Humans

Other people are human. This is a commonly recognized truth, but it is one frequently forgotten. Have you ever been walking down the street and realized that everyone you met has a soul? This is harder to see online. There is an inherent distance. Not just of miles, but of emotions. When someone is right in front of you and you look right into their eyes as you chew into them, the pain you've given them is harder to shake. But when they are a talking head or simply a username, seemingly a million miles away, it is far easier to justify hatred. Both Phil Fish and Marcus Beer fell into this trap last weekend.

For those unfamiliar, I'm just going to link the Kotaku article. Just because it's well written and balanced and it almost certainly is better than any summary I could provide.
http://kotaku.com/twitter-blowup-leads-to-sudden-cancellation-of-fez-ii-934548588

Caught up? Excellent.
People seem to think that Phil Fish exists in a bubble of assholery. Like he's the shifty looking man or woman at the bus stop shouting profanities at children just for the sheer joy of it. However, my understanding of the controversies that Phil Fish has been involved in has been quite different. Either he expresses a controversial opinion, like "Japanese games suck", or he acts rashly in response to abuse, or at least insensitive comments. The famous twitter line, "I just won the grand prize at IGF tonight. suck my dick. choke on it." was in response to someone crushing and devaluing his work on a game that wasn't even out at the time. That's rude and disgusting. While Fish's response was certainly in poor taste, it was also an act taken after provocation. It's a two way street. While abuse or hatred doesn't give Fish a excuse to act that way, it does give him a reason. With Marcus Beer's comments, while admittedly being an complaint about a relatively minor aspect of Fish's PR, still felt like a personal attack, with Marcus calling Fish an "asshole" and a "tosspot". I have no idea how familiar Fish was with Marcus's previous work, but in that moment the insult was all he saw. So, Fish acted rashly, without class or tact, but that is something we are all prone to do. If I've learned anything from my time spent on the interwebs, it's that giving people the benefit of the doubt is worth it. Particularly if we haven't met them, and if they haven't killed people or done something else truly terrible.

This, of course, applies to Beer as well. I know next to nothing about Beer and I've never met him in person. His opinions have frequently irritated me, but he's been an amusing and engaging presence in the industry. If Beer were to take Fish's offensive suggestion (and possible Futurama reference) and kill himself, we would lose something, and so would Fish.
Let me quote John Donne's "MEDITATION XVII Devotions upon Emergent Occasions" to illustrate my point.

No man is an island entire of itself; every man 
is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; 
if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe 
is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as 
well as any manner of thy friends or of thine 
own were; any man's death diminishes me, 
because I am involved in mankind. 
And therefore never send to know for whom 
the bell tolls; it tolls for thee. 

Other human beings are worth giving a damn about. Whether they are far away or close to you. That a simple reduction of people to "asshole", or "tosspot" or "crazy" is a reduction of yourself. While Fish's exit from the industry is certainly not as drastic a loss as death, it is still a loss. The dialog and creation of games has already suffered because of Fish's absence. All people are human. 

All people are a part of us. It's time we started acting like it. 

Game Journal 2

Games I'm writing about:
Catherine for Xbox 360 by Atlus
Gears of War 2 for Xbox 360 by Epic
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker on Xbox 360 by Konami
Persona 4 for Playstation 2 by Atlus
The Witcher on Macbook Pro by CD Projekt Red
The Walking Dead: 400 Days by Telltale Games


Games I'm actively playing:
The Witcher
Persona 4
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker
Far Cry 2

I don't have much to say about MGS: Peace Walker or Far Cry 2 this time. Stay tuned for further entries.

Catherine: Adding multiplayer to primarily single player games can be very dicy. It has often been accused to destroying the tone of the single player experience. For every good example, like Mass Effect and Assassin's Creed, there is at least one terrible example, like Metroid Prime 2, Tomb Raider or Spec Ops: The Line. Catherine may be a near pitch perfect example of how to do it right.
For those unfamiliar, Catherine is a Japanese puzzle/social sim game from Atlus, the creators of Persona. The story is concerned with Vincent, a 30-something dude with a girlfriend and a steady job. But he's having terrible nightmares, and a new mysterious woman has come to tempt him. However, there is a deeper supernatural mystery going on and Vincent must unravel it if he is to survive. (insert bit here about core gameplay) The core gameplay takes place within Vincent's nightmares. Which involve climbing a tower of movable blocks. You move the blocks to create staircases to allow you ascend, while a Freudian monster of the Psyche chases after you. It's Jenga meets Q*Bert meets Persona and it's extraordinarily original.
There are two multiplayer modes in Catherine, one is co-op which is basically the same concept, but with two players. It has spectacular moments where the players are forced to move the blocks very carefully as to accommodate each other, but it mostly scratches the same itch as single-player. Where it gets really special is the Vs. mode. In this mode, called Colosseum, both players ascend the same tower and attempt to win 2 out of 3 matches. You win a match by either making it to the top of the tower first, or if the other player falls before you. These simple additions, that involve almost no rule changes, give the game an entirely different strategic edge. You can move blocks in order to make the other player fall, or force them to discover a path of their own, rather than mooch off yours. The frantic puzzle solving gains a different edge because there is someone behind you who is catching up. It's incredible fun. It feels like an expansion or a valid addition to the game, rather than some unhealthy looking, corporate growth on the side of the game's face. Once more, both multiplayer modes force you to play the single player to unlock them. It's a game that's aware of its priorities, and isn't afraid to enforce them. The multiplayer is not the work of some investor looking over the shoulder of the development team. It is the result of the team wanting to work on the mechanics in a different setting. It's a labour of love and that makes all the difference.
 I'm not going to write about the single player much, because I don't have much to say about it.. However, I will say that playing a game that is basically about relationships and gender norms is so incredibly refreshing that it makes for a fun experience despite its more problematic elements. It's also refreshing to have a player character that starts out weak and cowardly and eventually through trial becomes bold and courageous. It's a game, primarily, about ordinary people, and that within itself is extraordinary.

