In and around all of the awesome action and scantily clad hotties is the story of the trials and travails of a young waif nicknamed Babydoll.  Babydoll is sent to a crooked insane asylum by her avaricious step-father to have her grey matter rearranged with an icepick.  She has five days to escape the asylum before the traveling doctor that preforms  the icepick lobotomies can get around to her. This is where Sucker Punch gets confusing because Babydoll decides to kick the squalid reality of the insane asylum to the curb about five minuets after being committed.  Squalid reality is replaced with some kind of bordello or burlesque club fantasy world.  From there things get more confusing as more fantasies get layered on top of the fantasy bordello world.  The layered fantasies are how Sucker Punch is able to travel instantly and seamlessly from a bordello to a World War II trench to futuristic train and back again.  All of the fantasy voyages to stunning locations play to Mr. Snyder’s strengths as an action movie director.  Instead of watching Babydoll sit around her cell and figure out how to escape she is simply given a video game style quest to get four items from an old man.  Then she fights three giant metal samurai.  This lets Mr. Snyder show off exactly how good he is at making action scenes and stunning fantasy vistas.

Mr. Snyder continues to play to his strengths as an action movie director for the rest of the movie.  Babydoll recruits her fellow inmates to help her steal the four items that she needs to escape.  Instead of showing the girls sneaking around and stealing things in squalid reality we are treated to fantasies where the ladies fight a laundry list of things nerds love.  They end up fighting dragons, robots, and clockwork Nazi zombies with a variety of guns, swords, and giant mecha.  Mr. Snyder has created a movie that reads like a nerd’s wet dream because the ladies run around these fantasy battles in some very hot costumes.  The hot chicks and awesome action are enough to make a thoroughly entertaining movie but Mr. Snyder seems to be trying for more.  Not to say that he pulls off a deep and meaningful story with Sucker Punch but he does seems to be trying for more than just awesome action.  The problem is that deep and meaningful is not his forte.  Awesome action is.

Hell Yeah!

Whether or not Sucker Punch is anything more than just an action movie is a matter of opinion.  Most of the critics seem to be arguing that Sucker Punch is as shallow as a puddle but I don’t buy that.  After watching the movie I found myself reflecting on it for a few days.  That there was something there for me to reflect on at all tells me that something deeper than the plot of the Expendables was happening.  I believe that this movie was made with the video game generation, my generation, in mind.  Sucker Punch seems to be taking the dictum that movies should show, don’t tell to the extreme. The video game generation is used to taking show, don’t tell to the extreme because video games usually only have about five minuets of exposition for each hour of play time.  Video games can’t use more exposition than that because it would get in the way of the game itself.  For example, some of the critics knocked Sucker Punch for not characterizing its characters very well.  It seemed like they were expecting the characters to tell the audience about themselves through exposition or dialogue.  Personally, I found the characters to be well characterized but I got a good read of who their character are from their appearance, weapon selection, and fighting style.  You know, the same way video games characterize their characters in a absence of exposition or dialogue.  In a similar vein, Sucker Punch never simply explains what is going on.  Instead everything is simply shown or not shown.  Taking the show, don’t tell dictum to the extreme.  This makes Sucker Punch confusing but potentially deeper than what it appears to be at first glance.  Of course, because nothing is explained any deeper narrative must be inferred, so any claim to depth is nothing more than an opinion inferred from the movie.  Mr. Snyder would have been better off if he took the time to add a bit of telling to his movie instead of simply showing alone, but showing does seem to be his forte.

Sucker Punch is a love it or hate it kinda movie but love it or hate it Sucker Punch deserves to be seen in the theaters, because it has such gorgeous visual effects.  Mr. Snyder is a master of created beautiful vistas and clean action scenes even if he might be better off adapting works to the big screen rather than writing his own material.  Of course, anyone part of the 20-30 year old male gamer demographic should see this movie because it was made for you.  For everyone else, I tried to explain what Sucker Punch is without spoiling anything so you can make up your own mind.  It is not like I am getting paid to put your butt in a theater seat.

I'm too sexy for my shirt, too sexy for my shirt, so sexy it hurts

Is Deus Ex: Human Revolution on your new games radar yet?  If it isn’t, then let me do you a favor and give you a heads up about it.

