Guy Cihi and other former Silent Hill 2 voiceovers sign waiver to release original work in the new HD collection

In 2001 Silent Hill 2 was released and Silent Hill 3 was released in 2003. They were both very successful with fans of survival horror. With the constant update of gaming consoles Konami decided to re-release Silent Hill 2 and 3 in HD for the PS3 and Xbox 360 in 2011. While fans were excited to hear of a visually updated version of their favorite game, they were not happy to discover that the original voice overs were going to be re-recorded.

Silent Hill 2 was originally released on the PS2, but later was released for the Xbox and PC as well. The mocap and voice actors were not given residuals for those releases. Konami did not state in their contracts that they were to use their mocap footage and voice over work in other releases of the game. Guy Cihi said this:

To tell you the truth, I had no idea they were releasing a ‘making of’ video. They never told me. I found out later when a fan asked me about it… I hope that some day Konami management learns how to do right by the people who contribute so much to making their products… Konami has reused my performances without my permission.

So with the HD collection coming out that produces even more of a problem. Guy Cihi along with the other actors signed a contract for ONLY the PS2 release. Not for the Xbox, PC or HD collection. Konami had been refusing to pay the actors what was owed to them and instead thought it would be easier to record new voiceovers.However, Guy Cihi owns the rights to the mocap used in the HD collection and he can sue Konami for those rights.

After much debate between the original actors and Konami, a waiver was finally signed releasing the rights to the mocap and voice work for the HD collection release. It has not been said what the final agreement was but most likely Konami will be paying what is owed to the actors for their original work along with residuals for the new release, and the original voice work will remain in the new release. A win-win situation and great news for us Silent Hill fans! While there is no release date yet fans are expecting for it to be released around the same time as the new addition to the series, Silent Hill: Downpour.

Sexualization in Video Game Characters

For many years now there has been a constant controversy with the sexualization of characters, and those characters that get caught in the fire are typically female characters. So how much sex is too much in a video game? There are many people that believe it fits in right with the story and gameplay, and then there are many people that find it to be completely pointless and degrading. Some of the earliest video games have introduced sexuality into gaming such as Duke Nukem and Tomb Raider. As time went on more games were developed that took it to a whole new level such as beach volleyball.

In 2008, Fox News did a report on how the popular video game, Mass Effect, depicted pornography. Talk show host, Cooper Lawrence said that it gave young boys the wrong idea about women and that it was, and that the video game showed full on nudity. Spike TV’s Geoff Keighly rebutted saying that it was nothing like that. Lawrence admitted that she had never played the game, but rather based her information off what someone told her just minutes before the show. Mass Effect in fact is not full of nudity and sex. There is barely any nudity at all and sex is just a small 30 second deal out of the whole game, and you can choose to not have your character engage in it.

Let’s look at a character that is widely criticized for her appearance: Lara Croft.

She has always wore the same style of outfit throughout her whole career; small shorts, a tank top, hiking boots, and her hair in a long, neat braid or ponytail. A lot of people feel that her outfit is a bit too revealing and that she is a disgrace to women. Because women don’t really climb mountains with no rope looking for treasure, and wield guns all while wearing comfortable clothing for such an occasion. The thing about Lara Croft is that she was never made to be over sexualized. She was created and portrayed to be a strong woman. How is it wrong for a woman to be able to defend herself while searching for the next big archeological find? She has always been one of my favorite female characters to play because she is so strong and smart. She doesn’t use her sexuality to get what she wants.

In 2007, a game came out with a female character that gave some women a small glimmer of hope for the portrayal of women in games. That game was Mirror’s Edge and the character was Faith Connors.

She wears a simple black tanktop with white pants that go to her ankles and red sneakers. People have described her as not being very attractive, but that was a positive. Then they compare her with Lara Croft and say that she is a much stronger character because she doesn’t dress like Lara. But look at these two characters; both are strong women fighting for what is right. Neither of them use sex in any way to advance in the game.

And then there are the bad game characters that do portray women incorrectly.

