 Los
Angeles In Springtime
Games For Health & The E3 Convention -
April-May 2006
By Tim Carter (5 May 2006)
They say that only outsiders and tourists call
Los Angeles "LA". I have a friend (well, my writer-uncle's friend)
- a screenwriter (who is, in turn, friends with a bonafide
Oscar-winning screenwriter [won for penning a Clint Eastwood
flick: you do the math]) - who has a much better name for it: the
"Dirty Avacado". It contrasts with New York's
"Big Apple". So I had the pleasure of staying at his Ventura-area
home and driving around the sprawling sprawl of the Dirty Avocado
for a couple days.
I imagine if you are reading this there's a
good chance you have been to the Dirty Avocado at least once in
your life - for a game convention, a professional trip, or maybe
you call it your home. So I probably need not describe it. But I'm
sorry, that would just be no fun.
It would be no fun to not say I sat beside a
returning Los Angelino who is
professional paintball player on my flight there (on the flight
back to DC I sat beside a union rights lawyer - go figure). That the Dirty
Avocado is sprawled-out like nuts (after I got back I watched
Tom Cruise's assassin prowling the city in the back of Jamie
Foxx's taxi cab in the movie Collateral with my map of LA
on my lap). That if you know gang lingo you know the black
spraypaint graffiti on certain off-ramp signs around South Central
means "stay out!" (hey, I've been through the battlezone
neighbourhoods of Baltimore, man! [I don't recommend you try] -
but it's Toronto where I learned about gang tabs - there are
lots, because Torontonians are a little naive about the reality of
gangs). That I found the various palms kinda cool and the
hillsides of Hollywood strangely beautiful. That it's weird to see
a city in person when you have "visited" it so much on celluloid
over the years (actually, I must confess the movies really made
all of America into a fantasy land of sorts to this non-American).
But most of all, what blew my mind was how wide the streets
were! Like New York in its way (tall), LA
(wide) is just HUGE!
Games For Health...
I was at the Dirty Avocado to take in the
Games
For Health mini-convention at the University of Southern
California, kitty-corner across the 10 and 110 freeways from the (in)famous
E3 Convention. A one-day (that had no official relation to E3), it
was not unlike the larger 2-day Games For Health I had been to
almost a year prior in Baltimore (with its Johns Hopkins and
famous "shocktrauma" centre [which the mean streets of B-More
needs] - I swear it's no accident the acronym for Maryland is
"MD"). Indeed many of the same presenters - and the same
presentations - were there.
An interesting Games For Health application was
an exercise-oriented one. Yes, that's right: videogames for
exercise. It seems to make sense, too. Dance Dance Revolution
is the inspiration. A company was there, planning to build a
franchise of gyms where you exercise by playing videogames. I
think it could be fun. The dullness of exercise makes it hard to
commit to - for me at least (that's why I like biking: because
unlike a gym workout it integrates exercise with the daily
activity of life: too bad it's so bloody hard to find anywhere you
can realistically rely on a bicycle for transport, as you can in
central Toronto). The prospect of integrating the exploration of a
virtual world with a bicycle or rowing machine workout, for
example, looks appealing. I think I would sign up to such a gym.
I'd really like to see how they could combine a brain game, like
Sim City, with a workout. Nerds the world over would be
fearsome hulks in no time.
A psychologist was using videogames to recreate
battlefield situations in order to treat post-traumatic stress
disorder (PTSD). The idea is to recreate the experience, adding in
each new layer one at a time - first the environment, then the
sounds, then the effects, and so on - in a guided way, enabling
the client to resolve a deeply buried pain. My wife is a
psychotherapist, and her philosophy of therapy is to "follow the
heat" - the most burning feelings have something to reveal. A
fellow I know at Forterra - which works with the US Army - tells
of young Iraq War veterans going nuts in the virtual worlds,
running around killing everyone in the game world. It's a fantasy
that is difficult to comment on - or judge.
I saw a short rolling scene from Pulse!!
(which I know a bit about through my association with BreakAway).
