Benjamin Hourigan

Yesterday Nintendo announced that its new console, previously developed under the Revolution codename, will be called the “Wii”.

I propose that the console’s followup be called the “Puu”, that Will Wright develop this game for the console, and also that the person who made the final decision to approve the name be publicly humiliated by being put in the stocks and urinated on for several hours.

It’s laudable that Nintendo has tried to come up with a name that can be pronounced across the world, stating that “Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii.” But it’s lunacy to choose a name that evokes urine to the largest videogame market in the developed world, of well over 300 million English speakers in the USA (not to mention the others in Australia, the UK, Canada, South Africa, Singapore, the EU and so on).

See also Joystiq’s Wii comic, A Wii logo video from Nintendo, Forbes’ article on response to the name, Vox pops on Joystiq, comments on Japanese response to the name, Joystiq’s reader poll on the name, and Joystiq’s commentary on Nintendo’s defense of the name.

Thanks to Joystiq, it’s just come to my attention that some of my favourite comedians from Melbourne, Tripod, are videogamers!

Tripod are, rather than stand-up comedians, a band that sings comic songs. In the past, I’ve been a fan of such gems as the “Xmas Song” and the “Ikea song”. I also had the great honor of serving Gatesy, one of the band members, at the supermarket I used to work at in Toorak. Tripod’s songs on videogames, which I’ve just discovered, are not only funny, but also capture a lot of the emotion of videogaming life.

This video of the group performing “Make You Happy Tonight” plays out the story of a man being cajoled by his significant other to come to bed for some “sweet, sweet love.” While he evidently has every intention of making it to the bedroom, he never quite gets there, staying on at the console in search of the next save point.

Having been in similar positions myself, in the numerous death throes of my previous relationship, I’m inclined to say that this fictional guy probably has some deeper relationship problems behind his apparent preferral of videogames to sex.

The next videogame-related song I discovered by Tripod is “King of the Video Arcade”, about a guy who drew in the ladies with his prowess at Pac-Man during the 1980s, but now finds himself left behind in a world that has no appreciation for his public displays of skill at 20-year-old arcade games. The song evokes a nostalgia for the era of arcade gaming, something which I remember from my childhood and early teens, but which has now almost completely disappeared in Australia. I strongly suspect that there are few women in this world who’ve ever been entranced by expert Pac-Man play, but it’s nice to think back and dream…

Australian Gamer also has this interview with Scod, the band’s geekiest member (in a good way), in which he reminisces about videogaming on the C64, one of the great gaming computers of the 1980s. The piece is fairly banal, but another nice Tripod/videogaming interesection nonetheless.

Don’t forget to check out the two songs!

“Make You Happy Tonight” (streaming video)
“King of the Video Arcade” (mp3, skip past the talk)

Today GameGal posted a “Hall of Shame”　featuring E3 Booth babes in skimpy outfits, which prompted me to post the following comment on Joystiq:

I just wish that people (men and women both) would stop spouting tired feminist rubbish and doing things like making “halls of shame”　that make it seem like some terrible crime is being committed every time a guy looks desirously at a woman, or every time a woman puts on a bikini. That’s just biology. And there’s nobody being oppressed here, either, which seems to be the implication any time anyone objects to the “objectification”　of women. Every one of those booth-babes, I’m pretty sure, made a choice that they’d enter into a contract with an employer to put on a costume and prance around E3 in exchange for a fee. So long as they’re not being forced, GameGal, you ought not to have a problem with it. Unless of course you like prohibiting people from making their own choices…

Of course the “evidence of me turning into a cunt”　aspect is tongue in cheek. I personally don’t think my remarks are remotely cuntish. People’s sex should not be a big consideration in how we treat them, or how we think of the way they should be treated. And overall, the most important thing is that people be able to make their own choices. What, GameGal, do you propose we do if the existence of E3 booth babes is so shameful: ban them? Granted, booth babes (in their role, not in their persons) don’t really have a lot to offer the videogames industry, but what are you going to do about it? And who, honestly, do you expect to care, except for university educated feminists (female and male alike) who’ve spent several years being indoctrinated by lecturers and tutors at university who think that 90% of everything is a plot to oppress somebody?