This "chitownhostclub" thing is deader than dead.  I've folded it into my site by installing a wordpress blog here.

My new album, a mix of japanese sounds and electronic music will be released in 1 month on the free Bump Foot netlabel.  Subscribe to my new blog's "news" tag RSS if you want to be notified of its release.

Informal article.  Strangely enough I was the least enthused about the "chitown host club" blog idea when Kuma first described it, but fast-forward to now and it's basically become an extension of my website's old blog, especially since I've lost interest in doing the whole anime blog thing w/ regular updates and features.  Basically everything sucks, but Kannagi is the shit.  It's a Sony.  Got that new Ef and Clannad series too, and Toradora is surprisingly quite fun and well produced for an unremarkable-looking JC Staff show.  this season is the season of moe.


I wrote about Ghost in the Shell 2.0 in a previous article concerning the peril of abusing artistic mediums and (for example) mashing them up in revised "special editions" that jam new effects into old films.  Now that the damn thing is out, there are some serious issues with GitS 2.0 beyond animation aesthetics.  Much of its revisions attempt to make the film more visually and stylistically consistent with Innocence, by changing the films characteristic greens and blues to a saturated orange, and pasting overly flashy and animated CG graphics over several scenes.

Of course that shit doesn't work at all.  Jamming Mamoru Oshii circa 2008 into Oshii circa 1995 doesn't add up to a stronger artistic vision.  All of its new flashy Innocence-esque stylings only serve to delude the stylistic impact of the film.  There's a certain peril in revisiting old projects that I can talk about from a personal perspective.

I've tried it in the past, mostly with music projects.  I have made a few energetic, angsty songs that are kind of awesome in a way that my current output isn't.  More than once have I wanted to put the best of both worlds together.  The core problem is I'm not the same person i was 10 years ago.  I don't have the right mindset (the angst) to connect with my old work.  Without being able to do that, I won't be able to elevate the work to greater heights, because I no longer have it in me to create angsty work.

I often wonder if directors were tempted by money to revise earlier works.  Ridley Scott was in his director's cut of Alien-- the DVD's liner notes explicitly state that Ridley still considers the original cut the true "director's cut".  GitS 2.0 is so inane and gimmicky with its revisions, it has to be a vehicle to milk hardcore fans of the film, or Oshii has lost his mind.

I know not to approach old projects, because I know I can't connect with them.  Hayao Miyazaki circa 1983 is a pretty different Miyazaki compared to today's.  He did the right thing... not going back and revising his seminal work, Nausicaa.  Instead, he created a brand new film, Princess Mononoke, that parallels and complements his earlier work, leaving fans with two distinct, striking artistic visions rather than a watered-down mishmash.



Shit I'm working on:
1. McSmash & me dance music collaboration.  Techno & hiphop with funk guitars and basslines.  It's less retarded than I make it sound.
2. How to build a garage kit... under 10min video that demystifies the hobby and the process.  Filming's already done editing's underway, I just have to get Kuma to narrate the rest of it.
3. Original music video for McSmash's rock band.  It's a group project between all three of us.  I'm also doing some mixing for some of his band's recording sessions.
4. goddamn f---ing new album.  I'm so close to finishing it, but I'm so lazy too.  I want it to be out in a month but watch it not get done in another million years.  The core issue is the first couple tracks suck and I need to figure out how to make them... not suck.  It's difficult.

5. A zillion other things I dream of finishing, but I'll likely not get around to it.  The 4 above though will be finished since I'm already so deep in production.

The day needs to be twice as long

    An article I've written nearly a year ago.  Given recent ground-shaking events, I felt it would provide the most insight into politics now.

Why political ideology cannot address the complex issues of the present and future:

    American politics have been deadlocked on critical issues both big and small. What size and shape should our government be? How should we design a sustainable, efficient health care system? What combination of energy policies will be the most effective? What kind of family planning services and sex & health education should we offer? These polarizing issues will not be solved until we change the way we think about politics on a fundamental level.
    Whether the political philosophy you subscribe to is Republican or Democrat, Liberalism or Conservatism, Libertarianism or Socialism, religiously-based or your own personal philosophy, it cannot address the complex and multi-layered issues we face today. The fundamental flaw in political philosophy is just that-- it is philosophy. Philosophy is a logical framework that operates purely in the imagination. It does not answer to research and evidence. It has no responsibility to line up with reality. Its only responsibility is to work “on paper” in the realm of human imagination.
    Communism is a popular example of a political philosophy that inspired millions with its brave, emotionally-charged idealism. However, Communism failed spectacularly in practice due to its oversimplified assumptions of human nature. There are still some “true believers” of communism who say if only the conditions were more ideal, more pure, then perhaps the communist states would've succeeded in creating utopia. This highlights the disconnect between the simplified viewpoint of philosophy and the complex workings of the real world.
    On the near-opposite side of the spectrum sits libertarianism. Its “elegant” free-market logic and simplicity of government attracts a significant number of followers. Of course you can point to examples of (fiscal) libertarianism gone haywire-- China with its smog-filled cities, rampant exploitation and other nasty effects of uncontrolled capitalism, and Somalia which is not unlike Robert Nozick's vision of a budding Libertarian utopia when you get down to it, sans the unification of disparate factions that occurred in his imagination. Again, proponents will simply say that these states are too chaotic, not ideal, not pure; not in line with what exists in their imaginations. Rather, the lack of pure libertarianism in the world shows that so-called “elegant” philosophies cannot tackle the complexity and chaos of the real world. They can only function in the radical simplicity and uniformity of imaginary worlds.
    The performance of ideologically moderate governments in the real world still produces a mixed picture-- one of great successes and boneheaded policies (which often occur when research and evidence are rejected in policymaking). The reason why governments, particularly those of larger countries like the US, have difficulty in creating policies with the nuance and sophistication required to tackle intricate problems is due to the fact that political philosophy is the current mode in which issues are debated.
    This mode will ultimately become ineffective in the future. When genetic engineering and other technologies grant us the ability to change our biology, what relevance will our constitution hold in a future where all men are not created equal? How will the constitution protect individual freedoms and punish individual wrongdoers when technology will eventually allow us to merge and augment our personalities and memories? How will the state defend humanity against next-generation, decentralized WMDs like bio-engineered viruses and nanomachines?
    Far-out futurism aside, our right to free speech is already being stretched in the face of mass media conglomerates and unprecedented political campaigns approaching billions of dollars. The Founding Fathers drafted our fundamental rights in the days when “free speech” meant distributing a pamphlet. There was no way they could have conceived of the technologies we enjoy today, and the revolutionary technologies we will create in the future. Technological issues require solutions with a level of nuance not attainable in our current political mode of ideology.

    No politician or political party is going to pull the answers to complex modern-day issues right out of thin air. We're already struggling with the tremendously multi-layered problems of immigration, foreign policy, privacy, security, abortion and family planning, race issues, education, health care, environmental issues, and economic recession just to name a few. Bills with some of the sophistication to tackle these issues have been shot down by ideological polarization or watered down and compromised to the point of ineffectiveness.
    Ideology muddies the water in political discourse. In a culture where we're taught that an opinion is as valid as any other, whether they are stemmed in religion, ideology, or statistical wizardry, the end result is polarization on critical issues and an open door for wealthy, focused special interests to disproportionately influence the political process in a variety of covert ways. In order to clear the waters of corruption and polarization, ideology must be replaced by practical problem-solving as a basis for political discourse.
    One of the main problems with ideologies is that they are top-down in their approach. They rely on philosophers and politicians having “grand visions” about how the entire world operates. These grand visions do not even begin to address the intricate problems listed above with anything beyond a sweeping generalization of policy, because no man can legitimately claim to understand the deep inner workings of the world. What is needed is a bottom-up approach. Individual issues need to be researched, and their intricate solutions extrapolated from evidence. When policies are implemented, their performance should be further analyzed and refined over time in the face of new evidence. I know this solution sounds frighteningly faceless and 'scientific', but it is the only way to find adequate solutions to these problems, because the alternative is to pull the solution out of someone's imagination or religious scripture.

A Case for Practical Problem-Solving

    Science is, at its core, the pursuit of knowledge and understanding. Scientists study the world, and through the evidence gathered, create theoretical models like gravity to explain that evidence and predict future evidence. In the face of new evidence, theories are refined and updated, like gravity into Einstein's relativity and more recently into quantum & string theory. Through evidence and theoretical models, science produces an increasingly finer and nuanced picture of the deep inner workings of our world. This is the one and only system that has achieved this feat. It does not rely on a single philosopher that claims to understand the world. Instead, it is an intense collaboration of thousands of dedicated people in search of aspects of the truth, whatever those truths may ultimately be. This “faceless” but collaborative approach has been astoundingly successful in creating all kinds of liberating technology over the years and expanding our (theoretical) understanding of our world and beyond. The fruits of science and research have allowed us to remain healthy beyond the age of 30, challenge despotic governments such as the former Soviet Union with increasingly decentralized communication technologies, and publish articles on the Internet, which places the entirety of human knowledge at our fingertips.
    Many political philosophers have called the field of political philosophy dead, citing liberal democracy as the end of the line; the pinnacle of political design because it recognizes all essential human rights and needs. The last significant advance in political philosophy came from 17^th century philosophers like John Hobbes, Thomas Locke and Adam Smith, of whom the American Founding Fathers were greatly inspired by. Liberal democracy has spread all over the world to become measurably the most stable and effective form of government. Since then we've only seen the inapplicably far-out ideologies of communism, libertarianism, and the hopelessly lost-in-space writings of Friedrich Nietzsche come out of the field.
    One way to advance political philosophy and human civilization is to throw out the “philosophy” aspect altogether. Instead of relying on grand but inaccurate visions of civilization, let's instead use our human ability to solve problems by creating pools of evidence through dedicated research and “theoretical models” (policies) that appreciate how the world actually works. Much like how Einstein merged the theory of gravity, electromagnetism and time together into a new “space-time” framework, each iteration of a theoretical model will often merge existing models. Likewise, as more evidence is gathered and more policies are implemented in a problem-solving government, solutions can evolve into greater solutions. For example, a theory of health insurance can merge with other heathcare ideas to become a grand theory of health care, rich and nuanced enough to become the most effective and efficient healthcare system in the world. As more of these policies are consolidated, we will be working towards an all-new, all-encompassing “theory of government”, much like science's ultimate goal of finding a “theory of everything”. This design, whatever it may be, will have the potential to become the successor to liberal democracy after centuries of philosophical stagnation, because it is the only form of government that has the potential to solve all of our current problems and tackle the rapidly transforming nature of future technology.