Personally I don’t judge these characters for looking this way. Mileena is my favorite fighter in the Mortal Kombat series. In Hollywood sex sells and gaming is no exception. Creators feel that they must create busty attractive characters in order to gain a profit by appealing the public masses. Since 60% of gamers are males then attractive female characters are going to be a high selling feature. It’s not wrong to give characters a strong role and if they are wearing a tank top and shorts what is the big deal? It’s probably hard to climb a mountain in jeans. But it is wrong to make them appear as submissive and not having minds of their own like most video games (Mileena is an exception of this since she is one of the top fighters).

So which side are you on?

Some Interesting Statistics

Ever wondered what the actual truth is behind video games? Well here are some interesting facts.

According to OnlineEducation.net :

• 65% of US households play video games.
• 49% of gamers are ages 18-49 and the average gamer is 32 years old. That’s an interesting fact since when it comes to marketing advertisements always seem directed to a more younger crowd. Also whenever there is a crisis that likes to point the finger at video games, such as the Columbine shooting, it always seems to involve teenagers.

The ESRB did their own study and found some more interesting statistics:

• 40% of gamers are indeed females. If you’ve ever been online to the many different gaming websites, such as Gamespot.com, a lot of the users will not be afraid to admit that they don’t believe that girls play video games. Why, when I was on that website for a few years so many of the people told me that they didn’t believe I was a girl since apparently girls don’t play video games….
• The average adult gamer has been playing for 12 years. I’ve been playing for 14 years. It’s not the average, but remember, the average gamer is a 32 year old male and I’m a 21 year old female so I’ve got room to stretch.
• 93% of the time parents are present at the time games are purchased or rented AND 97% of parents report always or sometimes monitoring the games their child plays. So what is the deal with all the parents freaking out about their children playing bad games? How does the old saying go? A few bad apples ruin the bunch.

So there are some great facts about the real world of gaming. Video gaming has some of the most bizarre myths and I hope that this brings light to what some people may think.

Kingdom Hearts – A Quick Review

In 2002, the world of gaming was introduced to an all-new video game series the would capture the hearts of many. That game was Kingdom Hearts. It was marked to be new and innovative because the video game developer and publisher Square Enix paired up the characters of the ever popular characters from the Final Fantasy games, our favorite Disney characters that we know and love, as well as original characters of their own. It was new, it was refreshing, it was something we hadn’t seen before.

Kingdom Hearts is the story of a young boy named Sora who was chosen to wield the Keyblade to fight evil. The evil are called the Heartless and they are led by a man named Ansem. Ansem released the Heartless across the many different Disney worlds. Sora, paired with Donald and Goofy who he meets along the way, must fight against this power and save the worlds from being corrupted, and find his friends, Riku and Kairi.

The game features many recognizable characters which makes it even more enjoyable to play. Sora will meet characters such as Donald, Goofy, Mickey, Aladdin, Ariel, Simba, and more from the Disney movies, along with characters such as Tifa, Cloud, and Sephiroth  from the Final Fantasy series. Sora will even travel to different Disney worlds such as Halloween Town from The Nightmare Before Christmas, and into Monstro’s belly from Pinocchio.

So you might be thinking, “How serious can I take a game that has Disney characters in it? Won’t that make it all safe and childish?” I don’t blame you for thinking that, but it in fact doesn’t. All these characters can fight alongside you and send you out on dangerous missions to complete. It is so much fun to get chase after the bad guys while on a magic carpet ride. Disney made a good call in pairing up with Square Enix.

The games are of the RPG genre. Players will get to choose which attacks they want Sora to use, and will get to make other decisions such as where to go and what to say. At first the fighting style seemed slightly confusing because players can change keyblades, gain the ability to perform different magic, use potions and ethers, and summon other characters to help fight during battle. But it is actually quick to learn and players can use shortcuts for the different spells and items. Players will gain other abilities such as different fighting abilities. There is also a section of the game devoted to the Gummi Ship. It is what Sora and his friends will use to travel from world to world. While on the Gummi Ship players must fight against Heartless who try to stop them from getting through. Players can also customize their Gummi Ship to look and function different ways by collecting gummi blocks. In my opinion, don’t waste time on it. You can get through the level and the game with the Gummi Ship you’ve been given.