Deus Ex: Human Revolution is a first person role playing game being developed by Eidos Montreal for the Xbox 360, PC, and Playstation 3.  Human Revolution is a prequel to the popular PC game Deus Ex and the less popular Deus Ex: Invisible War.  Set in a cyberpunk future and featuring a globe hopping campaign, Deus Ex looks to be what  Alpha Protocol should have been.  Like Alpha Protocol this game promises options. Specifically, Deus Ex is promising that any Mahatma Gandhis out there can get through the game with a minimum of violence using stealth, social skills, and hacking.

Beyond all the boring talking, sneaking, and keyboard twiddling Deus Ex is a first person shooter.  It is promising a wide range of weapons and weapon upgrades.  Of course, upgrading weapons is nothing new but it looks like Eidos is making an effort to make the upgrades more interesting than hum drum damage and accuracy boosts.  The only upgrade that has been specifically mentioned is an upgrade that transforms a boring dumb fire rocket launcher into a heat seeking missile firing murder machine.  But the weapons are not the biggest draw for Deus Ex.  If you just want a bunch of weapons and AI targets the newest Call of Honor Zone game will scratch that itch.  The story Deus Ex promises to tell is the reason to check it out.

The story is promising to be a complex epic that involves evil mega corporations, conspiracies, and everything else you would expect from a cyberpunk world.  It centers around Alex Jensen, Mr. Too Sexy For His Shirt up there, and the nifty new mechanical arms he is kitted out with after an epic beat down. Big Sexy’s involuntary upgrade to stainless steel dick beaters adds a side story that focuses on trans humanist ideals and ethics.  This plays out in a sepia toned, near future dystopia in which Jensen is some kind of cross between Solid Snake and Dick Tracy that works for a, presumably evil, mega corporation that makes vibrating prosthetic hands for the ladies.  Well, presumably they make more than prosthetics with naughty features but a cyberpunk conspiracy story about the near future porn industry is something that I find oddly appealing.

Time to wrap this up before I get into theories about how porn will drive the cyberpunk technology of tomorrow.  Deus Ex: Human revolution looks like a promising first person shooter that will mix stealth, action, and smooth talking into an epic story that actually attempts to tackle trans humanist issues and ethics.  It does not have a release date beyond some time in 2011 but the news makes it sound like it will be out this summer.  If it waits too long to be released it will be up against the powerhouse noob stompin’ duo of Gears of War 3 and Mass Effect 3 that is slated to come out just in time for Christmas.

I am completely with him on this issue. Why? Because when we buy a game we are casting a vote. We are telling that developer we want this game and are willing to pay their asking price for it. If the game does well they go on to make more or the industry takes notice and makes similar games. However, if the game is stolen they have no idea that game is doing well, to them it isn’t selling well and they abandon the course. So when people gripe about getting sequel after sequel to the same old shit they are partly to blame. Why should the games industry take a chance on a new idea? This happened with Machinarium. This was a really cool looking game and looked like a lot of fun but with a piracy rate of 90% why should they take chances? If people are stealing the game it is not generating money for the studio. Prices for video games have not changed in a long time, despite what some think. Super Metroid is listed in an old Nintendo Power I have with an MSRP of $60.

Piracy happens because some gamers have a sense of entitlement that I cannot even wrap my head around. They seem to forget that video games are an entertainment industry and are made as the developer sees fit. They cannot make everyone happy and they will make the game how they want to, if it is good then gamers will come. An example of this was the Diablo 3 petition. I would argue that some gamers now think they have to be catered to and if not, they will steal a game as a sign of protest. Congratulations, your reward to sticking it to the man is loss of profits and the possible closure of a studio and people could be put out of work. Was your sign of protest worth it?

Piracy also hurts people who buy games and aren’t doing anything wrong. To protect their investment some studios are incorporating DRM. This is to protect their investment. What ends up happening is two things that can hurt the developer. Some gamers will take offense and steal the game anyway as a sign of protest and legit gamers may be turned off to the fact that there is DRM and not buy a game. While the latter hasn’t stopped me yet it could depending on how much I want the game and the extent of the DRM.

Even if someone downloads a game to try it out it can be that much harder to justify shelling out the cash when you already have a copy. If you want the game, buy it new and if you can’t afford it then go without. I shop at Best Buy due in large part to their Reward Zone program. I get gift certificates which I then use to apply toward new game purchases. If you shop around a lot of times you can buy a new game for less than asking price.

