A Song of Brick and Lava: How would Bowser survive in the Game of Thrones universe?

House Koopa is coming for The Iron Throne. Source

The premise is basic.  Bowser a.k.a King Koopa a.k.a. Dennis Hopper of the Super Mario Bros. franchise squeezes his impossibly huge body down the wrong green pipe one day and finds himself in the awesomely harsh fantasy world of A Song of Ice and Fire--better known by it's television name Game of Thrones.  Written by professional sadist George R.R. Martin everything about the land of Westeros brutally subverts what we've come to expect from a fantasy novel.  It's less elves, fairies, and hidden treasures and more political scheming, backstabbing, and incest--lots and lots of incest. 

"I will take what is mine with fire and bomb-ombs!"

Now Bowser may lack the needed Machiavellian nature for properly navigating the perilous political proceedings of Westeros, but surely he has enough brute force to make some kind of impact.  How far will The King of all Koopas get?  It all depends on that one thing which for some reason is said three times: location, location, location.

Scenario #1:  Bowser starts off with a day in Braavos.  I'll give him a little entourage to travel with let's say a couple of Hammer Bros.  Not an army, but a nice little posse to watch Bowser's back as the streets of Braavos would be dangerous at night.

 Too bad for him the Braavosi are a sword loving people so Bowser loses the Hammer Bros. from the get go.  A Braavosi merchant watching the unusual trio pass by from his boat shouts, "Hey you two with the hammers want to be blacksmiths on my boat shop here?  We'll make and sell weapons right here on my boat!  I'll pay you in silver and boat-whores!"  Realizing their current master Bowser pays them in...nothing, silver and boat-whores sound major appealing.  The Bros. take off leaving King Koopa defenseless.  Not a very bro move, but hey. 

Suddenly Bowser comes to a frightening realization.  Braavos you see is not one island but many.  Canals and channels wrap around the cities, folks travel by boat shouting and trading with each other. King Koopa is in a land that might as well be medieval Venice, the origin point of his nemesis Super Mario.  Worse yet Braaovsi males tend to be mustachio dudes who love to challenge one another to duels.  One look at them and the turtle king will have flashbacks to all the embarrassing defeats he had to an Italian plumber.  It's only a matter of time before a guy who looks like Mario comes along, takes offense to his reptilian appearance, and puts a blade in his eye.  There are parts not far from Braavos where the screams of a giant horned river turtle are deemed a divine blessing.  In this case it'll be the sound of a lone king dying.

Imagine a city full of Syrio Forels.  Bowser is screwed. Source

Game Over Bowser.

Scenario #2:  Bowser sets his sights high and decides he's going to take King's Landing.  A powerful and populated city like this is going to take an army to siege it.  So we'll give Bowser that massive army. We're talking Goombas, Koopas, those blue wizards guys, and of course bomb-ombs, numbering in the thousands.  Here The King of all Koopas has managed to capture himself some female royalty as a Bowser is wont to do--only he made a huge mistake.  The woman he kidnapped is no princess but a queen--Queen Cersei Lannister to be exact. Mario won't be coming to save her--that will be up to her twin brother/lover Jamie Lannister.

Did I mention Jamie's absolutely mental with that damn sword? Source

The fields run red with blood, turtle shells, and the broken glasses of those blue wizard guys as the crimson red, lion-crested banners of the richest family in Westeros, the Lannisters, clash with Bowser & co.  Bomb-ombs are blowing themselves up on Bowser's side, as the Lannisters have alchemist throwing jars of green wildfire on their end.  Archer's shoot winged Goombas out of the sky while Koopas retreat in their shells in confusion.  Things go from bad to worse for Bowser when Jamie Lannister, on horseback, gets close enough to him to shout,

     "Unhand the queen and accept my challenge to single combat!"  King Koopa drops Cercei and responds with,
     "BWAHAHAHA!" because 1. He's not a very well developed character and 2. He has no idea he's about to mess with the greatest swordsman in Westeros. If a rotund plumber can give him a run for his gold coin, then Jamie Lannister will make turtle soup out of him.  Side stepping a flame attack or two, Jamie slips in close enough to stick his blade right through the reptile's scaly chin.  Bowser falls backward, moves his bowels, and dies.  A Song of Ice and Fire must always remind us, everybody poops.

