Salon | Letters to the editor

_______________LETTER FROM FAYETTEVILLE BY REBECCA BRYANT (10/12/98)

Don't hold your breath waiting for anti-discrimination laws in Fayetteville, Ark. I was born and raised in this state (Little Rock) and know all about the bigotry and snobbery in Fayetteville, and more to the point, the whole northwest section of Arkansas. This section is a major conservative stronghold, which has already played a huge hand in getting two Baptist brothers (Tim and Asa Hutchinson) to Congress and have another man, from the same church believe it or not, up for a Senate seat this November. I guess their big dream is to have the whole congregation running the country someday.
Of course not all of the citizens of northwest Arkansas are conservative bigots, but it seems that a lot of them are, or maybe they are just a lot more vocal. I admire the few people up there trying to buck the establishment, but I will be very surprised if they succeed. I hope you will keep us all informed on the anti -discrimination proposals on the November ballots.
-- [name withheld]
Thanks for the article on Fayetteville, Ark. and how it is responding to gay bashing with civic action. Here in Hawaii, the same week of the Shepard gay bashing/murder, we experienced another slam from our legal system, which let off another gay basher/murderer with a slap on the wrist. A 30-year-old man who murdered Kenneth Brewer, a gay man in his 50s, was convicted of a misdemeanor and will be released for time served. He employed the time-honored homophobic defense that he was resisting an unwanted sexual advance by Brewer. And the jury bought it.
Imagine if women could legally kill men who made unwanted heterosexual advances and get away with it! The male population would be decimated! A defense like this clearly demands that gays be seen as second-class citizens with fewer rights than the average American.
Those of us in the gay community here in Hawaii have no doubt that the jury pool here and in fact the whole climate of public life here has been tainted by the flood of homophobic advertising paid for by the Mormon Church, Pat Robertson's organization and Focus on the Family, with assistance from the Catholic Church. The Christian Coalition, with their publicity and their tirades from the pulpits against gays (and, incidentally, the president), is fostering a climate of hatred and intolerance against gays and lesbians. When is the IRS going to become interested in the tax-exempt status of churches that blatantly violate their status by telling their congregations explicitly how to vote based on right-wing, anti-woman and anti-gay agendas?
Hawaii, like Wyoming, lacks an anti-hate crimes law. It has also resisted creating a system of counting hate and bias crimes. We hope that Hawaii, which has always been at the forefront of civil rights, will continue that record and resist all the homophobic pressure (fueled by a mountain of mainstream money) that has been brought to bear on the people of our state by rejecting the proposed amendment against same-sex marriage and enacting legislative measures to deal with hate crimes here in the Aloha State.
-- Liz Randol
Kauai, Hawaii

_______________THE SPIRIT OF '96 BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK (10/13/98)

As coeditor of a webzine that I like to think is every bit as snotty, solipsistic, overdone, excessive, insular, contemptuous, undisciplined, childish, navel-gazing and elitist as anything still out there, I was very interested in James Poniewozik's article on the slickifying of Web writing. Myself and everyone associated with Wordgun should have our heads examined for trying to put together a webzine that is about as bankable as day-old tuna salad, especially now that nobody wants to hear overeducated nobodies rant and rave when they can hear overpaid nobodies rant and rave. For God's sake, we're still using Link Exchange! Pity us! But we're not just a dying breed. We're a days-dead and slightly smelly breed. Poniewozik's right (I'm glad he's going weekly) that this is all just as inevitable as it is sad. Of course, we have no principles. We'd jump at the first paycheck that came our way. Are you listening, Zapata? Still, the line between angry Web writer and snide content provider is microthin, and oddly, it works both ways. Wouldn't it be nice to think that, secretly, all those columnists at Slate, Nerve and, yeah, even Salon sometimes go pseudonymically slumming into the webzine gutter, just so they can complain and spew and vent without worrying about offending their patron venture capitalist? That's what I like to think. But then I'm not paid to think. I'm not paid to write, but I can't seem to stop doing that either.
-- Chris Mohney