Natural Selection 2 is a new PC game being developed by Unknown Worlds that spices up the first person shooter genre with real time strategy elements.  Unknown Worlds is a brand new development studio that was founded by the creator of the original Natural Selection, Charlie ‘Flayra’ Cleveland.  The original Natural Selection is a custom game mod for the original Half Life.  At its core, Natural Selection 2 is a multi-player first person shooter that pits fairly generic space marines against only slightly less generic aliens.  The space marines are called the Frontiersmen and might as well be the Colonial Marines from James Cameron’s movie Aliens.  The aliens, called the Kharaa, are more original but bear a strong resemblance to Starcraft’s Zerg.  Despite how generic the premise of each race is, the game itself looks extremely promising.  Natural Selection 2 incorporates real time strategy into first person shooting in innovative ways and has an exclusively multi-player focus.  The two races are generic but well differentiated and Unknown Worlds is working hard to make them balanced and fun to play.  The most promising aspect of Natural Selection 2 is that Unknown Worlds is embracing their modder roots by making their game extremely modder friendly.

Natural Selection 2 mixes first person shooting with real time strategy elements seamlessly by allowing any player to assume the role of a real time strategy commander at any time.  Assuming the command role is as simple as hopping into a command center.  The command center switches the player’s view from the first person to a top down view.  Once in the top down command view the player is responsible for building up infrastructure and managing the economy for the team.  The economy in Natural Selection 2 revolves around building resource gathering structures on resource nodes Dawn of War style.  The use of Dawn of War style resourcing works very well in a first person shooter game because every room with a resource node strategically important.  The resource nodes provide a strong incentive to take and hold more of the map rather than just camping out in the spawn area.  This reinforces the run and gun, team death match style of play rather than conflicting with it.  The resourcing system is also used to promote teamwork.  Taking a resource node provides both the individual players and the commander with resources.  This gives every player a strong incentive to work together with each other and the commander because everyone benefits from taking a resource node.  Of course, the commander uses command resources for different things than the individual players use personal resources for.  Natural selection 2 also uses the tech tree to reinforce the teamwork that the resource system promotes.  Each team climbs the tech tree by capturing command points and placing new command centers on them.  As more command points are captured the commander can spend command resources to unlock new weapons and upgrades for the rest of the team.  The rest of the team, in turn, spends their personal resources purchasing the gear that the commander unlocks.  As the respective tech tree are unlocked the differences between the Frontiersmen and the Kharaa become more pronounced.

Game play video of Marines.

The Frontiersmen play much like you would expect generic space marines to play.  It seems like a deliberate design decision to make both factions fairly generic so that it is easy for anyone with first person shooter experience to pick up and play Natural selection 2.  The Frontiersmen, naturally, focus on superior ranged weapons and feature decentralized infrastructure.  Frontiersmen weapons are first person shooter staples like shotguns, grenade launchers, and flamethrowers.  Even though the weapons are first person shooter staples they are tailored to fill specific roles.  The grenade launcher is tailored to take out infrastructure at range while the flamethrower is tailored to take out advanced Kharaa creatures.  The Frontiersmen use armories and infantry spawning portals to decentralize their infrastructure.  Both the spawn portals and the armories can be built anywhere on the map by the Frontiersmen commander.  This allows the Frontiersmen to turn any area into a base.  The ability to create bases anywhere seems essential to Frontiersmen strategy.  Unlike the Kharaa, the Frontiersmen will run out of ammo and move relatively slow, so they need to be able to get to armories easily to resupply.  This makes using the real time strategy elements to make the spawn portals and armories close to the action key to winning as the Frontiersmen.  On the other side of the arena, the Kharaa feature a centralized infrastructure and focus more on individual speed and melee combat than the Frontiersmen.

