Why I've Opened A Patreon

Dear readers, I'm launching a Patreon to help fund myself, my articles, and writing my book. I'm going to be leaving the GoFundMe for the book open, but advertising it less. The simple division between the two projects is this: The Patreon is for me, Rowan Kaiser, and the GoFundMe is for Possibility Space pre-orders. If you don't know which one to give to, a recurring Patreon donation would be FAR preferable.

I struggled with deciding whether or not to open a new crowdfunding source, but eventually decided that it was the best thing to do. Here's why: first, a Patreon fits my work-style really well—consistent work then reward. It also fits the book, as a series of essays on specific aspects of Mass Effect. Unfortunately, Patreon started a month after I launched this project, a fact of notable annoyance to me.

Second, I’m broke. I’ll get into the details of how that came to be momentarily, but the short version is that freelance writing stinks. We get recognized and published in high-profile spaces, but we barely make a living—or we don’t. My friend Jenn Frank recently posted a piece called “Why do you write?” that gets at both the terrible practicality of trying make a living writing, and the compulsive destructive need we have to do it anyway. I highly recommend reading it for understanding.

So, let’s talk about what “being broke” means, since I don’t think the details of the freelancer life are known enough. I made ~$14k in 2013, even with the bulk of the crowdfunding occuring in 2013. That’s actually down slightly from my 2012 revenue of ~$17k, which was the most I’ve made in my half-decade as a writer.

The crowdfunding money was wonderful and necessary and helpful, but a few things got in the way. First, taxes—freelancers get screwed on taxes. Second, a $1000 chunk of it went into savings in order to be able to print the copies I promised those of you who made larger pledges.

Most of the rest was used dealing with the usual summer doldrums. My income is derived relatively evenly between TV and video game writing. TV hits a huge lull in the summer, and video games get a slight one. I also lost my most regular gig, my RPG column at Joystiq, when they stopped doing columns. My partner, with whom I live and split bills, has a similarly fragile employment situation, except in academia, which also has their own summer lull. Worse, one of her most consistent gigs gave her less work last fall, and no work this past spring, meaning bye-bye to savings.

So there you have it. Barely enough money--for now--for rent, taxes, food, catfood. No money for savings, taking the cats to the vet, any luxury items or upgrades, decent booze, going out to eat with any regularity, or moving out of a far-too-small apartment. And it's getting worse, not better, even though I'm published at some of the most well-known and respected pop culture and video game outlets on the internet. Yes, freelance writing stinks, but I have to do it. Help me?

Flappy Bird, or, In Which The Internet Reacts To Something By Assuming It Proves What It Already Believes

Ever read the comments on a major newspaper site? You how there's always That Guy, or often dozens of Those Guys (and they're usually men), who makes whatever the article happens to be about whatever they believe in most strongly? There's a school board meeting, BENGHAZI! An article about hockey coaches turns into a discussion of the temperature at which the steel in the World Trade Center would have melted. Perhaps the best/worst example I've seen was someone putting out the hypothesis that the earthquake that caused the 2005 tsunami could have been triggered by the bombs in Iraq shaking the earth's tectonic system. Even when I agree with them--yes, the Iraq War was a disaster--that doesn't mean it's the cause of everything bad.

Anyway, I don't think anyone intelligent wants to argue that way. We'd like to believe that we see evidence, put it together, and the conclusions we make are totally supported etc etc. You know, rationality, truth, arguing, that kind of thing. We are better than That Guy From The Comments...right?

And so, Flappy Bird.

If you don't know, Flappy Bird is a mobile game that was released in March 2013, but in the last week or so, suddenly exploded in popularity--number one on the App Store, inspiring clones, media attention, criticism, accusations of theft, and so on. We're talking "next Angry Birds?" levels of popularity. Then the creator, Dong Nguyen announces on Twitter than he's pulling the game from distribution,

I am sorry 'Flappy Bird' users, 22 hours from now, I will take 'Flappy Bird' down. I cannot take this anymore.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

That's when the game journalist population becomes That Guy. Whatever they believe about "video game culture," that's what caused the end of Flappy Bird. Chief among those beliefs, in my circles at least, is that harassment campaigns by gamers caused Flappy Bird to die.

Harassment in the video game world is a huge problem. Mostly aimed at women, particularly outspoken ones, cybermobs have targeted several people and groups and attempted to ruin their lives. The attacks on Feminist Frequency are the most famous and loudest, but they're hardly the only ones. This is an unfortunate fact of "game culture" online right now, and deserves to fought against.

The problem is that it may not apply to Flappy Bird's/Dong Nguyen's situation, and it's being applied anyway. (For example, Robert Yang's recent post on the subject, "An alternate history of Flappy Bird", which, despite its title, seems to be the dominant history that I can see.)

The issue is that the "this" that Dong Nguyen can't take anymore is almost totally ambiguous. He's issued a single clarification:

It is not anything related to legal issues. I just cannot keep it anymore.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

So we know he wasn't sued into taking the game down. He wanted to.

It's probably true that Nguyen was harrassed. It's definitely true that he was accused, undeservingly, of stealing the art for the game in an ill-considered article on Kotaku. But this doesn't mean he was harassed into removing Flappy Bird.

Take a look at a few of his other tweets:

I can call 'Flappy Bird' is a success of mine. But it also ruins my simple life. So now I hate it.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

@hermanjakobi I won't. The PR will make me not an indie game maker anymore.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

@PhilipBR_ Flappy Bird is just a mini game. I would like keep it as it. Sequel may have.
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

@alanpico I am not an entrepreneur :D
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

@MattJayYoung @trueflappybird @listicleco Yes. I like it. People are overusing my app :-(
— Dong Nguyen (@dongatory) February 8, 2014

The story that comes across in these tweets is not that of a man driven away from his hit game by internet hate mobs. It's that of a man who doesn't want too much attention. What does that attention entail? Press requests? Demands to update? Dealing with ad revenue? Internet hate? Having to spend all free time managing the Flappy Bird franchise instead of creating new games? Not believing that Flappy Bird deserves the attention? All of those things?

I don't know why Dong Nguyen pulled Flappy Bird. Neither does anyone else. I can put together all kind of plausible scenarios based the incomplete evidence provided. For example, I'm terrified of the idea that a thing I was done with and released a year ago could suddenly become super popular, and I'd have to change it and explain it and defend it for the rest of my life. I'm equally hopeful and terrified that that will happen with my Mass Effect book. Like if I release that, I may never want to talk about Mass Effect ever again, and then could get a reputation as The Guy To Talk To About Mass Effect. So it seems entirely plausible to me that Dong Nguyen didn't want to spend the rest of his life as The Flappy Bird Guy.

But I don't know for sure. So this blog post isn't about that. It's about the fact that we don't know, and that we shouldn't assume it's a thing that happens to align with our already-existing beliefs on the subject. Because being wrong doesn't help a cause, no matter how noble that cause is.

Update: I'm not trying to tell people to shut up about harassment, even if I had that kind of power. This exchange might help explain:

@onidavin "Harassment was somewhere between 0-100% of the cause so let's stop acting like it was 100%"
— Rowan Kaiser (@RowanKaiser) February 10, 2014

Top 100ish albums

Look, I'm not gonna pull that "Oh I've been neglecting the blog woe is me" nonsense. I get paid to write at other places, so the blog's obviously not gonna be a priority. But. I am going to try to link to more of those things.

Here, have my "People's List" for Pitchfork's Best Albums of 1996-2011. I got to 71 as of this writing!

My GDC in short, part 1

A few thoughts on the GDC sessions I attended....

Knowing the Past: Game Education Needs Game History

Three academics who'd taught intro courses on game history described what methods had worked, and what methods hadn't, for teaching game history. Which made the title something of a disappointing bait-and-switch. Not that I'm opposed to the idea, but the discussion of the need was more interesting to me. It was also somewhat limited, in that none of the teachers had gone beyond Intro-level courses on the subject. That said, it was still pretty fascinating to see evidence of the things that did work, or not, in teaching potentially interested students, and the presenters were consistently intelligent and occasionally entertaining.