Game Over Bowser

Scenario #3:

700 hundred feet high, Bowser finds himself on top of The Wall, an incredible, icy structure built to keep all that is evil, frightening, and monstrous on the other side, away from the good folks of Westeros. The Wall is further guarded by The Brothers of the Nights Watch who loyally patrol the harsh winter land for the reward of never getting to have sex (it's complicated).  One of the most noble--Jon Snow--bastard of House Stark--also noble--finds himself facing down King Koopa, carefully balancing himself as to not fall off The Wall.  Ice melts under the scaled behemoth's flame breath causing the normally nimble Jon Snow to slip.  Snow, fallen but ever vigilante holds forth his sword Longclaw.
With chilled breath so thick it rivals Bowser's flames he shouts "I don't know how you climbed this wall or whether you are a Grumpkin or Snark, but I will let you go no further!"
  Most unfortunate Jon did not bring along with him his powerful direwolf companion Ghost.  It looks like Bowser has this fight...until he decides to finish his opponent with that dumbass down-B attack from Super Smash Bros. He misses Jon Snow by a foot and ends up falling 700 feet to his death, because that's what that attack is good for.

Game Over Bowser

In Conclusion: Bowser is too cartoonish and silly to survive the scary world of Game of Thrones.  His best bet would be to travel to The Free Cities, seek Daenrys Targaryen, Mother of all Dragon, and pledge fealty.  He is a ginger-turtle-dragon after all and I'm sure she'd love to have one of those at her side.  Or better yet he could stay in Westeros.  All he has to do is rock that cat upgrade from Super Mario 3D World and beg the lion-loving-Lannisters to be their mascot.

"The Lannisters let me poop inside!  In a golden pot too!" Source

Catherine--a Tale of Two Women

Catherine--you're pretty much her bitch.  Source

As any good stand up comedian can tell you, marriage is the end of everything--ever!  With this I present Atlus's Catherine.  You play as Vincent Brooks, a lovable loser just trying to get by in modern society.  You know this guy, unmotivated with a messy bachelor pad, and yet friendly and harmless enough to hang out with on a Friday night.  Plus it's impossible to say Vincent's dreams are completely crushed--a poster of a Space Tourism company is on his wall; fantasies of travel and true freedom persist. 

Catherine is self-described as a romance-horror and like Portal is a puzzle game with a heavy sense of narrative.  The story is about Vincent's relationship with two women.  The first is Katherine, his long time girlfriend who wants the 32 year-old slacker to settle down and marry her.  At a lunch date with Katherine, Vincent watches half-awake as she taps her ice-blue nails against the table.  "Snap out of it!  Were you even listening?" she demands.  It's clear from the start that this is a far from perfect relationship.  Regardless, she wants to pin her man down.

The second woman in Vincent's life is the title character Catherine (that's right this one's with a C).  Vincent finds her in his bed one morning, the result of an affair--one that he has no memory of whatsoever.  What's worse is it keeps happening night after night and not once can Vincent recall how she got there.  Catherine is an enigma.

Katherine with a K.  The K is for kontrol-freak.

 Gameplay in Catherine is split between hanging out in a bar with Vincent and his friends  and The Nightmare puzzle stages.  Time spent at The Stray Sheep bar is mostly mundane. The player can talk with fellow patrons, check out dirty pics on Vincent's phone sent from Catherine, and order drinks--which provides trivia on the beverage and will lead the player to learn waaaay more about alcohol than they ever imagined possible.

Then there are The Nightmare stages.  Ever worthy of their name not only for the creepy backgrounds with rusty chains and sharp objects reminiscent of a Saw movie, but the frenetic block pushing puzzle gameplay.  As you push blocks to climb up a tower, the ground collapses beneath the player.  It's a gameplay style that says, "Be careful and cautions and...HURRY UP!" all at once.

What's worse is the end of each Nightmare segment contains a boss chasing poor Vincent up the tower.  Each boss, referred to as "the killer", is a dark reflection of something in Vincent's personal life that he is unwilling to confront in the real world.


According to psychologist Carl Jung, dreams are a playground for universal symbols--ones that all minds can understand.  "Jung believed the human psyche exists in three parts: the ego (the conscious mind), the personal unconscious and the collective unconscious."