Implementation and Despotism

    What will a research-based, problem-solving system of government look like? How will we transition to it? In short, I don't know. That question warrants a research project in itself, but I can tell you what it won't be. It won't be about granting The RAND Corporation seats in congress. It won't be about withholding voting rights behind an intelligence test prerequisite. It won't be about launching a conspiracy to sneak proponents incognito into political power to “strike” at the right moment and activate the new system. Ideas like these are recipes for despotism and exhibit an extreme pessimism of mankind. They represent a step back from what we currently have.
    Something to appreciate about our current form of government is the numerous anti-despotism safeguards in its design. The freedom of speech, the right to a jury trial, the balance of power, the separation of church and state, transparency, time-limited terms of office, elections and malleable amendments are just some of the examples of how the constitution prevents disconnected, despotic regimes from forming. Those rights and systems were created specifically for that purpose, not for their own sake. Even the right to bear arms was granted as a “last resort” measure of armed revolution by the chance our federal government ever turns sour. It was not granted for the sake of “ownership”, hunting or self-defense. The office of the president was a hotly contested aspect of the original constitution because the position was seen as overly despotic. Same story with lifetime supreme court appointments by presidents. Because the constitution was proposed in a republic environment, such compromises were necessary for its passing.
    Transparency and collaboration are critical measures in fighting despotism. Because each federal policy must acquire some minimum level of approval, power remains balanced and stability is maintained. The more transparency measures we have in our system, the less prone that system is to corruption and despotism. Therefore, the design of a research-based government will likely have to include these elements. It should be highly collaborative, highly transparent and accessible. Each article of evidence or each proposal of a theory and policy will undergo extensive public/peer review. The Internet should also be involved. Because of its unparalleled power in the rapid exchange of ideas, only an Internet-based system will be able to keep up with the quickening pace of technological development and the increasing sophistication of our country's problems. With transparency, collaboration and the Internet, am I proposing a WikiGovernment 2.0? Maybe. However it's just a loose idea. As I've said, design and implementation itself will require a serious research project, not a grand projection out of my imagination.

Will Such an Idea Be Accepted in America?

    America in particular has a strong phobia of logic and logical people. Atheists, engineers and scientists in comparison to other countries are practically absent from the government. Scientists and engineers in popular American fiction are commonly caricatured as mad or amoral, gambling away human lives for the sake of progress and achievement. Science itself is often presented as a horseman of the apocalypse through weapons of mass destruction and bio-engineered terrors. Why? Because “logic” throws out the emotional aspect of decision-making. At their core, logical systems are caricatured as faceless, godless machines, something that pushes us in an ambiguous direction that we can't foresee. It is the fear of the unknown at work. Political ideologies in comparison put leaders “in control” of the direction of civilization with strong, tangible, inspiring visions of the future. They package their visions in meaningful, emotional contexts.
    This cannot be helped, because half of all humans process the world on a fundamentally emotional level rather than a logical one. The seemingly counter-intuitive scientific method of politics will not be accepted by a significant majority of Americans without help. This cannot be changed because people rarely ever change themselves on such a fundamental level. Instead, what is needed are leaders who can translate the logical ideals of research-based legislation into emotional ideals. In other words, we need powerful inspirational leaders who can overcome the old phobias of logic and bridge emotional voters to the potential of politics based in practical problem-solving.

Where to Start?

    Two-party systems are an inevitable result of our our “first to the finish” electoral style. There will never be a viable third party. For a new party to to gain significant power, another party has to implode spectacularly, and due to the nature of two-party politics, the new party will eventually evolve to the one it replaced to even out the competitive ideological balance.
    Making a new party is not the road to take. Instead, we only have to support non-ideological politicians in order to push the emphasis in American politics towards problem-solving. For instance, our recent president-elect, Barack Obama, has been inspiring voters with a vision of a new technology-driven age of non-ideological, practical problem-solving by touting Internet-enabled transparency and grass-roots collaboration.
    It's within the realm of possibility to implement the next generation of political action and discourse. Arguably we are about to embark in that direction. Regardless of the performance of Obama which has yet to be seen, more proponents of logical, inclusive legislation will appear on the campaign trails of future election cycles as disconnected ideology increasingly fails to address modern-day issues. Support these candidates wherever they may appear.

    Here's a game/console project I worked on back in 2005.  We didn't get around to making a vid capture until now, heh.  The project was both an original arcade hardware called the Impulse and a playable game, Starcell XF-1.  I was tasked with creating the 64-color (fixed unified palette) pixel art and music for the game.
    For me, a lot of time went into learning the art of pixel art, which essentially meant figuring out how to create the illusion of detail, lighting and texture using a grid of colored blocks (pixels), so it was a pretty interesting project.  I also had to tackle things like ocean waves, clouds and animated explosions.  I hate how the final product over-used the crummiest of my three explosion animations though :'(  This is one of those cases of artist/coder disconnect I've heard so much about.
    I generated a lot of artwork and assets that we never bothered to put into the final game-- several enemies, a morphing boss, and a trio of characters on the left.  We originally envisioned having some Aero Fighters-style dialogues in the game.  The game is playable, but there's only like 3/4ths of a level.  Eventually the waves stop coming and you're left to scroll across the remainder of the background sheet until it enters a starfield loop.  It's just a case of a deadline coming and going and us not being motivated to work on it past that point, since it was just a fun school project/diversion.

Now we move on to the second part of this blog post which has nothing to do with the first part.  It's called...


Obama will win the election...
    ...for the same reason Bush won in 2004.  If I were a betting man, I'd place my money on Obama-- but anyone looking at the polls would tell you the same thing, right?  They are certainly sliding in Obama's favor.  As election day draws nearer, the math is looking increasingly grim for McCain unless he can perform some kind of miracle to turn everything around.
    However there's a more fundamental reason Obama will (most likely) win, and why he has gotten so far in the first place despite his youth and "inexperience"-- it has to do with something beyond extrapolating poll numbers.  It is the same reason Bush was able to unexpectedly take the nomination from Kerry against all odds and logic.  Obama and Bush play to the popular narrative.
    At a time when America was under attack from an ideological nemesis, the public was looking for someone who could both protect their "American" "values" and take the fight to the enemy.  Security and so-called values were the two major issues in the minds of voters, and the man who embodied those aspects best was not John Kerry, the lofty anti-war intellectual.
    Now the narrative is different.  The public wants a fresh face to break through the partisan bickering of the legistlature and unify an ideologically torn America, solve critical issues with comprehensive and nuanced plans, restore America's standing in the world with mindful foreign policies and bring a sense of closure and resolution to two wasteful wars.  The public wants to put the devistation of the past seven years behind them and lay the groundwork for a better tomorrow.
    Obama, a fresh face who embodies the brave idealism of the American dream, fulfills the narrative that an old war veteran and his spunky Alaskan sidekick can't.  This dichotomy could not be made more apparent in their first debate.  While Obama spoke of putting the unproductive policies of the past to rest in a vision for the future, McCain continually reached back in time.  In any other election, this tactic would have highlighted McCain's strengths.  However McCain only highlighted his incompatibility with today's popular narrative.  This was further exacerbated by his angry tirades of "Obama doesn't understand!" (get off my lawn!) when Obama clearly had a deep understanding of the subjects being discussed.
    While both candidates did well overall during the first debate, the public gravitated towards Obama as they viewed him as the candidate of the future.  Meanwhile McCain has already exhausted his ability to grab Obama's appeal as an agent of change, and the public has already grown weary of his campaign's stunts and surprises.  His campaign, along with much of his party, has come to represent the past in the minds of voters-- a past they want to start putting behind them come 2009.

    Does this mean Obama will win the election for sure?  Bush beat Kerry by a small margin.  If Karl Rove hadn't been there to charge America's culture wars and mobilize the Evangelicals for instance, Bush would not have won.  If Kerry had managed a campaign more resiliant to attack ads and silliness, Bush would not have won.  The fact that Bush, despite being far and away the worst choice for president by any measure, played into the popular narrative is what allowed him to stay competitive in the election.
    Obama now has the advantage of the popular narrative.  The public is on his side, and the McCain campaign is in jeopardy as their tactics prove increasingly ineffective in swaying popular opinion.  McCain also has a deficit both in the budget and scale of his campaign versus Obama's legions of volunteers and stockpiles of donated money, not to mention registered voters.  Unlike Kerry, Obama has everything going for him.  If things continue at their current trajectory, Obama will definitely take the election by a substantial margin.
    The only way Obama can lose is if something occurs in the election that discredits his narrative to the extent that McCain becomes the lesser evil.  If Obama can hold his alignment to the popular narrative for the remainder of this month, there's nothing that McCain do can otherwise to take the election from him.

I'm bored at work without anything to do, so what's a blog for right?

ART KARMA
Kuma is high on what he calls "art karma".  In the span of a month, he went from having no art supplies (he was planning on saving up for a $2000 Wacom Cintiq) to magically landing a free high-end airbrush & air compressor from his neighbor, a large set of high-end markers from some estate thing, and a brand new airbrush by going to the local chicago company that produced his old airbrush.  They sold him a $250 airbrush at-cost (~$30).  Also, his airbrush allows him to plug in his markers for use as a paint source.

GARAGE KITS
This man is going resin kit crazy with his new airbrush.  He's doing a Kushana (Nausicaa) for himself, a Kiyone (Tenchi Muyo Mihoshi Special OAV) for McSmash, and a Nakoruru (Samurai Shodown) for me.  While he brush-painted kits, gundams, capsule & PVC toys in the past, this time I'm forcing him to document the whole process for the sake of this blog.  His paint style is somewhat unusual in that he likes to emphasize gritty, worn textures-- he learned several paintbrush techniques in order to achieve those surfaces.  It'll be interesting to see what he does with Kushana in particular.