_______________THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY BY GREG LINDSAY (10/08/98)

Greg Lindsay may be a frequent contributor to Salon, but it appears he is not a frequent observer of the online games industry. The only companies Lindsay writes about are the disasters (and disasters-to-be) of the business. They have burned through gazillions of venture capital dollars -- in at least one case, $50 million in the last three years -- yet have little to show for it: tiny audiences and revenues (let alone profits), little meaningful intellectual property or proprietary technology and no brand equity. Just massive, smoldering craters filled with shredded business plans and scorched investors groping for "greater fool" exit strategies.
What Lindsay fails to mention is that highly graphical, resource intensive computer games such as he seems to adore primarily appeal to a relatively small audience of teenage boys who will not, or cannot, pay subscription or other usage fees and in any case are not attractive to advertisers; and these games place way too much strain (i.e. bandwidth) on what continues to be a very new, fragile and unstable medium. Worse, Lindsay also fails to mention the existence of online games companies that are wildly successful and have been for some time. The "future of computer gaming" arrived ages ago!
Two examples are the Station at Sony and my company's Web site, Gamesville. Sites such as these eschew the whiz-bang-wow factor Lindsay seems to admire in favor of what Forrester Research calls "casual games," simple games that attract mass audiences. (Gamesville takes this a step further by offering "yesterday's technology today" -- accessibility to all Web surfers regardless of their setup -- immediate gratification and competitive play for all comers whether they use 9,600-baud modems or T1 lines, 486s or workstations, Netscape 5.0, America Online 1.0 or WebTV. The Station offers similarly low bandwidth online versions of Sony's successful TV game shows.)
In addition, sites such as the Station and Gamesville attract huge audiences and serious sponsors, and generate solid revenues -- even, in Gamesville's case, profits! These really are the "games people play." That this is a surprise to some is itself a surprise to us (albeit a happy one). For one thing, we live by the credo: "The average person can't tell the difference between cool technology and a broken computer." Ergo, highly ambitious, technologically sophisticated entertainments (while cool) are bound to attract minuscule audiences. And this company was founded not because we loved "Myst" (although we do), but because we wanted to leverage the concept behind the most successful piece of software ever written: Microsoft Solitaire.
-- Steven Kane
President, nineCo Inc.
Boston
Very good article. I've been telling my "Myst/Riven is the best game!" friends that it's not much more than pretty pictures and some puzzles for a couple years now, telling them if they want a REAL game to get something like Myth.
-- Chip von Unwerth
I'm glad that Greg Lindsay and Salon decided to cover this trend in computer gaming. I myself have wondered what the future is for adventure games, as the growing number of action and strategy titles seems to be pushing them out of the market.
I wish Greg had noted the visceral power of the networked action shootup, though. Shared storytelling is great, and the massive online RPGs like Ultima Online will probably grow in size and number (at GameSpot's BetaCenter, there are seven of them right now, looking for beta testers), but the action games like Quake II and Unreal, where you can kill and be killed a hundred times in an hour, generate a dry-mouth-and-twitchy-palms rush that is distinct from the pleasures of the slower paced games you've noted. As low-latency network solutions become more available to the home game players, these 3-D immersive experiences will become huge.
-- Larry Edelstein
Chief Technologist and Contributing Editor, GameSpot Inc.
SALON | Oct. 15, 1998

