Entertainment News: Heroes And Villains: The Ranges Of Good And Evil (PICS)

When Superman saves the earth, he simply comes in, does his bit, and then re-establishes the natural order. In the shared world of multiplayer online gaming -where nothing can really change because thousands of players are with you - this is ideal. Supervillains, however, are uniquely unsuited to these worlds because they want to remould them in their own image. This is the problem facing the games developer Cryptic when working out how to give its successful superhero multiplayer online game City of Heroes a dark mirror, in the shape of new game City of Villains. 1

This program enables current players to email 10-day trial codes to friends. If one of their friends buys a standard account and pays for one month of subscription to City of Heroes or City of Villains, the referring player will be automatically credited with one month of free game time! 2

That it is still an enchanting and atmospheric game speaks volumes about the value of developer Cryptic’s approach. It is best to think of City of Villains not as a sequel but as a sister game. Players who subscribe to City of Heroes can also play City of Villains once they buy the box, allowing them to skip between virtuous paragons and vile nemeses on a whim. City of Villains improves the game’s quality, by being funnier and better written and constructed, but also adds content, allowing heroes and villains to do what they were made to do - fight spectacularly. Even without that, the game’s unique approach keeps it compelling. 3

Whereas in many peer games you will fight foes in a shared environment with hundreds of players, City of Villains is personalised. In World of Warcraft, for example, if you are hunting wolves in a wood, it will be packed with fellow humans practising similar canine cruelty. When you accept a task here, you will travel across the shared world then enter a zone specifically created for you and the people you have chosen to team up with. 4

It is the assumption of this study that a standard ideology of war provides the central frame, or deep structure, within which the coverage of the Persian Gulf conflict was presented by the media. The objective of this study is to deconstruct this framing and analyze it in terms of its visual presentation. In addition, the study will attempt to determine to what extent criticism of the war coverage as bloodless or overly patriotic is confirmed by an analysis of the war photos. 5