Gears of War 2: Horde Mode is a really weird phenomenon. It has become one of the most popular game modes in recent years inspiring or directly influencing COD: Zombies, CoD: Modern Warfare 3, Mass Effect 3, Assassin's Creed III, Bulletstorm, Fear 3, Team Fortress 2, Killing Floor, Saints Row 3, Transformers: Fall of Cybertron, and Halo 3: ODST. And I'm sure there are dozens more that I'm missing. The interesting thing that Horde mode does is that there is no victory condition. You can not win. Every smart strategy, every close call, every sudden turnaround, is just a stall. You will lose. But, despite this, Horde Mode in Gears of War II is incredible fun. About as much fun as I've had playing anything. But it never seems to acknowledge the dark truth at the heart of the game. We are fighting, we are heroic, but we taste defeat. By entirely ignoring this element of the game, they ignore a potentially powerful story. Make no mistake, games tells stories. When I got cornered by three huge enemies and died, leaving my friend to fend off the rest of the wave, that's a story. When I rescue my friend under heavy fire, and we hold the line till the end of a wave, that's a story. When I make it to a very late wave, bruised and battered with no ammo, and die to a weaker enemy, that's a story. I just want the game to give those stories more meaning.

Persona 4: This one has spoilers, so you know SPOILERS: Persona 4 is an insanely smart game. This is really shown through how the game builds your routine and then messes with that rhythm. This is most explicitly shown in the endgame, where there are two primary changes to your routine, Nanako is gone, and a ominous, and eventually deadly, fog has settled over Inaba. Before Nanako was kidnapped, everyday you get home she greets you. I believe, and feel free to correct me if I'm wrong, that the greetings change as the game continues and your relationship to Nanako deepens. But once Nanako is gone, those greetings cease and their absence, as well as the change in music, cuts like a knife. Every in-game day, something that can occur several time in a single play session, gains a sudden reminder of what is at stake. Once the fog settles over Inaba, every location changes, again a constant reminder of what there is to lose.. Even when you hang out with your friends, the reminder text pops up before the short story truly begins. The sudden change gives everything weight, and lets your decisions weigh down on you before the coming storm.

The Walking Dead: 400 Days: 400 days is a semi-expansion to Telltale Game's excellent The Walking Dead. That follows 5 characters in interlocking stories that all take place at varying times during a period of 400 days. Making a shorter form Walking Dead game is really interesting, because it makes the illusionary nature of its choices more explicit. The Walking Dead always cheated, your choices don't ultimately have a huge effect on the overall narrative. But they do have an effect on how you perceive it. The example I tend to bring up in defense is Hamlet. Hamlet follows a fairly conventional trope, for both now and the time it was written: The revenge story. The play even acknowledges this by having two other characters, Laertes and Fortinbras, that represent more typical revenge protagonists. Even though many of the beats of Hamlet's story remain the same, he is different, and thus much of the play takes on a different tone and meaning. It changes everything. This is how I tend to justify the essentially meaningless choices in The Walking Dead. Plus the experience of making the choices is distinctly powerful and engaging despite their lack of mechanical meaning. And the choices you'll make in 400 Days are remarkably powerful. They'll make you question morality, nature of trust, the nature of sin, and what we're willing to do to survive. All of the short stories are very well constructed and build to effective, and occasionally devastating climaxes. It is astonishing how well the stories set up their characters and conflicts, it seems effortless, but it is definitely not.  It's not quite as heart breaking as the original game, but it's very impressive how much it does with its running time. So whether or not those choices we made actually matter, it's unclear whether these characters will show up for the game's announced 2nd season, the experience absolutely does.*

The Witcher: From a gameplay perspective, I don't have much more say than I did last time. The Witch is a beautiful, soulful game drenched in an engaging world, that is deeply flawed due to its occasionally very clumsy design. However, I wanted to talk about sex in the Witcher. Sex in the Witcher is so casual as to lose all meaning. Part of this must be since Geralt is a mutant and unable to get or inflict STDs, as well as unable to impregnate others. But this goes strangely unmentioned by any of Geralt's potential bunk mates. The societal implications of sex are not mentioned or elaborated upon in any fashion. It is unknown if this casualness is something normal to the world of the Witcher or unique to Geralt. Or whether him and his long term girlfriend Triss are committed and Geralt is cheating. What ever you think about sex, and where and when it should be done. It is an action and actions have equal and opposite reactions. The Witcher paints a picture of world where sex seems to mean nothing. For all the game's supposed maturity, that's pretty silly.