Game Educators Rant!  

I was slightly disappointed with these rants, in large part because I'm somewhat outside the target audience. I'm academically sympathetic (aca-curious?), probably far more than the average GDC attendee, so I'm somewhat familiar with many of the ideas. Ian Bogost's rant was either aimed too far or too close to home for me to really engage with. On the other hand, one about the tyranny of pixelated platformers as innovation was pitch-perfect, and I really needed to hear another, going up against games as spectacle in the face of climate change.

The Gamification of Death: How the Hardest Game Design Challenge Ever Demonstrates the Limits of Gaming

I'd heard good things about the presenter, Margaret Robertson, and when Sid Meier's presentation was too full, I headed to this one. She did not disappoint, explaining with good humor and intelligence all the different ways that she tried, and failed, to create a game based on the tragic death of a missing person. Something stopped me from really feeling totally engaged, though, possibly that I missed the first 15 minutes, or possibly that her conclusions led to far more questions than the bulk of the presentation.

Civilization V: Gods & Kings preview

A twitter follower/PR person sent me an email inviting me to this, at a hotel across from the convention center. I went, met some PR people, then got a demo of the new features from the lead producer and designer on the game, followed by a 10-minute interview with the designer. I've talked some shit about preview culture in my day, but as a Civilization fan more than a reporter (though I took notes in case someone wanted a preview) it was actually pretty fun - and I'm looking forward to the expansion, as it may fix many of my issues with the original. Fingers crossed.


The Emotional Puppeteer: Uncovering the Musical Strings that Tie Our Hearts to Games 

A presentation by one of Bungie's composers and a user researcher/musician who worked with him to try to decipher exactly what kinds of feelings people had when they heard various forms of music. Apparently male choruses make everyone think "ancient" which makes sense. But it went a little deeper than that. By trying out different combinations of music and videos, they could instigate different reactions in their subjects. I think what I enjoyed the most was that there was no final lesson to be learned -- it was more "hey, this is cool!" And it really was cool, especially seeing what combinations of songs and videos created completely different reactions than the pieces did individually.

Is Mass Effect's Setting An All-Time Great?

Mass Effect's greatest strength is its setting. It presents a universe of staggering diversity and complexity. It is well-populated, presenting your Commander Shepard with a wide range of different situations to respond to and to shape your character, which is integral to Mass Effect's character development and entire narrative system. But that's not the only way that the Mass Effect universe makes the game better. It also connects Mass Effect by connecting it to many of the great science fiction universes in the history of the genre, and it does so by moving outside the normal SF setting used by video games.

Most science fiction games use this as a premise: humanity is starting to explore beyond their normal boundaries. They come across something alien, totally unexpected, frightening, and most of all, dangerous. For example, Gears Of War does not take place on Earth specifically, but it is humanity's push towards the frontiers of their domain that leads to the disaster of Emergence Day. In Halo, initial exploration into space becomes an all-out war with the Covenant followed quickly by the Flood. Or, in the Half-Life series, experiments in dimensional travel lead to war with an alien invasion force.

These can all be summarized as "First contact goes horribly wrong" in one sense, but in another, it's even simpler: most science fiction video games take their cues from the Alien film series. In the first Alien, the main character, Ripley, is the member of an exploratory spaceship which uncovers an alien killing machine, forcing her to survive by her wits and whatever is available. The discovery of horrifying, murderous alien life is a staple of games, from Doom to Half-Life to Dead Space. 

In the sequel, Aliens, Ripley returns to the planet which housed the aliens, with a squad of elite soldiers. For all their bravado, the squad is quickly decimated, forcing the smaller and smaller number of survivors into increasingly desperate measures, ending with Ripley confronting the alien queen by herself. The initially militaristic opening with an increasing focus on individual heroics against an implacable, dominant alien force brings to mind the original Halo and Gears Of War. There are no negotiations, no conversations. The world is filled with violence and desperate attempts to survive.

Mass Effect's universe, on the other hand, is filled with a range of aliens willing to negotiate, converse, and perhaps fight as a last resort. The big enemies of the game, the Reapers, are totally alien in this world, as they exist only to destroy. Commander Shepard great political struggle over the course of two games is convincing the political leaders of the galaxy that these enemies - evil incarnate - actually exist. Everyone else is used to problems with political solutions.

This is what separates Mass Effect from the vast majority of science fiction games, and makes it comparable to some of the best science fiction settings of all time The vibrant universe of Mass Effect may seem initially comparable to the two great science fiction properties, Star Wars and Star Trek. But Mass Effect's setting is different from those two. Most Star Trek stories are built around exploration, with space as "the final frontier". Meanwhile, Star Wars presents a universe that has always been, with humans as the dominant species of the galaxy. Mass Effect portrays humans as late arrivals to the galactic scene - but arrivals which threaten a precarious balance of power.

In the 1980s and early 1990s, a newer style of science fiction epic became commonplace in literature. In David Brin's 1983 novel Startide Rising, humans are a "wolfling" race, which developed intelligence and interstellar travel on its own, causing them to be frowned upon by a conservative galactic order. When a human ship discovers a ancient artifact believed to be related to the "Forerunners", perhaps the original spacefaring race in the galaxy, it triggers a massive galactic conflict, as the humans try desperately to survive, build alliances, and discover what the hell the artifact means. Sound familiar?  Startide Rising seems to wield the same crucial influence on Mass Effect that George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice & Fire is to Bioware's Dragon Age.

Startide Rising isn't the only piece of classic science fiction literature to have echoes in Mass Effect. In Sheri S. Tepper's 1989 novel Grass, a huge, living plant-like organism exerts mental control over the world's colonists, much like Mass Effect's Thorian. And the climactic scene where the Reaper Sovereign reveals the AI plans, motivations, and sheer disdain for life is reminiscent of the Technocore from Dan Simmons' classic novel Hyperion. Finally, the scenes on the Citadel that comprise much of the first portion of the game seem much like the most literary of science fiction television shows, Babylon 5, a show whose humans also upset the galactic balance of power, and started working to make it better. In Mass Effect II, the centrality of the Cerberus organization and the game's darker, more conspiratorial tone aligns it with shifts in the science fiction styles of the 1990s, much like the hopefulness of Star Trek: The Next Generation morphed into the grittier Deep Space 9.

Part of what makes all of these stories so successful is that they have a history, a feeling that this is a wider universe. Mass Effect does better than most games at making its setting feel lived-in. The First Contact War between the humans and turians provides some background, but Mass Effect does best when describing the history of the tough, violent krogan peoples. The krogan history - their uplift (a term taken from Startide Rising), their defeat of the rachni, their rapid and dangerous expansion, and their depressing defeat at the hands of a fertility-suppressing bioweapon - provides many of the best moments in both games, most notably the assault on Saren's breeding pens in the first game and Mordin's loyalty quest in Mass Effect II.

But the Mass Effect games' storylines generally don't flow from the dense, varied history of the universe as well as the krogan-based plots do. None of the three major council races, the asari, salarian, or turian races have anywhere near as complex history as the krogan. This is the main thing preventing Mass Effect's universe from having the strength of the classic SF literature stories. Yet Mass Effect is remarkably successful at evoking those stories even if it doesn't quite match them. Its universe is one of the most successful settings in mainstream game history, but still behind the very best of science fiction settings across different mediums.

