It gave me something to think about from my childless ivory tower when the mom in the group said that she preferred being able to supervise her kids as they played video games at home because they'd otherwise be playing the games at someone else's house.It wasn't really clear whether she was allowing her kids to play the game or not, but I still have no idea how I'd handle that situation. Either get the game and have all hell break loose in the home or worry about them playing it at a friend's house and being exposed to all the same foul language and unmitigated violence and destruction a few blocks away.
Tough call.
One of the kids said they really loved the game because it was set in New York. Considering the ongoing competition between New York and Chicago, I'd be lying if I said I wasn't very, very jealous of that 15-year-old right then.
A quick glance through Wikipedia lists a long history of losers in the video games set in Chicago department. Aside from a handful of racing games which held their own. I can only imagine the horrors locked away in the Blues Brothers 2000 video game, a cash grab on an awful awful movie.
The bottom line is that there's no real blockbuster title in the bunch.
The GTA treatment has been given to New York City, Miami, Los Angeles, Las Vegas, San Francisco and New York City again. When's our turn?
For such a good looking and iconic city, we can't get one lousy video game on a next-gen system? Is there any sort of voting process that we can rig? We're pretty good at that.
Sure, we have a governor that picks on the game industry and its rating system and a city that won't allow GTA ads on the sides of city buses, but what better way to avenge that than setting a video game in a fiction twin for the Windy City?
Until then, I guess Chicago gamers will just have to settle for spot-on recreations for Wrigley Field, US Cellular Field and Soldier Field. Well, that, and a Blues Brothers game that has probably been confiscated by the government and buried in a very deep, dark hole at this point.
(Image from: Wikipedia.org)
1 comment:
My theory is that for a city of its size, there are relatively few video game developers that are either based in Chicago or have deep ties to the city (with the exception of Midway Games). NYC and LA are obvious choices for the entertainment industry, SF is the center of the tech world with Silicon Valley, and a disproportionate share of people in those towns own vacation homes in Miami. In contrast, there's a very strong Chicago-to-Hollywood pipeline, which has made the town the most common setting for films outside of NYC and LA.
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