Vincent isn't alone in the nightmare phase.  Others appear in this dreamers' realm, all male, taking on the appearance of bipedal sheep.  Not to give too much away but let's just say all these men have something in common--these sheep are being "led astray" from the women in their lives.  None see themselves as a sheep, yet they see all the other men as so.  A gathering of the collective unconscious of unfaithful men.  Each being chased night after night by what Jung would call The Shadow.  If the sheep-men fail the climb in the dream....the die in real life.

Ah!  I feel Jung again!  Source

For Vincent The Shadow has many forms.  One level's boss/killer has a large pair of  hands, one of which is holding a giant fork. The fingers sport the cold, blue, painted nails of Katherine.  In another he is pursued by a monster clearly inspired by the other Catherine.  Called the Immoral Beast, the creature threatens to eat the protagonist with a gaping dentata that would make Jung's wannabe mentor, Sigmund Freud, a proud father indeed. 

Also worth noting Catherine has a unique morality system that goes beyond the typical good and evil choices of most video games.  The arrow tilts between blue and red but it's not a choice of good or bad--it's a life of freedom vs. a life of control.  Which Catherine/Katherine will you choose?

The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time--keeps on slipping into the future

The Legend of Zelda is an epic video game series by Nintendo about a princess, (who the game is named after) a hero in a green tunic named Link, and there enemy, the always evil, sometimes porcine, Ganon.  That's three major characters battling for the mythical land of Hyrule.  As in many mythologies, three is a significant number in this tale.  Hyrule was created by three goddesses, and the main symbol of the series is The Triforce which is constructed from three triangles.

   The most groundbreaking entry of this series came in 1998 with its fifth installment, The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.  Taking advantage of the R4300i processor of the Nintendo 64, it was the first Zelda game to be rendered in 3D.  It was more than a graphics upgrade however--while the previous Zelda games certainly had storylines, much of which had to be read in the manual, they focused more on gameplay than weaving a coherent narrative.  Ocarina of Time managed to balance story and exploratory gameplay, presenting the deepest look into the magical world of Hyrule at the time.  Most importantly it forced us all to learn what the hell an ocarina was.  Well played Nintendo.

The Genesis of Hyrule via the goddesses Din of power, Naryu of wisdom, and Farore of courage.


In this game the player experiences Link in two forms: as a child in the relatively peaceful land of Hyrule, and through the power of time travel via The Master Sword, as an adult.  Only as an adult the sunny skies of Hyrule have been enshrouded in darkness.  Ganon a.k.a. Ganondorf has taken over the land and must be vanquished.

Little did we know at the time what a big impact the time traveling elements of Ocarina of Time would have not just within the game--but with the entire Zelda franchise.  In December 2011, Nintendo released a book titled The Legend of Zelda: Hyrule Historia which contained within the one thing fans have been constructing, speculating, and even reconstructing for years, the official timeline of the Zelda series.  All the major Zelda titles have been placed in chronological order, which is not to be mistaken with the games' release date orders.  This may be confusing for newcomers to the series as the release date of the games do not correlate with where their story falls into the timeline.  For example the latest Zelda for the Wii, Skyward Sword, was revealed to be the beginning of the world of Hyrule.  On the other hand, the Zelda games that were created back on The Nintendo in the 80's, take place well after Skyward Sword and Ocarina of Time in the chronology.  Further more, from one Zelda adventure to another, the player is typically not controlling the same Link or interacting with the same Zelda (though that bastard Ganon seems to keep surviving--evil never sleeps).  Link and Zelda are beings reborn through the ages who come to assist Hyrule in its times of need.



To add to the complexity of the Zelda timeline, there are not two, but three divergent paths, all of which occur thanks to Ocarina of Time.  When Child Link pulls the legendary Master Sword from the Pedestal of Time (King Arthur style) he travels seven years forward into the future.  Here, we play as Adult Link who, Master Sword in hand, must rid Hyrule of Ganondorf, which at the end of the story leads to three possibilities:

• The Hero of Time fails to defeat Ganon.  This creates "The Fallen Hero Timeline."  Ganon has free reign with no hero to oppose him.  This would lead to The Seal War, which connects to Zelda: Link to the Past released on the Super Nintendo.