My Tentative GDC Schedule

Like Herding LOLcats: Managing the Internet's Most Unruly Gaming Communities [SOGS Business]	03/06/2012	11:15 AM	11:40 AM	Room 130, North Hall
Knowing the Past: Game Education Needs Game History	03/06/2012	1:45 PM	2:45 PM	Room 2004, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Game Educators Rant!	03/06/2012	3:00 PM	4:00 PM	Room 2004, West Hall, 2nd Fl
More Than Fun: Designing Games With Purpose	03/06/2012	4:30 PM	4:55 PM	Room 2009, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Interesting Decisions	03/07/2012	11:00 AM	12:00 PM	Room 3014, West Hall, 3rd Fl
The Emotional Puppeteer: Uncovering the Musical Strings that Tie Our Hearts to Games	03/07/2012	2:00 PM	3:00 PM	Room 3010, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Let the Games Be Games: Aesthetics, Instrumentalization & Game Design	03/07/2012	3:30 PM	4:30 PM	Room 134, North Hall
Attention, Not Immersion: Making Your Games Better with Psychology and Playtesting, the Uncharted Way	03/07/2012	5:00 PM	6:10 PM	Room 134, North Hall
Classic Game Postmortem: Fallout	03/08/2012	10:00 AM	11:00 AM	Room 3014, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Build That Wall: Creating the Audio for Bastion	03/08/2012	11:30 AM	12:30 PM	Room 3010, West Hall, 3rd Fl
It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take this Historical Study with You: In-game Objects in Japanese RPGs, 1988-2010	03/08/2012	1:00 PM	1:25 PM	Overlook 2, West Hall, 2nd Fl
It's Dangerous to Go Alone! Take this Historical Study with You: In-game Objects in Japanese RPGs, 1988-2010	03/08/2012	1:35 PM	2:00 PM	Overlook 2, West Hall, 2nd Fl
The Art of Diablo 3	03/08/2012	2:30 PM	3:30 PM	Room 3014, West Hall, 3rd Fl
Enhancing Games with Clothing and Destruction (Presented by NVIDIA)	03/08/2012	4:00 PM	5:00 PM	Room 2011, West Hall, 2nd Fl
Art History for Game Devs: In Praise of Abstraction	03/08/2012	5:30 PM	6:30 PM	Room 135, North Hall

Hire me to do game writing!

Dear video game publications,

I am looking for more consistent, paid game writing. I've been freelancing for the last few years, but am specifically looking for work that I can rely on monetarily. I'm available for freelance work, columns, part-time, or even full-time work.

Portfolio

I've done several reviews in different styles. The A.V. Club's Sawbuck Gamer feature focuses on smaller games with shorter reviews, like this one of Bit.Trip.Flux. I also did medium-length reviews for The A.V Club, including bad games like Pirates of Black Cove, as well as good games like Gray Matter, a review I enjoyed writing due to the interesting confluence of adventure game item manipulation and magic sleight-of-hand. There are also a few reviews at Paste Magazine, including this focus on the mechanics and interface of the Bit.Trip series with their Complete collection.

Detailed focus on mechanics is also the heart of one of my favorite features for Gamasutra, on The Gestalt Effect Of Dragon Quest IX and how its combination of different mechanics and styles makes the game incredibly strong. I've also written about the emotional affect of things that aren't mechanics, such as this piece about weather effects in Skyrim and throughout gaming history. Video game history is a passion of mine, and that can be seen in pieces like my ranking of the 60 Most Influential Games for 1up.com, or an examination of old Ultima games and their lack of antagonists for The Escapist.

One dream of mine is to do a regular series on the best-loved games throughout game history, a video game equivalent to the A.V. Club's "New Cult Canon" series. I've published two prototype pieces on my blog. First is an overall analysis of Dragon Age Origins and what makes it special, including its fantasy tone and use of party members and their relationships instead of ethics. Second, a more meditative piece on Far Cry 2 and how it is both an anti-war game and a glorification of war.

While most of this is criticism, I'm also trained as a journalist, and have done some investigative or profile pieces. I'm especially proud of my Gamasutra feature interviewing and analyzing the career trajectories of the designers of classic games, like John Romero or Jane Jensen. And, since I am located in the Bay Area, I'd be available for local events, interviews, or conferences like GDC.

Finally, while game writing is the goal I'm focused on, here, I also have a more diverse background and set of interests. I regularly review books and television for The A.V. Club, including books like David Mamet's ridiculous The Secret Knowledge or Mat Johnson's fabulous Pym. Television shows include Terra Nova or Misfits. 

I hope this gives a good idea of what I'm capable of. If you're interested in talking further about work, leave a comment, talk to me on twitter, or email me with my Twitterhandle/firstlast at gmail. Thanks!

The Backlog

After Brad Gallaway put together his backlog, I though it might be fun to do mine. Here they are, ranked by system then by preference. Bear in mind that theoretically I'm working on a book on 1990s video games, and would like to be able to make more time for that, so in order to not have "Every 90s game I never played" as a list, I'll only list the ones I specifically acquired and haven't played before (a general rule for the list anyway.


PSX

Syphon Filter - Yeah, I never played this, picked it for the book for $2.

PS2

Persona 4 - I started this, got 30-40% done, but got overwhelmed and let it go.
God Hand
Sly Cooper
We <3 Katamari 
Disgaea - I've started this and stopped at the same place 2-3 times, early on. Would like to push further someday.

Gamecube

Buffy The Vampire Slayer: Chaos Bleeds
Mystic Heroes
Metroid Prime 2 - I've had this for years, but every time I start, I want to play Metroid Prime 1 then I do and get my Metroid fix. One day.
Zelda: Ocarina Of Time

Nintendo DS

Radiant Historia - started this, maybe 25% through. I enjoy it but it hasn't grabbed me and demanded I keep playing.
Castlevania: Portrait Of Ruin - started this, enjoy the central out-of-the-castle conceit, but never pushed myself to go back. You know, if I had a job where I left the house, I'd play more DS games.
Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dubious, but it has so many fans I want to do it.
Dragon Quest IV/VI - picked these up for cheap, played a notable amount of IV, haven't started VI.
Lost Magic - Had this one on my list for so long I kind of forgot why.

Wii

Monster Hunter Tri
No More Heroes 2
Little King's Story - Started this, very much liked it, but was driven away by Nutcracker music (sister's recital aversion therapy)
MadWorld 
Metroid Prime 3
Zelda: Twilight Princess - I did play most of this on the Gamecube when it was released, but it probably deserves a Wii play.
Super Smash Bros Brawl - Obviously it's best multi-player, but it's terrible with the Wiimote. So I need to get a Classic controller or two and have some friends over.
NHL 2K10 - I read this was one of the best games for use of the motion controls, but the controls didn't really click with me, and I think I have a bum shoulder.

PS3

God Of War III - Slowly working my way through this one, and it's top of the list of New PS3 game since it's borrowed.
Brutal Legend - I mean, Double Fine.
Valkyria Chronicles
Demon's Souls
3D Dot Game Heroes
Heavy Rain - I have this (borrowed), I started it, and I can't read it on my non-HD TV.
Resistance 2
Killzone 2
Brothers In Arms/Motorstorm - These were hand-me-downs, but I'll probably give them at least a quick try before trading them.

