I’ve had a craving to play some Silent Hill recently, which was particularly maddening since I have my PS2 packed away. Between this and always having a few choice Akira Yamaoka tracks on my iPod, I got to thinking about the Silent Hill movie and how I think a Silent Hill movie should be done.

First, the cast needs to be small. Look at how many characters appear in the first three Silent Hill games: 18. Admittedly, the Silent Hill movie only has 7 character, there are many more extras that appear in the movie. Isolation is a big thing in Silent Hill – the horror comes from the fact that you’re on your own most the time. It’s somewhat rare to come across another character – in fact it’s a reward for the player – and you only spend a little time with them each time you encounter them.

This leads me to an issue I feel is pretty big: how is the town is depicted. The movie got the town’s foggy and otherworld looks correct, but the town was merely a setting in the movie. Silent Hill is more than a town in the games. One can think of The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly or the Ju-On/The Grudge series as to how the town should be depicted. In The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly the wild west setting is what makes the events possible; it’s not merely where events happen, but it’s the time and place in history where the events could happen. The wilderness the three main characters live in is not a set-piece, it’s bigger than the characters themselves. In the Ju-On movies the house is not some haunted house, it’s almost a character. It calls and attracts people to their doom. It seeks to perpetuate the curse. Silent Hill needs to be a synthesis of these two sorts of settings. Silent Hill is inherently bigger than anyone that enters the town and it seems to act as a force that not only allow the events we see to happen, but causes them on some level.

It's not unheard to turn a setting into a character in the horror genre

When the role of tarot cards within the series is discussed, Pyramid Head is discussed within the context of the judgement card. How the (in)famous monster is discussed shows that the town of Silent Hill took something from its history to satisfy James’ need for judgement and punishment. On the character of Maria, the same theme comes up: Maria is both a representation of James’ crime and a real part of the town’s history. The foggy and otherworldly incarnations of Silent Hill are not just a hellish resort town, but a character unto itself – this is a town that called Cheryl and the entire cast of Silent Hill 2 (excluding Laura), and is also capable of being exploited and used (such as we see with Claudia bringing the otherworld to the shopping mall in Silent Hill 3).

I would go as far as to say that a good Silent Hill movie needs to be about the town more than the people. The main character of a Silent Hill game is primarily the vehicle in which the player explores the town and its history. The protagonist is mostly ignorant about the town and is lost in the insanity of the situation, like the player is. The main character has a motivation to explain why they press forward with such determination despite the happenings, but the motivation is something that the viewer needs to be able to explain in very simple terms. What’s Harry’s motivation in the first game? To find and save his daughter. What’s James’ motivation in the sequel? To find the wife he thought dead. What’s Heather’s motivation in Silent Hill 3? To avenge the death of her father. The games waste no time is throwing the player into the hellish situations. In Silent Hill 2 we’re just given a brief monologue. Heather’s motivation in Silent Hill 3 is introduced after the player has played the game for a while – after they’ve made their way home from the mall which Claudia has corrupted. However, even then we just have a short cutscene to show us why she’ll go to Silent Hill, why she’ll do as Claudia wants in order to hurt her.

Even the film had the good sense to use the iconic music of Akira Yamaoka!

I think the best way to set-up a character’s motivations, in the context of a Silent Hill movie, would be the use of a credit sequence montage or something similar. Imagine a theme sequence using Promise (Reprise) from Silent Hill 2 in a movie that’s inspired by the original game: the title appears on screen over a black background; it fades to coffee table with photos strewn all over the place of the protagonist, wife, and child, each photo has the date in the corner and appears to be taken from a film camera; photos show them adopting the child, first time the child is at home, and so on; among the photos is the young girls birth certificate, no mention of parentage is on it, but there is other relevant information (if you want to explain how this information is available and correct, you can use a Travis-like character); the camera pans and we see a newspaper clipping, it’s an obituary for the wife; we then see drawings that somehow relate to Silent Hill; the camera zooms out and the father is watching a recent home movie and, for a frame or two, the face of the girl he adopted changes from her own face to the face of an older girl (Alessa), he keeps watching this clip several times, rewinding to review it, but there’s no other attention drawn to this subliminal change; and finally we see him pick up some car keys and leave the room. While this plays there’s no text displayed on screen. The movie then starts in a similar way that the original game starts, with the character waking up in his car after a car accident.