1: SPOILERS: The one story I was ultimately disappointed with was Bonnie's chapter. The death of Dee, while very powerful, doesn't feel driven by player action. The first thing I thought when the shadow of a menacing figure was approaching was that it might be one of my two companions, so I waited. You then get smashed with a flashlight and the game over screen plays. In order for Dee's death to mean something, the player has to feel responsible for it and even though I took action against it in a reasonable manner, the game ignored me. Thus the accident didn't feel like it was my fault, it felt like it was the fault of the game's designers and the scene lost much of the power it might have had.

Gaming Journal 1

This is the first chapter of a gaming journal. I'm going to be talking about games I'm playing. Some entries might take the form of reviews. Some might be game or level design analysis.  Some might be examinations of wider trends in the game industry through the lens of a particular game. Basically whatever comes to mind. Spoilers may come, but I'll be sure to warn you. Unfortunately, I'm in the middle of a lot of games currently. As a consequence, this journal will probably not be as narratively satisfying as it should be. However, this isn't a saga. It's just musing and weirdness. Hopefully, you'll like it anyway.
Here are the games I'm playing this time:
Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD on Xbox 360
Far Cry 2 on Xbox 360
Persona 4 on Playstation 2
The Witcher: Enhanced Edition on a Macbook Pro
I reserve the right to randomly insert games onto this list in the future. This blog is a side effect of my gaming life, not the other way round.

Metal Gear Solid: Peace Walker HD: Peace Walker's primary addition to the Metal Gear franchise, besides being able to walk while crouching (THANK THE LORD*), is an army that you run in between levels. You recruit new solders, train them, place them in different areas of expertise like R&D or Combat, send them on missions or even play as them in side missions. Adding a meta element to Metal Gear Solid is interesting because its predecessors are focused on a single event. MGS2 has a time jump of a couple years, and MGS3 has a few months that separate its two sections, but they are both primarily concerned with continuous journeys. Both literal and figurative. What this meta element serves to do is create a more solid divide between the journey Snake (or Big Boss) is taking, and the game you are actually playing. But this divide also serves a really smart decision; making Metal Gear Solid a game you can play briefly or for a very long time. The game was originally designed for PSP and that platform informs almost everything about Peace Walker's design. The mission structure splits up bigger "level" sections into smaller chapters. It's a relentlessly smart game. You can literally play the game for 30 seconds and accomplish something important within the game's design. This also serves the purpose of making Kojima's wordy cutscenes shorter. They're still very long, but they feel much more considerate of the player's time. However, while the game is very smart, something is missing. Maybe it's because Snake doesn't have a real emotional stake in the conflict at hand. Although he might later*. But, I think it's because the game has become more splintered and fractured because of its structure. The game still works, and is very fun, but it has lost something.

Far Cry 2: An open-world first-person shooter in Africa. I don't have much to say about this one yet. I'm only 4% through according to the game. The game feel is very unusual. Everything is functional, but it has little of the kinetic pleasure of Call of Duty's or Halo's controls. I feel like this was intentional and I'm excited to see if it gains meaning as I play. Perhaps the player character, while clearly trained in the way of violence, isn't a killing machine. Perhaps they are trying to make the death messy and real in this game. We'll see.

Persona 4: It's a tremendous game. I don't think I have much to say about it that hasn't already been said. It's a game that manages to have immense affection for its characters while making them tremendously flawed. Its fun and serious and funny and engaging in a multitude of ways. The only problem I have really with it, is the sometimes the game is more punishingly difficult than satisfying difficult. Sometimes you die, and it doesn't really feel like your fault, and death is fairly punishing in the game. It can be incredibly frustrating. But the game's incredible energy and compelling structure easily rise above this shortcoming.

The Witcher: Enhanced Edition : This game is ambitious. It has big ideas that it throws around like weights shackled to its arms. This is a heavy game. Both in themes -racism and moral ambiguity-, and in mechanics - choices and living worlds.  It weighs the game down, but also makes it all the more impressive. First of all, its design is very focused on the world. The second chapter of the game, mostly concerns itself with a mystery, during which you explore a town and question its inhabitants. On one level, it's exhilarating. It makes the world feel real and alive with purpose. It makes the actions you take in the game world have consequences outside yourself. There's a 24 hour schedule during which the game's world changes in interesting ways. The game's characters have schedules and move about during the day. Everything gives the game a sense of life that builds and becomes more expansive as the game goes on. Side quests tie into the main quest in interesting ways. I solved the second chapter's mystery by exploring a side area. The game has a simply remarkable sense of interconnectedness.
The other level of it makes the game an immense chore. Because of the game's design, it feels as if everybody is very far away from each other. You end of running around to opposite corners of the map just to talk to somebody. Then you run around to the other end to talk to somebody else. The game's open design often leads to repetitive boredom, running around from end to end with none of the wonder that came when you first explored those areas. The game's writing is also incredibly clumsy. It has its moments. It smartly drenches its world in history, but doesn't explain it to you in a droll, condescending voice. Rather, it lets you inhabit the world, letting you fill in the blanks and the climax of the first chapter is a powerful takedown of sexism. However, I haven't become invested in any of the characters. The stakes of the drama are throughly unclear. I'm not sure what I'm doing or why I'm doing it or why it matters. The bad guys stole some recipes, why is that bad? Should I be concerned? The choices are similarly awkward. The potential consequences or ramifications aren't clear. They can feel arbitrary. The game seems so obsessed with making sure you know that your choices matter that it shouts it at you. The whole pace of the game changes, as the main character gravely intones words about consequences and choices. It does its job of letting me know that I've made an important choice, but it does so it an obvious way. It doesn't let the horror or joy of what I've done dawn on me. It doesn't let it's impact settle like a coming storm. Instead it shouts at me like thunder, empty and without substance. With all this in mind, I continue to play. Something I think I should just skip ahead to Witcher 2, but something, a vividness, keeps me coming back.

