Quote:June 9, 2005
For Them, Just Saying No Is Easy
By MARY DUENWALD
BIRDS do it, bees do it. But not necessarily all of them. Among bees the sisters of queens do not engage in sex. And in certain species of birds - Florida scrub jays, for one - some individuals, known as helpers, do not breed but only help the breeders raise their offspring.
But could indifference to sex extend to humans, too? An increasing number of people say yes and offer themselves as proof. They describe themselves as asexual, and they call their condition normal, not the result of confused sexual orientation, a fear of intimacy or a temporary lapse of desire. They would like the world to understand that they can live their entire lives happily without ever having sex.
"People think they need to convert you," said Cijay Morgan, 42, a telephone saleswoman in Edmonton, Alberta, and a self-professed asexual. "They can understand if you don't like country music or onion rings or if you aren't interested in learning how to whistle, but they can't accept someone not wanting sex. What they don't understand is that a lot of asexuals don't wish to be quote-unquote fixed."
Considering the pervasive advertising for drugs to enhance sexual performance, the efforts to market a testosterone patch to boost sexual desire in women and the ubiquity of sexual references in pop culture, it is not surprising that those professing no sex drive whatever have been misunderstood, or at least overlooked. Only one scientific survey seems to have been done. And many experts in human sexuality, when told there is a growing Internet community of people calling themselves asexual, say they have not heard of it. Yet most of those experts find the concept unsurprising.
Three-fourths of the patients who go to the Center for Sexual Medicine at Boston University lack any sex drive, said Dr. Irwin Goldstein, its director, who is also the editor of The Journal of Sexual Medicine. "We call that H.S.D.D., hypoactive sexual desire disorder," he said.
Lack of interest in sex is not necessarily a disorder nor even a problem, however, Dr. Goldstein quickly added, unless it causes distress, if it leads, for instance, to conflict within a marriage or romantic relationship.
Dr. John Bancroft, the recently retired director of the Kinsey Institute for Research in Sex, Gender and Reproduction at Indiana University, said, "I think it would be very surprising if there weren't asexuals, if you look at it from a Kinseyan perspective, that there's this huge variation in human sexuality."
Not all clinicians agree that lack of interest in sex can be considered normal. "It's a bit like people saying they never have an appetite for food," said Dr. Leonard R. Derogatis, a psychologist and the director of the Center for Sexual Health and Medicine at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore. "Sex is a natural drive, as natural as the drive for sustenance and water to survive. It's a little difficult to judge these folks as normal."
Asexual people often say they have been aware of their lack of interest in sex since adolescence and that while it may have troubled them, they never knew anything different. "I realized I was asexual about the same time I realized I was short, when I was about 15," said Miss Morgan of Edmonton, who is 5-foot-1. "I realized I was short when everyone grew taller than me, and I realized I didn't have sexual feelings when everyone else started expressing and experimenting with theirs."
The Internet has provided a platform for people calling themselves asexual to announce their collective existence. The anonymity of the Web makes it easier to converse about the topic, said Todd Niquette, 36, a systems analyst in St. Paul and a member of the Asexual Visibility and Education Network, an Internet group. With more than 4,000 registered participants, it is the largest such community of asexuals. "What we're really trying to find out is: how can I feel less alone in this?" Mr. Niquette said.
His network defines an asexual as someone who "does not experience sexual attraction." This definition is, of course, distinct from the much older concept of asexual reproduction, practiced by amoebas, jellyfish and whiptail lizards, for example, as well as by many species of plants.
Asexuals might have sexual urges and even masturbate, but they do not want to have sex with other people, said David Jay, 23, who founded the Asexual Visibility and Education Network (called AVEN by its members) four years ago, when he was in college. Asexuals often feel romantic attraction for other people, Mr. Jay said. It just doesn't involve sex.
Mr. Jay, who works for an educational nonprofit organization in San Francisco, is a talkative, outgoing man with a ready smile and plenty of friends. He is, he said, interested in "deep emotional involvement" and in raising children (though "not necessarily having my own"). But he has never had sex, he said, adding there is a good chance he never will.