HOIHOI-SAN
is a single-volume comic series, a PS2 game and a very short anime OAV.  In the near future, insects are immune to pesticides, resulting in the need for household bug-killing robots.  A popular robot model series called "Hoihoi-san" is taking Japan by storm.  It's a cute, doll-like combat robot with swappable costumes, weapons and accessories.

The comic chronicles the Hoihoi-san phenomenon through the eyes of a hopeless fan, a retailer, the fandom itself during a fan convention as well as the inner turmoil of the company that designs and produces the household appliance.

WHY AM I WRITING about such an inane-sounding series?  It's a distinctly Japanese comic that lightly parodies their culture of rabid consumerism.  The comic often highlights how the fanboy protagonist blows his wages on the latest Hoihoi-san doo-dad, as well as pays for costly repairs and replacements as he damages and otherwise bricks the firmware of his toy.

The comic also parodies consumerism from an industry perspective as Hoihoi-san execs pitch concepts for accessories as well as deal with their competitor's "Combat-san"-- in one scene, the fanboy buys a Combat-san dreaming of a bug-killing tag team, only to later discover that his Hoihoi-san disposed of it overnight.

The comic also follows the characters as they attend a Hoihoi-san convention, where they buy and sell unofficial home-made accessories and costumes.  Anyway it's a cute comic series... the anime is basically a fan suppliment for it, which animates a few of the scenes in the comic.  The PS2 game has you playing from the perspective of the Hoihoi fanboy, blowing your wages on the latest weapons and frivilous costumes (too bad she can't fight in that kimono I saved up for).

The whole mini-franchise is a simultaneous parody and celebration of Japanese consumerist culture.  The original comic has been published in the US, and there's a new spinoff being published in Japan.  I might get it commissioned for an unofficial translation at some point... dunno yet.

3D PRINTING & HOIHOI-SAN
This is all tentative, since I only end up doing a fraction of the stuff I plan to do.  Shapeways is a highly accessible 3D printing service, where you send them a 3D model (i.e. polygons), specify a size and the materials to use, and they send you back your printed, prototype product.  While Shapeways is new, 3D printing services have been around for a while for use in prototyping.  I often wonder if any garage kit (resin kit etc.) hobbyist creators in Japan make use of that technology.

Something I want to do eventually is model up a pair of Hoihoi-san kits-- one static statue, and another movable figure along the lines of Figma, Revoltech etc. toys with all the accessories and whatnot.  Kuma's down with painting it, and if we get ambitious, we can mold & sell a whole bunch of them (maybe even fly to a Japanese convention to do so?)... anyway  I'm not going to get started on that for a while though, since I have a backlog of other projects to finish.

WHEN GAMING FEELS LIKE A SPORT
I've been playing a lot of Soulcalibur 4 and Wipeout HD lately.  These two are purely brainless action games.  I've been macroing training on them so hard though, I'm getting to the point where the things that hold me back from (say) making a gold medal lap in Wipeout are purely psychological.  I get too hyped up during the critical home stretch and I fly right off the track or stack up critical errors.

Not that I have much of a point to make here.  It just amuses me that I feel like some kind of olympic athelete playing them, where only my nerves are holding me back from something I should otherwise be able to do well.  It's like damn, I need to read about pressure management techniques in order to get any better at them... Wipeout in particular.

    Freedom of speech, and how much?  Taxes & welfare?  Gun control?  Gay marriage?  Torture?  Eavesdropping?  Separation of church and state-- just what kind of separation?  Rights?  What is a "right", exactly?

    There's a lot of confusion in public discourse over these critical issues.  There's even a lot of confusion over what, fundamentally, Republicans and Democrats stand for.  While it may be easy in the spirit of tolerance to say "oh, everyone has a valid opinion about (say) gun control", many of these opinions are actually not valid in terms of the United States Constitution.  This is not a partisan article and I will not be touting my own opinion.  Instead I will be establishing a context to ponder political issues, which may sometimes arrive at a particular answer, or lead to a specific question.

    What the Constitution is All About
    If you can recall back to history class, many of the original colonists came to America in order to escape religious persecution-- many of whom were "protestants", i.e. in "protest" of the highly centralized religious authority of the Catholic Church.  The Declaration of Independence was written in protest of the tyrannical rule of King George III.  It followed that the United States government would be fashioned in such a way to prevent tyranical rule and religious/political conflicts like The Thirty Years' War.  The Constitution was designed after state-of-the-art political ideology fresh from Enlightenement philosophers.
    What made liberal democracy different from other forms of government was its inherent anti-despotism safeguards.  In other words, the Constitution was designed from top to bottom to prevent the formation of detached, tyrannical rulers and groups.  The Constitution established this by arranging a balance of powers, an electoral republic, allowing levels of transparency and granting certain rights to the people.

    What are "rights" anyway?
    When asked to define it, people tend to give a highly nebulous description of needs and entitlements.  Instead, rights define what the government cannot do.  The government cannot encroach upon your "right" to openly criticize the government, or your right to vote.  Without those protections, the government would be able to oppress its people with ease.  These rights are defined in the Bill of Rights and its subsequent amendments.  In other words, rights limit the power of government.  By doing so, it prevents the government from becoming despotic.

With this context in place, let's reconsider these constitutional issues:

    Banning Gay Marriage via a Constitutional Amendment
    It is literally impossible for such an amendment to be passed, because it expands the power of government (to oppress a certain group of people) rather than limiting it.  It is simply outside the design of the Bill of Rights.  Why did George W. Bush forward such a futile amendment?  Political points.  That's all.
    As for the issue of gay marriage itself, it is indeed a federal issue (as opposed to a state issue) since marriages and civil unions must be uniformly recognized across state lines.  Leaving it up to the states is not an acceptable solution.  However, how far should government power extend in dictating the structure of American families?  There are laws against polygamy for instance.  However, would further legislation against the much more visible gay population over-expand the government's ability to oppress its people?  To what extent should a government dictate the lives of its citizens is an issue to think about, because like most constitutional issues, it is a matter of balance and trade-off.  In this case, is it worth the expansion of government power to prevent  gay couples from filing joint taxes?  If it's about the idea of a gay family in general, one should look into credible research regarding how well gay couples fare in raising children versus heterosexual couples, and contrast it with the danger of expanding the government's ability to dictate the personal lives of its citizens.  You will arrive at your answer or perhaps, deeper questions.

    The Separation of Church and State
    In order to protect religious freedom, the state cannot endorse a religion in particular, and cannot use religious justifications to draft laws.  This is to prevent theocratic despotism and religious persecution from occurring in the US.  Keep in mind that this system was devised by the religious in order to protect their religions in the aftermath of The Thirty Years' War.  Instead, laws must be logically justified.  Any discussion of politics must take place in the realm of facts, research and logic rather than nebulous religious justification.  State-run classrooms cannot endorse a particular religion or teach creationism.  Such powers are simply outside the scope of the US government.  The first amendment in the Bill of Rights begins,
    "Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof."

    The Right to Keep and Bear Arms
    Despite what the politically-charged Supreme Court says, the right to bear arms is actually one of the many anti-despotism safeguards in the US constitution.  It is explicitly stated that, in the event the government becomes despotic, citizens should be armed and capable of toppling it.  In a sense, it is the final safeguard of the founding fathers' grand experiment.  However, people love to twist its definition to "ownership", "recreation" and "personal defense"-- definitions that have nothing to do with the constitution.
    Is it still relevant today, in a world of jet fighters and cruise missiles?  It was when the rifle was the most powerful weapon in the world, and when individual states held more power and independence.  The relevancy of certain rights is always an issue to think about, as many of them show their age.  In the future, warfare will increasingly become decentralized, mechanized and miniaturized.  In the rapidly approaching age of robotic warfare and (eventually) invisible nanomachine "smartdust" weapon systems, the defined ability of people to rise up against its despotic government may have to be updated to modern relevance.

    Terrorists & the Torture Question
    We are living in a strange time when the government can deem someone a "terrorist" and circumvent one of the first laws ever drafted against the tyrannical rule of a king-- Habeas corpus.  The right to a trial has been elaborated in several amendments.   However, is it worth allowing the government to circumvent these fundamental rights in order to detain (supposed) terrorists indefinitely, refuse the right to a trial and engage in systematic torture?  The US government of recent has used such nebulous justifications against some US and European citizens.  Constitutionally, this is a very dangerous pattern that must be examined critically.  Like many constitutional issues, this issue poses a trade-off between state security and the expansion of government power.

    Warrantless Wiretapping of Phone Calls and Internet Communications
    By any measure, this has ultimately been found to be a breach of the fourth amendment:
    "The right of the people to be secure [...] against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, [...] the persons or things to be seized."
    On one hand, the advent of George W. Bush's warrantless wiretapping program may highlight the obsolescence of the 4th amendment in the age of rapid, decentralized communications like cell phones and the internet.  On the other hand, warrantless (read: with no oversight) wiretapping sets a dangerous precedent in allowing the government to spy on its citizens without enforced limits.  Again this is a security trade-off question.  The answer will likely come in the form of some compromise, such as a system with power-balance, oversight and transparency built-in, along with defined limits (an internet bill of rights?)

    The Freedom of Speech
    Is it obsolete?  While it protected our freedom to criticize the government in the age of pamphlets, it is now being stretched in the face of mass media conglomerates and mega-million political campaigns.  Efforts have been made to limit campaign donations and expenses... however, does it encroach on the freedom of speech-- the ability of a person to spread his or her message through information channels?  Do these freedoms necessarily have to be limited, and is it worth expanding the power of government to do so?  Aspects of the freedom of speech will become more hotly contested as technology increasingly reduces the material world to digital information, and expands our ability to "speak" to millions simultaneously.