That's all for now. Did you guys like it? Want more? Let me know, and thanks for taking the time to read.

Footnotes
1: Yes, I'm aware that was introduced in MGS4: Guns of the Patriots, but I haven't played that one, so this was my first exposure to that shift.
2: SPOILERS: I just met Dr. Strangelove. So, the whole the Boss as AI thing just came into play.

Linearity and the Open World

Let me tell you a story.
It was a cold night, and John Marston was in the pursuit of violence. He was tracking a man called Dakota. Dakota had caused enough trouble to put a significant bounty on his head. And Marston, an increasingly desperate man, needed that money. The sheriff had told him two things: that Dakota had held up with a group of around 5 men up in the mountains due west of Blackwater, and that he was wanted alive. Marston was not the type to deny the sheriff his wish. So, there he had rode. His map had lead him true, to a small winding road up a mountain. He was now riding up it, and waiting for signs of life. The rocky, mountainous ground was covered in a light layer of snow. It was the first snow he had seen in a while, after the oppressive heat of Mexico. It was quiet, but he felt the heavy atmosphere before a fire fight. Part of him thrilled at the knowledge of coming violence, and the other part of him grimaced at the lives to be lost, but both parts strode up the mountain. He was coming close to the cave where Dakota was said to be hiding, and dismounted his horse just as one of Dakota's posse strolled over the top of the ridge. Marston crouched behind his horse, and quietly snatched a small knife from his back pocket. He took a deep breath, crept out slowly from behind his horse, and threw his knife with perfect aim at the henchman's head. Instead of the silent kill Marston had expected, the man cried out, and two more of Dakota's men ran out from behind the first. Marston, hit one of them with another knife, and then, realizing a stealthy approach was helpless, rapidly took his revolver and shot the second. He ran up the hill, expecting the men to come barreling down on him any moment. The top of the hill held a small campsite that was pushed up against the mountain. Two more of Dakota's henchmen were waiting for him, while Dakota took cover behind a bunch of rocks to the side. Marston quickly aimed for the henchmen's heads. One shot shattered a skull, but the other merely hit the henchman's shoulder. Marston panicked, firing off a series of shots. Enough of them hit to leave the man dead. Dakota put up a good fight, hitting Marston in the shoulder, but Marston expertly whipped out his lasso, and hogtied him. Marston called his horse, and put Dakota on its back. He rode off speedily, knowing that Dakota would have more men coming. Marston was not half way to Blackwater before three men on horseback caught up to him. Marston took care of one easily, but a combination of his wounded shoulder and his growing fatigue lead to an incredibly clumsy firefight. Eventually, Marston was backed up against a cluster of trees with two men coming at him. In a couple desperate shots Marston finished the group off. He took a deep breath, and was suddenly knocked off his horse. Dizzy, but still conscious, he steadily sat up. And saw a huge grizzly bear standing over him. He stood up in a frenzy, pulling out a shotgun from his back holster. He got off a couple shots before the bear beat him down and the darkness of death overtook him.

This more or less happened to me during a session of Red Dead Redemption. This is a moment that encapsulates what makes Open World games appealing and special. They are alive. Games are essentially exercises in cause and effect, but more complex games are rulesets. A series of elements that interact with each other. Open world games are a space to interact with that ruleset. To poke and prod and kick and kiss it until its mysteries open up to you. Most rulesets are focused on mastery. But, the open world is about possibilities. This is so expertly shown by the random events that occur in Red Dead. For those unfamiliar, these events create events that occur around in the game world. Robbers may pop up by the side of the road or someone may call for help and then attempt to steal your horse. They provide a space to react to and create narratives within the game's mechanics. Even the more regulated side quests(Strangers, Bounties etc.) only appear when you come close to them. This lends the events of the those missions a sense of discovery. One of the big problems I had with Assassin's Creed III was that it didn't understand the power that emergence has. The world in AC3 feels regimented and programmed. Rockstar understands that experience is meaningless without discovery. It brings an experience that is alive.

But, if this is all true than why are Red Dead Redemption's main missions so linear?
It has a very good reason. Red Dead Redemption is less about freedom and exploration, than it is about the experience of being in a western. The freedom and world feeds into the "western experience" rather than the other way round. The missions often act as a way of providing the western in a more contained manner. They also serve to introduce the primary mechanics of the open world. Another example of this goal at work is the deadeye mechanic. You want to feel like a Clint Eastwood style badass, so the game give you an ability to slow down time to more expertly lineup shots.

But, that really only answers the question for Red Dead Redemption. The deeper question at work here is, why do open world games have main quests? Why not have just a sandbox?

It could be because the player wouldn't be motivated enough to continue the adventure with more of an emotional hook to push them forward. Or throwing the players into the game's world without any basic tutorial or set-up might lead to frustration. Main quests can also serve to introduce each "section" of the game world to the player, and give them an initial investment in the exploration of that world. But, main quests often come with an problem: they can create a hefty amount of dissonance between the gameplay and the narrative. Red Dead Redemption has this problem in a big way. You can go rob people or go on a murderous rampage one minute, and the next you're earnestly trying to help a struggling family in a main quest. They also can destroy a game's flow. The openness of the game world in ACIII is in great contrast to the linear, set-piece laded main missions that the game feels scrambled together. Narrative is also hindered by the nature of open world games. When you can spend hours doing side quests, without touching the main narrative, it can be very difficult to get emotionally invested in something that seems so distant. Particularly since the exploration get in the way of any sense of emotional urgency.