This sort of thing would manage to communicate the motivations of the main character without the use of dialogue. We sometimes forget that movies are a visual medium – they need not be plays with the possibility of big explosions. Movies, as a result, are perfectly suited to tell us all we need to know about a situation with the use of well-selected images. This more subtle approach can also lead to some narrative choices that can foster mysteries. Imagine our father-character, while exploring the famous Silent Hill health facilities, finding a document about Alessa and the document mentions when she was hospitalized – it happens to be the date of birth of his adopted daughter – but there is no attempt to point out this connection other than showing the audience the document he is reading. This would allow the observant viewer to go back and piece the entire narrative together for himself. In fact, this sort of story telling is essential. Part of the appeal of the Silent Hill stories is they invariably feel like we’re a bit left in the dark. When the story is done there should be aspects that are ambiguous enough that the viewer can expand on either by themselves or through the fandom.

The town of Silent Hill is no stranger to insanity

Additionally, a good and faithful adaptation must focus running themes of the games: love and sanity.

The protagonist and antagonist should somehow embody something about love. In Silent Hill you had the love Harry felt for his adopted daughter standing in opposition to the lack of love her own biological mother felt. In Silent Hill 2, James embodies two similar extremes. One part of him loved his wife enough to follow her into hell just to see her again – Laura parallels this side of him (and some suggest that she is another hallucination on his part, which makes sense on a few levels). Another part of him was selfish and full of self-love, as seen with the revelation that James killed Mary because he couldn’t handle nursing her (the In Water ending makes it clear that he didn’t do it to ease her suffering). In Silent Hill 3 it is Heather’s love for Harry that causes her to go to Silent Hill to seek revenge, Claudia’s love for Alessa is the driving force of her character, and the game draws the contrast between the father-daughter relationships that Claudia and Heather were a part of. Love may not be the most unique theme, but it’s a powerful way to get the audience to connect with the action, to connect with some characters and to despise others.

The supernatural and horror elements that the series is known for also goes hand-in-hand with the question of sanity. This is most notable in Silent Hill 2, where pretty much every character is, in some way, struggling with their pasts which have driven them mad. Who can forget the line in Silent Hill 3 where Vincent says to Heather, “they look like monsters to you!” What could that mean, is Heather hallucinating? Perhaps it’s just Vincent committing a nice little mindfuck on both you and your avatar. Either way, the events throughout the film shouldn’t be assumed to be truth. The supernatural must have elements of it that imply psychosis. By the end of it, we shouldn’t be sure what was real and what wasn’t.

I love him too, but I don't want to see him unless a character like James somehow figures into the plot!

Finally, Pyramid Head shouldn’t be shoehorned into the story. That monster maybe iconic, but it makes very little sense to have him show up and wreck shit if he isn’t a character’s manifestation of their own guilt. The purpose of this creature is not even some subtle metaphor to be divined – James Sunderland realizes this himself and it a pretty climatic moment in the game.

Until this happens, perhaps you should just go and watch Jacob’s Ladder. This classic is not just an inspiration to the games, but also quite a bit better than the Silent Hill movie we got.

—

Jon of ZippyGamer: Hey Tom, thanks for agreeing to do the interview with us. I noticed your last name rhymes with my last name, so I assume that means we’re both geniuses. Anyway, please give us some basic info on who the heck you are.

Tom Sennett: I’m Tom Sennett. I’m a student at Penn State University, an independent game developer, and a genius.

Jon: Tell us about your first video game. What was it? How did you come up with the idea?

Tom: The first real game I put together was called Atomic Wall Ball, and it was a Breakout ripoff. Not quite a clone, because it made less sense than Breakout. I was 12 or 13 years old, so I take no responsibility for it.

RunMan: Race Around The World

Jon: What are you majoring in at Penn State? Do you intend to create a career as a game developer?

Tom: My major at Penn State is Information Sciences & Technology. It’s pretty undemanding. All the work I’ve done on games has been far outside my curriculum.

At this point, I’m hoping to go full-time indie once I graduate. That’s a year from now, so I’ve still got some time. If it doesn’t work out I will probably find myself at a game company though. I am committed to working on games professionally in some capacity.

Jon: When creating a game, what is your typical design process like?