    Is Our Constitution Going to Become Obsolete?
    Futurists project that within 30-40 years, we will be able to augment our intelligence with computers and take control of our body's biological processes via nanomachines as well as recode our DNA.  Eventually, a la Ghost in the Shell, we will be able to upload and merge our intelligences digitally.  What bearing will our constitution have in a world where all men are not created equal, much less are actual men?  How can it protect individual freedoms when the individual can no longer be defined?  Our constitution will, at some point in the future, become obsolete on a fundamental level.  In a world of accelerating change, there will be a need for a new configuration of government that is less centralized, quicker to respond and more adaptable.  I may dare to write about this in a future article.


    In the early days, the federal government was more akin to libertarianism.  Its power was tremendously limited and its design minimalistic-- no safety nets, no nothing.  After economic collapses around the Civil War and the Great Depression, the public clamored for a larger government, which lead us to our current size and scope of government with all of its laws, programs & trimmings, with a much more powerful president.  Both Republicans and Democrats seek to expand the powers of government in different ways.

    Republicans
    The Republicans seek a more, well, "republic" form of government, giving less direct power to the people and more decision making authority to its elected leaders.  Republicans are very ideologically-oriented, guided by political philosophy going back all the way to Aristotle.  The Republican party, to this day, seeks to use the power of law to forward Aristotelian ethics and values, currently under the guise of Christianity.  At their best, Republicans use philosophical and logical frameworks like capitalist theory to tackle issues and set a coherent course for the country.  At their worst (GWB), their emphasis on "republic" power can create detached and overly despotic laws and hierarchies of power, as well as seem out of touch with the people and issues due to their love of ages-old ideology, free markets and big military.

    Democrats
    The Democrats have a very nebulous and ill-defined ideology-- the world is an unfair place where people are born into different positions of privilege, so it is the job of the government to make the world a fair and just place for everyone.  Democrats are champions of federal programs, safety nets and welfare.  Without a solid ideology to guide them, Democrats are more keen on current issues, and seek to solve problems using government programs and regulation.  It rings true that "the media (and as an extension, the truth) has a liberal bias" because Democrats do not see the world through the abstract frameworks of old ideology.  True to their name, Democrats also champion "power to the people".  At their best, they tackle modern issues with the brute force of government.  At their worst, they may seem disorganized, clinging on to certain sensationalistic issues and creating fruitless and wasteful government programs while over-regulating the free market.
   

    As always, the best solutions lie somewhere in between the extremes... in this case, away from the outdated or underdeveloped ideologies of both parties.  In this election cycle, we have two relatively centrist, less ideological presidential candidates.  What does the world need right now, practical non-ideological problem-solving, or instead..... whatever it is exactly McCain & Palin purport to do?  (I'm not quite sure actually, their campaign seems to reverse its core messages like once a week now, as well as borrow themes from their opponent's campaign on a regular basis.)

    Yes sorry, we've reached the end of the article and my non-partisan tone is already breaking down.  If you want to know what Obama's about politically, download the audiobook version of Audacity[...].  He's interesting in that he's not ideologically bent or paranoid of free markets... he's much more practical and centrist than his opponent makes him out to be.
    If you're a fan of the "horse race" so to speak, or otherwise want to demystify the mysterious mind of the American voter, I'd recommend checking CSM's front page, Patchwork Nation project and Vote Blog everyday.  (CSM is not a gospel paper!)

And yes I'm writing an anime article thank god.  Hopefully it'll be the next one.  It's just taking a while since I have to seriously dissect three rather heady series.  End of Evangelion, here I come...

    The failed promise of next-gen games, or: An exceptionally critical trip down memory lane!  Look at how long this damn article is.  I split it up into three parts--

1.   a history of simulation in games 2.   concept games that illustrate the potential of dynamic worlds and storytelling 3.   the difficulty of creating dynamic games

Simulation in Games

    In the period of time between 1992 and 2004, we've seen exponential gains in graphics technology, as some games transitioned out of the realm of iconic abstraction and into the realm of realism for the first time.  However the escalation of graphics technology proved to be a stagnating force upon the innovation of games, particularly during the late 90s to the present day.  As budgets expanded first into the hundreds of thousands and now into the tens of millions, innovation was compromised as "triple-A" titles were obliged to capture massive sales in an underdeveloped, poorly understood market.  Similarly, as development teams expanded into the hundreds, the young industry suffered the growing pains of mismanagement, causing many over-ambitious projects to fall short of their goals and overshoot their budgets and schedules.
    This created a conflicted atmosphere of simultaneous hype and pessimism in the game fandom.  As the graphical sophistication of games continued to increase, it was hard not to notice the (sometimes humorous) disconnect between the photorealistic graphics and the circa-1993 gameplay mechanics & AI of modern games.  Gamers, again and again, latched on to the "next big thing" that promised dynamic gameplay mechanics and living worlds populated by sophisticated AIs... However the vast majority of these games fell short of their goals due to simple mismanagement or an obligation to "dumb down" their product for a supposedly dumbed-down mass market.  All of the conceptually exciting game projects of late have shared one feature in common, something that has the potential to catapult gameplay out of the realm of predictable & "pre-scripted", and into the world of dynamic & "alive"-- simulation.

1992's Ultima Underworld, released just before Wolfenstein 3D, was ahead of its time.  The studio would later create the innovative Thief and System Shock series as well as inspire games like Deus Ex, Splinter Cell, Bioshock and The Elder Scrolls

    A good number of games I'm going to talk about are single-player first person games, because they try to approximate human experience in a more direct manner by allowing you to look through the eyes of your game character.  These games, more than others, attempt to reach for realism instead of abstraction, thus making them better examples to illustrate the promise & peril of the tech-driven "western" game industry.  I will talk about RTS, RPG and "sim" games too though.
    It can be argued that two lineages were created in 1992 by two games: Ultima Underworld and Wolfenstein 3D.  Ultima Underworld, created by what would later become Looking Glass Studios, was an attempt to create a realistic 3D dungeon crawler.  While not fundamentally dissimilar to the dungeons crawlers that came before it, Underworld consolidated the primitive abstraction of the genre into a convincing 3D environment that can be navigated and manipulated at will with a drag-and-drop interface.  The player could pick up objects, talk to NPCs, fight monsters and manipulate the world with his simulated mouse-driven hand.

    Wolfenstein 3D was originally conceptualized as a sophisticated stealth action game, granting players the ability to knock out guards and steal uniforms.  During the prototyping stage, they found the game to be too convoluted for its own good.  They proceeded to whittle down what they had into a simplistic fast-paced shooting game.  "Wolf3D" allowed the player to run around a (2D in nature) labyrinth and hyperactively gun down nazis while collecting ammo, keys and powerups.  The immensely popular game launched a genre of "first person shooters" (FPS) and set many of the conventions of the genre.  Its wildly popular successor, Doom, added gritty Alien-esque techno-horror environments and grotesque monsters to the list.
    The genre of fast-paced FPS games created by Wolf3D and Doom saw only negligible gameplay advancements throughout the next decade, despite the rapid advance of graphics technology and the scale of levels.  1996's Duke Nukem 3D ("Duke3D") popularized semi-interactive, semi-destructible environments along with featuring an array of offbeat weapons (e.g. the shrink ray, which can be used against yourself if reflected off a mirror).  1998's Half-Life popularized the extensive use of "scripted" (pre-programmed) events in game levels, recreating the feel of a Hollywood film... or a Disneyland ride.  This emphasis would later be exploited in the infinity of WWII-themed FPS games created in the early to mid 2000s.  However, most of the advances in the FPS genre would be cosmetic.  1996's Quake brought realistic, pre-calculated lighting ("shadow mapping") to the table-- however, the advanced technology had no bearing on the core run & gun gameplay.
    Some attempts were made to advance the FPS genre.  1996's Strife integrated NPC interaction along with occasional story choices and sidequests in a non-linear, law-enforced city setting.  1998's Battlezone attempted to merge vehicular combat, FPS, and the real-time strategy genre into a rather nutty but critically acclaimed game.

    The Thief game series launched a quiet revolution in the FPS world.  While mildly successful financially, enabling two sequels, the 1998 game popularized the use of "stealth elements" in the FPS genre (for better or worse).  In the game, you play the role of Garrett the thief in a medieval steampunk fantasy world.  The game questioned fundamental aspects of the genre by making the avoidance of direct confrontation the central game mechanic.  As you broke into mansions, prisons, cathedrals and tombs, you employed your arsenal of flash bombs, firecrackers, gas bombs, torch-snuffing water arrows and your KO-inducing blackjack to distract and slip past security.  Much of the storytelling took place in-game, as you poured through diaries and eavesdropped on numerous conversations.  While you do carry a sword and some arrows, lethal measures are often considered a last resort, as the screams of combat and the inevitable bloodstains that result draw attention towards your relatively vulnerable character.
    This new approach changed the way players interacted with their environment.  By putting the player in charge of how and when confrontations occur, the emphasis shifted from twitch-action to decisionmaking.  The shadow-mapping techniques first showcased in Quake suddenly found a purpose in the stealth gameplay of Thief.  In-game sound effects, also considered cosmetic in the past, became a way to locate hostiles and vice versa.  Some of the more tense parts of the game have you creeping across loud marble or metal floors.
    Rather than having the player simply respond to hordes of onrushing enemies, Thief asked the player questions and forced him to make constant risk assessments based on his environment.  What's my visibility?  What are the patrol patterns of the hostiles in the area?  Is it worth trying to blackjack this guard?  Will I get caught if I walk across this marble floor?  Will I be noticed if I step out of the shadows?  Should I use my final gas arrow or save it for a rainier day?  Where can I hide if I get caught?
    While graphics and art/design tend to be purely cosmetic in a typical shooter, Thief demanded that the player be situationally aware at all times and examine every bit of the environment.  Since looting valuables was part of the game, searching every nook & cranny was something you did with pleasure.  The end result of the shift from combat to evasion was a greater sense of immersion, because the environment mattered.  Instead of a Disneyland ride with gun-toting zombies to shoot in a mockup setting, the world of Thief was a living, breathing place full of odd details to notice, stories to uncover, shadows to hide in and conversations to eavesdrop on.
    What set apart Thief from, say, 1990's innovative stealth-action game, Metal Gear 2, was its approach to simulated realism.  While MG2 had impressive, creative gameplay mechanics for a 1990 game, its abstract  top-down perspective and approach to its game world persisted in three Solid sequels until it was somewhat revamped in 2008.  Metal Gear's enemies spawned and respawned when you revisited an old area or got spotted.  Many of the game's critical moments were scripted.  In contrast, Thief's world was persistent and nonlinear.  Often the mission briefing simply told you to find and steal a certain valuable hidden somewhere in a gigantic mission area.  The AI NPCs could be toyed with, distracted, engaged in melee combat or stealthily killed.  Once KO'ed or killed, the body had to be hidden away from the patrol paths of the remaining security detail and other staff/residents.  Metal Gear's gameplay focus was always to get you from point A to point B alive in order to view the next cinematic cutscene.  It never mattered what you did in between.  In Thief, each mission unleashed you, the intruder, into someone else's private property.  The property became your house to play with and explore as you saw fit.
    The living world in each mission zone became every player's favorite aspect.  For the sequel, they drastically reduced the number of zombie-infested tomb-raiding missions and stuck to breaking & entering.  Thief is one example of how one aspect in particular can greatly enhance the game: artificial intelligence-- the simulation of, well, intelligence.  Rather than scripting, Half-Life style, what each actor will do the second Player One enters each and every room, Thief unleashed you into an environment full of other living actors to spy on and toy with.