So, if main quests are problematic, should we get rid of them? Are they a good thing overall? Are they a necessary evil? If so, how do we make them less evil?

I think the key depends on what exactly you are trying to do with your game. If you need a main quest, if you feel that it is important to your game, then make that quest rooted in exploration or in the elements that make your sandbox engaging. Super Metroid and Legend of Zelda 1 are both fantastic examples of this. While the games have a main goals, they force you to explore and engage with the game's world to accomplish that goal. Rather than having the goal pointed out to you on a minimap, you have to find or ask the inhabitants of the world to help, or simply use the tools available to find the way forward. The linear moments in Zelda (i.e. the dungeons) also have exploration as a heavy element, thus not alienating the rest of the game from the overworld. And Metroid has that framework worked into the design of the overworld. So the difference between the more straightforward moments and sheer exploration is not explicitly felt. Particularly, since Zebes feels ripe with mystery. I'm not sure if this would work for every game all the time, Red Dead needs some more linear moments for its narrative, but it would certainly lead to a more cohesive design.

If your game is more about exploration and existing in a particular world,  then create a series of quest that tie direct to the player's past, but are totally optional. It would deepen the tie between character and player and let the game breath to become something special. Skyrim kind of does this, but since that quest involves an ancient epic destiny and the potential end of the world, it doesn't make much sense for the player to run off and do whatever he wants. It also leads to one of the clumsiest openings in recent memory. An open world game like Skyrim, that puts such a heavy emphasis on self-expression, really would benefit from the feeling of total freedom.

I don't think main quests are a bad thing, just that their design can be at odds with the game they exist in. Until I got about 3 hours into Red Dead Redemption I felt like the overworld was just a way to funnel me from mission to mission in pretty landscapes. I changed my mind as the quests became both more interesting and more involved in the world, but the fact that the game didn't feel open and free right away tells you something about the flaws of quest design. Thinking more about the relationship between quests or missions and the open world would lead to games that are more cohesive and better designed.

But, anyway have you got any great gaming stories? Do agree with me or am I just talking crap? Sound off in the comments.

Social Gaming

We talk so much about how gaming alienates us. We talk about how we separate ourselves from family and friends, even general society, by playing games. We even make divides between other games: Casual and hardcore, Sony and Microsoft,  Nintendo and Sega. But games don't separate us, they bring us together. Why? Because games, at their core, are experiences. They are something that we literally live through. They're also mechanics and visuals and everything else, but those things come together to create an experience. And experiences, by their nature, can be shared. Don't you feel an instant kinship with someone who likes games, particularly the ones you like? If you meet another person who is into Minecraft or Skyrim or The Sims or whatever, don't you instantly start swapping stories and showing off scars? Single player games create stories, and stories can be told. Have you ever rekindled a friendship because you both happened to be on Xbox Live at the same time? Multiplayer games are a shared experience. They're something that we do together. We briefly become artists. We craft and shape an experience for each other. Whether that crafting is driven by competition or fun or a genuine desire to make an experience better for other people it is something we create. Even playing games is a kind of social interaction. Games are something that people make, something that they can pore their soul into. When we play games, we are getting to know people. So, what's the point of this? What does this knowledge give us? First, a defense against those who claim games are anti-social and cause loneliness. Yes, there are people who are anti-social and/or lonely that play games, but games do not cause either of those things. I suppose they could feed into those emotions in the proper context, but that is a big shift from causation. Secondly, a warning of responsibility. If someone feels alienated from games, it's our fault. Games are inherently social, but that potential community, that space of play, is created by us. We make it what it is. So let's make it something great.

Why I Love Video Games

A Couple Brief Thoughts About the ME3 Ending Controversy(No Spoilers)

I know, I know this (http://youtu.be/MjoMQJf5vKI) is what I'm doing. But I had a couple thoughts about the controversy that I just need to express. So, if you don't want to hear about this ever again, that's totally cool, just don't read it. I won't be mad.

First of all, I'm not here to comment on the quality of the ending. I'm not interested in getting into whether it was good or bad or not. Plenty of better writers than I have fallen on both sides, I not really interested in that kind of review. That being said, I am going to address some of the arguments people had against the ending. However, it's going to be in a way that doesn't address the quality of the ending itself. You'll see what I mean. ONWARD.

Alright, one of the thoughts people had about the ending was that Bioware must be trolling. This pisses me off so much I'm practically red in the face. The fact is, no matter how many hours you've put into the series, the employees at Bioware are more invested in it than you, in every possible way. Casey Hudson, the primary director behind all three games, has spent most of his waking hours for the past 10 years on this series. For the creators, these games are their babies. No reasonable human being would troll an audience with something that feels so much like a passion project. If you didn't like the ending than you have to address that dislike with the fact that this ending had pure intentions. There were people who thought you would like it.

