I have been playing my brand-new, eagerly purchased 3DS for the better part of the day. The system has, as expected, elicited a plethora of reactions that have run the entire gamut of gaming geekdom, from awed appreciation to tedious boredom to sheer excitement that the goddamn 3D really does work, after all, despite the bevy of hands-on previews hitherto offered by the journo world that have already confirmed (and re-confirmed) it.

And through it all, the most enjoyment I’ve managed to glean from my way-too-expensive little blue box has been the alternate reality games, tiny, little experiences that are barely-dressed-up pack-in tech demos. Take a picture of your wife’s face, have it morphed into a sphere, and shoot it as it flies around the room at you, in full 360 degrees. Slap a question block card on the table and watch as it morphs and distorts the piece of furniture into a shooting gallery. Cycle through the various poses of Mario, Link, and Captain Olimar’s Pikmin as they pop out of their own cards so that you might add their virtual likenesses to your three-dimensional photo album.

Cheesy? Sure. Laughable? Probably, although I’ve heard similar sentiments from plenty of others thus far. Gimmicky? Yes… and therein lies the crux of the matter. ARGs – at least, the 3DS’s photographic version – are most certainly a gimmick, along with Steel Diver’s periscope missions and a whole score of other applications seen in the launch library. Hell, the 3D itself, the very heart of Nintendo’s fourth-generation handheld, is nothing but a giant gimmick. But a quick survey of gaming’s finest moments yields surprising results: a goodly number of the most engaging, most enjoyable, and certainly the most unique experiences in videogames’ past come at the hands of some rather questionable methods. Clicking away on the myriad plastic peripherals that Guitar Hero has produced is some of the most fun I’ve had in gaming since I first played Super Mario Bros. in the arcade, with Star Fox 64’s force feedback or Pac-Man Versus’s interconnected GameCube-Game Boy Advance set-up not too far behind.

And then there’s the smaller stuff. Psycho Mantis bidding me to place my Dual Shock on the floor so that he might move it with the power of his mind strikes all three of the 3DS’s trifecta of lame chords – cheesy, laughable, and obviously gimmicky – but it’s also one of the single most clever beats I’ve ever encountered in a game. Playing as your Mii for the first time in Wii Sports never fails to bring a smile to one’s face, no matter how jaded he may be; rolling up everyday, household items in Katamari Damacy grows thin surprisingly quickly, but it never quite loses the hold that it (quite rightly) places on you. The versatility and the depth, the pervasiveness and resilience of the gimmick is nothing short of remarkable, really.

As it should be; for, at the end of the day, videogames are merely the latest extension – and, arguably, the fullest embodiment – of technology, and technology is nothing if not gimmicky. Text messages, GPSes, MP3 players, Blu-ray DVDs, karaoke machines… all are sizzle-in-the-pan deviations and recreations of a culture constantly attempting to titillate and capitalize. The gimmick is the special-edition, one-for-every state coin of the realm – which, just sometimes, can henceforth become the new, de facto standard, the one currency to rule them all forevermore (until, of course, the next new variation on the retired theme comes bouncing along). Sometimes, of course, it doesn’t. Ultimately, however, it doesn’t matter; the fun is in the experiencing, after all.

All of which means that the 3DS’s launch day, whether the ARGs’ novelty fades quickly away or their uniqueness makes them a permanent mainstay, is pure and simple fun.

Carpe diem.

In 2005, a child was born to the videogame world. Its father? The music industry. The little bundle of joy would go on to be christened Guitar Hero. The inspiration of this would-be giant came from peripheral maker RedOctane, who had recently developed a guitar-shaped controller for Konami’s arcade game Guitar Freaks. It would go on to have an unbelievably large effect upon both of its parent industries.

The release of Guitar Hero is one of those events in videogame history that everyone remembers to some degree or another. “Cultural phenomenon” became the phrase to describe it; some journalists even went a step further to call it “one of the most influential products of the first decade of the 21st century.” Sound like a little much? It did to me at first, too – until I took a step back and realized what it had accomplished. Not only had GH single-handedly spawned an entire genre that raked in, literally, billions of dollars worldwide, it had also boosted sales of music globally – and not just new artists, but old ones, as well. As if that weren’t enough, here’s a piece of trivia that may surprise you: researchers at Johns Hopkins University have used Guitar Hero as treatment for amputee patients and those needing new prosthetic limbs. Additionally, the music and dexterity-based controllers are credited for helping stroke patients regain coordination.

