Note: I wrote this post soon after Project Milo was announced. It seemed like an appropriate response.
 
 
 
 

Calling Facade a video game is a little misleading, as there really isn't an ultimate goal or an objective that is supposed to be met. Released in 2005, and calling itself an "interactive story", you play the role of a friend to these two fictional partners, Grace and Trip. They're having some marital problems, and the dialog you exchange with them will have an effect to what they say and do when the experience ends. Although watching two miserable people argue their differences is not something I find entertaining, the software is worth experimenting with, as it is completely free.

Although it won't cost you any cash, Facade does have a few shortcomings. One is, that the ambition of the project is a double-edged sword, as there are so many possible answers you can type in, the characters may sometimes respond annoyed, confused, or completely ignore what you said. That, and the program takes a bit of patience to install. The host website provides a few download locations, and for me, it took some time for the game to finish downloading. After it was on my desktop, the program took its time installing and decompressing the necessary files.

As for whether this program has any practical applications in gaming today, well, that point is debatable. It is true that there are many RPGs and text-based adventure games where the player's actions determine the events of the story, but I can see a project like Facade being a little difficult to market if it was a consumer title. The main appeal to the program is that you are determining the story's direction, but that's pretty much where it ends. Sometimes, Grace and Trip ask a series of 'Yes' or 'No' questions, essentially making the game a dialog tree that you can type. Nevertheless I do think it's an interesting software program, although the subject matter of couples arguing may make a few people uncomfortable or frustrated.

Finally, you're probably wondering why I would bring up this program that was released such a long time ago. Well, it turns out Peter Molyneux recently announced a similar tech demo at this years E3. Project Milo, as it was called, seems to be a more advanced version of Facade, in which you use the upcoming Xbox 360 camera (currently dubbed "Project Natal") to gesture and vocally interact and with a virtual little boy named Milo. I'm a bit skeptical as to how well it function, as Molyneux's enthusiasm is ridiculous, and what was shown was a video instead of a live stage demo, but I can see it being a fascinating direction to take the technology. However, Natal is not being released until at least 2010, but in the meantime, Facade will likely provide a similar experience as to what Project Milo will play like.
  
 

To download or read about Facade:

http://www.interactivestory.net/

 

So this week I was browsing the web and came across these photos:

 
 
 
 
 

      
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
One thing I'm not sure about is whether the first set of photos are from real accounts or not. 
What I found kinda strange is that there are several accounts on facebook.com from game characters. Is this a new trend? For whatever reason, most of them are set to private, but here are some public ones I found.  

 

 It goes without saying that today is the 8th year since the attacks on the World Trade Center. I am in no way trying disrespect the civilians and the public servants who lost their lives in the attack, but I would like to talk about the censorship that occurred after it. Now, by censorship I do not mean journalists questioning the government’s methods and being silenced because of it, but the caution many film studios and video game companies had to take in response to the attacks. The following movies and games were altered and/or delayed after September 11th 2001:

Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty
Metal Gear Solid 2 is a video game starring two playable characters (Solid Snake and Raiden) trying to stop a terrorist group from using different robot-like tanks called “Metal Gears”. The story of the game is much more complex and convoluted than that, but that’s all you need to know to understand the context of the changes that were made. A making of DVD called “The Document of Metal Gear Solid 2” was released some time after the game, which highlighted some of these changes:

“According to Hideo Kojima in the documentary Metal Gear Saga Vol. 1, the original plot of the game revolved around nuclear weapon inspections in Iraq and Iran and had Solid Snake trying to stop the Metal Gear while it was located on an aircraft carrier, in a certain time limit, while trying to stop Liquid Snake and his group. However, about six months into the project the Middle East began to heat up again and they decided that they couldn't make a game with such a plot. The tanker in the released game is based on this original plot.
Significant changes to the game's ending were made late in development following the September 11 attacks in New York, where the finale occurs. A sequence depicting Arsenal Gear's displacement of the Statue of Liberty and crashing through half of Manhattan was removed, as was a short coda to appear after the credits, a breaking newscast showing the Statue of Liberty's new resting place, Ellis Island. At the point where Solidus dies, Raiden was supposed to have cut the rope on Federal Hall's flagpole, causing an American flag to fall over Solidus' body, and American flags which were supposed to be on all the flagpoles in New York were removed from the title.”


