There are some potential minor spoilers about the game Haze in this entry.

Many years ago, long before I worked at GameSpot, I wrote a GuestSpotting article about gay characters in games. It was meant to be both serious and lighthearted--obviously, I don't truly think Mario and Lara Croft are gay But at the time of that writing, the issue of homosexuality and homophobia in games wasn't talked about much, nor is it often talked about even now. Fortunately, with sites like gaygamer.net and gaymer.org representing a unique perspective in games, we no longer need to be as marginalized as we once were. And what I said then is generally true now: "The games themselves are rarely the problem." It's rare that I encounter true homophobia in a game, and while gay folks are represented in them in various ways, none of those characters tend to be very offensive.

In Grand Theft Auto IV, there is an amusing mission in which you must go on a gay date, and like most of GTAIV's characters, French Tom is just short of a caricature. But as much as his lispy affects made me wince, I also realized that I know a few guys just like him. Rockstar is no stranger to the issue, but they treat homosexuality with the same amount of sly parody with which they treat everything. In fact, there are subtle gay references everwhere in Liberty City, and I distinctly remember seeing several same-sex couples holding hands and strolling along the street in Bully. To Rockstar, like to most developers, it's just another aspect of this world in which we live, and its development teams surely have many gay employees enriching this aspect of their titles.

Interestingly, I encountered the first occurence of homophobia (and racism) I remember in some time while playing Haze today. The first few chapters of the game introduce you to some highly unlikeable characters who cry out fake-"bro" dialogue like "BOOSH!" and "it's like taking candy from a crippled baby!" I get what Free Radical is doing with these characters, but there were two moments that were shocking and took me by surprise. In one moment, one of these soldiers, who has been using the word "monkey" to make his tired point, throws the word around mercilessly regarding several characters of color; and in another, one accuses you of insinuating that your teammate is gay--but it's said in a highly offensive manner that would require me to bypass the censor to blatantly tell you what term is used.

From a character development perspective, this stuff wasn't really necessary. Consistent with the characters, sure, but at what price? At this point in the game, the insidiousness of these awful soldiers is well established, and a point a little later ensures that you will despise them. Aside from shock value, I can't think of any reasonable purpose for some of this dialogue. It's uncomfortable, even for me, and I am not easily offended by any stretch. It's also part of a larger political point being obviously made about the evils of imperialism, what with the overgrown adrenalized frat boys (assumably meant to represent Americans) and the kindly freedom fighters accused of terrorism. And bear in mind that none of this is presented in a tongue-in-cheek style; it's all very matter-of-fact. You know the Republican space rangers featured on one of the TV stations in GTAIV? It might as well be the same guys. Except not funny.

Based on story events, I don't think this attitude is going to pervade the majority of the title, but I think it's worth talking about greater social issues in the context of games. Other art mediums have long concerned themselves with political and social statements, some successfully (The Grapes of Wrath), and others not so successfully (I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry). Games have been exploring that territory with similar uneven degrees of success, with Army of Two sticking squarely in my mind. Games also seem to be embracing unlikeable characters more and more often. Kane & Lynch is a great example, but Turok also made it tough to care about a single character. On the other hand, Grand Theft Auto IV toes that line brilliantly, with writing and voice acting that make it hard to hate even the most violent and misunderstood roles.

What games do you think make a point, and do it well--and which ones do you think fail at the statement they're trying to make? Sound off!

GTAIV is deplorable.

That's a pretty simple statement, and I use it only to make a point. If you were to hear those words attributed to Jack Thompson, you might not bat an eyelash about it, and it certainly wouldn't make headlines on its own. That's just Jack. That's what he does.

Now imagine that same statement coming from a representative of Take-Two Interactive. Knowing that a publisher's representative is talking trash about the company's own game puts an entirely different meaning on the same sentence, and might raise a few eyebrows or grab a few headlines.

But suppose that representative is working on the Dora the Explorer franchise for the 2K Kids brand. Well maybe it's a little less sensational then, since it's a person whose interests could very well lie in childhood edutainment instead of hardcore gaming.

Now imagine that the rep uttered the words to a friend as the pair sat in a movie theater waiting for the trailers to start. Since it wasn't publicly announced to the world or sent out in an investor conference call or slipped into an interview with the gaming press, maybe it shouldn't be regarded at all. People are free to their own opinions after all, and even game developers need to be able to express those in a way to somebody somewhere in a way that won't come back and bite them in the ass.

There's a selection of four different situations surrounding a three-word sentence, each hypothetical giving the same sentence an entirely subtext. Whether you're talking about news, reviews, or fanboys spouting off on the message boards, context is what gives facts their most robust meaning.