And then there’s the franchise’s offspring. RedOctane had teamed with Harmonix Music Systems to make the first GH (which was then distributed by Activision), but RedOctane would go on to be purchased by Activision, and Harmonix – which was acquired by Viacom through its MTV Networks division – would strike out on their own to create Rock Band, a game which took the Guitar Hero concept by the hand and guided it a step further, adding more instruments, such as drums, vocals, and even (later on) keyboard. In this way, the two games are cousins… or step-brothers… or something like that.

The next six years would see Guitar Hero become an incredible success – such a success, in fact, that, by 2008, the market for the newly-dubbed rhythm genre was worth $1.4 billion. Activision would go on to pump out more then 15 different versions, expansions, and spin-offs (such as Band Hero and DJ Hero). All the while, its relative, Rock Band, was doing the same to a lesser degree. Some of the expansions were specific to certain bands, such as The Beatles and Metallica. Other sequels offered new graphics, modes, and other goodies. But things weren’t destined to stay so bright and sunny. In 2009, a new word was being used to describe the games that everyone had clamored to buy four years earlier: over-saturation.

So what did it? Was it Activision in the lounge with the lead pipe? Or perhaps it was recession in the library with the revolver? It’s no secret that Activision had received some criticism for making all the GH games virtually the same; several prominent journalists and analysts in the videogame community pointed out that it would have behooved the publisher to continue to innovate and find new ways to mix gaming and music. Instead, they flooded the market with the same game over and over again. Like any good fad, people continued to purchase the living daylights out of GH – until they caught on to what was happening, and then many turned their focus to Rock Band, which had at least innovated in the form of new instruments. Despite all the indications of impending doom, Activation continued with its blind strategy of pumping out more of the same.

But perhaps the company isn’t all to blame. They had a great concept with Guitar Hero. There’s the old saying: “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” – and the series wasn’t broken, per se. And goodness knows that the recession that hit our country in the latter half of the 2000s did its fair share of damage; there were virtually no industries anywhere in the United States that weren’t affected in some way by the sudden tightening of purse strings. There is, in fact, the going theory that, perhaps, if the recession hadn’t happened, Activision would have had more cash to pour into making something more out of GH then just the same old, same old. This is all speculation, of course, but well worth pondering.

Finally – and most sadly of all – maybe people were just over rhythm games. It’s a fact that Rock Band’s sales have also been down, so much so that 15% of Harmonix’s 250-person workforce has been laid off and MTV Games has been completely shut down for good. Not enough bad indicators? Then how about this: Viacom, who was so quick to buy Harmonix at the peak of their popularity for millions of dollars, just recently turned around and sold the company – back to their shareholders, which was the best deal they could find. (On the plus side, though, this transaction effectively makes Harmonix an independent developer again. And since they still hold the intellectual rights to both Rock Band and newly-released Dance Central, there just may be a silver lining in this gloomy cloud.)

With the fad of rhythm games coming to an end, we are left with those few, but faithful, fans that actually loved the genre for what it was, not just for the moment of glory that it had. The only problem here is that these fans aren’t enough to keep the genre going at the pace it was – but, to some of these diehards, that’s actually a good thing. Many people were upset by the previously mentioned lack of innovation, and more then one fan has commented to me, since starting this editorial, that they hope the demise of Guitar Hero would allow Harmonix to step back, reevaluate the situation, and come up with the Next Big Thing. It’s just sad to this writer that the catalyst of this possible change is the death of the entire original series, as well as that of RedOctane, the original brainchild, who was axed one year ago by parent company Activision (yes, they bought the peripheral manufacturer hand-in-hand with GH) when the market started to sour. They were 12-years-old.

So I leave it up to you, dear reader, to decide for yourself who killed this once-dominating giant. For one to climb so high and to fall so far is a sad thing to behold, but, more than anything, it should serve as an important lesson to the entire industry that innovation and change are key. One would like to think that Activision will, indeed, take this to heart, but, then again, I’ve often been accused of giving people too much credit. Or perhaps the morale of the story is that fads come and go with the tides. Or maybe – just maybe – the fault lies with the conservatives for causing the Great Recession. Just kidding! (Or am I?)