Tom: I try to think of something interesting or fun, then run with it and see where it leads. Like one of my older games, Acwabatiacs, I came up with while sitting in physics class in high school. I was doodling in my notebook and I drew this long segmented centipede, and then to make it interesting I attached a bear to its rear end. And I looked at it and was like, “What if this was your character in a game?” and all of the gameplay grew out of that naturally.

Other times I’ll think about things that have been done before and how I’d do them differently. So with RunMan it was, “What if we made a game about running really fast?”, and anyone who’s anyone knows Sonic did this a long time ago. But we totally ignored everything about Sonic and just focused on our question, and ended up with something considerably different.

My design process usually involves beer. And if anyone else is around, yelling.

Jon: What do you have next up your sleeve?

Tom: I’m working with Matt Thorson of MattMakesGames.com, my partner on RunMan: Race Around the World, on a new game titled Deepak Fights Robots. It’s an homage to some awesome old arcade games, including Bubble Bobble and Pac-Man. We’re developing it in Flash and hope to have it out before Summer 2010. So far we’ve only released screenshots, but I can assure you, it’s totally sweet.

Deepak Fights Robots

I’m also working on a three game series called Brutus + Miranda, or Miranda & Brutus with a friend of mine. That’s in Flash too, and is too convoluted for me to explain, but keep an eye out for it.

Hopefully you’ll also see some Flash ports/remakes of my older downloadable games soon, so Mac and Linux users will finally get a chance to play them.

And we have some plans for RunMan: Race Around the World. I can’t go into details now, but I think people will like it.

Jon: I appreciate your time, Tom! Thanks for giving us a lot to look forward to.

Be sure to check out Tom’s Official Website. You won’t be disappointed.

The “Cinematic Platformer” Death

Somehow, he comes back from this (click image for a video cataloging the deaths of Heart of Darkness)

Pay No Heed, Reload!

Well, I Hope You Learned Your Lesson

Sometimes the easiest way to get back to this screen was just admit defeat and die... maybe it's a commentary on life and reincarnation?

If This Were An Arcade Game, This Is Where You’d Pay To Continue

Did That Happen? I Didn’t See Anything!

RPGs are a bit notorious for just ignoring deaths that occur in battle. They provide items to heal your team from death, but will sometimes kill your teammates off in ways that (mysteriously) render them immune to a phoenix down. This means the fan base that assumes some sort of coherency in these story-driven games will need to come up with explanations as to why a character can survive gun shot wounds, but not one stab wound. Perhaps when one’s HP is reduced to 0, it simply means they’re unconscious; perhaps they’ve been playing a lot of Dungeons and Dragons where some rule sets state that death only occurs when one’s HP reaches -10, while 0 to -9 just means that the player is knocked out (apparently this is only true for 2nd edition rules, but I swear 3rd edition had this rule too!). The deaths that occur in battle only became an issue when there’s a disconnect between gameplay and story, as with Aries’ death in Final Fantasy VII.

Don't bring a machine gun to a sword fight

There’s No Need For That, Is There?

Incorporate Your Death into the Story

You waking up at the start of the game, after one of your deaths. When a floating skull is a teammate, don't expect death to be a major hindrance (click for full image).

Make Death a Gameplay Gimmick

Conclusion

Street Fighter IV

Street Fighter IV revived the series with its fantastic gameplay and art style. Even if you’re not traditionally a fighting-game lover, you may find something to like here with all the bells and whistles that are thrown in. You can tell Capcom spent a lot of time balancing and paying attention to the details. Easy to learn and tough to master, Street Fighter IV is a new classic.

Average critic score: 9.3 out of 10

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare

Considered by many to be the best game in the series, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare is a must-play for all fans of first person shooters. Although many have moved onto Modern Warfare 2, its multiplayer mode was great and challenged Halo 3 as the most played online Xbox 360 game. With an insane amount of action packed in, even the single-player won’t be disappointed, albeit the campaign is a little short. The realistic sounds of guns and explosions really help to immerse you, especially if you’re playing with a nice set of surround sound speakers. Give this one a try!

Average critic score: 9.4 out of 10

Resident Evil 5

Taking a more action-oriented perspective than before seen in the series, Resident Evil 5 (along with RE4) caught the attention of those who had previously ignored the series for many years. Solid game mechanics and a fantastic co-op campaign sets this game apart from the norm, especially if you have a friend to blast your way through it with. Mercenaries mode adds a lot of replayability as you can team up with a friend to kill swarms of enemies and rack up new high scores.

