You’ve probably heard about George Campbell’s The Hero with a Thousand Faces, even if only because of Star Wars. Campbell argued that the myths that have survived for thousands of years share a common, evocative pattern: a “monomyth” that speaks to deep human needs.

As a cultural theory, the monomyth’s attracted its share of criticisms, but whether or not it’s correct it’s had an enormous influence on modern pop culture. And in a month that’s seen the (re-)release of classic-style JRPGs like Tales of Graces F and Xenoblade Chronicles, it got me thinking about our pop culture’s central tropes and myths.

Making fun of JRPG convention is one of the safest ways for one section of gamers to feel superior to the other. So if everyone supposedly hates the stuff, why are they still made – and why do so many of us continue to buy them? Is it because of their indifference to others’ mockery?

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Welcome to the second installment of She’s Got Game Weekly Wrap Up! As Denver prepares for the Snowpoclypse, I am gathering all the interesting gaming and geek blurbs from this week for you to enjoy in 15 inches of snow! This week we are playing Half-Life 2 to get Valve to release Half-Life 3, looking at some of the most sexist superhero costumes, sighing as GameStop reminds women that they would NEVER want video games as a Valentine’s Day gift, are unsure how to feel about a DragonAge anime, and laughing at the Minecraft Creeper’s new weakness.

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With The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim still spinning in most RPG enthusiasts’ systems it would be easy to overlook Big Huge Game and 38 Studio’s soon to be released Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.  However, the more I see of Kingdoms of Amalur the more convinced I am that dismissing this game would be a huge mistake.  With each new preview I’ve seen, not to mention the demo, I find myself getting more and more excited about what this game has to offer.

So here are my Top 5 reasons to not overlook Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.  

5) Length

With many of the top tier games of today coming in at totals of eight to ten hours, the length of a game has become a selling point by itself.  Kingdoms of Amalur’s developers have recently stated that some of the “speed runs” of the game, wherein the tester completed every quest, took around two hundred hours.  That’s a very encouraging number to gamers looking to throw down sixty big ones on a game.

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Welcome to “She’s Got Game Weekly Wrap Up”!  The newest weekly series that will focus on what news organizations and the geek culture have been talking about from the feminine perspective.  This series highlights what it means to be a woman in the gaming and geek culture — all the good, the bad and the downright ugly.  This week we have Booth Babes at CES, informal research on why men are choosing to play female RPG characters, how Miyazaki films are beneficial to young girls, Wikipedia’s call for women authors and Kotaku’s less-than-spectacular “Top 40″ list.

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We don’t want to live in a world of censorship. We don’t want people to tell us what we can and cannot say. We don’t want a government so afraid of its people that it threatens to restrict their voices.

If I can buy a shotgun in Walmart I sure as hell want to be able to speak my mind in the public forum.

Now in all fairness, I realize the intent of bills like the Stop Online Piracy Act (and its sibling bill the Protect Intellectual Property Act) are, funnily enough, to stop piracy and not to silence the voices of the people, but given even the most haphazard perusal, S.O.P.A. reveals itself as a gigantic, misguided, bloody Trojan Horse of a farce. Anyone with the slightest familiarity with the internet knows beyond a shadow of a doubt the war against internet piracy will not be won with a sheet of paper full of labyrinthine phrasing and rich old white men’s signatures.

And any fool can see the real danger behind its well-intentioned if incredibly-misguided intent.

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The rights to a potential Fallout MMO have landed back home at Bethesda Softworks, concluding a battle between Interplay and Bethesday since April 2009 when Interplay missed a two-year deadline to acquire funding and begin development.

Interplay pointed fingers at Masthead Studios, claiming that they already sublicensed the title for development, and that said development was underway. Bethesda, not entertained by any of this, sued both companies.

Interplay gave up the license for a paltry settlement of 2 million dollars; how is that for business savvy? Masthead refuted the claim that they had anything to do with this mess, and agreed never to develop anything related to Fallout.

On a partly related note: the legal team that brought this victory is the same one suing Mojang, the creators of Minecraft, over their new title Scrolls. Apparently, Bethesda/ZeniMax believe they own the rights to use the word “scrolls” in a fantasy setting. Mojang has won out against a temporary injunction; we will follow up as that story progresses.

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Another year come and gone, with its requisite glories and frustrations, with its ups and downs and to’s and fro’s, and its incredibly prosy introductory paragraphs. So with ANY ado to speak of, We at Pixelated Geek are proud to present to you our End of Year Awards! The PG End of Year Awards are intended to recognize the best in the industry in their respective categories. While we’re busy crouched over a dimly lit table in the secret war-room beneath PG Headquarters fighting for our personal favorites in 2011, we’ve put together a reader poll so that our loyal Pleekers will be heard!

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Whether you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, or any other of the myriad of End-of-Year holidays (or none at all, for that matter) one things is true: if you’re a geek, you love/crave/gotta have sweet geek loot. Be you a collector of comics, a hoarder of Hylian artifacts, a proponent of the PlayStation 3, a dastardly DM, a fan of Farscape, a connoisseur of Conan, or an aficionado of all things Aliens, you KNOW you have a deep-seated desire for the one gift to rule them all this holiday season.

Well here at PixelatedGeek, we’re no different, and we’ve put together a list of our most coveted childlike-squeal-of-glee inducing Perfect Holiday Gifts, one in a (relatively) reasonable price range, and one so far from the pale of believability as to require an in-flight meal. Feel free to throw in your two-cents in the comments section, or love, hate, adore, mock or drool all over our selections.

Without too terribly much in the way of ado, here we go!

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Well, folks, it’s official. Some delegates at the 31st International Conference of the Red Cross and Red Crescent have begun to consider extending the reach of “International Humanitarian Law” – the breach of which can constitute war crimes – into its most daring and unexplored realm: video games.

“While the Movement works vigorously to promote international humanitarian law (IHL) worldwide, there is also an audience of approximately 600 million gamers who may be virtually violating IHL,” read the Daily Bulletin of the conference for Thursday, December 1st. “Exactly how video games influence individuals is a hotly debated topic, but for the first time, Movement partners discussed our role and responsibility to take action against violations of IHL in video games.”

That’s right, folks; the Red Cross wants to start taking action against war crimes in the realm of virtual fiction.

And just in case you’ve played mostly Paragon in games and think you’re safe, a little tip. Ever shot a healer or medic in a game (not  attacking you)? Ever played dead to ambush the enemy? Ever used non-standard ammunition of any sort in a modern war shooter?

Congratulations, you would be a war criminal according to the Geneva Conventions if this was real life.

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It’s hard for a software business to admit when its product is not the ideal solution to your problem. It’s even harder when that same business has been pushing for two years to get everyone to accept them as a serious contender to meet that need.

Adobe has decided to discontinue trying to beat HTML5 on mobile devices, and instead focus on PC development. This does not mean they are backing out of the mobile marketplace – far from it. Adobe will be increasing its involvement with the HTML5 spec and ensuring that their needs are met in the still-evolving HTML5 specification.

The press release, from the Adobe Blog, is below.

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