Patience is a virtue, a wise man once said, and nowhere is this more true than the circumstances surrounding the story we're about to bring you right now. A month or so before the March Game Developers Conference, Nintendo's PR agency approached us about a hush-hush new content initiative that the company had been cooking up, and wanted to know whether or not we'd be interested in being the first to get the lowdown. We were. But GDC came and went without any more information. From then on, we'd check in with Nintendo from time to time, but no new information was forthcoming, not even about when new information might be forthcoming. So we began to despair. But on Monday, the folks at Golin Harris PR reached out to us again to inform us that the time was now, that the offer was still on the table, and that Nintendo of America president Reginald Fils-Aime would be available to speak with us Tuesday afternoon. We spoke with him, and here's what we learned.

On Wednesday morning, Nintendo will officially announce to the general public its plans for WiiWare, downloadable games for the wildly popular Wii videogame console. Unlike the vintage games already being offered for legacy systems (i.e. Nintendo Entertainment System, Super Nintendo Entertainment System, Nintendo 64, Sega Genesis and TurboGrafx 16) through the Virtual Console, these games will be built specifically for the Wii and sold via the Wii Shop Channel for Wii Points currency, much like the Xbox 360- and Playstation 3-specific games being sold on Xbox Live Arcade and Playstation Network.

What's more interesting is that Nintendo isn't only seeking WiiWare from established publishers and developers like Ubisoft and Sega. At a Nintendo developer's conference earlier this week, the company informed attendees that it was seeking from indie developers as well. Shorter, original, more creative games from small teams with big ideas; these are the buzzwords that you'll be hearing from Nintendo when its Wednesday announcement goes wide. Fils-Aime told us that while Nintendo, as the retailer, would itself determine the appropriate pricing for each game on a per-title bases, the games themselves would not be vetted by Nintendo. Instead, Nintendo would only check the games for bugs and compatibility, with developers and publishers responsible for securing an E for Everyone, E10+ for Everyone 10 or older, T for Teen or M for Mature rating from the Entertainment Software Rating Board--Adults Only titles like Manhunt 2 aren't welcome. Look for the first WiiWare titles from Nintendo and third-parties to become available next year. And check back shortly with Level Up for more details on our conversation with Fils-Aime.

1. BAN...Pressure group lauds AO-rating for Manhunt 2
2. HUH...Old trailers pulled at ESRB's request
3. WAH...Shadowrun producer defends game's price
4. HMM...The importance of being ethical
5. RND...Are you on the cover of Wired?

 

In Part I of our Vs. Mode exchange with MTV News reporter Stephen Totilo--which is also being posted on his blog MTV News: Multiplayer--Totilo explained how we got the opportunity to play the first six levels of controversial Adults Only-rated Manhunt 2, then plunged into a swift, graphic recap of the opener. (This included a disturbing crackling sound coming from his Wii remote; whether it was a bug or a feature wasn't clear, but it made him feel even more like the game's protagonist, asylum inmate Danny Lamb.) The Level Up staff, meanwhile, reminisced about how our film school education helped make us sanguine about extreme subject matter, before concluding with a full-throated defense of why a ban on the game--whether de jure, as in the U.K. and Ireland; or de facto, as in the U.S.--demonstrates a complete lack of respect for the ability of adults to determine how they would like to be entertained.

Today, in Round 2, the conversation gets more pointed. Totilo accuses us of failing to adequately describe the content of Manhunt 2 in our defense of adults' right to play it, and goes on to wonder why more videogame aficionados aren't willing to interrogate the violent nature of many of the games that they play. We return fire with an assertion that what troubles many about violent games--and blinds many gamers, developers and publishers to what should trouble them about the medium--is inextricably linked with the very definition of what games are. Some excerpts:

Stephen Totilo: I respect defense of games as speech. But I think for too long those who write and talk about video games--and I'm thinking primarily of reviewers--have ignored the effects of ultra-violence on games and the nature of that violence as it relates to the quality of what we play. I'm not talking about anything that would affect how games are rated. The people who rate games seem primarily concerned with how the interactivity of games possibly teaches or at least desensitizes gamers to real violence. What about how gamers have been desensitized to violence in games? It seems to me that the very thing that makes a game a game--its interactivity--encourages game makers to fill their creations with an inordinate amount of one of the most reliably engaging things there is to do with the press of a controller button: squashing enemies in Super Mario, shooting them in Call of Duty, commiting an act of virtual violence. As a result, gamers' entertainment is soaked in far more blood than other forms of entertainment. Is it a wonder games get such a bad rap?

N'Gai Croal: You're right to wonder why more of us aren't freaking out over our chosen form of entertainment--and by extension, more of the developers who create these videogames and the publishers who distribute them--but isn't the answer by now self-evident? We can't. The very fabric of videogames--their repetitive action, reaction and interaction--is the original sin for which censorious organizations like the BBFC, the IFCO, and, ultimately, Nintendo, Sony and Microsoft, would have us either a) repent, then go forth and sin no more; or b) confine our blasphemy to acceptable form and content. But as film critic Pauline Kael once wrote, "Art is the greatest game, the supreme entertainment, because you discover the game as you play it. There is only one rule, as we learned in 'Orphee': Astonish us! In all art we look and listen for what we have not experienced quite that way before. We want to see, to feel, to understand, to respond a new way. Why should pedants be allowed to spoil the game?"

Click on the link below to read Round 2 in its entirety.