Average critic score: 8.6 out of 10

Rainbow Six: Vegas

If you’re a fan of tactical shooters then you will love Rainbow Six: Vegas. It’s a nice change of pace to the frantic type of shooting we find in games like Halo. The new health system makes the game much more stress free, and could very easily fix the problems you had with the other ones. The campaign is top-notch and the multiplayer modes were considered to be some of the best yet seen on Xbox Live.

Average critic score: 8.9 out of 10

Bioshock

BioShock is widely considered to be an outstanding game and is ranked as one of the best games of all time. The game has a fantastic story and atmosphere that you will not find in 99.9% of other games. Besides that, the game has a great soundtrack and a mix of first-person-shooting and RPG elements combined to make a unique gameplay experience. Be sure to give this one a try.

Average critic score: 9.4 out of 10

Conclusion

You have likely played at least one of the above titles, but be sure to give a try to any that you’ve missed. There’s no need to break the bank on buying the latest titles. Pocket the extra cash or spend it on something important, like pizza. Maybe set aside a little for your girlfriend.

What are your favorite games for under $20? Let us know in the comments below!

Both of these games have something in common: the women are, how we say, gifted in certain ways. But over time it seems Croft is becoming a bit more realistic (though still gifted) meanwhile the girls of Soul Calibur seem to be filled even more with helium. Check out the photo evidence below [click thumbnails for full-size images].

It’s hard for a lot of people to remember what PC gaming was like before iD. I got into PC gaming with Quake 3: Arena and Unreal Tournament (and preferring Unreal Tournament). I was not yet four when Doom was originally released; I was five when Quake was released; I grew up on Commander Keen and SNES platformers. As a result, I don’t have first-hand knowledge on this subject. However, I do recall my brother, who is older than I, mentioning his initial thoughts to Doom and he was a bit happier about seeing RAGE on the iPhone – not so much for the game itself, but for the technology. I can’t help but feel that those who remember seeing the PC’s first smooth scrolling platformer (iD’s Commander Keen), first smash hit FPS (Doom), and one of the first polygonal 3D shooters (Quake) will be a bit more excited about this news. Gamespot’s review of Quake shows how important Quake was to the scene. In the review, Gamespot’s Trent Ward suggests players to use a mouse, instead of just the keyboard or a gamepad (as was common at the time), and recounts his first experience with one of Quake’s bigger monsters, in which he dropped his mouse and backed away from the computer (he urged his readers not to do the same). iD’s games were important to the PC as a platform because they showed that the PC can meet, and surpass, what consoles were capable of. We sometimes forget that Carmack is a bit of wizard when it comes to programming (you could say he’s the wizard of iD). iD’s impressive looking PC games have always been a benchmark and the iD games we see ported to consoles show us why: in the last generation the last show of the Xbox’s power was that it could run Doom 3 at low settings, neither the Playstation nor the N64 had versions of Quake II that looked as good as the PC original, and Doom needed a Playstation port to truly kick ass on the consoles (and even then it had some weird omissions; in return it had some new visual effects that the original could never had achieved).

Apple is in a situation where it knows it needs games on its platforms and companies are in a situation where they realize that Apple’s marketshare is not something that can easily be ignored – especially when it comes to their handheld devices. The problem, as I see it, is that the Apple’s handhelds haven’t had a big game come along to push the limits of the platform. I go to the Apple Store and the games I see that are pre-installed on the hardware to show off the capabilities are games like Nanosaur and Bugdom 2 – both good games, but I was playing both when I was in junior high on my school’s iMacs! iRAGE is what both Apple and publishers need. Both need to see good games that challenge our preconceptions as to what the hardware is capable of. Publishers need to see good looking games on the iPhone if they’re going to consider giving the developers that want to make games on Apple’s platforms the money they need – we already know the App Store can be a good source of income for publishers. Apple needs iRAGE because, let’s be honest, Apple has no idea how to target gamers. Apple has traditionally lacked the ability (and at times, the will) to appeal to this demographic and gamers tend to be a bit hostile towards Apple, but this is the just the demographic Apple needs; by nature gamers tend to not only have the means to purchase expensive hardware and software, but also the will to do so as well. If Apple wants to enter the gaming market through it’s existing handhelds, it needs something like iRAGE. iD was so important to PC gaming in the 1990s because their games were both fun and amazingly pretty (okay, maybe not pretty in the literal sense of the word). It’s not enough to have a tech demo, but you need to be able to do something entertaining with the technology.