    There have been numerous other projects that have touted aspects of simulation to capture the imagination of players (and the hype of the market).  However most of those projects have failed to fully realize their ambitious goals.  Among them:

    Jurassic Park: Trespasser (1998) was a highly ambitious project with a long, troubled production.  When the game was released, many of its ambitious aspects were unfinished and glitchy.  The fact that it ran poorly on even the best systems ensured mediocre sales and scathing reviews in the face of its wild hype.  In the game, your game character crash-lands on the fictional "Site B" island in the world of Jurassic Park-- the original testing facility for dinosaur cloning.  When you arrive, the labs are abandoned and dinosaurs rule the island.  There were two visionary objectives in this game, both of which relied on simulation:
    1. Trespasser wanted to be a physically-based game.  There were no HUD elements or interface graphics at all (save for the morphing tatoo on your body that indicated your health).  Ammo was indicated by your character guessing the ammo count of the weapon in hand ("Almost empty!").  You could only carry a couple objects/weapons at a time, as opposed to the limitless arsenal at the disposal of a typical FPS character.  With the mouse, you literally drove the hand of your game character.  You used the hand to open doors, press buttons, wield firearms, and pick & throw objects.  Instead of presenting an easy HUD reticle, you actually had to aim down the sight of the gun, an unusually realistic mechanic for the time.  The game featured an ambitious physics engine.  Its physically-based puzzles involved levers, crate-stacking (kill me), and the occasional opportunity to knock a weak structure over a hostile dinosaur.  This predated Half-Life 2's much-touted physics gimmickry by almost a decade.  Rather than using pre-made walk and attack animations, the dinosaurs had AI-driven, physically simulated bodies.
    In practice though, the physics were glitchy, the stacking puzzles were nightmarish, and the virtual hand control was extremely awkward.  Often, your arm would get caught in doorways and tight spaces, causing you to drop your firearm.  The physically-based dinosaur animation was downright goofy to watch.  Overall though, the physics engine did serve to make the game more immersive, if not somewhat frustrating.  It made you aware of how cumbersome your game character's body was and conveyed the sheer bulkiness of large firearms particularly in tight spaces, an immersive break from the typical "phantom gun attached to a floating camera" feel of  FPS games.
    2. Trespasser aimed to drop you smack in the middle of a simulated prehistoric ecosystem, with each inhabitant's AI governed by simulated moods like fear and hunger.  In other words, not all carnivores were out to get you.  If there was a juicer herbivore around, they might go after him instead.  Some hostile dinos could be dissuaded with a couple of shotgun blasts.  In addition, the environments in the game were gigantic-- big outdoor environments populated with trees and buildings complete with real-time dynamic shadows.  An innovative dynamic billboard placeholder system was created to keep the game's performance up.  Anyone reading a preview would imagine a non-linear survival game in a persistent world, populated with herds of dinosaurs with simulated needs and goals, forming up into hunting groups to take each other (and you) down... just like in the movie!
    Of course the final product was nothing like that.  The dinos were stupid and predictable at best, barely elevating them above the sophistication of a typical FPS baddie, and the environment was linear and segmented, complete with invisible walls.  Trespasser, while neat and ahead of its time (to the point where you needed a computer from the future to play it), ultimately failed its promise of an adventure in a grand, simulated world.

    Assassin's Creed (2007) was a game you either found to be fantastic, or fantastic for the first few hours until it fell into excessive repetition and tedium.  While being a stealth action game with a more than passing resemblance to Thief, the game took on a completely different environment.  Assassin's Creed's stealth aspects relied on your ability to blend into the hustle and bustle of a large city, track down your prey, strike from the crowd and escape in the ensuing chaos.  Or, at least, that's how it was supposed to work.  Either way there were two exciting things about this game, both based on AI and simulation...
    1. Simulated crowds.  The game gave you the impression that you're smack in the middle of a film epic like... well... specifically Kingdom of Heaven.  No doubt.  Crowds of commoners, beggars, merchants, thugs, priests and protesters flowed throughout the dense urban mission areas of the game.  As you wove and pushed your way through the crowds, careful not to bump into anyone that would cause a commotion, you used your character's simulated intuition to locate targets (although this intuition aspect was abstracted into a HUD minimap and other elements).  As you pounced and drew first blood, the citizens would scream and scatter as nearby guards rushed in to investigate.  Occasionally, rebellious citizens would aid in the battle by distracting the guards.  After the deed was done, you could blend into a nearby group of monks or escape to the rooftops to find a hiding place, as law enforcement investigated and searched the streets below in the wake of simulated chaos.
    2. Much of the game character's acrobatics were simulated through AI and procedural animation.  All a player had to do was hold down a couple of "free run" buttons and watch as his game character scaled buildings, lept from rooftops, swung from rafters and dove off buildings into soft stacks of hay.  In any other game, such a task would have been a maddening trial-and-error jumping challenge.  In Assassin's Creed, the player drives an AI that accomplishes all the hard work of knowing how to climb, jump, land and swing on complex, unpredictable surfaces (much of the game's impressive animation was procedurally generated during runtime as opposed to using 100% canned animation).  This made flying through the city both worry-free and exhilarating, with a minimal number of show-stopping deaths and injuries due to a mistimed jump.
    While the animation and control system was indeed impressive and fully realized, the same cannot be said about the crowd simulation.  While Assassin's Creed presented many "blend into the crowd" modes, they rarely found much of a gameplay purpose, due to the fact that there were no long-term repercussions to causing a commotion.  You'd think after killing the 30th guard in a sector, after haphazardly running and bumping your way through crowded streets, after flamboyantly spidermanning your way across the city all day, the law enforcement detail would have so many search parties after you, your ability to "blend in" would be entirely compromised and the mission aborted.  This was not the case, so the numerous stealth elements seldomly found gameplay use, and the crowds had negligible effects on the core gameplay.  Most of the game involved haphazardly racing from one city checkpoint and predictable minigame to the next, and assassination could be achieved just by running up to your target with a sword and slashing your way to victory.  In other words, much of the game had little strategizing and risk-assessment possibilities, and the crowd simulation was rarely ever more than cosmetic.  Rather than being an adventure in a dynamic city simulation, the game was little more than a series of tedious hoops for the player to jump through.  The "virtual memory-reconstruction experience" context of the game's story, while brilliantly covering for the game's disjointed gameplay and things like deaths and reloads, also made it difficult to care about the world and your actions (i.e. it subtracted from immersion).
    For those who have played the game: what tipped me off of its unrealized vision was the fact that, during horse-riding segments of the game, you are given a few "blend in with the crowd" options that seemingly have no gameplay purpose whatsoever (what stops you from racing all the way to the next city?).  The development team probably had to cut their ambitions short to make a deadline.  That, and the repetitive nature of pre-assassination "investigation" smacks of underdevelopment.

    Remember when I said there were two lineages created in 1992?  RPGs were brought into the realistic 3D realm with Ultima Underworld.  However, both the RPG and shooter lineages of first-person games have a lot of overlap.  Trespasser for instance featured a very Underworld-like virtual hand interface, while Thief and Strife showcased progressive RPG-esque storytelling and nonlinear environments.  The Ultima Underworld games lead directly into the sci-fi horror shooter/RPG hybrids, System Shock (1994) and System Shock 2 (1999).  Both of these games integrated aspects of RPGs into the shooter genre-- nonlinear level design, interactive inventory items, modifiable armor and weapons with various attributes, customizable character development, "spell"-casting, storytelling (via diaries and other things discovered throughout the labyrinth), and hackable systems like turrets and vending machines to break up the typically brain-dead FPS formula.  System Shock 2 in particular, using the Thief engine and sharing its environmental emphasis, is personally one of the scariest and immersive games I've ever played.
    This hybrid FPS lineage also encapsulates games like the Deus Ex series, Vampire Bloodlines, Mass Effect and Bioshock.  Bioshock in particular is worth discussing because it was, at first, touted to be a game based in a simulated world.

    Bioshock (2007).  "[At Irrational Games (now known as 2K Boston)], we think emergence is the future," touts the director in a preview that discusses a very early concept of Bioshock, meant to be a successor to System Shock 2.  The concept describes an abandoned WWII-era laboratory ruled by an "AI ecology" of experimental creatures harvesting genetic material, working together and fighting for survival in a type of food chain.  The ecosystem would be composed of harvesters, predators and protectors.  Their idea, inspired by nature documentaries, was designed to promote so-called "emergent" gameplay, where the player decides what to do to survive in a dynamic world.  This vision highlights a break from dominant game design thinking-- the kind where the designer sets up a series of pre-determined hoops and holds the player's hand through them.  Instead, Bioshock would allow players to write their own stories, so to speak.  Unfortunately, this game was not realized.  In a "post-mortem" analysis of the production, the director discusses the disconnect between the game originally touted in early previews and the final product.
    In other interviews, it was more bluntly stated that they felt pressure to produce sales to match the game's triple-A budget.  Rather than being a successor to the System Shock / Thief lineage, the end result was a fast-paced "Doom clone" with a lot of funky, Duke3D-like weapons with environmental effects (e.g. lightning  zaps water, fire melts ice and catches oil, etc.), a few tricks right out of System Shock (hacking, spellcasting), and some vague remnants of the original project ("big daddies" and "little sisters").  However, the simulated ecology, the dynamic world and therefore the "emergent" gameplay was nowhere to be found, despite being the very things that put the game on the map in the first place.  There were no decisions to be made, only scores of generic, predictable baddies to be killed in a world of linear hoops.