PC

The Old Republic - Like anything's getting played as long as this is #1....
Fallout: New Vegas
Bulletstorm/Portal 2 - I want to feel like my 2011 Best Games list is more complete. Own these. Haven't played. Should.
Bioshock 2
Bastion - Okay, I've played this, but is it New Game+ time? It should be, right?
Atom Zombie Smasher - This is kind of getting played alongside The Old Republic, so it's not quite a "backlog".
Skyrim - Yeah, I'll go back. Maybe let some mods and DLC show up?
Cave Story+
Braid
Limbo
The Witcher
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.
Dragon Age: Awakening
Just Cause 2
Assassin's Creed
Torchlight 
Alpha Protocol
Amnesia
Recettear - Played long enough to get a good feel for the mechanics but not so good I didn't fail. Would like to go back and win.
King's Bounty/Crossworlds - I would like to finish one or both of these
SpaceChem  - Played a while, need to play more.
Metro 2033
Binding Of Isaac 
Shogun 2: Total War - NEVER ENOUGH
Eversion
Rock Of Ages
VVVVV
Diner Dash
Beyond Good & Evil
Mirror's Edge - Probably would be higher, but I have it on disc and don't have a CD-ROM drive at the moment.
Baldur's Gate II - I played this long enough to get a good idea that there was something impressive, but got stuck and said I'd come back to it. 
E.Y.E. Divine Cybermancy
Frozen Synapse - Was not impressed when I started playing, but the Steam gift contest will push me into at least another try.
World Of Goo
Battle For Wesnoth
F.E.A.R.
Vampire The Masquerade Bloodlines
Tomb Raider/Myst - These two are probably close on the "Most Important Game I've Never Played" pedestal
Prince Of Persia 2008
Mount & Blade Warband
Majesty 2
Titan Quest
Time Gentlemen, Please!/Ben There, Dan That
Splinter Cell
Ghost Recon
Might & Magic Heroes VI - I liked this a lot and I want to get back and finish more of the campaigns but oh man.
Terraria - Gave this a quick start, but was immediately pissed off by the lack of tutorial or manual. I guess it's hip to make your fans put videos up on YouTube instead of teaching your players how to play. Doubt I'll go back, honestly. Or play MineCraft. But I probably should.
Solar 2
Thief: The Dark Project/Thief: Deadly Shadows
Quake I/II/III
Orcs Must Die 
Overlord I/II
Oddworld: Abe's Exoddus/Oddysee
NightSky
Monday Night Combat - I played this a bit and really liked it but there are so many team-based shooters around I'm not sure I'll ever go back.
Medieval Total War II/Kingdoms - I have so much love for the Total War but they're such an investment.
Max Payne I/II
Inside A Star-Filled Sky
Grand Theft Auto V
Gemini Rue
Oblivion
Dead Space 2
Delve Deeper
Cthulu Saves The World/Breath Of Death VII
Broken Sword
Avadon: The Black Fortress
A.R.E.S.
1...2...3...KICK IT!








  

Too many good reviews?

One of the constant discussions I've noticed amongst my game critic friends this year has been about the excess of high review scores. Some see it as a sign that game critics are too soft, or even corrupt. Or perhaps the games really were just that good? Other, more detailed theories (like mine) focus on the 10-point review scale triggering a certain inherent inflation. Or particular review constraints and embargoes.

There's also the theory that maybe the games this year have really been just that good. I didn't necessarily buy this theory at first, but I've come to believe that a variation on it may be true. But "good" is a vague term, so I think we should be more specific.

I think it starts from the extra-mature console cycle. Traditionally consoles have roughly five-year lifespans, but we're getting into years six and seven for the Xbox 360 and PS3, which have come to dominate the blockbuster side of gaming. In the past, as consoles have matured, the games have tended to get slicker, more certain of themselves, and generally better. Consider God Of War for the PS2, or Final Fantasy VI and Chrono Trigger on the SNES. But as we've moved past that rough time scale. The consoles are beyond normal maturity, they are, perhaps, stagnant.

So that's why we see a pile of third games in a trilogy coming out this year that all share similarities: Uncharted, Modern Warfare, Gears Of War, Battlefield, Resistance, Saint's Row, and a few other single sequels, Arkham City and Crysis 2. What do these all have in common? They're all slick, impressive, not-much-wrong-with-them sequels to popular franchises. That's essentially a guarantee of a high-scoring review. And that's not necessarily a bad thing.

But the thing is, with three games using similar if not essentially identical engines over a five or six year span, there's very little chance of surprise. Which is why most of these games, with the exception of Arkham City, aren't appearing very highly on Game Of The Year lists, I think. Instead you have games like Portal 2, Skyrim, and Skyward Sword, which may all be sequels, but they're sequels to games from several years back at the very beginning of the console cycle. They have the chance to both surprise and impress.

I'm not saying this is a bad thing. Most of those third sequels are games that I'm not terribly interested in to begin with, so if the people who are want to give them high scores, it's no skin off my back. But I do think it's a plausible explanation for high scores that doesn't imply that reviewers or fans are idiotic slaves to marketing.

Rowan's Best Of Television 2011

When I voted for The A.V. Club's Best Of Television list, I included notes on all the shows I voted for. But since we only published the notes of shows that didn't make the main list, most of mine weren't included. In case you want more detail, here it is:

1. Parks & Recreation (15) – Parks & Rec had an absolutely stellar shortened 3^rd season, with maybe one episode of 16 being disappointing, and including all-time classics like “Flu Season” and “Fancy Party”, my pick for best episode of the year in any category. The 4^th season has been a little wobbly, but not enough to take the show out of the top tier.
2. Community (15) – A show this audacious should have less to show for it, but Community's hits vastly outnumber its misses. Even better, as its gimmicks have become standard, Community has also developed much more of a soul than it's given credit for.
3. Misfits (14) – Misfits' combination of comedy, drama, character work, and utter absurdity means that it, more than any other show, gives the impression that anything could happen. The tension helps the show be both more amusing and more emotional.
4. Justified (13) – You could easily make the case that Timothy Olyphant, Margo Martindale, and Walton Goggins were the three best actors on TV this year. I wouldn't argue with you.
5. Game of Thrones (12) – Possibly the most interesting show on television this year, thanks to considerations both on the screen and outside it. Also one of the best, although it did have its growing pains.
6. Louie (12) – Louis C.K.'s formal experimentation is marvelous. His use of drama in a comedy show is bizarre and intense, both in good ways. His willingness to dredge up the darker side of his psyche is impressive. It doesn't always hit, and it occasionally focuses too narrowly on a subject or scene, but I'm glad someone is trying that hard.
7. Archer (11) – I may be in the minority in preferring Archer's more grounded, lighter first season to its second. But that's not to say that there wasn't some great stuff, especially the three-part fall episode.
8. The Vampire Diaries (10) – At some point the ride has to end, yes? A show can't be this tightly serialized, with so many intense cliffhangers, and actually keep getting better and smarter. Can it? It's working for The Vampire Diaries so far. Why complain?
9. Mildred Pierce (9) - It's deliberately old-fashioned in a way that you might expect from, say, Masterpiece Theater, but Mildred Pierce has a distinct American flavor that keeps it interesting.
10. Treme (8) – It's a little less surprising in its 2^nd season, and some of the story decisions have been awkward, but Treme is as warm as ever.
11. Ricky Gervais Show (8) – Tighter editing transformed the 1^st season's occasional so-funny-you-choke-on-your-drink moment into a regular occurrence.
12. Bob's Burgers (7) – Halfway through its first season, Bob's Burgers switched from “potentially interesting” into “possibly magical”. Thanks to animal anus paintings, but hey, you take what you can get. If it can maintain that level of quality, it'll be towards the top of next year's list.
13. Children's Hospital (6) – For bite-sized dumb fun, hard to beat Children's Hospital. For clever parody that shows just how manipulative TV shows can be, it's also a good choice.
14. The Middle (5) – The Middle deserves recognition for being consistently good and sneaky-smart about class issues. It may never be one of the very best, but it's a great show to have around.
15. American Dad (5) – Like The Middle, it's a show deserving of some recognition for consistency, although it does it from an almost totally opposite direction.
    
    
    Yes I Know About Breaking Bad - I started my catchup too late and it became a choice between that or three or four shorter, easier to handle shows. Next year.
    
    
    As a side note - I did the writeup for The Vampire Diaries on the main list, and also The Cape and cult-comedies-on-hiatus for the specific TV Club Awards.

That Glee episode of Community

I love Community. I think this season has been stronger than its gotten credit for. I will miss it during its break, and hope to see it back and renewed as soon as possible. So it's with that love in my heart that I have to say: last night's Community was among the worst of the show's run. Not because it wasn't funny (it was, often) but because it was almost totally soulless.

The key point of the episode seems to be when Abed says "I just like liking stuff." It's a rejection of snark, of mean-spirited jokes and criticism. It's an acceptance that things can be good just for being liked, that the heart wins out. It's a celebration of, well, the idea of Christmas and the television Christmas special.

Here's the problem: the episode undercuts that at every possible point. When Abed says this, he's been brainwashed by the Glee virus that, through him and his weakness, sweeps through the rest of the study group, forcing them to behave in ways they don't want to. The episode doesn't conclude with the group gathering to like things, it concludes with them gathering around to watch the Inspector Spacetime Holiday Special on the grounds that it's so-bad-it's-good.