I could tell you that Midway will turn a profit of a few hundred thousand dollars this quarter, and you might shrug your shoulders. But if I told you that Midway hasn't turned a quarterly profit since 2005, or I point out that Midway released all its big titles for the year during the quarter (or none of them), then you have a better frame of reference to weight the significance of the news.

I think this context is crucial for truly understanding anything, and I think it's sorely lacking in most things online. The context is definitely there if you want to look for it, but most people are content to be handed a new fact and simply accept it at face value in whatever form it's being presented to them.

The best way to compensate for this is to consider the source of all your information. Consider it for reliability (the New York Times saying something surprising carries a lot more weight than Joe Schmo's blog--no offense, Mr. Schmo). Consider it for subjectivity (EA Sports executive Peter Moore saying that Madden 09 is the best football game ever doesn't mean much. Reviewers from every major gaming outlet giving the game a 10 would mean considerably more). Consider it for timeliness (Peter Moore saying that Madden 2001 was the best football game ever when he was still running NFL 2K1 publisher Sega would mean much more--circumstances change).

This isn't to say you should disregard the opinion of any site that isn't massive, any person who can't really be considered impartial, or anything people said more than two weeks ago. This is just to say that considering the source of information you consume is vital to properly understanding exactly what the hell's going on.

This is one of the reasons I want to add a bit more getting-to-know-you time to the new HotSpot format. I could tell you that I have no interest in the next Call of Duty game, but that statement means something different if you know that I generally don't get involved in multiplayer online gaming, and that I'm personally very put off by war games that turn events in which millions of people died into action-packed entertainment with nothing edifying to say. The landing at Normandy should not be a tutorial level, nor a bullet-point on a back-of-the-box features list.

I've mentioned this a few times before, but I'm also incredibly put off that wars are such fertile dramatic ground for movies and books, but games have done so very little to use their own medium to tell stories, express points of view, or move audiences when it comes to war. Seriously, for all the WWII shooters you've seen, how many have dealt in any way with the Holocaust?

Tangent aside, knowing that about me might put every future comment of mine about war games in a different light. Imagine I was stoked for Call of Duty 5 or the next Medal of Honor; what do you think that would say about the game?

News broke this week that Activision will give a break to one of its most succesful franchises by allowing the Tony Hawk series to sit out the 2008 holiday season. Though this move has come about four years late, it's still a fine idea--and certainly better than dragging out the withered husk of Tony Hawk for yet another round of incremental updates.

Perhaps it's the fact that I'm one of the few remaining Tony Hawk fans in existence, but I'm excited to see what they can do to this series by taking some time to reboot it. There was a time when every new Tony Hawk game offered a substantial improvement over the previous one. Tony Hawk 2 introduced the manual, Tony Hawk 3 kept combos going with the revert, 4 offered increased freedom by doing away with 2-minute timers, and the first Underground let lifelong skaters live out their fantasies with a compelling storyline. The latter introduction has always been a source of great conflict among fans of the series: some argue that the series peaked with number 4, but for someone like me who spent their youth skateboarding, I truly enjoyed the ability to live vicariously through my on-screen avatar as he kickflipped his way from anonymity in suburban New Jersey to taking it all in Vancouver's Slam City Jam.

But very few will argue that the series saw better days after that. Underground 2 handed the keys to Bam Margera with an incoherent, over-the-top storyline that felt less like skateboarding and more like an episode of Jackass. American Wasteland continued the theme of style over substance by going with a an overwrought, in-your-face, Xtreeeme aesthetic to compensate for the fact that the most touted upgrade--one giant, open-world Los Angeles--wound up being a disappointing collection of standard levels with tunnels replacing load screens. Project 8 actually managed to take a step backward by doing away with Create-a-park mode, which had been a series hallmark since the second game in the franchise. Nail-the-trick was certainly interesting, but didn't add much depth to the game.

And then there was Proving Ground. This game marked a series first for me: it was the first console game* in the series I have yet to play. For this, I have none other to thank than EA's Skate. When the demo for Skate first hit Xbox Live, it wrapped its hands around me and never let go. The controls were difficult to get a grasp of, but wound up proving to be immensely rewarding. And while the game was far from perfect--skating rails and ledges was great, but fumbling through pools never become anything more than awkward no matter how much time you invested--Skate's fluid appearance and mellow-but-stylish approach to skateboarding culture was just what the genre needed.