    On one end of the Ultima Underworld lineage lie hybrid FPS games described above.  On the other end are 3D CRPGs, more along the lines of, well, the Ultima series except in 3D.  Ultima 7 and 8, while being isometric games, were interesting in the degree of freedom they give the player to manipulate the game world, despite the fact that everything in the world was meticulously placed and scripted in advance.
    In Ultima 7, a friend & I spent a day parading around in a wagon we managed to mount a cannon on in an attempt to perform medieval drive-bys on monsters, and otherwise attempt to creatively kill Lord British.  In Ultima 8, players will nostalgically recount the ways they've managed to break into people's residences and otherwise be up to no good.  Both of these games, just by their sheer scale and meticulous non-linear world design, challenged  players to discover the ways of the fantasy world and creatively subvert it.

    The Elder Scrolls II: Daggerfall (1996) was among the more ambitious games to come out of the first-person RPG lineage.  Daggerfall offered... not as much a dynamic world as a generated world.  The game offered an astoundingly gigantic game world filled with a countless number of cities, towns, islands, dungeons and castles.  Crowds of people walked the city streets by day while thieves stalked the streets at night.  There were plenty of guilds to join-- murdering or stealing, provided it didn't land you in prison, would grant you invitations to the Dark Brotherhood and Thieves Guild for instance.  In other words, the game gave you the freedom to travel a vast, generated world. performing good or evil, getting on a faction's good or bad side, participating in or ignoring the main storyline/quest, concocting original potions and writing original spells, buying houses and boats and horses and so on.  Of course the downside to this generated world was-- it's generated.  The dungeons in particular were no fun to explore due to their often nonsensical design, and the rest of the world, along with its guild quests, was repetitive and arbitrary.  Still, Daggerfall gave gamers an exciting amount of scale and freedom for the time in a 3D game.
    TES III: Morrowind (2002), despite being my favorite in the series, took a break from simulated, generative worlds and instead opted for a densely packed hand-crafted world (at the cost of scale).  It was fun to walk in a random direction just to see what you'd run into provided it wasn't a Cliff Racer.

    TES IV: Oblivion (2006) seemed to go back to the roots with a fractal-heavy world, this time with vague aspects of simulation and some degree of AI.  However, the game suffered from a lack of vision and integration all over its production.  Oblivion is an interesting project to look at as a case study for a game project gone subtly wrong.  It was obviously a tremendously large project with a terrifying amount of graphical assets, a substantial amount of middleware, and hours of voice acting in a world populated with cities, dungeons, guilds and quests.
    Despite its scale and middleware, it suffered from quality control and integration issues, along with a general lack of vision.  Just to name a few things, the procedurally generated forest terrain (brought to you by SpeedTree), while impressive in promo videos & screenshots, carried no interactivity and served no purpose whatsoever in the game.  Similarly the game's random forest wildlife (deer, monsters etc.) had no purpose either.  I mean, if the game simulated any survival aspects like health and hunger, then the trees would make nice shelter from the sun and rain, and maybe I'd climb one to see if I could spot any deer to hunt.  With Oblivion's Point-of-Interest teleportation system, and the fact that there was hardly anything interesting to see in the game's generated landscape in between POIs, gave the player even less reason to embrace the great outdoors.  The surprise-free, cookie cutter dungeons didn't help.
    The game also touted some advanced AI.  Guards would patrol outside looking for monsters to kill.  People would go about their scripted daily lives from sun-up (to work in the fields or tend a store) to sun-down (back to bed).  While it was somewhat interesting to observe the mundane lives of the citizens, with one quest even enticing players to do so, the system otherwise served no gameplay purpose.  Perhaps if there was some underlying dynamic economy to the game, which would give some kind of AI motivation for the townspeople to work, then such a system could be justified, and would allow the player to manipulate it and observe the outcome-- read: change the world.  Isn't that what we want to do in our games anyway?  Early in the game, I robbed all the shops in the capitol of their goods.  Upon daybreak, the shop keepers diligently opened their stores (with all the display cases open and empty!) as if nothing happened.  Things like that highlight the artificiality of the game world, serving to make it much less immersive and substantial.
    I could go on about Oblivion's nonsense game design and unbalanced production for several more paragraphs, but the overall point is that it used several simulated aspects (touted often in previews) without really giving them a gameplay purpose or relevance.  If the world is one big uninteractive facade, how can you make gamers care about it, much less believe in it?  Why bother to make deer and trees if you can't interact with them on even a basic level?  Are the game's busy-looking townspeople in practice any different from those that just stand in one spot eternally waiting for Player 1 to arrive?  The studio is now working on a 3D adaptation of the Fallout game series, which will be a blend of Elder Scrolls-like RPG and FPS.
    Let's put RPGs and FPSes aside for a second and look at a game from the, well, sim genre!  This one just arrived last week riding an immense wave of hype and anticipation:

    Spore (2008) is the lastest game from the innovative studio that brought you SimAnt, SimCity, and The Sims.  The majority of Maxis Software's games, often management games, put players in control of a simulated, dynamic system, whether it's the workings of an entire city or the satirical depiction of mundane life in a simulated household.  In SimCity, it was the players task to create a functional city.  This required smart city planning, and the balancing of budgets versus the need for city projects, services, utilities and infrastructure, a strong economy, low pollution levels, traffic control, waste management and disaster preparedness.  McSmash, a big fan of the game series, once dubbed it "I Want to Deal With It: The Game".
    In a recent lecture at the Technology, Entertainment & Design Conference, Maxis founder Will Wright explains his inspirations behind his simulation-based games-- he sees them as educational toys.  Not academic education, but something that allows us to understand the world at a deeper level.  Simulations have a lot of power in illustrating the complex dynamics that govern our world (even through imaginary worlds).  In the video, he touts his then-upcoming game Spore, several years in the making, as a grand simulator of evolution and ecology that illustrates life and natural selection at every scale from the microscopic to the galactic.  In it, everything from the food chain to entire planets could be toyed with, their simulations and governing dynamics explored and revealed by the whimsical pushing and prodding of the player.  Those anticipating the ecological version of Sim City might've envisioned being able to cast disasters and paradigm shifts upon a simulated ecosystem (such as a meteor strike or a transition to an oxygen-based atmosphere from a methane one) and observe its drastic effects.
    As usual, the final product was not what it was hyped to be.  Again, the game suffered from a Player 1-centric gameworld that diligently awaited his arrival.  The simulation, particularly through the tribal and civilization stages, were very thin, predictable and rigid.  When player 1 was the only force capable of negotiation and evolution, one does not get the impression that they're penetrating a living world.  Rather than a serious simulation, the game played more like a facade of a simulation in the shadow of SimCity, with simplified elements of other game genres filling in.  A simulation of ecology, natural selection and evolution was nowhere to be found in Spore.

    Are you growing tired of the emerging pattern of this article?  Is simulation really the next frontier in game design?  Is there a game in this world that both touts simulation and delivers?  There is one... an unexpected title that's also somewhat inaccessible due to its unintuitive UI and overall learning curve, so you'll likely have to make due with my description:

    Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis (2001) and its sequel, ArmA: Combat Operations (2006) is a series of first-person semi-realistic military combat simulators, able to simulate immense land & air battles involving hundreds of AI and up to 32 human players on a persistent battlefield several kilometers long, consisting of dense forests, open fields, cozy villages, military forts and small cities.  Rather than being a pre-scripted Disneyland ride, the entire battle (and sometimes the simultaneous battles that comprise the full scale of the war campaign) are dynamic and in control of the players and AI in a chain of command.  The Gamespot review describes both the awesome promise and peril of this game series:     ArmA depicts a living, breathing battlefield with with players and AI making tactical decisions on how to best approach an objective.  At its best, it depicts how you're just one little soldier in a vast, chaotic battlefield.  Less than half of the gameplay depends on raw twitch-action shooting.  Instead it depends on situational awareness-- knowing where the enemy is, and anticipating his movements.  Will he engage or fall back for reinforcements?  Will he try to flank you, or can you flank him first?  Should you keep your squad together or tell them to scatter?  Does the risk of defeat outweight the reward of victory?  If you're close enough to the squad leader, you can hear him barking out real orders to his men.  If you can catch him off guard then he's finished.
    Riding a tank (it takes 3 to operate one effectively, and the game illustrates why through its simulation) or flying an aircraft will present a different set of sophisticated tactical decisions.  The game almost never gets old for me, and I never stop learning new tactics and strategies because every battle can play out in a million different ways.  With every new major patch or game release, I find myself re-entering the world I discovered back in 2001.   Because it's based on simulation, the game offers many game modes, each one presenting a different style of play and a different set of tactical/strategic considerations depending on what your objectives are, what units/weapons you have at your disposal, and what kind of environment you're in.  An ArmA game mode introduced in a recent patch blends RTS-like base building with resource collection points (the island's many towns and cities become capture points) in a hybrid package that's not unlike a grander, more sophisticated version of 1998's Battlezone.  The game is surprisingly immersive and engaging, not only due to its scale and depth, but also the fact that the battle is truly alive.  Very little is a pre-scripted facade, the battles and decisions made by the AI and the players are real.