The Kharaa resemble the Starcraft’s Zerg by having a more centralized infrastructure, melee focus, and faster movement.  The basic Kharaa creature that every player starts as is a smaller, dog-like ankle biter called a Skulk.  The Skulk can take shortcuts through air vents by running along walls and ceilings.  This allows the basic Kharaa Skulk to be a fast, versatile bushwhacker and harasser.  Each player can evolve from the basic Skulk into a different creature at any time, anywhere by entering a short chrysalis phase and spending personal resources.  Three other creatures revealed so far are the flying Lerk, the teleporting Fade, and the defense building Gorge.  The Lerk is a flying creature with a variety of ranged attacks that include a rapid fire spike, a sniper spike, and area denial gas bombs.  This makes the Lerk one of the few Kharaa creature with any kind of standoff firepower.  The Fade, on the other hand, forgoes ranged weapons for the ability to teleport over short distances and a powerful melee attack.  The Fade’s teleport allows it to, ideally, teleport in, pick a marine off, and get back out before the Frontiersmen can react.  The Gorge rounds out the faster, more offensive creatures by being able to place static defenses.  The static defenses the Gorge places are flower looking things that shoot any marines that come close to them.  The Kharaa also feature a more centralized infrastructure that revolves around Hive nodes.  Hive nodes act as both command centers and spawning portals.  The Hive nodes must be placed on command points and each additional hive node unlocks another level of Kharaa technology.  The Hive nodes also create eggs at regular intervals that the team respawns from.  Making the Hive nodes both the command center and spawning portal centralizes the Kharaa economy and sets them apart from the Frontiersmen.  Both of these races promise an innovative blend of first person shooter and real time strategy with simple to understand but well differentiated factions that only scratches the surface of what Natural Selection 2 could become.

Game play video of aliens.

Unknown Worlds is promising to embrace its roots as a Half Life 2 custom mod by releasing an extensive suite of modding tools with their game.  An extensive modding suite will allow players to do whatever they like with the game.  This means that any player could come up with new weapons for the Frontiersmen, new creatures for the Kharaa or even whole new games.  The Natural Selection 2 community is already talking about making mods that pit Frontiersmen against Frontiersmen and Kharaa against Kharaa.  The community is also planning to make a classic team death match game that strips out the innovative real time strategy elements.  Those mods are just the beginning of what Natural Selection 2′s modding community will come up with.  Unknown Worlds is promising to support their community in their modding endeavors.  Unknown Worlds is making a very smart decision by supporting their modding community because the modders will invariably add a lot of replay value to their game.  There are a lot of examples of how a mod has added a lot of replay value to a game.  Warcraft 3′s modding community, for example, created the Defense of the Ancients mod which was the inspiration and proof of concept for both League of Legends and Heroes of Newerth.   Other examples of popular mods that that added a replay value to there respective games are Team Fortress, Counter-Strike, and the original Natural Selection.  Unknown Worlds support for its modders is a virtual guarantee that Natural Selection 2 will end up being much more than just what the developer publishes.  The promise of extensive modding makes an extremely promising game even more promising even though Natural Selection 2 is only in beta testing.

Unknown Worlds has not yet set a release date for Natural Selection 2.  There seems to be  little chance that it will release this year, but don’t despair.  If anyone wants to play Natural Selection 2 right now they can zip over to the Unknown Worlds website and buy a beta copy.  Everyone that thinks Natural Selection 2 will be an awesome game should go buy a beta copy because Unknown Worlds is using the revenue from selling beta copies to finish their game.  There is also the promise that anyone that spends buys a beta copy will get the full game when it releases.  I encourage everyone who can afford it to go and buy a beta copy because Natural Selection 2 has a lot of promise and I would hate to see it fail for lack of funds.

Duke Nukem Forever will be the most famous vaporware game ever until it is actually released.  Recently, it was announced that Duke Nukem Forever would be released on May 3rd of this year but 3D Realms, the original development studio, has announced release dates for Duke Nukem Forever many times before without ever releasing a game.  This release date is different because Gearbox Software, the developer of Borderlands, is announcing the release this time.  Gearbox Software took over the development of Duken Nukem Forever after 3D Realms collapsed 2009.  3D Realms had been working on Duke Nukem Forever for 12 years when they folded and Gearbox worked on it for at least another year.  Which begs the questions, why did it take 14 years to create Duke Nukem Forever and why did the original development studio go under?  The short answer is that Apogee and 3D Realms, the original publisher and developer respectively, monumentally screwed up Duke Nukem Forever’s development.  The development process was so bad that Apogee and 3D Realms became the butt of the games industry’s jokes for years. Zero Punctuation even got in on the fun and made a spoof episode on the nonexistent Duke Nukem Forever.