But more to the point, beyond the interpretations of the characters' actions, the show itself doesn't abide by the idea that it "likes" things, because the entire episode is a vicious attack on its theoretical rival, Glee. As much as I love Community and as much as I might laugh at the jokes initially, they come across as just mean, jealous of Glee's popularity and zeitgeist. I mean, Glee deserves it, don't get me wrong. But Community has built its reputation on loving, character-based satires. "Modern Warfare" wasn't great because it was it a specific parody of an action movie using sitcom characters, but because it used action movie tropes in order to discuss the characters in a different, interesting fashion - notably the Jeff-Britta relationship. "Regional Holiday Music" dispenses with that in order to simply target one particular show, and a show that Community has already attacked multiple times at that.

Critics of Community often describe it as a soulless endeavor, a meta-sitcom that does parodies and pop culture references without understanding the soul beneath what it's making fun of. This description has always struck me as more fitting of post-cancellation Family Guy or worse, The Cleveland Show, which not a compliment, instead of Community. Community, I thought, was closer to The Simpsons, a show which was in love with the forms and history of television, but not so much that it couldn't make fun of them. Last night's episode? Last night's episode was Family Guy - cheap, mean-spirited jokes with a fake, ass-saving swipe at meaning.

November link roundup

Time for another link roundup!

Over at Gameranx, I had a piece published on the slight disappointment I felt about Deus Ex: Human Revolution. The idea that Hollywoodizing of existing properties dulls their edginess seems so obvious that I actually struggled a bit with coming up with an example. V For Vendetta proved a superb one in the end, but I always felt like I was missing something really obvious. Ian Cheong, editor at Gameranx, has been actively recruiting me through Twitter, and his persistence has won him a few upcoming Skyrim articles for the site, so keep an eye out for those.

I have, in the past, taken some issue with the term "game journalist" to describe my writing about games. I'm a critic specifically, or a writer generally, but if I'm only doing a bit of research on Wikipedia and not interviewing people, I really wouldn't call myself a journalist. At least, I wouldn't have until I did this piece on designers of classic games for Gamasutra. 

My work at The AV Club continues, and it's actually been a fairly dense month for television, though less so for book reviews. One of the most random TV shows I reviewed was Knights Of Mayhem, a reality show on the would-be sports stars of professional jousting.

But perhaps the most exciting thing I did there was a Gateway To Geekery on Discworld author Terry Pratchett, which involved reading five Pratchett books in a week, which was a lot of fun. So if you or someone you know might like Discworld but was scared to start, here's the article for you.

Moving forward, I have a couple of Mass Effect pieces in the pipeline at some different sites, which is exciting, as it's one of the more comment-worthy game series around these days. It's also Best Of list time, and I'll have the chance to put together a few of those.

Link Roundup

Hey all, I haven't been using this blog for much, so I figured I'd use at least to point you at other things I've done recently (and give a somewhat permanent record to them).

I made my front-page debut at The AV Club with this piece about the problems networks have with superhero shows. This was a fairly difficult piece to wrangle, but after putting up with No Ordinary Family and The Cape last year, it was pretty inevitable.

I've continued reviewing the middling but still potentially good Terra Nova there, along with the usually-charming, always-slight American Dad. More excitingly, my TV Club Classic reviews of Veronica Mars are back.

I also reviewed Neal Stephenson's Reamde, which both a very good book and an exciting opportunity for me to review a book from the King of All Nerds at a major website.

This review of Might & Magic Heroes VI may be my last game review at the AV Club for a while - there's lots of people who want to review games there, and...

...I've also started doing game reviews at Paste Magazine, including this one of Bit.Trip.Complete and this one of Red Orchestra II. I'm quite happen with both of them, as the editorial freedom there and longer word count gave me the opportunity to really delve into what made each of the games interesting.

Dragon Age: Origins

Dragon Age: Origins  represents the culmination of a few trends in RPG design, which gives it a certain tension in both narrative and game mechanics. Its much-lauded story and characters are at the heart of this tension. On one hand, it wants to be a dark epic fantasy, directly inspired by George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire books. On the other hand, it still uses general fantasy RPG and specific BioWare plotting tropes. The setting includes dwarves, elves, wizards and orc-like creatures called Darkspawn from the beginning, making it appear more as a traditional fantasy than the human-centered, politically-oriented dark fantasy of A Song of Ice and Fire. As anyone who played the Dwarf Noble origin story can attest, adding those other races doesn't eliminate the bloody political intrigue – but it's hard to say that it adds much of significance other than some slightly different character models (with the major exception of the oppressed elves, which is a twist both good and novel).

The conventions of RPG storytelling, instead of setting, are far more constraining for Dragon Age: Origins. To perhaps oversimplify, most video game RPGs, western or Asian, tend to follow gaming's version of the Hero's Journey. You start at level one, and are presented with some kind of world-threatening crisis early on. The game follows your character as he or she levels-up until the world can be saved. On the other hand, the narrative form of the epic literary fantasy has become fractured, with multiple different point-of-view characters dealing with interconnected events – seemingly dozens in some books. They may never even cross paths once over the course of a series, let alone a book. Such is certainly not the case in most RPGs, including Dragon Age: Origins, although you do see the occasional external cutscene, usually focusing on the villain.

There are two narrative benefits to the fractured point-of-view approach: first, that it allows every major event in the world to be experienced by the reader, and second, that it keeps narrative momentum going via a series of cliffhangers. Dragon Age: Origins takes its subtitle from the fractured potential origin stories of its main characters, where choosing your character's background, like City Elf or Dwarf Noble, leads to a different recruitment by the Grey Wardens. However, once your avatar has been drafted, the plot coheres into a much more conventional Hero's Journey-style RPG story. The loss of the fractured storytelling weakens Origins' narrative at several points, most notably when your characters go to recruit the Circle of Mages, Upon your arrival, you discover that the Mage's Tower has been betrayed and taken over by demonic influences, with most of the population already dead. It's a major event, and it's one explained almost entirely by exposition, instead of demonstration.

Divided storylines are uncommon in gaming, but not unheard of. Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes, released in 2009 as well, utilized multiple points of view to tell its story successfully. More traditional RPGs like the classic Betrayal at Krondor also switched between characters from chapter to chapter, to tremendous effect. Dragon Age: Origins seems like it's built for such a game mechanic. The different origins could easily have made for different characters all as once, working simultaneously, crossing paths occasionally. The game suffers from having too many party members, nine, when only three can be in the party at once. Dividing them up with different characters and storylines would have forced the player to get to know them better, both in terms of personality and by encouraging the use of different tactics.

The party members dominate the game so much that they give the game both its greatest joys and biggest frustrations. They are, generally, complicated, three-dimensional personalities, with histories darker and deeper than normal RPG fare. Their personalities are consistent both within themselves and within their world, although there are the occasional interjection, like Morrigan talking about “survival of the fittest” or Alistair doing an internet-inspired “MUWAHAHAHA”, that doesn't quite fit. They're fun to talk to, in when they're in your party with each other, they'll also banter with each other, occasionally quite entertainingly. This is all good (and probably the best variation on the party member theme since BioWare kicked it off with Baldur's Gate), but the problem is that the game mechanics don't entirely support the character mechanics. The choices you're given are either too free, or too limited.

The essential issue is that, with three characters of nine to choose from, there are rarely reasons to pick any one character over another. They don't say “Hey, I'd like to go with you on this mission” or “I won't do this,” except in really exceptional, easily avoidable circumstances. Also, for having such strong personalities and histories that aren't necessarily congruent with your characters, they're fairly easy to please. Get them talking, nod in agreement, and buy 'em booze. The “Feastday Gifts” downloadable content makes it even easier to get into their good graces – I know I'll disable that one if or when I replay the game. Even the most common mechanical reason to develop different party members, splitting the party into different groups, only occurs once at the very end of the game, and only for a quick battle which is also easy to the point of irrelevance. Pushing the player to use different party members is common in story-based games, most notably in the Final Fantasy series, where FFVI's final dungeon used three different parties, and FFX utilized a system where you subbed different party members in and out of combat according to need.