Whichever school of thought you subscribe to, however, I hope that you’ll give a moment of silence to our fallen comrade, Guitar Hero.

The Xbox 360, it goes without saying, is my default system of choice in the current generation. It was the first 256-bit console to launch, it offers superlative online services, and, for at least the first few years of its release, it offered better versions of multi-platform releases (particularly in regards to anything from Electronic Arts, which mainly amounted to The Orange Box in my non-sports gaming collection) – all reasons which made the decision an obvious one, a literal no-brainer.

Which is not to say, of course, that I have ignored the PS3’s software – Uncharted is easily one of the best games to arrive this generation, as are the ingenious LittleBigPlanet and the masterpiece Heavy Rain – or ever failed to rave about the big black box’s absolutely stellar downloadable library, which includes the likes of Echochrome, Pain, and Everyday Shooter (if Halo Wars is the game that I literally have not been able to put down this generation, then ES would easily be my wife’s. We have an affliction, I know). I have always, since my youngest days as a gamer, deliberately collected every (major) console to have access to its roster of exclusives, even going so far as to beg, plead, and torture my parents to purchase the Sega CD for the (now-dubious) likes of Sewer Shark and Night Trap; it’s strictly in the confines of multi-system titles that I’ve favored, usually irrevocably so, one of my babies over the other(s), not unlike Jehovah with Cain and Able.

But something strange has been happening over the past year-and-a-half or so, starting slowly at first but now quickening at an almost exponential rate: I am buying the PS3 version of games, when and where applicable, over the 360. For Batman: Arkham Asylum (August 2009), it was the exclusive downloadable content; for Assassin’s Creed II (November ‘09) and Brotherhood (November ‘10), it was the ability to connect to the PSP game and previous console entry, respectively; for Dead Space 2 (January ‘11), it was the inclusion of a better-looking and -playing version of Extraction (September ‘09), a game I already own on the Wii; and for the upcoming Portal 2 (April ’11), it’s unquestionably the Steam support, something that Microsoft could never allow with its current configuration of Xbox Live. At this rate, I have little doubt that at this year’s E3 presser, Sony will provide me with another two or three games I’ll have to scratch off of the Xbox list and hastily scribble in under the PlayStation column.

Despite my parents having always told me, at every available opportunity, that I was a special boy growing up (the last time, in fact, was just last week), I have to imagine that there are scores of gamers out there that are just like me, that, though it would be near-impossible to make them flip their default settings, they can certainly be motivated to deviate from it, and deviate from it quite often. Though it’s still unlikely that the PS3 will be able to out-sell the 360’s install base by generation’s end next year, there is certainly the very real possibility that Sony will be able to steadily and diligently chip away at Microsoft’s lead, eroding its foundation and doing much to level the playing field at the start of the 512-bit cycle of consoles. Then again, maybe not – I am that sick gamer, after all, who just has to buy the collector’s edition of a title whenever it’s available, whether it may contain a statuette of in-game characters or a deluxe art book or just some fancy packaging. (I’m doubly afflicted, I know.)

There’s also the small problem of MS seeing both revenue and gamer chic slipping through their fingers, one digital drop at a time. Announcing that all Call of Duty DLC would be timed-exclusive to the 360 was a significant step in the right direction – of getting the exclusives pendulum that Sony openly mocked at the beginning of this generation and now has fully embraced to swing back in its direction. Although Sony will shortly have the entirely new venue of NGP-PS3/PS4 connectivity available to it, building upon Ubisoft’s AC example (and, of course, Nintendo’s – with the Game Boy and numerous home consoles – before that), it should be battening down the hatches in anticipation of Microsoft’s inevitable counterstrike.

Although this current generation may be (finally) starting to cool down, the larger battle is just warming up.

Yes, contrary to popular belief, the TotalPlayStation staff does own systems other than the PS2, PS3, and PSP (well, in the interests of full disclosure, Marc doesn’t have a PlayStation Portable, but he thinks that’s an eminently understandable decision) – and, what’s more, they actively play and even enjoy quite a few games on them, as well (except for Ryan, that is; he suffers from quite a bad bout of acute Fanboyitis. Yes, our prayers are also with him).