All jokes aside, there is much more to Apogee’s story than Duke Nukem Forever.  Apogee’s founder, Scott Miller, literally invented digital distribution and game demos back in the 1980s.  Those innovations propelled Apogee to a meteoric rise that was eventually brought down, in part, by failing to ever finish Duke Nukem Forever.  The Machinima series All Your History Are Belong To Us has chronicled the rise and fall of Apogee and Duke Nukem Forever very well.

The first episode of the four episode series by All Your History Are Belong To Us about Apogee Games and Duke Nukem shows how Apogee was started by Scott Miller and how that he revolutionized the game world by inventing digital distribution and game demos.

The second episode of All Your History Are Belong To Us’s four part series on Apogee Games shows how Apogee conspired to found Id Software.  Id Software was founded after Scott Miller convinced John Romero, John Carmack, Tom Hall, and Adrian Carmack to leave the Softdisk corporation.  Once Id Software was founded they used Apogee’s digital distribution model to revolutionize gaming by creating the original first person shooter, Wolfenstein 3D.

The third episode shows how Apogee continued to rise with the release of Duke Nukem’s first 3D game, pithily titled Duke Nukem 3D, and how the seeds of Apogee’s fall were planted.

The fourth and final episode of the All Your History Are Belong To Us series shows how Apogee finally self destructed with its failure to ever release Duke Nukem Forever.

The story of Apogee and 3D Realms stands as a cautionary tale for other video game studios, and an example of how hubris can bring down even the mightiest developer.

The fate of Video Games is in their hands.

Soon the Supreme Court will hear a case that could have a profound impact on the video games industry.  The State of California is trying to restrict what video games can be sold to minors.  The desire to restrict new forms of media is nothing new.  Both film and comic books were placed under relatively harsh restrictions when their respective mediums were still young.  Now California is attempting to place more restrictive measures on video game sales.  The Supreme court is hearing the case of Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association/Entertainment Software Association in which the State of California is trying to impose a fine on retailers that sell violent games to children.  This case has reached the Supreme Court because the lower courts have decided against Schwarzenegger and the decision is being appealed.  Schwarzenegger is contending in his case that video game violence does harm to children and promotes real world violence.  The contention that violent video games do harm to children has been made in court before and so far it has not held up well.  The Electronics Software Association has made a fact sheet about those previous court cases.  Gamers are reasonably concerned about what might happen to video games if the Supreme Court decides to uphold California’s law.  Because trying to restrict new forms of media, like video games, is nothing new we can look to the past to see what could happen to video games.

When the film industry was young it came under restrictions that would be almost unthinkable today.  In 1915 the Supreme Court decided in Mutual Film Corporation v. Industrial Commission of Ohio (reference link) that films were not an art but a business and that films did not enjoy First Amendment protections.  It is extremely unlikely that the Supreme Court would strip video games of their First Amendment protections but it is a possibility.  After the film industry was stripped of its First Amendment protection the Motion Pictures Producers and Distributors of America (the MPPDA which later became the MPAA) created the Hay’s Code so they could avoid government censorship by censoring themselves.  The Hay’s Code lasted largely unchanged until films were granted First Amendment rights in 1968.  After films were granted First Amendment rights the MPAA instituted the ratings systems that became the rating system we are familiar with today.  The rating system that was pioneered by the MPAA is similar to the system that the Electronic Software Rating Bord (ESRB) uses to regulate video game content today.  It is unlikely that video games will be stripped of their First Amendment protections but it happened to film in 1915 and could happen to video games today.  Comic book regulations paint a much more likely picture of what could happen if the Supreme Court upholds California’s new law.

Originally, comic books did not have any regulations.  Comic books were not regulated until 1954 after public outcry that their content was too graphic for children.  The arguments against comic books back in the day are similar to the arguments against video games today.  After public outcry the Comic Code Authority (CCA) was created to regulate the content of video games (reference link).  Like film’s Hay’s Code the CCA was created to preempt government regulation by self regulating.  The regulations the the CCA used to govern the content of comic books were based on the Hay’s Code but were more restrictive because comic books were considered children’s books.  No comic book was forced to submit their work to the CCA but without CCA vetting a comic could not get the CCA’s Seal of Approval.  Without the CCA Seal of Approval most retailers would not carry a comic book.  Because most retailers would not carry a comic without the CCA Seal almost all comics were made within CCA regulation.  There is a chance that the new California law will have a similar effect on video games.  The California law basically seeks to fine any retailer that sells a Mature rated game to a minor.  This could cause retailers to stop or limit their sales of Mature rated games.  In effect, a Mature rating could become a de facto Seal of Disapproval that keeps retailers from carrying Mature rated games.  This would mean that the video games industry would have a strong disincentive to make games like Fallout 3 or Mass Effect.  Of course the CCA Seal of Approval is rarely seen on comic books today even though the CCA still exists.