The typical mechanical reason for using a previously under-utilized party member, in these games, is usually to keep them strong enough for use later in the game. Dragon Age: Origins totally eliminates this, by pegging every party member's level to at least one below the main character's. Bizarrely, Dragon Age doesn't force you to use party members, nor does it encourage you to use any of them. The freedom to choose may seem nice initially, but without consequences, the choice is essentially meaningless. Without an anchor, playing the game, I always felt like I was doing it wrong. Should I be using every different member? Should I pick a main party and stick with it? Most importantly, was I missing significant parts of the game by playing the way I wanted to play, instead of some ideal fashion? When, fairly deep into the game, I discovered that the party members automatically set their levels to stay playable, I was actually so disappointed that I stopped playing for a few days. The game simply felt hollower knowing that there was no mechanical reason to vary my party members.

An imbalance in the game's classes exacerbates this as a problem. Mages are both the best at healing and best at dealing damage. Only two party members are mages (and the player can be a mage as well), so if you're not using both Morrigan and Wynne, you're making the game harder than it needs to be. On the other hand, missile-based rogues and fighters are probably the least effective, making mages with their ranged spells even more relatively powerful. While this makes a certain kind of narrative sense – in any fantasy world, mages are probably the most powerful persons – it doesn't mesh well with one of Dragon Age: Origins' other influences, massively-multiplayer RPGs.

One of the hallmarks of the modern MMRPG is its rigid formulation of combat. Your party consists of four different groups: a heavily “tank,” who draws the attention of the bad guys and sucks up damage; damage-dealers like rogues and offensive mages; crowd control, characters who paralyze or stun enemies (almost always also characters who do damage once their crowd control is worn out); and healers to keep everyone alive. There's an entire jargon around MMRPG, involving “pulls” - using a missile weapon to gain the attention of enemies, and “line of sight” to draw them into areas where they're easier to defeat using traps or exploding spells or the like. Dragon Age: Origins has a combat system which seems to be built around the same premise – all of those things are possible, and if you get them to work, helpful – but it's only partially effective.

The goal of creating MMRPG-style combat (also shared by Final Fantasy XII) is undermined by two flaws. The first is the imbalanced class system – in an MMRPG, any class, of any specialization, played well, can be useful, which is not the case with Dragon Age: Origins. Second, the combat system itself is far too fast-paced for a player to play every party member. Constant pausing and deliberation is possible on the PC version, but the game doesn't include an auto-pause option as the old BioWare games like Baldur's Gate possessed, which makes full player control over combat lie somewhere between impossible and extremely annoying. Instead, Dragon Age: Origins utilizes a straightforward tactical if-then approach for non-player-controlled party members, such as “If the main character's health is below 50%, then cast heal.” However, using this for complete control is still impossible, as tactical slots are doled out by progress through the game, instead of being infinite.

The tension in the combat, then, is between a chaotic, action-packed form of combat common to real-time single-player RPGs and the more segmented form of combat in RPGs. Dragon Age: Origins may not have entirely decided which direction it wants to go, but it still manages to have an exciting sense of both chaos and control for the player. This is kind of a synecdoche for the game as a whole. It has wonderful, ambitious aspects which are slightly diluted by its reluctance to embrace them wholeheartedly.

The Good New Days Are Over

For a couple of years, it was actually getting kind of good to be a media consumer. Digital distribution, thanks primarily to things like Netflix Watch Instantly for movies & older TV, Hulu for newer TV, or Steam for video games, was actually making it cheaper and more efficient to pay for media than before. Naturally, this is coming to a stop: Netflix is raising their prices on hybrid streaming/disc options, while Steam is fighting with EA, who are trying to set up their own distribution system.

And this here is the main issue - the distinction between publisher and distributor is blurring. This was most notable when Netflix announced that they were picking up a TV series, but it's also subtler in Steam's case - they're run by Valve, one of the great developers in video gaming, who can drive critical mass to Steam by making games like Portal, Half-Life 2, and Left 4 Dead. But Valve is also an underdog. They're one of the few companies which develops and publishes their own games - and the only company which also distributes them.

As an underdog, I think Valve understands what makes digital distribution work: it needs to be easy. The point of the exercise is to create an environment where you can type in a game's name, buy it, download it, and play it. This model can break down at several different points: if the game isn't available, if the game is too expensive, if the download is inefficient, slow, or broken, and if the game can't actually be played.

And - this is the most important point - those things have to work in order to prevent would-be players from jumping to the next-easiest option. The next easiest option is not conventional retail. It's not online retail. It's piracy. There, you type in the name of the game, download it, and play it. Steam can beat piracy by being more moral and having games that work without having to hack and crack. EA...well, EA is doing it wrong. They're still acting like digital distribution is an alternative to physical retail, half an alternative to piracy/retail, and half its own thing.

Likewise, while Netflix might still be a great deal, its recent price change combined with the pressure from Hollywood and the studios' attempts to get into the digital distribution game for themselves have started choking off Netflix's selection, or charging higher prices for it. The first results in frustration - as I and anyone following along with my Veronica Mars reviews felt last month - and the latter results in higher prices. Both make Netflix look like the bad guy.

Hulu, too, is losing its effectiveness in the face of "publisher" pressure. One side of FOX may have helped to found Hulu, but another side has rendered it more useless, moving its new streaming episodes from the day after to eight days after.

There's also the growing trend of ISP's trying to cap bandwidth, and behaving like it's a finite resource. This isn't just frustrating to the consumer, it's also frustrating to the distributor.

It's not like I don't expect growing pains in digital distribution. But I do think that this trend towards publishers and distributors (and creators and ISPs) merging is one which is likely to leave the people who benefited from low prices and digital distribution in a worse situation in a few years than they are now. Publishers are inherently conservative, trying to milk the most profit they can out of existing methods. Distributors have to be more experimental, trying to find and exploit new revenue streams. As long as they're underdogs, I'll root for them, but they're underdogs for a reason - the publishers have more power.

And the pirates, just outside looking in, are the ones most likely to benefit from this struggle for power. I think Steam and Netflix understand this, implicitly if not explicitly (GOG.com, which sells old games for cheap but makes sure they work, is explicit). It's not going to be easier to be legal for quick media acquisition if this continues. Likewise, the consolidation of creation, publication, and distribution of media is a direct path to monopoly. And it's not just media, either, I think we'll see providers of services on the Internet start to become Internet Service Providers over time. It may be a few decades after it was supposed to happen, but the corporate cyber-dystopia of Snow Crash is looking more and more likely.

King's Bounty Reboots

There is a certain critically acclaimed, publicly tolerated subgenre of gaming which goes by the awkward portmanteau "Metroidvania." Based on the Metroid series of games, with an assist from a variation on Castlevania starting with Symphony of the Night, this subgenre focuses nominally on exploration and freedom. The idea is that you appear to have total freedom to explore, but difficulty and items which unlock areas - we'll call them "keys" but they can be more varied than that, like double-jumps or new spells - appear to open new areas.

In the Metroidvania style of gaming, these things tend to be fairly rigid. You explore for a while, and may note several obvious obstacles - this block clearly needs a new type of bomb, that door requires a key you don't have. There are a handful of options which are available to you, one or two of which expand the number of options. Go here, get the key, go there, get the double-jump. It's not quite fully user-driven and emergent, but it's not the linear experience that most games utilize. It is designer-created and fairly rigid, but offers both a small amount of choice but a large feeling of satisfaction.

Perhaps the most interesting and usually successful part of the 2008 King's Bounty remake, and its expansion/sequel Armored Princess, are that it adapts these Metroidvania concepts. However, since it does so in a strategy/RPG style instead of the platformer/RPG style of Castlevania, it invokes a similar feeling despite using very different mechanics. In many ways, it's better: King's Bounty only rarely uses keys, instead, it lets you choose your path by giving you information about potential opponents. It tells you what kind of enemies are in your way, as well as their strength relative to yours, allowing you to judge whether you're up for taking them on.