Sharp-eyed readers will notice some fancy new titles for some of us editors. No, they’re not typos; this is all part of refining our editorial structure, which is part of refining TPS, which is part of – ultimately – the grand site redesign that has been in the works for the past several months.

Consider it a little sampling of 2011 while we digest the best of 2010…

Shaun Mason
TPS Mascot
Now that we’re at the end of January, it’s definitely time to take a look back at 2010 and see which games held our attention, kept us up late at night, and constantly amazed us with their awesomeness. However, instead of the traditional formula, let’s not focus on the sweetness of the PlayStation from last year (blasphemy, you say?!). Instead, what non-PlayStation games were at the top of your list? Was Epic Mickey full of awesomesauce? Did Fable III romance and entertain you? Did you max out your vocabulary with Super Scribblenauts?

I’ll kick it off with a game that was so excellent, that PS users will be able to experience it in the first weeks of 2011. Mass Effect 2 was a great game, which took much of the original and improved on many of the gameplay mechanics and storyline to create an engaging adventure in the cold recesses of space. Thankfully, the horrible driving on planets was jettisoned in favor of planet scanning (which again is a questionable feature, but more controllable). But the commander and his ragtag group of soldiers, scientists, and misfits still manage to get the job done in the end, and the option to have many decisions that were made from the first game impact the sequel was fantastic. I’m looking forward to taking on the third chapter this holiday season eagerly.

So, how about it – what games fired you up from last year?

Marc N. Kleinhenz
Features Editor
Let’s get the elephant in the room out of the way first, shall we? I really enjoyed Halo: Reach (as did Dave Clayman, whom I interviewed on the subject), even though I felt some of its narrative components were a bit on the flaccid end of the spectrum.

On the flip side, I thought Alan Wake was a blast in terms of story but predictable in the gameplay department.

Super Meat Boy and Limbo were terrific in fundamentally different ways, GoldenEye – or what little I played of it – was all right, and Kirby’s Epic Yarn was like my first girlfriend: cute and fun but shallow.

Oh – and I can’t seem to put Halo: Wars down no matter what I do…

Aram Lecis
Managing Editor
There was a pair of games on the Xbox 360 that resonated with me this year. Both Deadly Premonition and, as Marc already mentioned, Alan Wake paid homage to one of my favorite television programs of all time, Twin Peaks (especially DP). Both games contained myriad gameplay “quirks,” for lack of a more graceful word (especially DP), but also deep, rich, and – yes – quirky stories (especially DP, naturally). I loved the atmosphere and emotion in the two towns that are central to each game, and if it wasn’t for this pair of offbeat adventures (and Limbo, of course), I might not have turned my Xbox on this year. I know Deadly Premonition had its share of detractors out there, but I can overlook the tepid-at-best combat system for Swery’s smart, witty, and borderline-actionable David Lynch tribute.

Andy Curtiss
Staff Writer
I have to say that my loyalty to PlayStation is pretty solid – so much so, that I don’t always get a chance to play other games for other systems. The consequences of this are that I don’t often “discover” games for other systems until they’ve already been out for a disturbing period of time. That being said, and I know Aram already mentioned it, but Limbo really got my attention. The atmosphere in that game was amazing, which is funny to say because of its understated graphics and simplicity. But despite being black-and-white and 2D, Limbo managed to create enough atmosphere that, at certain points, you really didn’t want to move forward anymore – there was a genuine pang of fear there.

On a more whimsical note, I personally discovered Pokemon at the beginning of last year. Yes… I already hear most of you groaning. But it’s addictive. And that’s, perhaps, the most fascinating part. Think about it: the premise behind the game is flimsy at best, but you can’t help yourself from wanting to catch, train, and breed these cute little monsters. And with the new Pokemon game on its way out (both the Black and White versions), I can’t help but be excited despite my fanboy-esque devotion to PlayStation.

Ryan Green
Reviews/Previews Editor
The only non-Sony game I even got this year that was any good was Halo: Reach. It probably stands out so much because it is the only good Halo game that came out since the original. A Halo game with an (overall) good story? Containing (something close to) character development? Show Spartans as vulnerable people and not super apes? The game runs well and is the best game Bungie has ever released. It is a shame it is wasted on the Xbox community.