This may be a point about syntax more than the validity of the point itself, but whatever. Many have said that ultimately their choices didn't matter. Now, this may or may not be true depending on your point of view. However, that phrase "my choices didn't matter" sticks in my throat. Whether or not they mattered in terms of the ending, they still mattered. If you paused and thought a minute when confronted a choice, it mattered. If it made you think differently about a issue, or made you reexamine your own beliefs, it mattered. The ending may or may not have expressed those choices very well, but those choices still mattered if they affected you. I know they affected me.

That's it. That wasn't so bad, right? To be honest, I don't really care what you thought about the ending, as long as you could back it up. I just think the debacle was a opportunity to have a conversation. About video game narrative, about choices, about the illusion of choice. What we ended up with was a bunch of people yelling at each other and creating white noise. That makes me sad. So please, those of you about to comment, don't make me sad.

The Samus Complex

Why isn’t there a stronger female presence in the video game industry? Well before we can address this vital question, we must discuss the inherent problem in this essay. If there is any group that is over-represented in the video game industry it is straight, white men. So having me write about the lack of women within the industry is both presumptuous and a little bit unhelpful. A woman actually in the game industry would easily be the best person for the job. While I don’t personally know anyone who fit that description, I am readily familiar with someone who was in a similar position, Virginia Woolf. Woolf’s essay “A Room of One’s Own” carefully reveals the reasons for the lack of woman’s presence in literature. Her voice will certainly be helpful here.

The title of Woolf’s essay is “A Room of One’s Own”, which elegantly introduces her central thesis: in order to write, a woman must have the means, the time, and the space to create. I don’t really need to tell you that all those things have become more readily available for women. Since women receive the same educational opportunities as men (at least they are supposed to), they are more easily able to discover and cultivate these interests and talents. Woolf tells the story of a theoretical sister of Shakespeare, who is just as brillent, but because of the culture she exists in, is never able to discover her talent. She could thrive in the modern world. So, with all this in mind, why isn’t there a stronger female presence in the video game industry? It primarily has to do with two things, scale and culture. Writing literary work is mostly accomplished by one person. Video games, especially the AAA games that gain the most public and media attention, take teams of hundreds with millions of dollars on the line. There are significant exceptions. The smash hit platformer Super Meat Boy was made entirely by two people. So was the enigmatic puzzler Braid. (Hellman, Indie Game: The Movie) But even those games require money, investors, and publishers to allow the game to reach the public. A room of one’s own, and enough money to provide for one’s self may be enough to make a certain scale of games, but it is not enough to make those games reach the public. Even worse, it is not enough to make the scale of games that reach mass audiences. Books are relatively inexpensive things to create, but games usually take at least a few hundred thousand dollars. Which brings us to the second problem, culture.

When Virginia Woolf went to the British museum to find the truth about women and literature she found a immense sea of writing about women. If Woolf were to go to a Gamestop today, she find almost nothing about women, however the games she would find would be just as sexist as much of what she read. However, it would be in a profoundly different sense. Women act primarily, with a fair amount of exceptions, as two things in games, objectives and player characters. In Super Mario, Peach doesn’t really have a personality, or wants, or goals. She essentially acts as an excuse to move the player through the game. She is something you get when you win. As terrible as that sounds, it is for all intents and purposes true. This trope shows up everywhere, from Legend of Zelda to Super Meat Boy. Player characters are where things get more divisive. When the player is a women in the game she may be, and usually is, just as physically powerful as any of the men. The problem comes in that they are women designed to be played by men. Many of these characters are hyper-sexualized, and that alone is their defining characteristic. Characters such as Ivy from Soul Caliber, or Morrigan from Darkstalkers are good examples. A more recent example is Catwoman from Batman: Arkham City. In terms of ability to fight enemies, she is mechanically the same as Batman. However, she is dressed is a skintight suit with a deep neckline and is almost always referred to in sexual terms throughout the game. While the seductive bit is an important part of Selina Kyle's character, in Arkham City, that is the only thing she is defined by. We have a gaming culture that rarely create great female characters for a potentially female audience. 

That isn’t to say that things haven’t gotten better, they have. Games like Mass Effect allow the player to be either a man or a woman and have strong, engaging female characters outside the player to boot. Bioshock Infinite offers an engaging twist on the traditional “Rescue woman A from location B” plot, and creates one of the most amazingly crafted characters (not just female) in gaming today. The now classic, universally acclaimed game Portal has a female lead. One of the most beloved characters in gaming history is Samus, a strong female character. The most recent Tomb Raider game was a solid hit. However, the lack of triple A titles focused toward women is astounding. Mass Effect put most of its marketing muscle behind the male main character. Bioshock Infinite removed the female lead from the box art, opting for a cover showing the player character, a white, grizzled man holding a shotgun. According to a study done by EEDAR, in a survey of around 600 games, only 24 were found to have female protagonists alone, and less than half of them gave you a choice. In fact, according to the same study those games with female protagonists alone were given less than half the marketing budget of games with only male protagonists (Kuchera). At least Woolf had a series of classic female authors she could list off at the beginning of the essay. We don’t have the good fortune to name game designers.