The power of the CCA was broken when specialty comic shops and direct distribution channels became popular enough that comic books no longer needed CCA approval to sell their comics.  Even if the Supreme Court upholds the California Law and makes a Mature rating a de facto seal of disapproval there might not be much change in the video game industry.  The kind of specialty shops and direct distribution that broke the back of the CCA are already in place.  For example, Gamestop is a successful chain of specialty video game shops and Steam and Impulse already provide direct digital distribution.  Because these distribution methods are already in place there is a chance that even if the Supreme Court upholds California’s law it might not make much difference.

The examples offered by comic book and film regulation show what the Supreme Court could do if it sides with California in Schwarzenegger v. Entertainment Merchants Association/ Entertainment Software Association.  Both film and comic books examples offer hope because they have overcome regulations that were much more harsh than what video games are facing now.  Of course, there is a very good chance that the Supreme Court will side with the lower courts and strike down the California law.  If the California law is struck down it will be very difficult for anyone to bring a similar case against video games again.  This Supreme Court challenge is like a trial by fire for the video games industry.  It might discourage innovation if the video games industry loses this challenge but if video games win they could come out much stronger.

I thought I’d make a short post about this.  A fellow gamer needs help.  His daughter suffers from a medical condition that requires very costly treatment.  Help a fellow gamer out and chip in a donation.




Marissa’s Bunny

Marissa is a baby girl who was diagnosed with Infantile Spasms on February 15th of 2008.  Infantile Spasms is a serious pediatric epileptic condition that could leave her mentally and physically disabled for life – or worse.  Fairfax is Marissa’s Bunny – a shared name for a family of bunnies that are traveling the world trying to spread awareness of her disease that has no reliable cure and is hard to relieve.

As a software developer, a gamer, and someone who knows plenty of lefties (left-handed individuals) out there, I’m kind of at a loss to explain why modern video games are so inaccessible to a demographic that makes up 7 to 10% of our population.  I really can’t comprehend why a game studio looking to put out a blockbuster game and sell millions of copies would choose to ignore that large a chunk of their target audience.  If designing a game to work for lefties were such a big hurdle to overcome, that would be one thing, but it’s not.  Programming a control scheme that caters to lefties is such a simple addition to a game that every studio out there should be doing it.

Some game studios are better than others, but most still fail miserably at implementing a control scheme for lefties.  I’m even willing to bet there isn’t one single game studio executive out there that’s left handed.  If there were, they would definitely be pushing all of their games to be lefty friendly.  One of my gamer friends, whose Xbox Live gamertag is Dez1013, has this to say about lefty controls.

It’s frustrating, when I go to get a new game or just browse the shelves for something new I can’t buy it immediately. I usually have to check with friends or search online to see if a game has control customization, then go and either get the game or listen to my friends talk about how much fun it is while I sit in the party chat. If you think its easy, try switching to lefty and see how well it works for you. It’s quite frustrating, you can’t react as you normally would, and you have to think about every action before you do it.

I’m not sure if it’s flat out ignorance or deliberate prejudice against lefties that causes game studios to leave these options out of their games.  It’s not as if most of these games don’t already have some alternative control schemes in them, but almost all of them are catered to changing a controller’s button preferences and not movement control schemes.  Modern video game consoles and PC’s have some of the most advanced computer hardware on the market today.  The ability to handle that minute little extra processing power it takes to interpret different control schemes is there.  Game studios need to design their games to be usable for all gamers, not just the 90% of us that are right handed.  To do otherwise is to lose potential sales and fans.

The problem doesn’t lie solely at the feet of game studios though.  Personally, I would say most of the problem could be fixed by game console manufacturers.  At first, I thought that the console could have default lefty controller mappings set on the console itself that each game could read in, but there are simply too many games out there with too many slight variations for any platform wide default to be feasible.  No, the simple solution that console manufacturers could do is to put out alternative controllers.

This image was used as an April Fool's Day joke by one website a few years back.