The gameplay, then, works like this: you get a few quests, which point you in the right direction to travel. In your way are several wandering or static enemies, which can be scouted. You can find multiple different paths, or do entirely different quests in a different area of the map, until you go up in levels, can hire more troops, and suddenly the enemies which had been rated as "Strong" are "Slightly Weaker" and can be cleared out, leading to more levels, more money, and so on.

The "Metroidvania" moniker is insufficient for describing this model, though it's closer than just about anything else to describe King's Bounty. I propose "organic exploration". It's not quite emergent narrative - though it's close - but it has the feeling of letting your knowledge of the map and game slowly expand with your character's power. It's something a little bit magical, like the aim of RPGs and many other games, but rarely ever actually achieved so directly.

With King's Bounty organic exploration comes problems, though. It's possible to fail. Not fail as in "you have to reload your last saved game". Fail as in "your strategy has failed. Restart the game." You can, quite easily, work yourself into a corner where you don't have enough money to recruit troops to replace the ones you just lost. But this is the flip-side to the organic exploration. The thrill of expansion is useless if it's not also balanced by the thrill of defeat.

Far Cry 2

I am only good for one thing: killing. Fortunately, I am in a place where killing is the only thing that matters. 

The fictional African country of Far Cry 2 has been destroyed by civil war, and that civil war continues. Why did it start? I don't know. Why does it continue? To keep mercenaries like me in business in the game, and gamers like me outside the game entertained. What does it mean? It means nothing. It is, simply, killing.

I never meet anyone who says otherwise. The representatives of the two factions in the civil war, the APR and UFLL, have no explanation for why all they do is kill. Their names might have meant something once. They don't now. Their leaders occasionally spout some Pan-African nonsense. They only care about power, and acquiring it by killing. Their second-in-commands, the ones who give me my missions? They're mercenaries just like me, and they know the score. If the war ends, no more work. Worse, an end to the war means a purge of mercenaries, so it's not just money they're motivated by, it's survival. Even when I'm working for one faction, its soldiers don't know it. 

Virtually everyone I meet tries to kill me, regardless of my loyalties. So I have to kill them back.

Such is true of my “friends” in Far Cry 2 as well. They will aid me, yes, so long as I aid them. But what do I help them with? Tasks of petty revenge or maintaining the war. All of my tasks are amoral. Sometimes I destroy medicine. Sometimes I assassinate villains. I shut down the national radio station. Someone told me it was all propaganda. It called itself the voice of truth. Maybe it was both. But it doesn't matter.

What does matter is that I'm extraordinarily good at killing, in a world where that can be difficult. At night, I take a silenced pistol and SMG, alongside a dart gun, and sneak to my objective. Or in the daylight, I pick up a small grenade launcher, a powerful sniper rifle, and a giant machine gun, subtlety be damned. And the things I do! A truck drives straight at me as I stand in the middle of the road. I hastily reload a rocket launcher just in time to fire on it, and barely, just barely, step out of the way of the flaming wreckage as it flies towards me. James Bond eat your heart out.

I should take one part of that back. There is one person in Far Cry 2 who talks to me about morality: The Jackal, the arms dealer whose death is the entirety of my motivation when I arrived in Far Cry 2. Everything I do, every alliance I make, every ally I betray, every blood diamond I find, every single thing is supposed to lead me to his death. But he's the only one who sees what I see, that this is a big, dumb, self-perpetuating war. That there is no room for anyone but killing machines like myself in Far Cry 2, but killing machines like myself are unwelcome anywhere else in the world.

Although I had nominal control over the choice of my character at the start of Far Cry 2, he remains entirely silent. Other than the occasional character calling me “China,” my character choice is totally irrelevant. The Jackal, my ostensible enemy, is a better “me” in Far Cry 2 than I am. He realizes that the country is a total disaster. He realizes that there's no solution in this brutal civil war between interchangeable factions. And he has a plan to end it. This doesn't explain why he sold the sides the weapons in the first place, but then, I don't know why I'm in this country to kill him in the first place, so we're even.

Morality has always played an integral part in open-world games. Back in 1985, Ultima IV: Quest of the Avatar solidified the concept of the open-world game, building on the burgeoning role-playing genre to create a game where the world existed outside of the hero and his or her quest. You were a part of that world, and could interact with it in myriad ways beyond following a linear path to its conclusion. Ultima IV may be the most ethical game ever made, demanding the player fulfill specific virtuous goals to be successful. So it is perhaps somewhat ironic that, as open-world games like Far Cry 2 have moved outside of the RPG genre, they've become known for their gleeful immorality.

Far Cry 2 initially seems to fall into that immoral category alongside Grand Theft Auto, but I don't feel like it's immoral – I kill no innocents in Far Cry 2 – I think it's amoral. I am amoral My actions are essentially meaningless in an ethical sense. Death and life are entirely utilitarian. But Far Cry 2 does more with that amorality – it uses it to make a statement. If it sounds repetitive and futile, it is. Far Cry 2 succeeds as a monument to the repetition and futility of war. 

There is a famous quote, attributed to Gillo Pontecorvo, director of The Battle of Algiers, that no film can depict war without glorifying it. This may be the case with film. Yet, while Far Cry 2 may revel in the glories of personal combat, it also frustrates my conventional gaming desires to heroically succeed through proper application of violence. I am not simply watching characters fight in this futile war. I am a participant – I am the most important participant in this idiotic war. And I cannot help but be unhappy at seeing what horrors my killing wreaks. My friends are all dead – many by my hand. My allies, who helped me out of many a jam and perhaps deserve my loyalty, are just as dead – many by my hand. Far Cry 2's glorification of war and violence becomes something more thanks to its commitment to amorality. It becomes tragic.

Serialization Visualization

I talk about serialized stories and mythologies quite a bit, and occasionally link to my previous blog post on the collapse of Battlestar Galactica's narrative as an example of what I think about the subject. But it's not enough. Not that I disagree with it anymore, I still stand behind it, but it's a little bit too specific, talking about the very specific failures of one particular show. As a general theory, however, I think that my conception of serialization, mythology, and world-building makes much more sense visually than it does in simple text.

It still requires some text for explanation, so here goes. I imagine a well-balanced show to be circular. Everything fits best in a circle; they're the most efficient use of space. Most shows have an efficient premise, but as they add characters, cliffhangers, history, and continuity, they start getting ungainly. The mythology takes over from the storytelling. It looks like this:

It's a mess. There's no plan, things get lost, forgotten, ignored, or worst of all, lose their impact because they get cut out of the story, by retcons or resurrections or whatever. This could be a chart for The X-Files or Battlestar Galactica, or it could be Angel or Buffy. The difference between the former and the Whedon shows is that the Whedon shows remembered character came before plot. Angel, especially, shifted into emotional resolution more than plot resolution after its excess of serialization in its 4^th season caused problems.

On the other hand, The Wire is far more elegant:

The Wire is ruthless in focusing on the important parts of the story for each season, occasionally bypassing formerly important characters and bringing in entirely new ones. The tonal whiplash as it makes these changes can make seasonal transitions difficult, especially at the start of the 2^nd and 4^th seasons. However, this is necessary both to keep things fresh and to keep the show's overall world and mythology – which is huge, using Baltimore as a stand-in for the American city – working and symmetrical.

Babylon 5, for all its other flaws, also had serialization that worked, in a different fashion. Famously, it was built on a five-year plan, and the creator exercised rigid control over the story – so rigid that he wrote all but one episode over the last three and a half seasons of the show's run.

The premise and overall story for Babylon 5 – the “arc” - was universe-wide, expanding into all aspects of the setting. However, as the series started, the focus was much narrower, on the station itself. The groundwork for the later seasons was built (too) slowly through the 1^st season and much of the 2^nd, but it was done almost entirely on the station itself. There were hints that the story was bigger, done primarily through foreshadowing, prophecy, dramatic irony, and occasionally ominous whispers about a great evil stirring and the like. As the ambitions of the storytelling increased, it grew to fill in the gaps created by the foreshadowing.

