I’ve reached the 16th edition? Hum, yay? Bioshock 2 critique is done, only thing left is to clear up a few rough edges and work on the translation – should be up in the next days. Until then, I predict a chance of Alien vs. Predator this Saturday and Sunday and some openings in Endless Ocean 2. For now, the links of the week.

• PC Gamer announced and Ars Technica confirmed: the PC version of Assassin’s Creed 2 not only requires online activation but also demands that players to be constantly online in order to play and even save their progress. In theory, this prevents the game from reaching the second hand market since information is inexorably tied to our account and Ubi’s servers, and it also prevents (or at least delays) digital pirates. In practice, this makes it so the game can’t be played offline and that if something happens to our connection or even to Ubi’s servers, it becomes impossible to play Assassin’s Creed 2. Connection failure after a one hour playthrough without passing by a single checkpoint? Tough. You’ve lost everything since your last save. Similar situations have been happening with Bioware’s Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins. When Electronic Arts serves are down for maintenance, the games cannot recognize their respective DLCs, preventing players to access them. Any savegame using DLC content is therefore rendered invalid until the servers are back online. It’s not hard to understand why depending on a constant online connection is a terrible idea: ISP problems, router failures, interferences in wi-fi connections, precarious stability of 3G networks and problems in Ubi’s own servers (from maintenance to an eventual shutdown further down the line) are just a few of the situations that may arise. And all this without even mentioning the most obvious issue: yes, some people do not have an internet connection at home. If there ever was a valid reason for PC gamers to boycott a game, here it is. And I’m talking of an absolute boycott. We have to supress this idea that it’s somehow mandatory to play every single new game in the market, and that it has to be played regardless of costs – whether financial or ethical – associated with them. Why? Because if you buy the game, you’ll be telling Ubisoft that you accept this kind of initiative. If you pirate the game, you’re only reinforcing Ubisoft’s position and they will keep insisting that this kind of system is necessary. It’s a vicious and cheating cycle, one only the consumer can help break. And that’s enough fire starting for today.

• But still on the AC2 debacle, Eurogamer member “ignatiusjreilly” presents a very interesting analogy. Look at this image and imagine that “the man represents pirates, the car represents paying customers and the bus represents Ubisoft DRM”.
• Reading this David Cage interview at Eurogamer is enough to make one want to play “air masturbation”. As if the term “interactive dramatist” wasn’t enough to raise eyebrows, on Heavy Rain, Cage asks “how many games can lead you to talk about something you’ve lived in your personal life?” and answers “very few”. Cage comes off as a Molyneux in training and forgets something incredibly obvious: all games are personal experiences and as such, are capable of reminding us of our lives. It doesn’t matter if a game is designed by committee or if it’s a work of love by a garage band equivalent, each game ressonates in gamers in unique and personal ways. If the industry wasn’t busy talking about “graphics”, “sound” and “gameplay”, maybe they’d notice the people who play GTA: San Andreas as tourists free of their peers’ judgement while trying to create a new identity in a different culture; about how a mere option in online games like Unreal Tournament can remind us of times well spent with a friend; of how a game’s marketing can bring back unpleasant memories about one’s sexuality; of how morality in some games, even if limited or binary, can lead us to explore and rethink feelings of fatherhood. And these examples are mere drops in an ocean. That Cage does not have the time or the inclination to know all of this is perfectly understandable; that he attributes to Heavy Rain a quality which isn’t singular at all is ridiculous. Only thing more ridiculous are those too gullible to stop fawning over it.
• Prose in Motion: clever little Flash game that combines physics, spelling and sandbox.
• An important debate: are games ert?
• “My sense is that we’re nearing an endgame for the modern age”. North-american economist Jeremy Rifkin presents compelling and frightening arguments for a change in global consciousness. Damn well worth a read.
• Frightening examples of how we are so quick to trust our eyes. And to think television was once in a unique position to challenge cinema’s obsession for the excesses of the digital era.
• Kotaku (rather, Brian Ashcraft) looks at the japanese marketing of Dante’s Inferno and cross references powerful imagery to make interesting observations about racism. I hope this is the sign of good things to come from Kotaku, which is a wonderful source of news but doesn’t always excel at great articles.
• Along this article and the comments following it, Jonathan McCalmont (a columnist over at Futurismic) suggests we’re predisposed towards a given reception regarding certain works according to the social hypnosis we’re subjected to, and questions if the reception surrounding things like Avatar and Bayonetta comes from the role which we are expected to play in society (meaning, if we’re conditioned to enjoy the movie or the game only because that’s expected from the social groups we’re in) but believes that, actually, trying to distinguish between high brow and low brow entertainment is pointless: we’re all sheep. Good ideas to explore when it comes to videogame culture, no?
• A history of chicken violence.
• Ideal for weddings and world conquering.
• Spy and Pyro. A love story.
• “We have top men working on it right now”.
• Statistical Rambo.
• After Tom Clancy’s HAWX, now come images of the sequel: OWLZ.
• Are we Batmen or cowboys? Short but sweet analysis of how we solve problems in videogames.
• Looking for the invisible boxer. Excelent article about tracking down every man that once fought against Muhammad Ali and one of them, the last on the list, in particular.

Links. Links never change.