    In other words, ArmA is one game that actually fulfills the promise of simulation in all its dynamic, immersive glory.  Some of the most fun I've ever had was in the game's map editor, pitting armies of tanks, planes and infantry against each other in immense urban battles.  My scenario would play out in a radically different fashion with every reset, with my game character smack in the middle of a hectic firefight.  Unlike any other tactical shooter I've played (and I've played a lot), ArmA actually gives me some insight into in real-life military engagements.  Future versions of ArmA will enable RPG elements by adding active civilian factions that will take part in a dynamic war simulation.  The civilian faction will present trust-building opportunities, avenues to expand your intelligence network & security forces, and expand the strategic dimensions of the game.
    While it's not Falcon 4.0 or anything, its somewhat clunky graphics and animation, unintuitive UI and steep learning curve prevent it from being the mainstream breakthrough hit that will deliver simulation-driven immersion to the masses.

    If ArmA/Flashpoint sounds too convoluted to reach the mass market, what kind of game will it take to deliver immersive, dynamic gameplay to the masses?  Does simulation necessarily create overly complex, inaccessible games?  Not necessarily.  One way to consider the possibilities of simulation is to apply their benifits to existing game genres.

The final one-third of this article is continued here.

Concept Games

    The concepts for Trespasser, Flashpoint and Bioshock illustrate how simulation can increase the dimensions of gameplay in the game world, but how about on a much smaller scale like, say, player control and interactivity?  FPS games and first-person RPGs are plagued by the abstract "floating camera with a weapon attached" feel with, often, an even more abstract on-screen reticle to interact with gameworld objects as if they were icons on a desktop.  Despite the increasing graphical realism of the game, the "simulation" of your game character and his interaction with the world has remained largely the same since 1992's Ultima Underworld.
    One way to break out of this persistent paradigm is to employ more realistic simulations of the game character's body.  One animation system (sold as Euphoria / Endorphin) is now making its first appearance in some games**.  It uses a neural network motor control system AI to drive a physically simulated body, allowing game characters to navigate rough terrain, react to world forces, and exert their own forces upon the game world in a realistic, intelligent fashion.  Trespasser demonstrated an initial rough attempt at this idea of physically simulated bodies, and Assassin's Creed demonstrated an impressive AI-driven "free-running" system, but something like Euphoria can take this form of next-gen interactivity to greater heights.
    Similarly, GPU-accelerated physics engines (PhysX) as well as advanced software implementations (Havok) are now commonplace in games, though not being used to their full potential in terms of being able to depict physically detailed ballistics and entirely destructible environments.  Let's first combine these two technologies into an imaginary FPS game.

**though its usage so far has been unimaginatively limited to "ragdoll version 2!" implementations.

The Physically-Based FPS
    Using a physically modeled body, this game will make your character feel like a real person with weight and balance holding a bulky weapon, rather than a hopping combat segway.  If there's a bunch of debris in between point A and B, your player character will attempt to walk and climb over it in a realistic, physically modeled fashion using his arms and legs (in other games, you'd slam the jump button all pogo stick style). If you hold down the run key while navigating uneven terrain, there's a chance your player will trip and injure himself, which may hamper his ability to move until he can find a safe place to treat his wounds.  He can also grab onto the surrounding terrain to pull himself back up or, if the situation is particularly dire, drag his body to safety.  If the gun he's carrying is too bulky, he's also going to be hampered by it, in addition to not being able to aim it wherever he wants in tight spaces and cover.  If you tell him to run, there's a chance he might drop it for greater speed if he perceives a grave threat, or he might even drop it on accident in the scurry.  He'll also have to look down the sight of weapons and line up the shot, rather than relying on a totally abstract HUD reticle. He can press himself against cover in a more intelligent, more dynamic, less segmented way and creatively figure out how to best position his gun over it while keeping most of his body in cover.
    Individual aspects of these mechanics have been simulated in previous games... for instance the unsteadiness of aim was simulated in early Rainbow Six games through a HUD reticle that depicted the radius of error.  While realistic from a simulation standpoint, it comes off as overly abstract today as modern games opt to simulate it in a more direct fashion.  Games like (say) Rainbow Six Vegas allow characters to get into pre-defined cover positions.  However the characters still lack basic self-preservation AI, so if a head or an arm that happens to be sticking out gets into the line of fire, they won't intelligently tuck themselves back into cover.
    As environments become more and more destructible in games, the ability for players and AI to realistically negotiate rough, dynamic terrain will become more and more important.  Similarly, as environments become more dynamic, the demand for body simulations like Euphoria will increase.  A game physics demo I came across depicted a character on a rickety old bridge.  The physically simulated game character attempted to keep his balance on the bridge by holding on to the sides and bracing himself for the bridge's exaggerated turbulence.  This kind of AI/physics-driven design is not possible with contemporary FPS mechanics.
    All of these core improvements to the fundamental "simulation" of the FPS experience will enhance the immersion of the game to the point where there would be no turning back to the segway-esque mechanics of derivative FPSes.  They will also bring the environment to life for the player by opening up new ways to interpret and assess the game world, much like what Thief did to the FPS formula back in 1998.  Will I hurt myself trying to dash across this rough terrain to that new cover point?  How much longer will my cover hold up against hostile fire?  Should I drop my bulky weapon first?  Can I afford to do that?
    A pair of promotional animations for Bioshock (1, 2) demonstrate a level of physical interaction that the actual game did not duplicate.  The animations start to illustrate the concept I've described above.

The Physically-Based Dungeon Crawler
    In the days of tabletop RPGs, attributes such as a character's strength, dexterity, agility, skills with certain weapons and disciplines were abstracted into statistics, which made things like how much damage Character A will do against Character B with a broadsword easier to simulate with some basic math and a few dice rolls.  Humorously this simple architecture is still used in sophisticated, triple-A titles like Oblivion and Neverwinter Nights 2.  As on-screen characters mechanically swipe each other with their swords, the game spits out random "dice rolls" to determine if hits are taken or evaded and how much damage is done against a player's "hit points" (a single value that represents the entirety of a character's health).  As game characters defeat enemies and overcome obstacles, their learning, growth of muscles and development of skill is abstracted into "level ups", which allow character attribute values like strength and broadsword skill to numerically increase, tilting the dice roll formula in the character's favor.
    What a physically-based RPG can do is kick all that absurd abstraction to the curb with simulated bodies and realistic damage models.  It will not only supplant abstract attributes like strength with realistic simulation, it will also supplant simulated learning with actual learning on behalf of the player.  Like a smarter, more AI-driven implementation of Trespasser's virtual hand, the player will drive his character's sword in fencing in a more direct manner.  He'll have to learn how to dodge, parry as well as find openings and deal critical blows.  A physics model will not only simulate the strength of his attacks (simulated muscles) but also the damage dealt to his foe's armor, and the seriousness of injury if his sword penetrates his foe.  Similarly such a system can be used to simulate destruction upon inanimate objects like chests, doors, wooden structures and so on in a stunningly realistic fashion.
    As the player trains, his character's simulated muscles will grow, allowing him to hold heavier objects and swing them with greater ferocity.  His quickness increases, allowing the player to discover new tactics.  His character's performance will be affected by fatigue, hunger, thirst, injury and so on.  His speed and range of motion may be hampered by the bulkiness of his body armor.  Spells and potions will have an effect on aspects of the character's body simulation, such as his rate of healing and strength of his muscles.
    With all these simulations in place, the dungeon ceases to be a place filled with iconic monsters to roll the dice with for "experience points".  Instead it becomes a place of simulated character development, real learning, and creative survival as you take care of your character's body and health in a harsh, physical environment.

Dynamic Storytelling in a Simulated RPG World
    Game designers like Warren Spector (Deus Ex) will argue that dynamic, simulated worlds diminish the game designer's ability to tell a story.  In essence, this is true, but it is a fallacy to think that dynamic worlds diminish storytelling.  Instead, it merely hampers a scriptwriter's effort construct a linear, pre-planned story path for the player to follow.  However games are not films, and they should not be confined to linear, pre-scripted stories all the time.  One method to bring dynamic storytelling to a game is to simulate the needs and desires of NPCs in a dynamic world.  Bare with me here as I describe this impossibly ambitious (but undeniably exciting) concept:
    Imagine a typical middle ages-like RPG fantasy world populated with villages, towns, cities, farms, kingdoms and castles.  It is a world that's highly segmented and factionalized, always in a state of flux.  In the simulated world, factions will attack each other for gain, kingdoms will wage war (or enforce the peace), go through coup d'états and peasant upheavals.  Villages and towns will prosper and grow or fall under hard times and vanish due to economic downturns, natural disasters, poor harvests, or factional violence like bandit attacks and military annexation.  Every NPC in the simulated world will go out and earn their living, whether through farming or a trade like blacksmithing (at the end of every week, some NPCs may go to the nearest town or city to trade their wares etc.).
    None of these systems are fixed, it will all dynamic and simulated.  Even the personalities of each character will be simulated through an implementation of a personality model like the MBTI, which will determine the depth and scope of their trade/skills and calling, and personality-- reflected in their dialogue, their ability to form relationships and network with other NPCs as well as raise families.  If the villagers perceive a threat to their livelihood, they may band together and decide to face the threat.  Some of them may decide to move to another village or town, or even try to tough it out in the wild or become a bandit/thief.
    Now drop Player 1 into this world, complete with all the physical simulation described in the previous game concept.  The possibilities are endless.  Because the world is entirely dynamic and meticulously simulated, he will have the ability to literally change the world or, if he wishes, live a humble life in it.  Every NPC he encounters will have a story to tell with life experiences that have shaped their character, and a personality type that will determine his or her, well, personality.  Perhaps the player will want to tough it out in the wild for a bit and see what that kind of life is like.  Perhaps he'll find some way to strike it rich, go to the city, get on the nobility's good side and find himself in a position of power, able to set the domestic and foreign policies of a state.  Perhaps he'll instead join a rebel faction inside a city and take part in a violent uprising against the kingdom.
    Perhaps he'll find a small village to settle in and live out a Dances With Wolves-like adventure.  Let's imagine that the player, through his travels, comes across a village falling under increasingly hard times.  The villagers offer him a place to rest for the night.  As he talks to one of the families, they reveal that bandit attacks and poor food stocks are two major issues in the village.  From there, the player offers to aid the village with his advanced hunting skills.  As the days pass, some villagers (calculated by their experiences with the player and their personality types) may grow less suspicious of the stranger and befriend him, telling him their life stories** and otherwise shoot the shit.  As the village encounters the bandits, the player may try to track the bandits back to their camp.  As he informs the village of his discovery, he raises going on the attack as an option.  A couple of the stronger villagers who are more inclined toward the player offer their assistance.  During nightfall, the trio makes it to the camp and ambush the bandits in their sleep.  As the village gets back on its feet again, the player announces his departure.  One of the adventurous younger villagers, particularly close to the player, offers to join him in his ongoing adventure.
    This would be only one possible story of many that could take place in the game.  While it may not have the deep intricacy of a focused, pre-written work, it will have much greater meaning to the player, due to the fact that his story actually took place in a dynamic world, rather than being a pre-determined path a game designer held your hand through.
    **The rest of this description is technical, but some of you may be wondering how NPC dialogue and storytelling can be implemented in this dynamic world concept.  Basically, NPC dialogue will be constructed from a patchwork of Mad Lib-like templates according to the situation, the relationship with the player, gender, age and personality type.  The game fills in the blank for things like names, places, and so on.  "Shoot the shit" type stories and details will likely be canned things that the NPC randomly spits out from a vast library of things to say, tagged by personality type and other variables.  The NPC can also talk about real gameworld topics like relationships with other NPCs, opinions of other places the NPC has heard about or has been to, and the difficulties and triumphs in the NPC's life.  Opportunities to insert "figure of speech" type patterns, accents, and other quirks to personalize and define NPCs are available too.  Basically it will be a dialogue synthesizer pulling from a monstrous library of pre-written template content and speech elements.  YES IT IS POSSIBLE.  It may be difficult, it's may be extensive, but it's possible.