If asexual people are commonplace, why have they not been mentioned in history books or anywhere else before the advent of the Internet? Elizabeth Abbott, a research associate at Trinity College of the University of Toronto, is the author of "A History of Celibacy." She speculates that it may be because such people have stayed under the radar. They never married perhaps, or they entered into sexless marriages, or they had sex without wanting to. Unlike homosexuality, she noted, asexuality has never been illegal.
Society has not always accepted it, however. As early as the Middle Ages, Dr. Abbott said, "nonconsummation of marriage" was considered "an insult to the sacrament of marriage" and a ground for divorce.
Asexuality, she noted, is distinct from celibacy, which implies a conscious decision to stifle a desire for sex. What appears to be the only published study of asexuality - which defined it as a lifelong lack of sexual attraction to either men or women - found that 1.1 percent of adults may be asexual. The figure was drawn from a survey of 18,000 Britons who were interviewed in 1994 about sexually transmitted diseases. The data were reanalyzed by Dr. Anthony F. Bogaert, a psychologist at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, who published his findings last August in The Journal of Sex Research.
Dr. Bogaert found that 44 percent of those expressing no interest in sex were either married or living with partners or had been in the past.
One might assume that by avoiding sex and all the emotions and responsibilities that go with it, let alone the health risks, asexuals might have a comparatively easy life.
"But I think we exchange all that for a different set of trouble," Mr. Jay said. "Sex is very central to life in a lot of ways, and one of the real challenges of being asexual is trying to figure out where you fit."
That problem typically arises during the teenage years. "I knew when I was 16 or 17 that sex was just something that seemed tremendously important to everybody else but that I just didn't get," said David Warner, 55, a technical writer and editor in a Virginia suburb of Washington.
Like many other asexuals, Kate Goldfield, 21, a student at Goucher College in Baltimore, once thought she might be a lesbian. "I decided I must be gay because I knew I wasn't straight," she said. But she said she has since realized that she is not sexually attracted to women either.
Asexuals say they are often told that they will change when they meet the right person or when circumstances change, but those predictions do not ring true to them.
"Why do I need sexuality in my life so much that I should divert my time and energy to finding out what it is that will turn me on?" Mr. Jay asked.
Physicians have found that they can prompt sexual desire in both women and men by giving them supplemental hormones. And some scientists suspect that hormones might be involved in some cases of asexuality. Or, Dr. Bogaert suggested, it could be that certain brain structures may have developed differently in asexual people.
Dr. Derogatis agreed that low hormone levels usually underlie low libido but said sometimes psychological mechanisms come into play. "Some of these people may have a very powerful phobia about sex," he said.
Yet a small and still unpublished survey of 1,146 people - including 41 who described themselves as asexual - conducted in online interviews by Nicole Prause, a graduate student in psychology at Indiana, found that asexuals do not resist having sex because of fear. Rather asexuals "only lack the excitatory drive," Ms. Prause said in an e-mail message.
Barry W. McCarthy, a professor of psychology at American University and an author of "Rekindling Desire," a self-help book for married couples, said many people who experience inhibited desire would be well advised to examine that inhibition because it may turn out to be the result of fear, rather than a natural desire to forgo sex. "You have to respect people's individual differences," he said. "But for the great majority of people with inhibited desire the answer is not asexuality."
People often experience periods of asexuality. Many married couples give up sex after a number of years, said Dr. Pepper Schwartz, a sociologist at the University of Washington in Seattle and the author of "Everything You Know About Love and Sex Is Wrong." "Some people are relieved to not only back-burner sex, but to no-burner it," she said.
Mr. Jay acknowledged that some asexuals have spent - or will spend - some time being sexual. "We'll have people in AVEN who get into a relationship where suddenly they enjoy sex, and we have many people who say they used to enjoy sex but really not anymore," he said. "But the majority of the community is pretty stable."
A 32-year-old man in Dallas named Keith (he declined to give his last name) said he had tried to cope with his asexuality by marrying. "I thought that getting married would fix me and suddenly I would become interested in sex." After six years he and his wife were divorced, and now he is living with a younger man in a relationship that he described as loving and romantic but free of sex.
