while in video games it all just seems kind of senseless. Issues of game violence aside, perhaps the best way to create meaning and purpose in video games is if the player provides them on their own. Perhaps by blurring the lines between the virtual and the real, we can go beyond just dragging our fantasies into reality. We can do more than just brag that our Level 70 Paladin runs their own guild. We can say that they did something important there as well.

Quick—think of the last Spore-related article you read.  It could have been yesterday, it could have been last week, but think about it: What was it about?

EA’s Spore

It makes me sad to even type this, but it’s my estimation that for something around 90% of you, the last Spore-related article you read was about penis monsters, mammary trolls and the like.  The fallout of releasing the Spore creature creator almost three months before the full game was released is that every sexually-challenged goofball out there who thought he or she was being absolutely hilarious (RoFL WoFLs!) decided to make a monster that looks like human sexual organs.  Some of the more enterprising souls released the results to YouTube.  In fact, the “Sporn” phenomenon has grown so quickly and placed in such a prominent position in the mainstream coverage of the game thus far as to have all but completely overshadowed the incredibly ambitious nature of the full-length game.

The mere idea of Spore has been making gamers, particularly PC gamers, drool for some years now, and it’s unfortunate that the pre-release press for the game is so focused on the juvenile.  Still, if Spore even approaches the mere idea of itself, the press post Sunday’s release should focus on the changing face of the simulation genre as a whole.  Spore is the one to watch this week, maybe the one to watch this year.

Square Enix’s Infinite Undiscovery

Elsewhere, there’s a whole pile of releases for the Xbox 360 this week, including Infinite Undiscovery, Square Enix’s next venture into non-franchise role-playing.  Given the incredible response to The World Ends With You, Infinite Undiscovery has a lot to live up to.  Facebreaker looks like it could be good for a laugh or three, and hey—some people actually liked Vampire Rain, so maybe PS3 players have something of their own to look forward to.

So what are you picking up this week?  Scope out the release list, check out the Spore vid, and let us know in the comments!  Oh, and enjoy your Labor Day!