When Activision finally got around to releasing a demo for Proving Ground, it felt like I had just stepped into a time machine after all those hours spent cruising through San Vanelona. Apparently consumers felt the same way, because Activision wouldn't be conceding a year's worth of profits for the sake of creative growth. But what sort of growth can really be achieved by taking a year off? I'm not convinced simply mimicking Skate's "flick-it" controls will do Tony Hawk any good. Skate was such a promising game for a variety of other reasons: the animation and sound was superb, the close-up camera and realistic physics allowed minor tricks to feel like triumphant achievements, and never at any point was the game so "in-your-face" that you felt like you were forced to trudge through some artificial sense of style**.

Perhaps Neversoft should take a look at those reasons for success rather than grafting a new joystick-based control scheme onto a game that's been far too diluted over the years by over-the-top style and minor gameplay additions (Natas spin, sticker slap, kart-racing, parkour, nail-the-anything, to name a few). More than anything else, I would love to see the series get back to its roots--a simple, honest reverence for skateboarding culture--while giving the game a visual and audio overhaul to actually make it feel like a current-gen game. There's so much more to be said for adding new stumbling and feet-adjusting animations to make you feel like you're skateboarding rather than some bizarre new move that you'll only use once or twice throughout the course of a game. Go back and shine up those first few ways of linking combos instead of adding new ways to extend them. In short, simplify rather than complicate.

Tony Hawk has always been a lot like James Bond: over the years, he's developed an increasing number of skills/gadgets to go along with more and more elaborate and exotic settings in which to display them. If there's anything Casino Royale's reboot taught us, it's that you can take away most of those skills and still provide a compelling experience. Bring Tony Hawk back to the schools of Southern California and teach him to skateboard all over again. Hell, bring the player's avatar back to anytown, USA and propel him all over the world with an even more engrossing story. Just put a focus back on the skateboarding rather than all those extraneous elements that watered down a once-great game. After all, this is a series that used to have the word "Skater" in its title.

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*Let's not even talk about Downhill Jam.

**Except, of course, for those obscene close-ups on a pro skater's sponsors during skippable cut scenes.

The second episode of The Lineup--GameSpot and SportsGamer's video show--is up on the site now. This time around, Aaron, Shanker, and Brian play a game of cooperative NBA Live 08 to prove that anyone can come out of the Eastern Conference in the NBA playoffs, argue about whether Major League Eating is a sport, and eat a trailer load of donuts in celebration! We also talk sports games, including:

- A first look at THQ's upcoming WWE SmackDown! Vs. Raw 2009
- A preview of the NFL Draft feature in NFL Head Coach 09
- A graphical comparison between Gran Turismo 5 Prologue and Project Gotham Racing 4

All that and, of course, we punch Mike Vick in the grill. We hope you enjoy Episode 2 of The Lineup as much as Roger Clemens enjoyed Mindy McCready when she was 15... allegedly!

Lineup Episode Archive:

The Lineup: Episode 1

Last weekend I was able to attend the third annual Maker Faire in San Mateo, California. This was my first time at the show and it was absolutely awesome. Really, it's difficult to describe the event and do it justice, so I put together a short video that shows some of what makes the Maker Faire so great. Should you watch? Only if you like:

Video games
Robots
Robots fighting
Mythbusters
Diet Coke and Mentos fountains
Model boats trying to sink one another
Giant, motorized cupcakes
Rube Goldberg
Steampunk
Experimental airplanes
Other awesome stuff

GameSpot Community Game Night is becoming increasingly more fun each week, thanks to the releases of several games that lend themselves to pure, unadulterated mayhem. I am surprised at just how good GTAIV's multiplayer is; not only are the built-in game modes awesome (Mafiya Work and Cops & Crooks are my favorites) and customizable, but simply tooling around in the city with buddies is cool too. I expect I will be playing a lot of this game in the months to come--and I hope I will see you around.

We've also got a susprise in store for all of you regarding Game Night, so be sure to tune into On the Spot today to see more! In the meanwhile, check out some highlights from this week's games, courtesy of Sidburn19.

On this week's episode of From the Bleachers Aaron takes the helm as Brian and Shanker are in Vancouver covering an EA Sports event. While the dynamic duo are missed, former GameSpot news editor and current TV.com editor Tim Surette makes a triumphant return to the world of GameSpot to help fill the void. This episode is a little shorter than the norm, but that doesn't mean we didn't cover a lot of ground.

Here are just some of the topics we touched on:

- Tecmo Bowl is back baby!

- NASCAR 09 will let you paint your dream car

- You can make some crazy-looking dudes in Top Spin 3

- Crazy Bears Fan Josh talks about how Cedric Benson stinks both at football and at life

- Roger Clemens and Aaron Thomas apologize for "mistakes"

Be sure to stick around for the end of the show when Brian Ekberg gives a truly pathetic pick in a last-ditch effort to get in the win column for our "call it" segment. You've got to hear it to believe it. Come on Brian, step it up!

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