But, really, what else came out that was good? Everything else mentioned so far didn’t do it for me, especially Limbo (not to call you out, Andy; I mean to call you out, Marc). Of all of the non-Sony-exclusives, the really good ones were third-party titles, so I can’t really count them. That and I didn’t play too many games on the other platforms.

I guess if I had to pick it, it would be StarCraft II. It turns out I really don’t like StarCraft games anymore, but it was all right. It took too long to get into the story, and the multiplayer is at a level where you have to care to enjoy it (so that is out). Did the iPhone version of CivRev come out in 2010? That game rules all y’all fools.

Sir Gordon Wheelmeier
Gaming Guru
I think that what we’re seeing this year is a bunch of great stuff that didn’t release in 2010 because MS and Sony were so involved in getting the Move and Kinect to market. If that’s true – that is, great non-motion-centric games were scheduled for 2011 early on from a marketing standpoint to leave room for the motion titles, thereby giving them extra development time – then we’d actually owe a bit of 2011‘s awesomeness to last year’s (boring) motion control battles.

Or it could simply be because Sony tends to give its development houses the time they need to make great games rather than rush them to market, and they just all happened to be ready this year.

I’m actually inclined to believe it’s a little bit of both columns…

Dan Hemsath
Features Freelancer
I could go on about the awesome multi-console releases I enjoyed (*cough, cough* Red Dead Redemption, Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow *cough, cough*), but in the spirit of non-PS fare, here goes.

Top of my list: Mass Effect 2. This game has the best narrative structure I’ve played in any videogame I can recall (though I look back fondly on MGS3’s). Aside from the game’s many amazing features (near-perfect fusion of quality gameplay/graphics, interactive character development/customization, and rich and multi-faceted story), it is constructed in highly-manageable mission chunks with consistent rising action-climax-descending action – a formula often used for character missions, I noticed – making each sit-down with the game memorable, fun, and exciting. Scanning planets got old, to be fair, but hearing Mordin sing Gilbert and Sullivan ranks among my “best moments of 2010″ – worth the price of admission.

Alan Wake surprised me; it somehow managed to captivate my attention above that of Red Dead Redemption at launch, primarily because of its success at embracing its subject matter in an earnest, multimedia-oriented fashion, which – for lack of a better reference – reminded me of Enter the Matrix. I remember watching the “Bright Falls” viral videos – painfully released only one at a time – hoping, like Twin Peaks, to gain some insight into the mystery of Alan Wake, even before the game came out. And the collector’s edition; frankly, if you didn’t get this, you missed out, for no better reason than the amazing Alan Wake Files work of fiction-within-fiction. This rare work of love is a hardcover book (roughly 144 pages) written in the voice of a fictional author, documenting the last known whereabouts of the titular character, one of his pursuers, and the mystery behind the town of Bright Falls itself. All of these elements merge into one overarching saga that expands beyond the sum of its parts, and – like every great mystery – leaves you desperate for answers you’ll never get.

I would certainly acknowledge Limbo and Super Meat Boy as achievements (no pun intended) for the well-structured gaming service that Xbox Live Arcade is. The games ooze nostalgia but wear it with pride. Limbo brought back to mind that silent protagonists – I think of Gordon Freeman here – can be effective at allowing the player to project his/her emotions into the scene, rather than being JRPG-born, ellipsis-churning mannequins; for a game primarily concerned with creeping you out, it is eerily effective in this capacity. And Super Meat Boy has become my addiction these cold winter nights, its manic levels haunting me, evoking a mantra of “I know I can beat this level!” as it hones my reflexes bit by barely noticeable bit.

Lastly, I would be remiss to neglect a sweet little B-lister that captivated my heart with its unabashedly Japanese sensibilities: Deathsmiles. Aksys games – whom I would consider the second coming of Working Designs, for their love of sweet “omake” – even released the game with its fantastic soundtrack and a (now-defunct) Xbox 360 faceplate, featuring the darling gothic lolis. But even with all the sweet swag packed in, the game is an excellent and challenging shmup, reminiscent of those quarter-gobbling arcade games that made pizza places have to stock up on extra change back in the ‘90s. It’s cute, packed with great music and level design, and just good-natured fun.