Why can’t Sony, Microsoft, or Nintendo put out alternative lefty controllers that are literally mirror images of their current controllers but have the hardware wired up so that to the console, the input is the same?  All a controller does is send specific signals to the console telling it which button was pressed or what direction a thumbstick was moved.  A mirrored controller would allow lefty gamers to enjoy every single game out there on that console without causing developers the time and effort (however little it may be) to implement alternative controller schemes.

I would like to issue a call for all game studios to implement controller schemes that cater to left handed gamers, until such time as the game console manufacturer decides to market the hardware that makes controller schemes unnecessary.  Gaming is a past time that is meant to be enjoyed by all.  Game designers and hardware manufacturers need to get on the ball and stop ignoring that segment of our population.

Edit (8/11/2010): I’m adding these diagrams for those who are not avid games and unfamiliar with the standard default layout, legacy, and southpaw layouts.

Legacy Layout - Sideways motions of thumbsticks swapped

Standard Layout - Left thumbstick controls motion, right thumbstick controls the direction you're looking.

Southpaw Layout - Thumbsticks are swapped from the standard layout

Gamer is an action movie and has the kind of story every action movie should have, a simple one.  In an action movie the story should never get in the way of all the action.  The story goes that in the near future Ken Castle, played by Micheal C. Hall, creates a way to control people remotely and uses that technology to create games that use people as game avatars.  The movie revolves around two games, Slayers and Society.  Slayers is a third person shooter that uses death row inmates as its game avatars.  Society is a real world simulator like Second Life or the Sims that uses the downtrodden and dispossessed as game avatars.  In Gamer, Kable, played by Gerrard Butler, is a wrongfully imprisoned death row inmate that is forced to fight in Slayers.  Kable’s wife Angie, played by Amber Valletta, is a game avatar in Society that is forced to do all kinds of hedonistic and depraved things.  Both Kable and Angie are used and abused by their respective games and have to escape from their games.  That is Gamer in a nutshell and the games Society and Slayers provide the perfect set up for the two things that every great action movie must have, explosions and boobs.  Gamer understands that good action movies are built around boobs and violence and delivers two tons of both.

Gamer has these

And a lot of these

Boobs and explosions are important to making a good action movie but to be a great action movie there needs to be some humor.  The humor is where Gamer becomes great for gamers but I doubt it can be more than good for non-gamers.  Other than a few clever one liners and inspired musical numbers most of the humor in Gamer is video game specific.  For example, non-gamers would not get a tea bagging reference or the utterly ridiculous screen  names that are not to far from what gamers regularly use.  There is more video game humor than those two things but I am not going to spoil it.  There is one funny bit that I am going to spoil a little.  I hope I just give away to make it a teaser.  Micheal C. Hall has one truly off-beat and hilarious scene where he does a song and dance number.  All humor aside one of the good parts of Gamer is the is cast.

Gamer has a great cast for an action movie.  Gerrard Butler plays a stoic hero out to rescue his family and he does it very well.  Gerrard Butler might not be able to play anything other than a stoic hero but if he keeps making movies like Law Abiding Citizen and 300 then I hope he keeps doing what he is doing.  The other very well cast actor in Gamer is Michael C. Hall.  Michael C. Hall is not as well known as Gerrard Butler but most of you would recognize him as Dexter.

Michael C. Hall aka Dexter

Michael C. Hall is cast as the big bad guy Ken Castle.  In Dexter like in Gamer Michael C. Hall plays a completely charming bad guy.  Michael C. Hall might not be able to play anything other than a charming bad guy but if he keeps giving us stuff like Dexter and Gamer then he should keep on doing it.  The rest of the cast plays their parts well but the big focus of Gamer is on Gerrard Butler and Michael C. Hall and they deliver.

Gamer delivers a good action movie with a solid cast and a well done video game twist.  This is not to say that Gamer is a great movie.  At the end of the day Gamer is a cheesy, campy action movie that somehow managed to get  big budget.  The only question that remains is whether you should go see Gamer or not.  If you want a fun action romp with some boobs and big ka-booms then you should check Gamer out.  If you turn you nose up at a movie that is held together with nudity and violence then forget Gamer and go watch Barney again.

For a slightly more professional opinion of Gamer try here.  Movie Bob has a solid, entertaining review of Gamer.

Movie Bob reviews Gamer for the Escapist

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