Overall, the story, characters, design, colors, everything is just amazing about this game series. As you progress to other games their will be a more developed plotline, more characters, and more fighting styles. They are super fun and extensive plays. I would highly recommend it to anyone who likes RPGs. Actually you don’t even have to like RPGs to play this game. I played it based on the sole fact that I’m a HUGE Disney fan. So there are so many different reasons to play these games. Check it out because there are other games such as Kingdom Hearts 2, Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories, Kingdom Hearts 358/2 Days, and Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep as well as the many others that are to be developed and released.

Netflix to add video games to lineup

Netflix recently announced that they will be adding video games to their rental lineup. Along with an apology they made that caused confusion about the split between the dvds and online streaming prices, the CEO of Netflix announced that video games will now be a part of their new service called Qwikster. Gamefly already offers the rental of video games to be shipped to your door and customers can keep it as long as they want with no late fees. Gamefly’s prices are a bit on the expensive side, so now that Netflix is going to offering a similar service will they become competition for Gamefly? The impact of online streaming and mail in rentals has caused many rental companies to lose business such as Movie Gallery and Blockbuster. Now that Netflix is offering this new service, what is going to happen to other companies offering a similar service?

Sad news for gamers, playing doesn’t promote cognitive development

It’s recently been discovered that playing video games does not boost cognitive development. In all honesty I did slightly believe that it did. If you’ve grown up playing video games where you have to solve puzzles, crack riddles, and the like wouldn’t it make sense for you to develop that part of your mind more? And when the Nintendo DS was introduced there were games that seemed to help promote brain development such as Brain Age. The Brain Age website reads:

Brain Age’s intuitive gameplay makes brain training easy for everyone. Train across fifteen activities. Solve simple math problems, recite piano songs, play a challenging version of rock, paper, scissors, and test your memory skills in the classic game, Concentration. You’ll love your mental workout!

A study on hand-eye coordination has been conducted on surgeons and the results showed that surgeons who played at least 3 hours a week made 37% less mistakes during surgery and finished it 27% faster. From personal experience I can tell definitely that playing video games has improved my hand-eye coordination. So it would seem that while playing video games might not make you smarter with puzzles, hand-eye coordination does develop somewhat.

A Quick History of Video Games

Computerized gaming roots back to the 1950’s with some simple computer games that were similar to table tennis or shooting airplane targets. In 1977, the Atari was released that would soon take gaming to a whole new level. It was the first console that had plug in cartridges that game in a variety of different video games. The first game to be released was Pong. It was similar to the table tennis game involved in the 50’s.

As time went on gaming branched out into various arcade games such as PAC-MAN, Frogger, and Street Fighter, as well as many others. As technology grew people were able to bring some of these classics into their home through purchasing other consoles. While their have been a great number of consoles created and sold to gamers the most popular are as follows:

• Nintendo Entertainment System (October 1985)
• Sega Genesis (August 1989)
• Sony Playstation (September 1995)
• Sony Playstation 2 (October 2000)
• Nintendo GameCube (November 2001)
• Microsoft Xbox (November 2001)
• Microsoft Xbox 360 (May 2005)
• Sony Playstation 3 (November 2006)
• Nintendo Wii (November 2006)

Here is a weekly overview of video game hardware sales:

So with the constant in gaming technology what will the future offer us? What will be the next console to be released and which of the major gaming companies will release it first? Only time will tell.

Survival Horror and Handheld Gaming

Hours ago Tecmo announced a brand new survival horror video game to hit the 3DS titled Shinrei Camera. This got me thinking, I feel like handheld gaming takes away from the “horror” aspect of survival horror. While there is no official published definition of what survival horror is, Wikipedia provides us with a short explanation:

Survival horror is a subgenre of action-adventure video games inspired by horror fiction. These games make the player vulnerable by providing them with less ammunition and fewer heavy weapons than other action games…  Games make use of strong horror themes, and the player is often challenged to navigate dark maze-like environments, and react to unexpected attacks from enemies.