Kyle Heimbigner
News Editor
The first big game of 2010 for me was Mass Effect 2. It was a big improvement in every way over the first game, and I am really looking forward to Mass Effect 3. All of the DLC that BioWare created for it was also amazing and added a lot of extra hours to an already long and rich game. I liked the way the character interaction worked, and the more streamlined RPG and combat systems were very well-done; it felt like an improvement over the original while not dumbing it down, which is what a lot of sequels end up doing.

Red Dead Redemption was the second big game of the year for me. The huge, wide-open game world was beautiful – easily one of the best-looking console games to date. And although I had a lot of complaints about the reliability of the multiplayer component, the single player was top notch; it had a very long storyline that covered most of the game world and offered plenty to do in-between, as well. It didn’t at all feel like Grand Theft Auto in the Wild West, which I really appreciated.

StarCraft II was the biggest out of everything this year. This game is absolutely perfect, and Blizzard again proves that they are grandmasters at their craft: stunning graphics, amazing single-player campaign, and multiplayer that doesn’t get any more perfect. It’s a very well-balanced and competitive game. I almost enjoy watching StarCraft II more then I enjoy playing it; the tournaments that take place worldwide are something else to watch. The professionals that have made a living out of playing StarCraft have proven that this is the best real-time strategy game, and nothing else can even come close to matching its complexity and depth.

If I can be different for a minute, I would also like to talk about a game that caused a lot of disappointment, too. I had been waiting over four years for Final Fantasy XIII, and while I put over 90 hours into the game, I still left it feeling very unsatisfied. The incoherent storyline; awful dialogue; simplified, dumbed-down combat system; lackluster upgrade system; pointless grinding; and a terrible balance left this game feeling like it was an experiment gone horribly wrong. It was also the start of a bigger problem, what I feel is the downfall of Square Enix in terms of quality control. They used to release some fantastic games, but, in the last two years or so, they have just continually dropped the ball. FFXIII really failed to please a lot of fans – and let’s not even get into Final Fantasy XIV.

Shaun Mason
TPS Mascot
There were two games that have already been mentioned that also stood out to me – while StarCraft II seemed to take forever to come out, I found it to be worth the wait. Like Kyle, I liked the single-player story a lot, and, like Ryan, I found the multiplayer to be where the majority of my time was spent once the single-player experience was long gone. I also found Super Meat Boy to be lots of fun in a fast-twitch, perfect-timing sort of way.

But that kind of highlights much of my focus this past year – I dove back into PC gaming wholeheartedly. It wasn’t hard to see why, given this past year, either, but I’ll mention a few fun highlights: the release of a new Sid Meier’s Civilization game is practically a holiday for my wife and me, and Civ V was no exception. I probably played it for two weeks straight, creating every strategy that I could imagine to dominate the world.

As much as I kept telling myself that I wouldn’t do it, I also found myself diving into Puzzle Quest 2 once again and getting stuck in the Bejeweled-style gameplay. Then again, I could say the same thing when Bejeweled 3 came out – yeah, yeah, I know, they’ve got casual gameplay that isn’t necessarily as involved as a shooter or strategy game, but considering that one of the RTS games that I had been waiting for was a huge disappointment (C&C4 and EA, I’m talking to you – that was a horrible ending to a great franchise), I’d rather spend the time with a casual game than get let down again.

What is a man?

…

Aside from a “miserable, little pile of secrets” (c’mon, tell me you didn’t chime in there). It’s a legitimate question, even if it does come from a vampire waxing philosophical. Certainly, there are a gamut of answers for this, but I’m going to limit it to the arena of videogames, and how portrayals of men in our favorite hobby contributes to – or is derived from – the zeitgeist, and how this has changed, even over the last few years, from bald space marines to dudes with beards.

So, why is it that when you put in whatever FPS/action game/etc. in your gaming console (or PC), you can expect a majority of the time to find that your “character” is – frequently by default – a male, aged 18-35? The short answer: money. Gaming is, at least these days, a financially fueled entertainment medium, with little room for slack. Publishers spend millions on finding out who’s playing what they’re selling – and, hey, why not cater toward the audience by making that ability to identify with the main character all that easier?