•  The Hero of Time succeeds.  An adult Zelda rewards the matured Link for defeating Ganondorf by sending him back seven years to his childhood so he could live a normal life.  Now following Zelda, this is "The Adult Link Timeline."   Unfortunately Ganondorf returns to life and wrecks havoc on Zelda's kingdom.  There is no Link to stop him as he was only recently sent back in time.  Rather than let Ganon have the world, the goddesses plunge Hyrule beneath a vast ocean.  This leads to Wind Waker, where players follow a new Link who sails the flooded world.

•     The Hero of Time succeeds.  Same as above only this time we follow things from Link's perspective as opposed to Zelda's.   Sent back to his original time, he is a child once more.  This little Hero of Time would have another adventure in the sequel Majora's Mask.  This is known as "The Child Link Timeline."  Despite having minor conquest, no one would truly know that Link was the great hero who went forward in time and saved all their ungratefully hides from Ganondorf.

Ocarina of Time would not be the last we see of this incarnation of Link, The Hero of Time.  In The Twilight Princess (which follows along the "Child Link Timeline") the new Link takes guidance from a ghostly figure known as The Hero's Spirit, who teaches him seven hidden skills, making the new hero into a better swordsman.  The Hero's Spirit turns out to be Link from Ocarina of Time.  His ghost stays in Hyrule begrudging the fact that he had no heirs to pass his skills onto, and that he was never recognized as a great hero.   Twilight Princess marks the first time we get to see one Link interact with another--hopefully it won't be the last.

A left-handed swordsman?  It is The Hero of Time!  Oh Link what woes have befallen thou?

  

Source

Clearly Nintendo realized what an impact Ocarina of Time has had on the series and released a remake for the 3DS on June 19, 2011

Robin Williams and his daughter Zelda who thankfully lacks her father's hairiness.

Hotline Miami--Let's make those white suits RED! pt. 2

"Right after you pass me the Cheerios you rude, dead, man."

 Things get bad--Jacket enters a convenience store to find a strange bearded clerk (who also seems to work at a pizza shop, a bar, and a VHS rental store) as well as the corpse of his enemy, Biker.  The creepy clerk informs us, "All this is not really happening" which may be a wink at the player, this is a video game after all.  To prove that this isn't reality, the corpse of Biker, and what's left of his head, attempt to speak...but mostly he just gurgles--and he's not the only member of the talking dead we'll encounter.  Corpses of the slain mafia men pop up all over the place.  Outside shops, in Jacket's apartment, pleasant stuff really.  Also it would appear that Jacket is being observed by a pair of green suited janitors who seem to have little to do with the plot (and have a strong resemblance to Hotline's creators Jonatan Söderström and Dennis Wedin).  One even has the nerve to enter his apartment and when the player attempts to speak to the janitor his reply is "......" nil. 

This game has more talking corpses than a Chan-wook Park film

 Things get worse--raging through the levels to a funky electronic soundtrack that may be as addictive as the high octane gameplay, Jacket continues to leave blood splatters all over the flashy neon tackiness that was 1980's Miami.  The beats keeps the player flowing through what can only be described as an eerie murder trance.  It's all routine until Jacket returns to his home to see the unspeakable happen.  Another assassin in a rat mask named Richter has broken into his apartment and slain his new found girlfriend.  That rattin' bastard does him another favor by putting a bullet in his head--Richter too is following orders from his answering machine--the protagonist has outlived his usefulness to this shadow organization.

                                       Mega 64's hilarious take on Hotline Miami

Things get weird--the player gets an automatic Game Over.  The end...that is until we wake up in a hospital.  We learn that while the events we've seen did actually happen (though to what extent who knows) we have been witnessing a coma dream up until now.  Surviving a bullet to the head will do that to you.  From the rest of the game onward Jacket is in the "real" world.  His first mission in reality, escape the hospital and return back home. 


From here the storyline gets a change of tempo.  This is now a tale of revenge.  Jacket wants to wipe out every mafia bastard as well as the rat-faced Richter, for the death of his girlfriend.  Even though he succeeds in offing the rat (though you can show Richter mercy), plus the Russian's and their leader, Jacket's story ends with a dangling plot thread. Who the hell was leaving these threatening messages on the answering machine that led to the slaughters in the first place?  To find out Hotline Miami uses a unique character switching mechanic.  Time literally rewinds before our eyes.  Controlling the pink vested hitman Biker, we are led back to the fight between he and Jacket--only this time around Biker wins the fight and executes the game's hero with a not-so-gentle stomp to the head.  Unlike the mute Jacket, Biker wants to get to the bottom of things and find out who has been ordering him, as well as the other assassins, to murder the Russian mob.