This brings me to the lack of Doom 4. Why shouldn’t they show us screenshots and trailers? After all, this is the next instalment to one of iD’s big names and it’s another game that will be using the id Tech 5 engine, alongside RAGE. The problem with showing off Doom 4 is that is what would have been big news. Showing off Doom 4 would pit RAGE against Doom 4 and I suspect, despite being closer to release, that RAGE would lose. Doom was big – for years after the release of Doom, first person shooters were known as “Doom clones” – and I think everyone at iD and Bethesda know that RAGE could not share the spotlight with the next Doom title. Doom has the power of nostalgia on its side and we can’t underestimate the power of nostalgia. RAGE has suddenly turned into the game that the gaming press loves to talk about – I imagine RAGE’s similarities to Borderlands (especially before Gearbox completely changed its art style) caused the press to choose between RAGE and Borderlands. We don’t know much about Doom 4 other than the setting and that it will be closer to the style of the original Doom games than Doom 3. I wanted Doom 4 news as much as anyone, but even I know that if RAGE is going to be a success, it needs to be in the spotlight a bit longer. iRAGE is, in my view, iD’s acknowledgement that it can’t hope to recreate the power of the Quake and Doom experiences on the PC (or on the consoles), but they have a chance to do the same thing on the iPhone (we can only hope that people won’t drop their expensive iPhone’s when they finally fight a big ass monster).

iRAGE (I’ll admit, that name isn’t as catchy as I hoped) serves a dual purpose – it will build anticipation for RAGE and will help make iD relevant to a new demographic of gamers. iD’s previous exploits will not be enough to get sales from those that never played their earlier titles. Recreating the impact of Doom and Quake on the iPhone will make RAGE more relevant and, more importantly, it will provide a low-cost way for people to return to the roots of the first person shooter. RAGE seems to be exactly what we expect from the creators of Doom and Quake; it’s deeply rooted in the old design philosophy, it’s fast paced and has no pretensions of realism, it’s balls-to-the-walls action with mutants and huge creatures. This is not Call of Duty or Halo, nor is it the cover-based shooter that’s quickly becoming the standard, this is what we expect from the daddies of the FPS game (with about 100% more cars). Doom 4 would distract everyone from both versions of RAGE. As someone who has been wanting to see more of RAGE since it was announced, I’ll make do with the silence on Doom 4 if it means I get to see more RAGE.

RAGE is due in September of 2011 for PC, PS3, and Xbox 360 and the version for iPhone and iPad will be out this year (Doom 4 will be out “when it’s done”).

Consider your room

Dorm rooms aren’t big. They aren’t small either, but often they are a downgrade from one’s own room back home. When planning on what games and what consoles to take with you to dorms, remember that you may not have room for everything. Especially as you make progress through the system you’ll have less room for games as books find their way onto the provided bookshelves, as blasphemous as that very idea is. Your room should influence console choice. If you have six consoles you absolutely can’t part with, you’ll need to learn to part with a few of them. If you bring your Wii, you need to realize the waggling of some games requires space. This means if you often have people wanting to join in on such games you’ll need to get used to lugging your console out to a common area to play – and that’s assuming the common area isn’t being used by people watching a movie or something.

This is what the dorms at my school look like – one gets used to lack of space quite quickly.

If you’ll be sharing a room with someone, do not plan to bring too many consoles and games. You need to share what little space there is, so be considerate. If you live fairly close to the university, it’s better to bring too little at first and bring more stuff in at a later date. If you have to travel quite a ways to get to the university, just bring one console and a few of your favourite games for it. It’s better to be on the safe side and if you have extra space you will fill it up. At my university trips to the Dollar Store, ValuVillage, and thrift stores are pretty common. You will find crap to lug home. In the end, packing a bit light when it comes to entertainment will not kill you.

I’m not saying leave your Wii at home, but maybe you should leave that copy of Just Dance at home if you don’t want to always move your console.

You’re there to learn, seem smart, and then go back to Starbucks with your degree in Russian Literature

It seems like my moral responsibility to talk about student habits, since you won’t spend all your days trying to beat the current speedrun for Super Metroid.