Over the past couple of years survival horror games have made their way to handhelds such as Silent Hill: Origins for the PSP, and Dementium for the Nintendo DS (both of which have not done very well), as well as many others, but is it a good idea? In the Wikipedia definition it states that players are expected to react to unexpected attacks from enemies. Handheld gaming can be great. It’s brought some of the greatest games of all time, and Pokemon in a ways helped handheld gaming take off. With the advances in technology we’ve seen the Gameboy turn into an 8-bit monochromatic display, to color, to 3D. And other gaming consoles have turned to handhelds such as Sony and the PSP as well as the new PS Vita. The thing about handhelds is that the screen is only so big. The DS screen measures in at 3.8 inches. Would it not seem hard to get the scare factor that survival horror has to offer? Seeing a ghost pop out from under a bed on a small screen that can fit in my pocket is not the same as seeing it happen on a 42″ flat screen television.

But now gaming is being offered in 3D. Having that ghost pop out of a bed might get to players more in 3D on a handheld than in 2D. As handhelds have developed so have the graphics. Uncharted 3: Drake’s Deception looks AMAZING on the PS Vita. The colors are vibrant, the graphics are smooth and flawless. It’s just as amazing as if it were on an HD flat screen television. So survival horror might pick back up very soon. As sales grow more these companies that are producing video games are going to want to broaden their horizons as is why the all-time classic Silent Hill has made it to every console except the DS. If it sells good on one, they will try to sell it on another. As this may upset some gamers (me included) it does have potential.

Will this change the world of gaming? Will 3D gaming help sales of less popular series? Guess we will find out this holiday!

How young is too young?

That is a popular question made by many parents of child gamers. Even though there are plenty of games out there marketed toward children such as the numerous Lego video games and Nicktoons Unite!, many children want to play the more mature video games like Mortal Kombat, or Mass Effect. Many parents are not okay with their children playing M-rated video games. And some of them are.

When I was 10 years old my mother came home from a day of work. As she entered the door she seemed to be carrying a small, square case in much excitement. That small case contained something that forever changed my view of video games. It was Silent Hill.

My mother said that she had borrowed this video game from a friend, and that it was supposed to be very scary. There were not very many survival horror games before 1999. There were a few, but Silent Hill seemed to help that genre of gaming take off. So when my mother told me about this game being scary I was excited because I had never played anything like it before. So there I was at the tender age of 10 playing survival horror.

As you can tell in the image this game is rated M for Mature. The ESRB gave Silent Hill its rating for Animated Blood and Gore, Animated Violence. There are a ton of parents out there that would have a fit if they knew their child was playing such a game. And because of that, many parents will try to have video games banned in hopes that their child will not get their hands on it. It all comes down to parenting skills in reality. Parents say they want to get involved in knowing what their child is playing. It is as simple as picking up the box, turning it over, and reading the ESRB rating in the bottom corner or every video game box. Standing in line at a video game store one day, a mother was going to purchase an M rated game for her 12 year old son. The clerk asked the mother, “You do know this is rated M for Mature, yes?” The mother looked shocked and said that she wasn’t aware and then asked what it was rated for. The clerk then told her it was for violence, sexual content, nudity, use of alcohol and drugs. The mother then got very angry with her son and left the store.

It is mothers like that, and fathers as well, that try to take the fun away from everyone. Because they don’t want to ask a simple question or do some small research for themselves they would much rather have as many video games banned as possible to avoid their child from playing it. My mother was more lenient with me, than my younger brother. I was more mature at the age of 10 and she knew that I would not act out on what I played in the game so she let me have it. My brother on the other hand got in trouble at school for imitating something from a violent video game he had played. Parents want to get more involved, then they should monitor their own child and decide for themselves whether it is okay for their child to play a stricter rated game. Those of us who are responsible gamers should not suffer the same punishment as those who are irresponsible or too young.

Now don’t get me wrong. I am not saying I would give my 10 year old child (if I had one) a game with ratings for sex, nudity, and extreme violence. But I would not forbid them from playing anything. I would inspect the game before letting them have it. I tend to remain open-minded about gaming since it was been apart of my life for near 15 years. If they’re too young to see the sex scene in Mass Effect then I would take it away from them until they were older. But if they want to play as a man with a cheetah for a face and compete to be the King of the Iron Fist, then my all means, go on ahead. So how young is too young? I guess that is for mom and dad to decide.