There were military types interested in "simulation" (still
uncomfortable with the word "game"). Physiotherapists who use
games very effectively, the games rigged up to various
contraptions (it's hard to explain how without showing their
videos of patients extending their limbs to play). A pediatric
anesthesiologist was there, who has discovered that if you give
Billy a GameBoy to play as he is rolled down to surgery, he will
tend to not have the trepidation that Nintendo-less control-group
Billy has. There were the Brit makers of the Interactive Trauma
Trainer for combat medicine interventions - which
incorporates the typical British zeal for "drill" into its play
mechanics (I know about drill: I was with the - wait for it!......
48th Highlanders of Canada). And other presentations. Okay, I
admit - I was there mainly to network.
Lucky for me, in the party afterwards Ben
Sawyer handed me an industry pass to E3, so what the hell?
Actually, one of the coolest things (to me) was
that this event was across the street from the Shriner's Auditorium
- where the Oscar award cermonies have been held for years. It was
just getting dark - the USC neighbourhood emptying (Toronto boy
laments that US cities become ghost towns after dark...) - when I
walked in front of the Oscar building. Did I mention I have a
degree in film?
...And E3 (Anti-Games-For-Health?)
I almost had cardiac arrest walking into EA's
booth in E3 (if you can call their auditorium-sized offering a
"booth"). Does that sum up E3? The floor was the bass woofer, I
think - vibrating as a 360-degree panorama screen with lots
of special effects and rock video editing spelled out why we
should mark all of EA's upcoming releases on our calendars.
Actually, this worked promoting the latest Medal of Honor
release - you were in the sky with a flotilla of C3 transport
aircraft emptying their cargoes of paratroopers onto the bocage of
Normandy in 1944 while flak burst all around. But plugging Will
Wright's Spore this way?
I met people from Massive Entertainment in
Sweden, which developed my favourite real-time strategy game,
Ground Control (which I still play regularly). They are about
to come out with World In Conflict - an alt-history
Cold-War-goes-hot wargame - and I got to play it a bit. I'm
definitely looking forward to that one.
The official Canadian booth was small and
stuffy, but then again I find Canada really unambitious about the
game industry. Not in terms of production and pipeline standards -
we have that down pat: just like the film industry we are turning
into a factory centre for US-based companies (or, in the case of
Ubisoft, French-based). It's just that we seem so unable to be the
originators of new things. Ah... that's an old lament about
Canadian industry overall. It makes me sad.
A cool place was Kentia Hall - the basement,
where all the little companies are. Little overseas companies were
offering their services to outsource; and there were small
tech-based offerings with new inventions (which I can't offer much
worthy commentary on). The fringe elements of any industry I
always find the most interesting.
The main thing I could say about E3 was that it
was incredibly loud. Maybe it's just me, but I have more fun
walking through the rooms of the Pandemonium gaming convention in
Toronto - with its crazy roleplaying adventures, boardgames,
miniatures battles, LAN-based Counter-Strike, Starcraft
and so on, and even the folks dressed up as Elves, Orcs and
company; all of this accompanied by delightful trash-talking,
laughter and hyped-up in-character theatrics. Something about E3
just screams ADVERTISING!!! And when someone screams at me, my
first reaction is to put on earplugs or leave. I have discovered
that what appeals to me about games isn't the games so much as the
looks on the faces of gamers - the chemistry between the game and
the human being playing it.
A final bit. I took lunch at this cool little
restaurant called The Original Pantry Café, on Figueroa near 8th. It was staffed
entirely by ex-cons. It's been there for decades, but the owners
only hire ex-cons, you can't pay with anything but cash, and the
cash-register is worked by a lady inside a cage. Layers of
flooring worn through like erosion of sediments in a two-foot
square patch in front of the cashier's booth attest to the age -
and popularity - of the place. It was a little bit
like stepping into a 1940s movie, and you half expected the world
to fade to black-and-white in deep contrast, and Bogie or Robert Mitchum
out of nowhere to ask ya hey buddy, got a light? The land of dreams and
magic indeed. I hope the tech-obsessed makers of games pay a
little more attention to those human dreams lying just outside
their peripheral vision ...and right in front of their noses. |
