I love Roger Ebert.  He is, in my view, not only the finest film critic of all time but also a tremendous social critic, political gad-fly and general Fan of Life Well-Lived whose stories and commentaries on everything from rice-cookers to Russ Meyer films utterly intrigue me.

I hold his opinions in high regard.  That is not to say that I AGREE with them all the time, but I find that he regularly displays an extremely difficult-to-balance mix of advocacy and objectivity in his writing.  Objectivity, contrary to the notions put forth by cable news outlets and the like, is NOT simply the act of “presenting both sides” or of creating a bullet list of positive and negative aspects of the thing being considered.  Objectivity allows you to (even DEMANDS that you) take a stand and defend your position, so long as you are willing to have your mind changed by a reasonable counter-argument.

Sometimes – just SOMETIMES – I regret living in the post-Scientific Revolution era.  Sure, I like sanitation and the germ theory of disease and air planes and HDTV and all of that, but those goodies come at a price.  That price is the fact that we live in a world where we rarely accept things without evidence (except when it comes from talk radio or cable news).

The result?

You and I live in a world where we DON’T believe in lots of weird and wonderful things.

For example, we don’t believe that some lambs are the fruit of a magical super-plant.

No, really.

In an effort to figure out why cotton exists, medieval “scientists” decided that the best possible explanation was that a special kind of lamb sprouted from a plant and was connected to to that plant by an umbilical cord.  The Vegetable Lamb spent its life grazing about its host-plant and – once the plant died – the lamb died, leaving behind cotton.

THAT’s what science used to be like.  Totally insane, comic-book crazy explanations for EVERYTHING.

And I CHALLENGE you to tell me you’d rather live in a world where cotton comes from a stupid, boring little bush rather than from an insane plant/animal hybrid that exists in a legendary far-off land.

So it seems I’ve been derelict in my duties.  Why?  Because I’ve failed to point out the most-excellent “Age of Blogging” event that the folks at Blog Warhammer are organizing (and that OODLES of sites are participating in).

Some quick advice to bloggers new and old:

We love constructive criticism. Let’s face it – if you’re running a WAR blog you’re part of the most passionate, “plugged in” part of our community. You represent an important part of the “voice” of the community and part of that relationship means voicing concerns. While I usually won’t read ranting or aimless whining, but I’ve always got time for even-handed, considerate criticism of what we’re doing. Be tough, be honest, be fair.

That being said:

It’s okay to be a fan. I like reading about people having fun with our game. While it’s fun for Devs to read about people enjoying their work, it’s actually also an important feedback mechanism. Just like constructive criticism helps us know where there’s room for improvement, positive feedback helps us know what people are enjoying the most and, thus, what sorts of things they’d like to see MORE of.

Make sure we can contact you. We really DO read most of the WAR blogs we’re aware of and sometimes that means we have questions to ask or feedback to offer that don’t belong in blog comments.

So… yeah. Get out there and blog! If you start a new site, make sure to let me know!

A weirdly large number of people decided to email/IM me instead of commenting, which is curious. Are you all SECRET FILM MAKERS?

Anywho, to clarify a couple of things:

Yes, I realize that no “big” studio would grant the kind of access necessary to make a good documentary on game making. That being said, it’s far more likely that indie developers would be willing to consider it, if for no other reason than the promise of free advertising. And the story you’d get there would almost certainly be a good one, as there are only two likely outcomes:

1) Plucky underdogs make good and achieve success against all odds.

2) Wide-eyed dreamers crushed by factors beyond their control.

I’d watch either version!

Why hasn’t anyone tried to make a documentary on video game DEVELOPMENT?

I’m not talking some sort of post-mortem, deeply controlled Q&A deal.  I want to see somebody tag along during ACTUAL development and tell the story of how games are really made.

I promise there are all sorts of indie-film honors just WAITING for the Bright Spark who first manages to pull it off.

The Brits have opened a video game historical archive at the National Media Museum in Bradford.  This is a Good Thing.

The nature of our industry has made it far too easy for us to “fire and forget” products in the past with the result being the loss of awareness of the history of great games that have been released over the years. Furtive and legally difficult efforts have been made to preserve the availability of so-called “abandonware” and the success of handheld devices has given added life to older games that get ported to things like the DS, but even then all that’s being saved is the data.

What makes efforts like this archive helpful is the addition of context.

Without understanding where something came from or why it looks, feels and behaves the way it does makes it hard to appreciate the significance of many older games. How can you explain the significance of text-based MUDs to a kid whose first online gaming experience was a graphically intensive shooter on XBox Live? You need a narrative. What was the world like when these games came out? What sort of impact did it have on players? On developers? On future game makers?

People tend to try and compare what we do to movies, which I don’t think is correct. We’re a lot more like music. I was talking with Barnett a few days ago and he mentioned something that struck me as very true. Anyone who loves games – as with people who love music – almost certainly has a “season” in their past where that love was first established and fortified. What you experienced during that “season” is lodged forever in a priveleged part of your mind and psyche and – while you’ll continue to seek out and enjoy new games (or music) for the rest of your life – you’ll always have a disproportionate affection for the things you LOVED during that specific time in your life.

For most of us, that happens when we’re young. I distinctly remember rushing over to my best friend’s house in the Winter of 1993 to try and grab DOOM off of the U. Madison FTP server the day it was officially released. And then, of course, failing to do so and desperately trying to get onto a local BBS that had it available. I have fond memories of weekends spent playing through old Sierra adventure games with my friends – taking turns at the keyboard while the rest of the group shouted suggestions and demands. I remember playing the original Civilization for the first time, then losing the next six months of my life to it. I’ve enjoyed hundreds – maybe even thousands – of games since then, but the games I played in those formative years mean the most to me on a core, emotional level.

It’s hard to communicate what old games meant to people simply by porting them to a phone. You need to offer the human side of it as well to capture the full narrative and history of where we as an industry came from. I hope we see more of this sort of thing in the years to come because the work of the early generations of game developers deserves to be preserved and remembered not simply in screenshots and emulation, but also in stories and in the collective consciousness of new generations of gamers.