Biker, getting to the bottom of things, like bikers do.

Gameplay as Biker works a little differently from Jacket.  He maintains the cleaver and three throwing knives he used from the earlier boss fight, and can not pick up additional weapons.  After following address leads from his own answering machine, and threatening the right people, Biker comes to the house where the assassination orders are being made.  Upon entering the house we see one of the janitors who was spying on Jacket flee into a sewer manhole.

Biker follows him down and confronts not one, but two of the janitors who are hiding down below.  "Who are you working for?" he demands

"No one" the blonde janitor with a smug smile says.
"We're independent, we did it ourselves!" replies his brunet accomplice through his jackal grin.  This statement is a reference to the production of independently made video games.  In this case the company who created the game Dennaton comprises of just two men.  The janitors jerk Biker around and give him no straight answers.  Biker is left with the option to kill or spare these men, but will never know why exactly all this killing had to happen.  But wait yet, there is a proper ending, we just have to rewind one more time, only not so far.

Back to the surface level of the janitors' hideout is a password protected computer.  There are sixteen puzzle pieces hidden throughout Hotline Miami, each a different letter that when combined reveals a phrase that works as the password for the computer.  Discovering this code reveals what is known in the video game world as The Golden Ending.

This password is brought to you by The Boss!



This time around having hacked into the mysterious janitors' personal computer, Biker confronts them without having to ask questions.  He already knows all he needs to about the shadow organization they run known as "50 Blessings."

Wiping the self-satisfied grins off the faces of these jingoistic bastards is one of the most satisfying moments in video game history.

50 Blessing it turns out is an overreaction to the 80's return of The Red Scare.  The janitors have been blackmailing and coercing people through phone messages to go on killing sprees against what 50 Blessings saw as a looming Russian invasion.  Now that he has his answers, once again Biker has the option to kill or spare these men.

 This was one weird ride, but it is definitely one I'll be willing to take again when Dennaton finally releases the sequel they're currently developing.  Hotline Miami is a series where the corpses don't fade away after you kill them.  They just lie there dead, lifeless and destroyed.  It's a design choice that one of the creators, Jonatan Söderström, expressed in an article by International Business Times, "There are moral implications in trying to sanitise violence and we just didn't want to do that.  It's better to make a violent game than to try and tone down the violence. We wanted to show how ugly it is when you kill people."

Hotline Miami--It's like that 80's song pt. 1

Hotline Miami by Dennaton Games

Another daily message on your answering machine, "This is 'Thomas' from the methadone clinic. We've scheduled a short meeting for you tonight. We're at NW 184th street, APT 105. And don't worry... We know discretion is of importance to our clients."  The only truth in this message--and all the other messages you receive--is the address, the rest is a lie.  When you arrive at the address in your stylish Delorean, you choose from a variety of animal themed masks, put one on, and lets the bloodshed begin.



Hotline Miami is set in the late 1980's (guess in which city). The ultra violent retro adventure was so inspired by the movie Drive that the creators mention the film's director in the game's credits under special thanks.  It is not the video game it seems to be at first, both from a gameplay and narrative perspective.  It's a top down game that has you playing as a nameless, violent, assassin who has access to a large variety of weapons.  Many are impromptu: baseball bats, lead pipes, golf clubs, and in one case a pot of boiling water.  Others are more official killing tools: katanas, uzis, and shotguns.  However the player must use these items with caution. 

Kill--but kill carefully.
Source

Running into a room guns a blazin' will only attract more members of  the Russian mob you've been contracted to kill.  A stealthier approach may be needed.  Precision, speed, and planning are necessary if one wants to survive Hotline Miami.  You don't want to go rushing into a room with four armed mafia men who want your head.  Instead you'll find yourself waiting for one to walk by a door--then you'll swing that door open from the other side knocking that gangster to the ground.  You throw a knife at one of his accomplices across the room cutting his life short.  You rush back over to the downed man and bash his head into the ground before he can recover.  Grabbing  his weapon you run over to finish off his two comrades before they finish you.  That's what the gameplay is like--fast paced and quick thinking--and you might want to leave a little room for improvising in case things go wrong.  This isn't just action, it's a puzzle game as well. You'll constantly ask yourself, "how do I best navigate through this maze of mafia men without them handing my ass to me?"