Mr. Jay said he believes asexual people can learn to negotiate relationships with sexual people.
"In high school and early college, when I would sense that someone was hitting on me, I would go into defensive mode and be like, 'O.K., this can't work,' " he said. "But since then I've realized that if someone is going to approach me sexually, it means they like my personality."
In recent months many people have logged on to the asexuals' network Web site to learn to understand better partners or spouses who are asexual, Mr. Jay said.
"There's a real desire out there to figure out how do you manage relationships without sexuality?" he said. "We don't have anything like a self-help book we could write on this yet."
Saw this over at The OT and thought somebody here might find it interesting.
I'm so the opposite of this. I think I might have too much sexual desire.
Quote: Killer 7; experimental college project or game...you decide #1<!-- 2 1--> <hr style="color: rgb(209, 209, 225);" size="1"> <!-- / icon and title --> <!-- message --> Some initial impressions of the GC version of Killer 7. I put about 4 hours in and did the first 2 "episodes".
--There is very little gameplay in the title. The action bits consist of simple shooting a couple of enemies in each section and the rest of the time is running around RE style and collecting items to use in fireplaces which give you new items to use on the empty picture on the wall which opens the secret passage. Though this is not bad, it's actually pretty fun.
--The shooting bits are a joke. You can either aim on your own, or just tap L and it locks on to the enemy's weakpoint and you hit fire and kill them in 1 hit. Basically this is the big "hit win" button game.
--You can change between 6 of the 7 characters at any time, the 7th one is the medical man and can't be changed to during play. But at checkpoint rooms you can use a TV and change to him. If one of the 6 characters dies in battle, you are warped back to the last checkpoint room. If you use the medical man and go to where the previous guy died, you can take their head back and resurrect them for what seems like free of cost. So again "win button"
--Each character has their own unique attacks, special attacks, and personal abilities. Certain enemies are best dealt with by certain members but since you can morph instantely it's no problem. For the personal abilities the map actually marks all points that can be accessed with a specific character and shows a picture of their face. For instance one of the guys can unlock any lock, so if his portrait is on the map screen you know there will be a lock there and you should switch to him. Some characters can jump to rooftops, some can read secret messages, some can destroy walls, etc... but since the map tells you who to use at each area again "win button" :P
--When you kill enemies you get blood. You can store the blood at your checkpoints and use it to upgrade your stats of your characters. There is a limit to how much you can store per episode and since enemies respawn you reach the max pretty fast. From that point you can just use the blood to heal yourself at enemy time or use it for the character specials which cost blood.
--Level and art design is pretty cool. Each section looks great and the game just has a really nice look that makes it stick out. The game is very gorey (screaming girls exploding and only their top half of torso remains; rolling heads of high school girls, etc...) but since the graphics are kinda like PS1.5 looking they can get away with it. It kinda reminds me of Fear Effect where it's really gorey but the graphics suck so much it's not that offensive. Graphics are decent on the main characters and the levels look alright but yea it's the art that makes it look good; technically it's pretty weak.
--Music ROCKS. Really good music filled with bizarre ambient sound effects. Unique music for almost every few rooms, tons of variety so far and everything fits. Sound effects are pretty good although since the game is about hearing where the enemies are located it's kinda weak that you're limited to Stereo sound.
--Considering the levels are complete insanity, the plot is kinda a normal alternate universe sci-fi political story. Seems interesting so far, but Capcom scripts always have a disjumbled feel to them.
--Voices range. Some like the villian are horrible, while the main old guy and the black guy are awesome. As usual with English voiced capcom games, the dialogue is odd and stilted because I'm guessing that the Japanese team has a ton of control over the english voice recording and use...and yea most Japanese people don't know the difference between good english voicework and bad work.
--I gotta wonder if this game will be uncensored in the US. Not only is it pretty gory, but each character has a tag line they yell when you kill an enemy and one guys is "YOUR FUCKED" and anothers is "FUCK YOU". So when you're shooting a room full of enemies all you hear is "FUCK YOU FUCK YOU FUCK YOU" :P For a GC game I dunno how that'll go over in the states. Maybe they'll change the lines.