At the end of the day, you’re in school to read books, write papers, and (generally) be smart. Get into a good study routine. For me, I read my required readings the day before, since I have large blocks of time to do nothing. After supper is a good time for me to socialize, watch movies, and play games. This way, I have from when I wake up until 5 to do my required readings.  Underline passages in the books you read, have a notebook to write down the bibliographic information of books you’ll source in major papers, and plan out when you’ll be doing assignments. If you have a book review, plan to read the book before hand. I know people who believe that they can skim the book and get a good mark. However, I’ve seen their reactions when they see I got an A on a book review and they got a C. Knowing those books will also make you well-prepared on exams when you can summarize your in-class readings to prove a point. It may not seem like much, but most people won’t do this.

When you get your syllabus for a class, look at the assignments and write those dates down somewhere. Then, figure out when you need to start working on it in order to finish it on time. This way you won’t be in the situation where you’re not free for long periods of a time because you’re working on multiple major assignments that are all due in a week. A lot of people that absolutely can’t go out and have fun during school are in that situation because they put off assignments. If you plan shit out, you have leeway and time to waste.

Think about the games you’ll bring

Single player games are fine – I play quite a few single player games in fact. As a rule, expect people to watch. People will often have nothing better to do and if you’re playing Zelda, well, everyone loves Zelda (especially Ocarina of Time) so you can imagine people will want to watch, comment, and joke. Even this will allow you to learn something about certain people. The games people stop to watch give you an idea on what they like – I have one friend who watched me play through Okami, pretty much end to end, just for the art style. Provided you’re willing to have a conversation as you game, you aren’t being anti-social. That being said, single player games can sometimes attract unwanted attention. If you want some alone time while you play a game, remember to keep the door closed. If a game requires a lot of concentration and immersion, leave it at home or play it with your door closed. Otherwise you’ll be talking as you play Silent Hill II and nothing kills Silent Hill II like other people.

Sadly, not all of these will fit in your dorm.

Multiplayer games are trickier. Sports games are a good staple, they’re pretty easy to jump into, move pretty fast, and the rules are mostly familiar to almost everybody. All you need is one more controller to enjoy a game with someone. However, when you get to computer games it’s hard to find good games that are easily to spread around the floor to play. Some older strategy games have “hot-seat” multiplayer modes – such as the almost-perfect Risk II. Hot-seat games will have you and your friends taking turns using the computer to input your moves. This is best done with a larger group as those that aren’t playing are not supposed to look at the screen when it’s not their turn. This means you don’t need to give the game to anyone, just one person needs it for everyone to enjoy it. I’m a whore for Good Old Games and it is definately the way to go for this. No CD keys are required for their games and there’s no digital rights management; these two things make it the perfect place to spend a few bucks on a game all of your friends can enjoy. As a rule, shooters and strategy games will be crowd favourites. Chances are people will play Starcraft and Warcraft III, so if you have those games you should definitely bring them. Last year, Dawn of War became a favourite game to play on my floor. Heroes of Might and Magic III is also a good choice, but it may not like some current OS and hardware configurations as much as Starcraft. Overall, strategy games tend to be more popular due to lower system requirements. Some shooters I’d suggest to try with dormmates are Unreal Tournament (the original and Unreal Tournament 2004 should run on almost any computer), Alien versus Predator II, the Call of Duty series (this is a console staple), and Gears of War.

Don’t fear the “Freshman 15”

The “Freshman 15” refers to the weight gain many people experience when they first get to university. Sometimes it’s because you can eat as much cafeteria food as you like and sometimes dorm students will have common kitchens, resulting in a lot of Kraft Dinner entering one’s diet. The food most university students can afford is not particularly healthy and university cafeterias have to consider their budget. Either way, you’re not eating the healthiest food out there. A second cause for the dreaded 15 is the fact, for many people, living at university presents the first taste of freedom they’ve ever had from their parents. Thus, they may eat more food and less healthy food than they would under normal circumstances. However, there is no reason to fear it. You likely won’t be keeping it because you won’t keep that diet up, which may cause your body to burn some of that sexy fat away. Universities are also equipped with well-maintained gyms. If the weight gain is too much for you, hit the weights and the treadmill to lose the 15 pounds. You’ll feel better for it. Never worry to much though, you’ll lose that excess fat with little effort.