The Chain-of-Command RTS
    The problem with (and some will argue the appeal of) the RTS genre lies in the fact that it's not "real time strategy" as much as "real time tactics".  The units in RTS games tend to be impressively dumb.  They have no understanding of cover, tactics, or self-preservation.  They rely on you frantically clicking your mouse to grant them the intelligence to defeat, or merely run away from, an enemy.  While it may provide a level of frantic excitement, it also narrows your ability to command the battle to one area at a time.
    In real war, the general is not telling his soldiers exactly how to get into cover individually, or when to use his grenades.  In a game where individual units actually have some brains and decisionmaking ability, the player can concentrate on actual strategy and coordination rather than dissuading a lone infantryman from hopelessly engaging that heavily armored deathmobile, or standing in one place while eating bullets from a hidden enemy.
    In a real-time strategy game, units will be driven by a squad AI that coordinates squad tactics at the fine level and makes decisions about engagement.  Rather than instructing a bunch of units how to get from point A to point B without dying, the player will instead concentrate on developing missions, assigning units to them and managing the overall battlefield situation.  In mission design, the player can specify things like conditions and behaviors.  If casualties mount over a certain threshold for example, squads can be instructed to automatically collect their wounded and return to base, or establish perimeters, divert from mission goals to perform rescue operations and other complex, multi-layered tactics.  With AI, the focus of the game changes from tactics to deeper strategy, anticipation, pre-emptive and counter strikes, battlefield communication and control.
    While aspects of simulation have been implemented in ambitious and creative RTS games in the past, such as the chaotic Total War series of games or the highly bizarre Peter Molyneux game series, Dungeon Keeper, the real time strategy game I've described does not exist as far as I know, even though such a game has been feasible for over a decade.  The only thing that comes even vaguely close is a particularly well-coordinated multiplayer game of Operation Flashpoint or ArmA.



Creating a Dynamic World
    First, a disclaimer:
    While I've worked on a few tiny game projects in the past, one academic and another indie along with a game port in progress, I've never even come close to approaching anything like a triple-A game project.  I can only make assumptions based on the huge number of game postmortems and analysis I've read from publications like Game Developer, and lectures, presentations & classes from various people in the games industry.

Avoiding a Troubled Production
    The primary difficulty in shaping a dynamic game as opposed to a linear game, is the gameplay experience is at the mercy of the simulation itself (and the unexpected creativity of the player).  It's much easier to plan things, shape experiences, and make gameplay elements work toward a goal when the course of the game is plotted out in advance.  In a simulation, you may have ideas and assumptions about how the simulation will operate and what the player will do, but it may turn out to be a totally different beast once you build it and press the go button.  In Jurassic Park: Trespasser, the designers envisioned their physics engine driving all the dinosaur animation.  However, their limited box-based physics modelling resulted in both a drastic performance drain and sub-par animation when applied to the dinosaurs-- however they were too late in the production process to turn back.  Many of Trespasser's production difficulties have stemmed from the late implementation and evaluation of gameplay mechanics & simulations.
    This illustrates some of the danger in using simulation in games and shows the need for a very, very, very lengthy, extensive prototyping stage in game development before building up a team for full-scale production.  If the simulation has fundamental issues that challenge the vision of the game project, it's better to discover them earlier when the concept is still being developed.  This also means the game design itself must lend itself to a game development path where many of its core simulation and gameplay concepts can be implemented and evaluated early, before the web has already been spun past the point of disassembly.
    Either way, the development path of a simulation-heavy game will be a long one, since dynamic systems never work the way artists envision, and must be tweaked and re-evaluated over and over.  Operation Flashpoint for instance had a four-year development cycle.  If an extended development cycle is necessary for simulation-heavy games, it would make sense to begin such a game project with a small, focused team working out conceptual gameplay kinks in prototyping rather than employing a large team, wasting their time developing assets that may end up needing revision again and again as critical gameplay mechanics are found to fall short of their goals.  Many of the games reviewed above, along with other infamous examples like Peter Molyneux's Black & White, suffer from obvious underdevelopment of their simulated, dynamic aspects, resulting in a disappointingly unfinished game.

Making It Accessible
    Game designers and publishers often misunderstand their audience when they attempt to make their games accessible.  Making a game overly simplistic with an emphasis on twitch action are not the things, in essence anyway, that make a game accessible.  People aren't stupid, and are not entertained when games assume they are.  By drastically speeding up the game and emphasizing twitch-action and reaction in Bioshock for the sake of accessibility, the team made a tremendous mistake, because it only served to make the game more bewildering to the uninitiated.
    Accessibility has nothing to do with speed or the lack of gameplay depth.  It has everything to do with the intuitiveness and intelligent simplicity of the control scheme, the logic of the game world (is it consistent and easy to think about, or do you have to memorize a lot of nonsense mechanics to win?), and the transparency of the interface.  A friend of mine, a long-time gamer, watched his roommate grow frustrated by the character sheets and convoluted inventory management of Mass Effect, despite the fact that, for the genre, they were pretty simplified.  This provides great insight into what makes a game inaccessible.  The idea of character "stats" and "classes" seemed completely foreign to him, along with having to haul tons of loot around a battlefield to be sorted through later.  Both of these things are too far removed from how people logically think about the world, since they stem from the archaic and overly abstract architecture of pen & paper RPGs.  In order to make games more accessible to a non-"hardcore" audience, designers have to be willing to challenge the abstract and often nonsensical conventions of their genres.  One thing Bioshock did well was reduce its reliance on abstract stat sheets and menus over System Shock 2, which often had the player playing Tetris with his inventory grid to make items fit.  Mass Effect neither had a transparent interface or logical game mechanics-- instead it awkwardly jammed archaic RPG conventions into a Halo-esque shooter.
    Simulation can make games more accessible and appealing.  With something akin to Trespasser's virtual hand interface, you can consolidate a countless number of possible actions into an analog controller and a couple buttons, rather than breaking out everything a game character can do with his hands into several convoluted commands.  Want to open a door?  Get your hand on the knob and push the door open at the speed of your choosing.  Want to fire a weapon?  Place your hand over a gun to pick it up, and press the use button to fire it.  Want to reload it?  Flick your arm all the way down (to steal a convention from arcade shooters).  Want to swing a sword?  Find one and get swinging!  Want to deflect an attack?  Hold the use button and push the enemy's sword away.
    You may be thinking "Wait a minute, attempts at direct swordfighting in the past have all been clunky as shit."  While that's true, none of them had a sophisticated body simulation & AI driving that process... it was all "dumb" input data from the controller fed right into the game object.  Much like Assassin's Creed's "free run" mode, AI has to take part in translating the controller's input into the sophisticated behaviors of an intelligent game character.  In Trespasser, which featured a "dumb" VR hand, pressing buttons on a numerical keypad in the game suddenly became an absurdly epic challenge of precision VR hand-driving.  However, with a game character that has some understanding of the world and can accurately read and perform the bidding of the player, these issues can be eliminated.
    To get back to the point, what simulation-heavy world interaction can do, outside of consolidating several controls into a few, is add an underlying logical structure to the game's interaction.  When deep interaction can be performed by just a few game mechanics instead of several disparate ones, the game becomes much easier to think about, and gives players the joy of coming up with unconventional and creative approaches, styles, and solutions to the game's challenges.  It avoids the "oh, I forgot my game character can do [x] if I go into the [y] menu and activate the [z] mode, and press [w] during combat" problem.  There are a countless number of games I've played (MGS anyone?) that featured a mind-boggling number of character actions mapped to convoluted, context-based button combos.  I hardly used any of them beyond the essentials because, franky, I couldn't be arsed.

    Gamers want dynamic worlds and dynamic interactivity...  Ok, granted, not all of them and not all the time (we enjoy a well-written, pre-scripted narrative too), but given the sheer amount of hype that simulation-based game concepts generate, dynamic worlds are something that have granted several mediocre games big sales just by their sheer potential.  Even Operation Flashpoint, one of the few successes of simulation-based gameplay, has enjoyed tremendous sales outside of the US (which is a bit odd given the game's US-centric subject matter & presentation).
    But why do we want it?  Games often tap into our desire to do something important and be someone incredible.  We love to learn things... not just develop twitch skills, but to understand gameworlds, take control of them and bend them to our will.  Simulation allows us to change the world.  Not the world, but certainly the fantasy world that exists in the game.  When a game character is merely following a writer's script, gamers know they aren't changing shit.