The storyline begins in a fog.  We don't know why Jacket (the name given to the main protagonist by the fans) is going from one mafia safe house to another killing the dangerous men within, but we know what's motivating him, mysterious answering machine messages he receives in his home giving him the address to his next "appointment." 

Hotline Miami tells a story in subtle ways all while using Nintendo era graphics.  In the level titled Decadence, Jacket rescues a junkie/prostitute from the clutches of the Russian gangsters.  He takes her home out of sympathy and we see them living together between chapters.  While not a word of dialogue is spoken between them, we see the hitman's home getting a "woman's touch" overtime.  The apartment gets cleaner, and we see their two beds being moved closer together over time.  It's story telling at it's most subtle, but also at it's finest.  Here lies the strength of indie games, they can tell a powerful narrative without the photo-realistic graphics of mainstream titles.


Nah man, nothing is alright in this twisted tale.
Source


The cut scenes in the game are chilling and confusing like a David Lynch movie.  Within each of the game's four acts, Jacket is confronted by three masked beings in a creepy undisclosed location.  Much like the disturbed protagonist, they wear animal mask.  The rooster Richard (representing the superego), Ramsus the owl (the ever brutal, ever rude, id), and Don Juan in her horse mask (the ego).  Richard, clearly the leader of the group, ask Jacket (and by proxy the player) these four questions:  

1. Do you like hurting other people?
2. Who is leaving messages on your answering machine?
3. Where are you right now?
4. Why are we having this conversation?

Whoever is leaving the messages on Jacket's answering machine guarantees one thing--the hitman is not alone on his masked massacre.  There are others running rampant at the orders of this mysterious organization.  Jacket will encounter a few of them, and it won't be pretty when he does.

In a chapter titled "Neighbors" the protagonist faces one of these killers.  The pink vested, helmet wearing, cleaver swinging, rival assassin has been dubbed "Biker" by fans.  Assuming Jacket has come to kill him, a boss battle ensues, and if things go well for the player, Jacket ends up playing a friendly round of golf with Biker's head.  With a fellow assassin dead you'd think things would be getting better for Jacket, but from here things only get weirder....

to be continued....

Proteus Effect: You! Are! Avatar!

 Proteus Effect: describes a phenomenon wherein the behavior of an individual operating under a digital persona, adapts to conform to that persona. This is an effect associated with digital self-representation.  Source

In 2012 (the year our world ended) a study was done titled, The embodiment of sexualized virtual selves: The Proteus effect and experiences of self-objectification via avatars

 The study took 84 women from 18 to 41 and placed an HMD (head mounted device) on them.  Looking into a virtual world they were presented with a digital character to control (in some cases they resembled the player and were referred to as "virtual doppelgangers.") 

"We wanted to determine whether self-resemblance of the embodied avatar moderates the Proteus effect. Thus, in this study, participants were embodied in an avatar that was either sexualized (wearing tight and revealing clothing that accentuated a voluptuous body) or nonsexualized (wearing conservative clothing on a non-voluptuous body). Additionally, the face of the avatar was manipulated in that participants either saw their own face (Self) or someone else's face (Other) on the virtual body." (Fox et al., 2012)

After the virtual experience a questionnaire was given to the test subject in regards to the woman's perceptions on rape myths: the belief that when a woman is raped she is in some way responsible, because of the way she dressed, her behavior, etc.  The study found that the women who played as the sexily dressed avatars were more likely to agree with the absurd rape myths.

Let's walk it back some to the 2009 study  The Proteus Effect Implications of Transformed Digital Self-Representation on Online and Offline Behavior.   The study featured Nick Yee and Jeremey Bailenson who first coined the phrase Proteus Effect in 2007.  Building on their prior research they monitored online worlds such as the ever popular World of Warcraft and discovered an interesting find:

   "Overall, the findings suggest that avatar height and attractiveness do play a role in an online game, and tall attractive avatars do outperform other avatars... these findings show that an avatar’s appearance can influence a user’s behavior in an online environment." (Yee et al., 2009)

Damn, no wonder the dude in Avatar was so confident.  His was like ten feet tall!