--Another thing that will be interesting with the localization. 90% of the voice acting in Killer7 is by ghost like people who are supposed to be wierd. So in order to up the wierdness Capcom decided to do this:
1. Take the Japanese script for each line (ex: You'll never make it through here alive!)
2. Run it through babblefish (result: Alive you chop wood tree)
3. Use a text-to-voice pc program and record the voicing (robotic voice: Alive you chop wood tree)
4. Insert this as the voice of all the ghost characters
Now in the Japanese version you can at least read the Japanese subs and it'll make sense, since the subs are saying "You'll never make it through here alive" while the voice is talking about trees. But in the US version normally the subtitles would just be a transcript of the voice work which in this case would make 90% of the dialogue sections complete giberish. Hopefully Capcom USA is not that dumb and will have readable normal english subs while the ghost is speaking gibberish.
--Loading times suck. I'm playing a GC game...WHY ARE THERE LOAD TIMES!? In reality they really don't suck and are only about 2-3 secs between rooms. But compared to your average GC game that's like a 300% upgrade in load times. Bah. I bet the PS2 version is kinda bad if they're twice as long.
--Boss battles are kinda bad gameplay-wise. I mean when you can't even move on your own, there's not much you can do with a boss battle so.....yea.
So umm, yea so far it's hard to really describe it as a game. I'm having a good time playing it and certain things have made me smile and laugh a bit. It's really addictive and if I didn't have work tomorrow I'd probably play the entire thing straight through. But for those looking for a RE4 experience or DMC3 or anything gameplay related are gonna be let down. It's a walk around and solve simple RE-style puzzles while going through cool levels game with a little bit of easy shooting to keep things interesting. I don't expect a great plot as it's a Capcom game, nor do I expect great dialogue sequences as it's a Capcom Jpn game with English voices. Yet take it for what it is and it's good stuff; the Famitsu guy who gave it a 10/10 was crazy, but since I enjoy oddball attempts at unique art pieces it's easily a strong 8-9/10 so far.
Saw this over at Gaming-Age and thought it was interesting.
Quote:Have you ever seen an independent or small budget film where you could tell by the story and direction that the people behind it were geniuses in the making? Like Terminator, with its experimental effects and choppy stop motion… Advent is like that. The difference is that in Hollywood talents like these are showered with praise and given more money and resources to create their opus, where in gaming, select “press” see these instances as an opportunity to salt the wound; search for every last bug and put them under a microscope.
Does Advent slow down? Yes…Is Gideon dynamic to the environment…no. But as they said in one of Cameron’s many future opuses; “you have to look with better eyes than that”. Advent is a Halo scope game by a first time developer meant to immerse us in part one of a cinematic trilogy, much like Star Wars; another cobbled together first effort. On the whole the game is an experience no sci-fi fan should miss and in a proper environment would be critiqued for what it does right, over technical flaws inherent of time technology and a first time developer. This, right here, is why games like this are endangered and why our industry often veers in the wrong direction. As long as it’s easier and safer to put out cookie cutter flavor of the year games, we won’t see proper strides in gameplay. New ideas and franchise players such as this need support, not undue scrutiny.
Want me to go off on the technical snafus of GTA…Got an hour? But it’s a great game! Do you see these outlets doing that? No? Hmmm; I wonder why? Did anyone bag on Halo when Covenant troops glitched and ran into crevices like broken robots? Of course not…Or how about the trees in Halo 2…They’re square…and have no transition to the ground. I could have modeled them better. Anyone pick that apart? No; of course not, because it’s an awesome game. It was also made over three years on a titanic budget with a huge team and cutting edge tools, the same tools and treatment Donald Mustard and company now deserve to complete his trilogy. They should also recruit David Siller, one of the best producers in the country, if not the world, who is currently shopping for a new home. Only one of the main guys responsible for making the original Crash the game it was and creator of the first ever American made Capcom hit; Maximo. With Dave on the team, Advent is a 10…But that’s just my two cents.