But we all know that’s not universally true. After all, many games have broken the mold, or at least made a decent effort to do so. While the Prince of Persia games feature a male protagonist (kind of goes with the whole “prince” thing), Beyond Good & Evil proved Jade could make it in a man’s world. Nathan Drake of Uncharted fame owes much to the nature of his game to Lara Croft of Tomb Raider — so much so that Uncharted was sometimes referred to as “Man Raider” before it broke onto the gaming scene to critical acclaim of its own merit. Games like Mass Effect and Dragon Age have had tremendous success splitting the difference, allowing for players to choose and customize their genders as they wish.

And yet, who is featured most prominently on the Mass Effect covers? Hint: it’s not “Femshep.” The reality of it is that demographics, market research, and all that other horrible corporate buzz talk we hate when we talk about our favorite games still lurks under the surface of it all, subtly influencing our purchases with depictions of – you guessed it – our projections of ourselves, or at least some facet therein.

Unlike movies, videogames depend on us actively controlling a character in order to proceed. Like Pavlov’s dogs, our achievements and progress in the game are rewarded with more entertainment. How, then, can developers make that connection stronger, yielding – even at the subconscious level – increased entertainment value? Make that character, that situation or scenario, one we can project ourselves into. Virtual reality is an easier pill to swallow when we still have free will. “Everything begins with choice.” (Thanks to Morpheus of The Matrix for the maxim.) Even if that choice is an illusion, it’s frightfully convincing.

So why does the default Commander Shepard of Mass Effect look the way he does? His cover image certainly does fit the bill of the quintessential “bald space marine,” albeit with a slight resemblance to Matthew Fox (from the early episodes of Lost), plus power armor. And why has that archetype become as ubiquitous as to be imitated in numerous other games? I think of Fracture first, with its hilariously named protagonist, Jet Brody (contrary to his name, there are no extreme snowboarding levels in the game). If you squint – and know nothing about games – it would be forgivable to mistake one game’s hero for the other.

Call of Duty occupies a unique place in this dynamic, primarily because starting with Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the figure on the cover is more-or-less an obscured silhouette, with the action in the background. Humorously, this “cover philosophy” would go on to “respawn” not only in each consecutive iteration of Activision’s flagship title, but in its competition, such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and, to some extent, Medal of Honor.

Medal of Honor has the additional distinction of being one of many recent additions to the portrayal of masculinity in videogaming: that of a game featuring “dudes with beards.” (So much so, that it is a bonus for leveling up in the game.) Between Dragon Age 2’s default protagonist “Hawke,” and the early screenshots of Dominic Santiago in Gears of War 3, our heroes in 2011 may be more hirsute than before. (Guess they didn’t get that Schick Quattro for Christmas.) Even John Marston sports some healthy trail stubble.

In the end, bald or bearded – or both, if Max Payne 3 is any indication – publishers count on their core audience wanting to play the games they make. If they have to model their “cover boys” after the grooming habits of their focus groups, so be it; it puts food on their tables and lets them keep making games. And it may be cynical to say so, but people are naturally inclined to judge a book by its cover. It’s not necessarily a bad thing, but a first impression shouldn’t be the last one.

Mass Effect, for one, was first recommended to me by a young lady who didn’t express any sense of alienation by its portrayal of an 18-35-year-old bald space marine on the cover. Rather, she encouraged me to try the game because of what exciting choices awaited within the game itself. We discussed other games that we enjoyed, such as Assassin’s Creed and Splinter Cell, both series prominently featuring different portrayals of masculinity on the surface, but rich with rewarding gameplay and thrilling stories bursting from within. Our mutual enthusiasm was that of the content of these games, rather than the image the publishers evoked to hedge their bets in favor of an easy sell.

So as time goes on, how will the covers of our videogames look? Will they be more reminiscent of a GQ magazine, with direct call-outs to its target audience? Or will publishers push the other way, maybe with something impossible to identify with, like abstract Color Field painting – a blue line intersecting a red block for Call of Duty 26? Maybe all of the covers will digitally capture the facial features of whoever is holding the game and render it into the image on the case. (Okay, that would be cool, if a bit creepy.) The future has always been difficult to predict, and as the videogame industry emerges from its “awkward teens,” how it chooses to portray its audience will define how it is perceived at large.

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But enough talk – have at you!