Metropolis
In this case, Metropolis refers to a Japanese anime film that was released in May 2001. It was scheduled to be released in the United States at the end of that year, but was delayed because of the imagery in the ending of the film, which was a prolonged and detailed explosion of a giant building. The film was eventually released overseas, but the delay was unusual, considering the movie’s fictional setting. In any case, you can view that segment of the film here, and just to give a little context to what you’re seeing, the plot involves the tension between humans and robots coexisting, and a young boy’s friendship with a girl, who is unaware that she is a machine.

 
 

Twisted Metal: Black
Twisted Metal: Black was the first game in the series to receive a “Mature” rating. In this vehicle-based combat game, you are placed in a deathmatch arena and kill your opponents using missiles and other explosives. In one level, there is a large jet plane you can shoot down, and must do so to unlock a hidden playable character. This game was released in the US on June 2001 with the content intact, but the European version that was to be released later that year was censored by removing the option of shooting the jet altogether, along with the cutscenes in the game, which were pretty violent. In any case, you can view the plane segment here if you wish.

 
 
   

Spider-Man 2: Enter Electro
This was another video game that was altered in response to the 9/11 attacks. IMDB states the following:

“In the game's original ending, Electro shouts "Top of the world, ma!" after he departs his battle with Spider-Man and he goes to the North Tower of the World Trade Center, thus giving Spider-Man the clue he needs to track him down for the game's final battle. When the towers were destroyed on 11 September 2001, the game was quickly pulled and re-released with an entirely new ending, in which Spider-Man just happens to correctly guess the unnamed building that Electro goes to for the game's final boss battle. At the end of the video game, The Mighty Thor is credited with defeating Electro in the final battle. This is because Thor was supposed to appear in an video segment in the video game where he talks with Spider-Man shortly after he has defeated Hyper-Electro, thus giving Thor the credit with Electro's defeat in the Daily Bugle newspaper. This was removed because the game's original ending takes place atop the World Trade Center towers when the game was being developed and it was removed because of the towers' destruction on 11 September 2001.”

Spider-Man teasers
The first trailer for the Spider-Man film of 2002 used the Twin Towers, and even early posters had the building’s image reflect of his eyes:



 
 

Still the teaser trailer was surprisingly well made, as it was a big reveal at the end when Spider-Man appears. As you can probably guess, Sony pulled both of these ads in response to the attack.

As of now, these are the only examples I could find, but I am certain there are other cases in which a piece of fiction was censored in response to a sensitive time. Censorship has been a big theme in some of my previous entries, and I felt that this subject was an interesting one. Still, it occurs to this day, as Comedy Central refused to show an image of Muhammad in South Park in 2006, when they had previously aired an episode that featured him in 2001, but the former was edited out because it was soon after the Danish cartoon strip riots.

Anyway, that’s all for now, but it looks like these kinds of edits on works of fiction will still occur in the future.

References:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metal_Gear_Solid_2

http://www.animevice.com/metropolis/13-626/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/index.html?curid=2487346

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0286145/trivia

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spiderman_film

South Park
“Cartoon Wars” Part One and Two (2006)

“Super Best Friends” (2001)

I just felt like taking a few of these out and displaying them around my house.



You can search youtube if you're interested in making these Lego 8 bit figures of NES characters. You may also notice that Soundwave is in the background, but I'll leave that for a different update. Unfortunately I didn't have enough pieces to complete Samus legs, but you get the idea




  The one on the left here is Kirby. Pink legos aren't very abundant so I ended up using white pieces.