We all scream for original games and innovation and here Glyphx and Majesco are delivering, and all certain outlets want to do is focus on what should be regarded as asides; things easily explained within the context of the development process. Well, enough. I said my piece. They are entitled to their opinion and their process. I just don’t agree with it. I don’t mean to throw stones. Lord knows I’ve scored some games high that many people weren’t so wild about…(P.N. 03, Voodoo Vince…) I just feel that in this case certain reviews have been overly critical in the scheme of things.
To Donald and everyone at Glyphx (and Tommy T. for a truly stunning score) I say hang in there and let the game buying public (who seem to love it) be your guide. I only hope the right message gets through so that we see you guys again real soon. Our cover will always be open for Advent Rising.
Quote:Nintendo: Innovation is dying
Mario creator Miyamoto discusses what's wrong with the video game industry today
June 3, 2005: 8:11 AM EDT
Game Over is a weekly column by Chris Morris
NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – This might come as something of a shock to the gaming world, but Shigeru Miyamoto – the man who created Mario, Donkey Kong and Zelda – really doesn't feel like playing games these days.
"There's not a lot I want to play now," he told me recently. "A lot of the games out there are just too long. Of course, there are games, such as 'Halo' or 'Grand Theft Auto,' that are big and expansive. But if you're not interested in spending that time with them, you're not going to play."
What he misses, he said, are games you can pick up and play – something the company hopes to accomplish with its next generation home console, currently code-named "Revolution".
Nintendo deliberately avoided giving too many details about the Revolution at the E3 conference this year, frustrating some fans who felt the company did not fight back against the PR onslaught of the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.
Miyamoto didn't offer any firm details either, though he did offer a few more vague hints about how the system would be different.
"The Revolution will use cutting edge technology, but it's ultimately about how that technology is used," he said. "We asked ourselves 'why would a family need or want to have a gaming console?' The answer is what's driving development of the Revolution."
While Miyamoto insists the Revolution will have advanced graphics and features, he doesn't want that to be the focus of the machine.
Instead, he's trying to encourage developers to think outside of the genres that have become so well known in the industry. In other words, there's more to gaming than role playing, simulation, strategy and action.
"Rather than thinking we have a new console, let's make epic games, I want [developers] to make more unique products," he said.
That's the school of thought behind some of the upcoming games for the Nintendo DS. "Nintendogs," a Tamigachi-like canine simulator lets you experience the joy of raising a pup with none of the house-training. Whether U.S. audiences will embrace it is a mystery, but Japan has gone crazy for the game, buying more than 400,000 copies, according to Nintendo. "ElectroPlankton," meanwhile, blends music and art, letting owners mix their own tunes.
Less likely to make it to Western shores is "Touch Dic". (Really, that's the name.) This dictionary application for the DS is a bit different than standard electronic dictionaries, turning learning a new language into a game. For example, one person, using the DS' stylus, can draw Kanji characters onto their Picto-chat screen while others try to guess their meaning.
There have even been whispers of a PDA application for the DS in the works, though Nintendo declined to comment on that.
Of course, the Revolution and the DS will continue to primarily be game machines. (Nintendo's not straying that far from its roots.) And company president Satoru Iwata has indicated established franchises, such as "Super Smash Bros." and "Metroid" will be ready at or near launch.
How much support Nintendo will get from third-party publishers remains to be seen. Though they used a lot of smoke and mirrors, Sony and Microsoft both turned heads at E3. Nintendo's next-gen device was barely an afterthought for most developers.
If Miyamoto is concerned, though, he didn't show it. He said he wasn't overly impressed with what he saw from Sony (Research) and Microsoft (Research) at the show – particularly in their pre-show press conferences.
"Most of what you're seeing are not even the first projections of games," he said. "They're just shiny computer graphics. They're things anyone using a computer can do. ... It's how we're going to use the technology that separates us. What we want to do is different – and we're happy with the road we're taking. When you have a Revolution, you're not going to have the same experience as you would with the other home consoles."
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