Change your caffeine fix from pop (or soda, for you silly Americans) to tea or coffee

Invest in a good kettle (get one that’s metal for health reasons), a tea pot, and a french press. In some areas, yerba (a South American tea) is very popular. This is a good tea to start off your new fix with – it has a lot of caffeine, is drunk from a funky horn or a hollowed-out gourd, and it’s assumed to be a social drink. The tea itself is very cheap – I pay $5 for a kilogram of yerba. Other teas will be more expensive, but they are still cheaper than soft drinks. Admittedly, tea has a steeper start-up cost, if you will, if you don’t have things such as a kettle. If you buy all the products in this paragraph related to tea and coffee, you’ll spend about $100. The trade off is you’ll make your addiction into something that’s a social activity. A good way to get to talking is by sitting around sipping on coffee or tea; you don’t really get the same atmosphere with a two litre bottle of Coke. If that’s not enough to win you over, think about the sugar in your favourite soft drink. If your favourite soft drink has artificial sweeteners, think of the health concerns over those chemicals. Finally, think of how much water will suddenly enter your diet!

I may not be the hottest model, but hot yerba on a hot day makes for a hot picture!

Think about your computer

If you have a big, state of the art computer, don’t expect to play too many of those fancy games with people in dorms. Some universities, such as mine, block online games. Plus, very few people will have nice, sexy beasts of machinary to play Crysis with you. One of my friends purchased a top-of-the-line PC over Christmas break and he’s already considering selling it. It’s a nice machine, runs everything really well, but the issue is that he can’t really justify having it when he doesn’t have the money to buy the latest games that take advantage of the hardware. If you have a nice PC you shouldn’t be afraid to bring it along, but don’t get too excited about the prospect of Crysis LAN parties. Expect to play older RTS and FPS games a lot.

Also, I advise against going for a laptop. I had a laptop my first year and it was a bad choice. Aside from the fact it wasn’t very well made, bringing laptops to class is not a good idea for most people. Within weeks you’ll see people you know posting pictures of Facebook that they took on their MacBook during class. For note taking, a few notebooks and some pencils are cheaper and much more efficient. Come study time you won’t have 50 windows open on your desktop, but one notebook. Plus, the brain processes information better if you write it down instead of typing it out. If you need another reason to ditch the laptop, try playing Doom 2 during class when all you have is some paper and a pencil.

If you are looking to purchase a computer, go for a slim desktop. I got mine from Dell for about $500. It had better specs than my laptop, which cost double that, and plays what I need from it. On-board graphics processors are never the way to go for the hardcore, but they are not as bad as they used to be.

and think about your consoles

I’ve already alluded to this. You may very well want to bring your Wii, 360, PS3, Gamecube, Dreamcast, and Super Nintendo with you. I suggest a two console limit, though. Nintendo consoles are good for multiplayer games – everything from Donkey Kong Country to Super Smash Bros. Brawl will make for a good party game. You’ll definitely want to look at your game collection on a console by console basis to see what you want to bring. You may thinking brining your SNES will seem dumb, but the fact is a lot of people grew up on the 16-bit consoles and will love you for it. I play more SNES games at university than I do at home and my neighbor across the hall brought his top-loading NES (man, that’s a sexy beast) and there were always people wanting to play some Tecmo Baseball or Archon or other 8-bit classics. If you’re wary about bringing your Playstation 3 with you, leave it at home for a year. I’m going into my third year and this is the first year I’ll have my 360 on campus with me. At the very least you’ll appreciate the classics more when you don’t have the newest stuff.

Hmm, maybe I need my SNES more than my computer?

Keep your room as clean as you can

Believe me, I hate to sound like your mother right about now, I really do. It’s not because I have my own mommy issues, but due to the fact no one likes to be reminded they have to clean up. Well, you will have to. A mess is alright, a mess is allowed… if it’s the proper sort of mess. Books being thrown on the floor because you’re running out of desk space because you’re doing research for a big paper? That’s understandable. Spilling tea leaves on the ground and not bothering to vacuum them up? It’s a bit disgusting. A lot of the stuff that goes in here should be common sense, but after living on a floor of guys for two years I’ve learned that it isn’t. If you eat a lot of fruit, take your garbage out. If you play sports, don’t put your sports equipment in your room or in the hallway – there should be designated spots for you to keep sweaty equipment. Wash your clothes regularly, even if you have enough clothes to last you a month you should do laundry on a weekly basis. If your room has a lot of smelly clothes, that is what your room will smell like. If you have a roommate, find a way to fairly divide up the cleaning.