The portrayal of female heroes is troubling, but even more disturbing is the “boy’s club” mentality of the industry. In November of last year, a simple question, why aren’t there more women in game development?, caused a flood of responses on Twitter, under the hashtag #1reasonwhy. The women in the game industry reported stories of sexism, put under the thin guise of “good fun”. Stories of being mistaken for assistants. Stories of people expressing doubt at the very idea of women playing games. Stories of being sexually harassed at conventions. It is that culture you are walking into when you want to create games (Plunkett). Woolf’s concept of the “room of one’s own” is relevant in that women were being robbed of the opportunity to create. Woolf creates a vivid and uncomfortably familiar picture of that culture in this passage “...it is fairly evident that even in the nineteenth century a woman was not encouraged to be an artist. On the contrary, she was snubbed, slapped, lectured and exhorted. Her mind must have been strained and her vitality lower by the need of opposing this of disproving that.” There is a remarkable sense of discouragement along the lines Woolf illuminates. I believe it is that culture, combined with the scale of production needed to create video games, that has caused the lack of both female protagonists and female designers and developers. There are very few places to go outside the main studio system, and when that system is as toxic as it seems to be, it is understandable that women creators wouldn’t want to be a part of it. The lack of female protagonists feeds this as well. If I want to introduce my little sister to games, she will have to really look for female characters she wants to play as. Much less ones to inspire her to become a great game designer.

The problem is not so much that women don’t have the space or time to make games, but that the industry pretends not to have the space for them. Woolf acknowledges a similar problem, and offers a clear solution. However, with the video game industry being as massive as it is, it is hard to find such elegant answer. I will deposit this, that the people losing the most by not hiring women are the same people who are lowering marketing budgets for games with female protagonists. David Gaider, a head writer at Bioware (the creators of Mass Effect), had an experience that illustrates this perfectly. The team of writers were going over scripts for an upcoming Bioware title. The scene in question was a sex scene. The criticism, analysis and praise was continuing as normal until one of many female writers pointed out that a specific moment in the game’s script could be construed as a rape scene. Once this was pointed out, the author realized this was true, and was horrified. They quickly changed the scene. Gaider argues that if their hadn’t been any female writers there, this incredibly offensive moment could have made it into the final game. This is a voice we need within the game industry, for reasons practical as well as artistic.

Works Cited

Kuchera, Ben. “Games with Exclusively Female Heroes don’t Sell (because publishers don’t support them ” penny-arcade.com. Penny Arcade Report, November 21, 2012

Gaider, David. “Female Perspective in Game Development” A Personal Blog

Hellmen, David Hellman.net

Indie Game: The Movie. Pajot, Lisanne, James Swirkney Blinkworks Media. 2012. Netflix. Web.

Wiedner, David. “Drones Over Wall Street” wsj.com. Wall Street Journal, March 13, 2013

Plunkett, Luke. “Here’s a Devestating Account of the Crap Women Have to Deal With. In  2012” kotaku.com Kotaku, November 27, 2012

Woolf, Virginia “A Room of One’s Own” 

Action Game Level Design

Today, I'm going to talk to you about Half-Life 2 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. Both are action games with the same basic mechanic, shooting things in a first person perceptive, and some similar overall goals, such as making the player feel empowered. However, both these represent entirely different approaches to both level and game design, Modern Warfare 3(hereafter referred to as MW3) has a simply incredible misunderstanding of what makes games compelling, and Half-Life 2(hereafter referred to as HL2) is a nearly pitch perfect game, both a pinnacle of its genre and a incredibly admirable piece of game narrative. Let's break down every element of the games, and talk what makes one superior to the other.

Presentation: MW3's engine may be a little old, but it's put to great use. The sense of detail that went into every scene of mass destruction is insane. The scope and scale of the levels is really remarkable, and the fact that the game handles it without any jerks or frame-rate issues is impressive. It clips along at 60 frames a second. Now, if the MW3 engine is old, HL2's is ancient. While cutting edge at the time, the graphics now look blurry and occasionally muddled. However, art direction and technique more than make up for aged polygons. The facial animations and voice acting are both solid and add a real life to characters that are already well written. The various enemies are all distinct and interesting in visual design. It has a unique aesthetic awash in industrial metal, dystopian suburbs and disturbingly slick sci-fi buildings. MW3 does keep things somewhat visually interesting with its globe hopping schtick, but mostly has fights in grey or brown urban areas. While MW3 is more impressive technically, it doesn't match the artistry of HL2.

Gunplay: First of all, both games control very well. Call of Duty's slick, accessible controls are a large part of why the franchise is so popular. The game handles different elements with astonishing ease. Your character moves at a nice pace and everything feels really satisfying. HL2's controls, while not as viscerally appealing as MW3, have a nice flow and movement to them. HL2's combat has a great emphasize on traversal  and thus it's easy and fast to get around, while still slow enough to let you absorb the game's world. However, the gunplay itself falls far in HL2's favor. First of all, HL2 has various distinct enemy types. You have your traditional soldiers, but also giant man eating insects, three different kinds of alien zombies, giant walker aliens, and helicopters. All of the enemies have distinctly different purposes. Slow zombies are lumbering and dumb, but difficult to deal with in large numbers. They act a misdirection for the fast zombies, who force you to pay attention to your surroundings and think fast so you won't suffer a painful death. The zombies also have a nice little trick to them. They carry alien creatures on their heads -- known as headcrabs -- that control them. If you aim for the head, you will kill both the zombie and the headcrab, but if you shoot the body, the head crab can survive and attack you. Thus lends itself to more interesting shooting mechanics because every shot has a more profound consequence, which is further accented by the limited ammo. I could probably spend a while talking about the design of each enemy, but then we would be here all day. MW3 has one enemy type. Maybe two if you count snipers. Maybe that's a little unfair, but you essentially handle the groups of common enemies in the exact same way. If there are distinct differences between the groups of soliders you fight, they are never made explicit and so it has little to no impact on the game experience. This creates a sense of repetition and staleness to the whole game. While HL2 is constantly evolving with new weapons and enemies, MW3 often feels stuck. There is no sense of progression.