I would definitely like to see research like this be expanded as it is only in it's infancy (hell, MMO gaming itself is still a fairly new phenomenon). An article on the 2012 study on NBC News says of the researchers, "Fox and Bailenson said that these are preliminary findings, emphasizing that critics of video games should not jump to hasty conclusions before more research can be done on the subject."


 My question for the 2012 Proteus Effect study is, would the results be different if all the women selected were experienced gamers?  Could they better differentiate between reality and fantasy?

It may be tempting to think that a gamer might be more susceptible, but could the opposite be possible?  We've played as Tommy Vercetti, Lara Croft, Commander Shepard, the list goes on.  Could trying on various skins and wearing many hats weaken the Proteus Effect?

In World of Warcraft it doesn't matter if the player is a hulking tauren or a squat dwarf--they'll hit you in the face with a blunt object all the same.

An interesting aside, the 2012 study also found that women who controlled the sexy avatars often felt the same physical insecurities as women who tried on swimsuits in real life body image studies.

Which is why TECMO decided to combine these elements into DOA Xtreme Beach Vollebally: The coup de grace to female self-esteem!

Oculus Rift--Plug into The Matrix!

For so long gamer-kind has been teased with the idea of virtual reality.  Some of us remember Nintendo's attempt with their system The Virtual Boy.  With its odd red and black image display, and the burning sensation players would feel in their eyes after 30 minutes of use. It was clear--we weren't viewing video games through those ruby lenses, but the blazing depths of Hell. 



Virtual Boy Born: July 21, 1995  Died: March 2, 1996

  Source

                    Rumor has it that the Virtual Boy's creator, Gunpei Yokoi, was punished for the system's failure by being made to man a booth for the dead system at a 1996 gaming convention.  Despite the appearance and title of the console, it was in no way virtual reality.  The experience was more akin to sitting really, really, close to your TV while playing your Super Nintendo--after having been punched in the eyes.


The only other bit of virtual technology I could recall was back in the way rad early 90's.  When I was a little kid on a trip to Disney World I was lucky enough to be selected to beta-test a virtual reality game based on the movie Aladdin.  I remember putting on the virtual goggles and flying through the streets of an animated Agrabah on a rig that reminded me of a stationary motorcycle.  Thankfully a blog post by one of the men who worked on the project, Avi Bar-Zeev, confirms that the project was real and not one of my childhood hallucinations. 

Fast-forward to present day.  Not a lot has happened with virtual technology--that is until one hell of a Kickstarter project occurred in 2012.  Enter The Rift!  The Oculus Rift's goal was to reach $250,000 in pledges...it made it to $2,437,429 within 30 days.  It gained an additional $16 million in funding from Matrix Partners and Spark Capital.


Much like Gangnam Style and Miley Cyrus antics, The Rift has even attracted The Today Show's attention.  The system will be the first affordable virtual reality set to be used in households.  It should be interesting to see how this will change gaming, as well as other aspects of our lives.  An article on the Medical Device and Diagnostic Industry site explains future healthcare possibilities,
"The idea behind using VR for healthcare is to completely immerse patients in a computer-generated world where they can undergo therapy and training in a safe, artificial environment controlled by a clinician."

Some major games will be supporting the device.  Imagine how much creepier Ravenholm will be in Half-Life 2 when you walk through a dark room, turn your face, and see a headcrab leaping at you!

Virtual reality will allow us to immerse our selves in fantasies.  Some light, some oh so dark.

How realistic will VR become? What other sensations will we one day feel beyonds sights and sounds?        Throw in the omnidirectional treadmill and we're that much closer to having Star Trek's holodeck.

Speaking of sensations...not two seconds after the whole, "Hey they'll probably make porn out of this thing," joke was made, it stopped being a joke.  A naughty little Japanese title called Custom 3D Maid will be Oculus Rift compatible and will come with a special controller called Ju-C Air which can only be piloted by males--if ya know what I'm sayin'!  

Ah the human sex drive, well I believe Jeff Goldblum said it best in Jurassic Park "Life, uh... finds a way."

First we resurrect long-dead prehistoric beast, then we make sex with dead-eyed, virtual characters a reality.  For this we must endure the judgmental gaze of Goldblum!