Bring a football, soccer ball, and/or Frisbee

You can’t spend all day inside… well, you can, but for some reason it’s frowned upon (never figured that one out). When video games don’t help you meet people, going outside to toss around a football or frisbee with someone will help you meet new people. Besides, even in the Great White North, September is a beautiful time of year. People will want to interact with all these new people they’ve never seen before and organizing a little game of catch will be a good way to get outside and meet people. Besides, in all honesty, who wants to sit around playing video games all day? Neckbeards, that’s who!

Remember, piracy will be the norm

It’s no secret students are the worst pirates this side of Somalia. Students have quite a bit of free time, but they don’t have the disposable income to buy new games, movies, and music too often. This means you’ll need to reconsider your anti-piracy stance if your friends want to play Age of Empires II, you’ll probably get a flashdrive with the game pre-cracked for you. An anti-piracy stance in a dorm environment is not only somewhat expensive, but a good way to feel left out. Even if you go out and buy the game, you may not be able to play with your friends and their pirated copies – sometimes you can only patch a cracked copy of a game so far and some companies keep the retail copies patched as they ship out. If your friends have a pirated version of Diablo II, you may buy a copy pre-patched to 1.10 while they’re stuck with 1.8. In that case, it sucks to be you.

If you’re already comfortable with piracy, invest in some USB controllers to play multiplayer games via emulator. You don’t need to spend big bucks to get a good controller, but when looking around for a controller think about the platforms you’re emulating. Logitech’s Precision controller is good for Playstation and SNES games, but not so good for Genesis and N64 games. Conversly, the Saitek P990 and P2500 are good choices for Genesis and N64 games but are incredibly awkward as Playstation controllers. If you have a wired 360 controller, use that as it’s a nice and a versatile controller.

The biggest threat to entertainment industries!

[ed. note: I'd like to thank Revelation Space for providing the slider image, check out his Deviant Art page here and enjoy some of his artsy stuff!]

People like to have fun. This is obvious. Games are a part of virtually every culture and gaming has the power to make the world a better place.

The Fun Theory

Not long ago I heard about The Fun Theory, which is simply brilliant. The idea of the fun theory is that having fun is a good way to change behavior. The web site challenges visitors to think of creative ways to improve the world by using the concept of fun.

We all know that taking the stairs is healthier than taking the elevator. The age of computers is causing more and more of us to sit on our asses all day. What if taking the stairs was more fun? Check out the video below:

Check out The Fun Theory web site for more videos.

Jane McGonigal

Jane McGonigal is a well known game designer who is working to encourage game designers to improve the world with their games. She claims that reality is broken and game designers can fix it!

In the 20-minute video below, McGonigal discusses gaming and how we could use it to solve real-world issues like hunger and poverty. Sounds crazy, right? Check out her fascinating talk:

Be sure to check out her web site as well. As McGonigal says, we need more epic wins!

DICE 2010: “Design Outside The Box”

In the video above, Jesse Schell of Schell Games gives a presentation on the future of gaming. This video is interesting because it shows how gaming has already changed the world and how we spend our money on games.

Games like Farmville and Wii Fit came out of nowhere and changed games as we know them. The possibility of earning Gaming Achievements has changed how gamers play their games.

Could our real-world lives be more successful if we acquired achievement points for performing certain tasks? The 2010 Ford Fusion Hybrid explores this idea by having you grow a tree in the dashboard. The better gas mileage you get, the taller your tree grows.

Some teachers are already successfully using video games in their schools and UC Berkeley even taught a class using Starcraft.

How do you think gaming has changed the world?

Image attributions: featured banner, thumbnail

Warning: These are not safe for work!

Sega gives a new meaning to “playing with your joystick.”

A classy reference to the “masturbating will make you go blind” myth.

Yeah, it’s somewhat common for those in the North to pee their name in the snow. Don’t ask me why.

This advertisement is nuts.

And finally, the best for last…

Probably the best advertisement for any video game, period.

Have you seen any other funny ads? Let us know about them in the comments below.