R E C E N T L Y+| CLINTON'S AMEN CHORUS BY DAVID HOROWITZ

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_______________LETTER FROM FAYETTEVILLE BY REBECCA BRYANT (10/12/98)
	Don't hold your breath waiting for anti-discrimination laws in Fayetteville, Ark. I was born and raised in this state (Little Rock) and know all about the bigotry and snobbery in Fayetteville, and more to the point, the whole northwest section of Arkansas. This section is a major conservative stronghold, which has already played a huge hand in getting two Baptist brothers (Tim and Asa Hutchinson) to Congress and have another man, from the same church believe it or not, up for a Senate seat this November. I guess their big dream is to have the whole congregation running the country someday. Of course not all of the citizens of northwest Arkansas are conservative bigots, but it seems that a lot of them are, or maybe they are just a lot more vocal. I admire the few people up there trying to buck the establishment, but I will be very surprised if they succeed. I hope you will keep us all informed on the anti -discrimination proposals on the November ballots. -- [name withheld] Thanks for the article on Fayetteville, Ark. and how it is responding to gay bashing with civic action. Here in Hawaii, the same week of the Shepard gay bashing/murder, we experienced another slam from our legal system, which let off another gay basher/murderer with a slap on the wrist. A 30-year-old man who murdered Kenneth Brewer, a gay man in his 50s, was convicted of a misdemeanor and will be released for time served. He employed the time-honored homophobic defense that he was resisting an unwanted sexual advance by Brewer. And the jury bought it. Imagine if women could legally kill men who made unwanted heterosexual advances and get away with it! The male population would be decimated! A defense like this clearly demands that gays be seen as second-class citizens with fewer rights than the average American. Those of us in the gay community here in Hawaii have no doubt that the jury pool here and in fact the whole climate of public life here has been tainted by the flood of homophobic advertising paid for by the Mormon Church, Pat Robertson's organization and Focus on the Family, with assistance from the Catholic Church. The Christian Coalition, with their publicity and their tirades from the pulpits against gays (and, incidentally, the president), is fostering a climate of hatred and intolerance against gays and lesbians. When is the IRS going to become interested in the tax-exempt status of churches that blatantly violate their status by telling their congregations explicitly how to vote based on right-wing, anti-woman and anti-gay agendas? Hawaii, like Wyoming, lacks an anti-hate crimes law. It has also resisted creating a system of counting hate and bias crimes. We hope that Hawaii, which has always been at the forefront of civil rights, will continue that record and resist all the homophobic pressure (fueled by a mountain of mainstream money) that has been brought to bear on the people of our state by rejecting the proposed amendment against same-sex marriage and enacting legislative measures to deal with hate crimes here in the Aloha State. -- Liz Randol Kauai, Hawaii
_______________THE SPIRIT OF '96 BY JAMES PONIEWOZIK (10/13/98)
	As coeditor of a webzine that I like to think is every bit as snotty, solipsistic, overdone, excessive, insular, contemptuous, undisciplined, childish, navel-gazing and elitist as anything still out there, I was very interested in James Poniewozik's article on the slickifying of Web writing. Myself and everyone associated with Wordgun should have our heads examined for trying to put together a webzine that is about as bankable as day-old tuna salad, especially now that nobody wants to hear overeducated nobodies rant and rave when they can hear overpaid nobodies rant and rave. For God's sake, we're still using Link Exchange! Pity us! But we're not just a dying breed. We're a days-dead and slightly smelly breed. Poniewozik's right (I'm glad he's going weekly) that this is all just as inevitable as it is sad. Of course, we have no principles. We'd jump at the first paycheck that came our way. Are you listening, Zapata? Still, the line between angry Web writer and snide content provider is microthin, and oddly, it works both ways. Wouldn't it be nice to think that, secretly, all those columnists at Slate, Nerve and, yeah, even Salon sometimes go pseudonymically slumming into the webzine gutter, just so they can complain and spew and vent without worrying about offending their patron venture capitalist? That's what I like to think. But then I'm not paid to think. I'm not paid to write, but I can't seem to stop doing that either. -- Chris Mohney
_______________THE GAMES PEOPLE PLAY BY GREG LINDSAY (10/08/98)
	Greg Lindsay may be a frequent contributor to Salon, but it appears he is not a frequent observer of the online games industry. The only companies Lindsay writes about are the disasters (and disasters-to-be) of the business. They have burned through gazillions of venture capital dollars -- in at least one case, $50 million in the last three years -- yet have little to show for it: tiny audiences and revenues (let alone profits), little meaningful intellectual property or proprietary technology and no brand equity. Just massive, smoldering craters filled with shredded business plans and scorched investors groping for "greater fool" exit strategies. What Lindsay fails to mention is that highly graphical, resource intensive computer games such as he seems to adore primarily appeal to a relatively small audience of teenage boys who will not, or cannot, pay subscription or other usage fees and in any case are not attractive to advertisers; and these games place way too much strain (i.e. bandwidth) on what continues to be a very new, fragile and unstable medium. Worse, Lindsay also fails to mention the existence of online games companies that are wildly successful and have been for some time. The "future of computer gaming" arrived ages ago! Two examples are the Station at Sony and my company's Web site, Gamesville. Sites such as these eschew the whiz-bang-wow factor Lindsay seems to admire in favor of what Forrester Research calls "casual games," simple games that attract mass audiences. (Gamesville takes this a step further by offering "yesterday's technology today" -- accessibility to all Web surfers regardless of their setup -- immediate gratification and competitive play for all comers whether they use 9,600-baud modems or T1 lines, 486s or workstations, Netscape 5.0, America Online 1.0 or WebTV. The Station offers similarly low bandwidth online versions of Sony's successful TV game shows.) In addition, sites such as the Station and Gamesville attract huge audiences and serious sponsors, and generate solid revenues -- even, in Gamesville's case, profits! These really are the "games people play." That this is a surprise to some is itself a surprise to us (albeit a happy one). For one thing, we live by the credo: "The average person can't tell the difference between cool technology and a broken computer." Ergo, highly ambitious, technologically sophisticated entertainments (while cool) are bound to attract minuscule audiences. And this company was founded not because we loved "Myst" (although we do), but because we wanted to leverage the concept behind the most successful piece of software ever written: Microsoft Solitaire. -- Steven Kane President, nineCo Inc. Boston Very good article. I've been telling my "Myst/Riven is the best game!" friends that it's not much more than pretty pictures and some puzzles for a couple years now, telling them if they want a REAL game to get something like Myth. -- Chip von Unwerth I'm glad that Greg Lindsay and Salon decided to cover this trend in computer gaming. I myself have wondered what the future is for adventure games, as the growing number of action and strategy titles seems to be pushing them out of the market. I wish Greg had noted the visceral power of the networked action shootup, though. Shared storytelling is great, and the massive online RPGs like Ultima Online will probably grow in size and number (at GameSpot's BetaCenter, there are seven of them right now, looking for beta testers), but the action games like Quake II and Unreal, where you can kill and be killed a hundred times in an hour, generate a dry-mouth-and-twitchy-palms rush that is distinct from the pleasures of the slower paced games you've noted. As low-latency network solutions become more available to the home game players, these 3-D immersive experiences will become huge. -- Larry Edelstein Chief Technologist and Contributing Editor, GameSpot Inc. SALON \| Oct. 15, 1998