The guns themselves control very well in both games. However, the ability to carry several guns at once gives the combat in HL2 a depth that MW3 doesn't really manage. It allows to to pick and choose guns for every situation, adding a deeper level of strategy to each encounter. Adding a limited ammo supply, you've got a deep engaging meta system at work. When you get a new gun in HL2, it's a big deal. It's something that changes the game entirely. MW3 utterly fails this potentially interesting aspect. In MW3 you can only carry two guns at once, although you can pick up weapons off of enemies or just found around the environment. Halo does this and it works well. However, Halo's weapons are very distinct, and many are self explanatory. MW3, under the pretense of realism, has actual weapons. While everyone playing probably knows what a AK-47 is, very few would know what a PKP PECHENEG or a MSR are, much less the difference between those and other guns of the same type. This combined with the lack of ammo in the weapons enemies carry and the extraordinary amount of ammo the designers give your starting gun, the game actively discourages you from experimenting with the game mechanics. Particularly since the multiplayer puts a strong emphasis on creating your own play style, this is a huge loss of engagement for the game and one that could have been fixed very easily.

Level Design: This is the basic thing that MW3 does poorly. The visual design is muddy. The enemies look like environment and look like your allies, leading to a tremendous amount of visual confusion. This coupled with you being constantly shot at from every angle, this to a game that feels cheap and frustrating. Half-Life 2 is always visually clear, and because it doesn't have a regenerating health system, the game doesn't need to throw enemies at you from all directions. The information the game presents to you is helpful, clean and classy. HL2 steadily and carefully introduces new elements to its core gameplay making the game design feel expansive and constantly growing. MW3 does throw new elements at its player often, but then drops them at the tip of a hat, so little to no depth is ever able to be cultivated out of those elements. You're given new toys, but they are only used once in any meaningful way. The sub-mechanics of HL2, such as driving cars, are given entire levels to grow and change. The car-boat-thing in the early part of the game is really good example. It starts out with you trying to avoid simple obstacles, then avoiding obstacles while fighting bad guys, then dodging obstacles while avoiding a helicopter. Is as a simple and clear progression that both escalates the difficulty, and makes the player feel like they are growing stronger, because the game is progressively teaching the player how to play. The vehicle segments in MW3 are brief and are mostly an excuse to show you spectacle. They have no weight as game mechanics. This illustrates the tremendous problem at the heart of MW3's level design; it doesn't respect the player. It tries to create excitement by forcing control out of the player's hands, and constantly orders you around. The levels are essentially corridors and the game still feels the need to place markers to show you where to go. The game is more a roller coaster than a true interactive experience. I don't know if that can be really called a bad thing, but I know this: Games can be so much more. Action movies will always create funner set pieces than games. So, it feels like a very pointless exercise to try and recreate something that can be done better in another medium. As something of a counter point, Half-Life 2 does have moments that feel very much like this. However, most of them are grounded in the mechanics. Even if the game is linear, it still feels as though you are making decisions, as if you are driving the action. The game gives the mechanics space to breath and grow and gives the player room to discover and enjoy the game. MW3 is so concerned with showing off how cool it is that it totally loses what actually makes games engaging.

Narrative:  MW3 has such a mind boggling misunderstanding of modern war, that it has two nuclear armed nations actively fighting against each other, without any threat of nuclear war. Well, ALRIGHT. HL2 on the other hand, has a much better understanding of the cost of war. While both games totally demonize their villains, the war in HL2 has victims. It has a cost. Part of what makes the finale so cathartic, is the incredible odds you see your comrades facing in the previous level. You have squad mates that are dying around you. So when you become incredibly powerful, easily able kill dozens of enemies, it packs a much bigger punch than any of the heroics in MW3.

In conclusion, Half-life 2 is really good. A masterpiece. Modern Warface 3 is, well it's bad. It was clearly made of some really talented artists and programmers, but it all is put to very little use. It just shows a little thought about the medium you are operating in goes a long way in creating a great experience. At least the multiplayer is pretty fun.

Springsteen

Bruce Springsteen
The Wild, The Innocent and the E Street Shuffle is a mess. It jumps from musical theme to theme sometimes jarringly, sometimes it's song structure is perfectly comprehensible, other times it's a like a fever dream. It's a tangle of different styles and genres, its lyrics are a jumble of different storytelling ideas that sometimes collide, but often wander into absurdity (there is a particularly hilarious moment in "4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)" when Bruce is telling a girl how much he loves her and then proceeds to talk about his ex for a whole verse). It's also a masterpiece. With that tangle and jumble of different ideas comes a ferocious and infectious energy. A passion that seeps into your bones and makes you want to, well, dance. And I don't mean the awkward teenage tumble of a dance party, but the kind of dance you do after doing something awesome, after acing a test, or kissing a girl or eating a donut. A life-affirming dance. It is a album, so enamored with the people and the society around it that it talks and rambles excessively. Sometimes it runs off into weird tangents and hits dead ends, but the love and grandeur that is has are undeniable. It is probably the only truly great "happy" album, I'm aware of. We could use more of those.