Thus the increased complexity of the Babylon 5 story didn't feel like it was a bunch of added mythology tacked on later once the initial premise was getting tired, but instead built on solid foundations in order to increase the stakes in a satisfying fashion.

This piece is merely meant to be descriptive, not prescriptive. Both Babylon 5 and The Wire required a specific kind of wild ambition from their creators, which is always going to be unlikely to be duplicated. Likewise, just because a show is a mess in terms of continuity and mythology doesn't mean it can't be great. Battlestar Galactica may be structurally weaker than Babylon 5, but I'm not sure I'd actually say that, as a whole, it's worse. And Angel demonstrates that a series can go absolutely apeshit crazy with the serialization and still somehow bring it together.

However, I do think that using the visual metaphors for how mythology springs from serialization is helpful, and how I generally conceive of these things. I hope it helps to explain my point of view on the subject.

A Unified Theory of Game of Thrones

Yes, the title is somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but having seen several reviews, both positive and negative, as well as the first episode itself, I'm starting to feel like there's an elephant in the room. My Twitter friend Noel Kirkpatrick hits upon it to some degree with his generally negative review, in describing Game of Thrones' issues with the big three of race, class, and gender, but it also touches upon the discussion of the series as a representative on the fantasy genre, and even bigger than that, what makes for successful, classic television and storytelling.

It can be summed up as this: what is the point of the story?

In fantasy literature, in general, the point is the plot. It is meant to describe an interesting, entertaining, set of events. There are very few popular fantasy novels where nothing happens. It's not necessarily earth-shattering (although it often is), but the main characters are important participants in some kind of important event.

In more well-respected storytelling, or high-brow, or snotty artsy-fartsy crap, depending on how you want to describe it, plot is much less important than theme. Great stories are supposed to reveal something about the nature of the world or humanity or America or suburbia or men or women or what-have-you. While major events could happen, having the characters as the main participants in them is a sign of genre fiction, and frowned upon to some degree. Fantasy, where that's the entire point, thus exists at arguably the lowest level of that hierarchy, as that goddamn New York Times review demonstrated.

Which brings us to television. Interestingly, television, despite almost all of its series being "genre" stories (with the possible exceptions of Mad Men and Treme), television, or "quality television," is quite strong thematically. When you look at the shows which are considered part of the canon, such as it is, they almost all have tremendous thematic relevance. The critical king of television, The Wire, is all about theme, most notably, the crushing weight of institutions. But it doesn't stop there. The Sopranos is about the corruption of humanity. Buffy the Vampire Slayer is about growing up and dealing with responsibility. Even the great comedies have strong thematic elements. Arrested Development is about living with family. Seinfeld and later Curb Your Enthusiasm are about societal norms. Even The Simpsons has strong thematic elements, like its tendency to make fun of mob mentality in small towns.

On the other hand, you have shows that are considered trashy fun, like Glee or True Blood currently, where they're best described, as The Simpsons once famously said, as "just a bunch of stuff that happens." Glee of course tries to tack on morality, but it's so inconsistent that it undercuts its own ideals from scene to scene, let alone episode to episode. There are also the CBS-style procedurals, which occasionally have insulting theme descriptions (fascistic, hegemonic, etc) attached to them, but don't try to do much more than blandly entertain.

Here is Game of Thrones' problem: it is a story that is all plot. It's a great plot, to be sure, and some of the events can and will shatter your expectations of how plots are supposed to work (in a sense, it's somewhat similar to Joss Whedon's stuff, but we'll get there when we get there). But it's being treated as if it's a prestige series, to be placed in the HBO pantheon alongside Deadwood and Rome if not quite The Wire. But it doesn't have a strong theme. The theme might be emergent, that is, it slowly develops over the course of the show, and it will likely be subjective, changing from person to person. But that's not what makes for "quality television." And this may be Game of Thrones' biggest problem moving forward.

Note: my essential breakdown of story components is as such: all stories need good characters. Setting is where the characters live. Plot is what happens to the characters. Theme is what the characters learn/are supposed to teach the audience. Game of Thrones the book certainly has strong characters, which doesn't necessarily show up in the pilot, so there's plenty of hope yet.

Second note: I am not covering Game of Thrones in any official, paid, or week-to-week capacity. I would like to. If you know of anyplace that would be interested in taking me on to do it, let me know!

Fantasy, Gender, and Game of Thrones

While I should not have been surprised about the new HBO series Game of Thrones turning into a referendum on fantasy, it has somehow turned into a huge discussion on gender in geek culture, which is somewhat more surprising.

The initial reason for this is that the highest-profile negative review, from the New York Times, specifically genders enjoyment of fantasy, calling it "boy fiction." This review's foolishness is well-documented (I took a few shots at it in my last post myself) and has led to a thriving mini-genre of female geek blog posts - see here.

However, as usual with gender, this is a multi-layered affair. Many of the writers who have treated Game of Thrones with the most disdain, and whose links are being passed around and mocked, and presumably have had their comments sections taken over by irate fans of the novels, have been female themselves. Myles McNutt, my co-AV Club writer, has documented and discussed this here, while my editor Todd Vanderwerff went into the subject a little bit deeper in the comments, citing both the male numerical dominance of online TV criticism, and even more interestingly, a masculine definition of what makes for a quality TV show.

This is without even getting into the text itself, where a gender analysis of the books, show, and the show compared to the books could all be fruitful. One consistent criticism of the show from people who haven't outright dismissed it for its genre has been an excessive amount of distracting boobage, which is also an issue I and others had with HBO's Boardwalk Empire. More subtly, I've heard suggestions that some of the impressive female characters from the novel are hard-done-by early on the show, since they don't have the internal, point-of-view monologue on-screen.

To sum up the different gender arguments, in case you're looking for a senior project, thesis, or dissertation topic:

• Treatment of gender in the A Game of Thrones novel
• Treatment of gender in the Game of Thrones series
• Comparing and contrasting gender in the book and the series
• Gender of reviewers responding to the show
• Gender of TV reviewers overall
• Gendered discussion of "quality television"
• Stereotypes about gender of Game of Thrones fans
• Stereotypes about gender of fantasy fans in general
• And, finally, the one that I haven't seen mentioned often: the gendered discussion of fantasy literature as a whole

You see, I've long had the impression that fantasy was gendered female, especially compared to its fraternal twin, science fiction. Science fiction is largely written by men, and the subgenre of "hard" science fiction focuses on rational concerns, extrapoliting current science out into time and space (and note the gendered terminology, hard=rational=masculine, soft=imaginative=feminine). Fantasy, on the other hand, is written by women as or more often than men, and is reliant on magic, an irrational flight of imagination. I even had a creative writing textbook once which said that science fiction was a good genre because it could say something about the world we lived in today, whereas fantasy was pure escapism and totally unserious.

My personal experience bears this out as well. In the 90s, I spent a lot of time on CompuServe's Science Fiction & Fantasy forums, and found that yes, the fantasy forum seemed to have a much better balance of male and female contributors, whereas the science fiction forum skewed much more male. Interestingly, I also talked about Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series in another subforum, and recall that being a primarily male forum.

To be fair: it is possible that, despite my possibly-accurate impression of the fantasy genre and its fans skewing female, A Game of Thrones is actually a more masculine-oriented novel, much as I found The Wheel of Time to be male. Perhaps there is something in the structure of the neverending fantasy series preferred by Jordan and Martin which fits in with masculine concepts, in the same way that Todd described "quality television" (usually serialized, dense, and overly serious) as seeming to have a masculine orientation. It could also be that by keeping magic largely on the sidelines, as I mentioned in my post yesterday, A Game of Thrones possesses a more historical, rational, and masculine appeal. On the other hand, one of the fantasy authors I would describe as the most "feminine" (despite his apparent male gender), Guy Gavriel Kay, also tends to write "fantistoricals." Or I'm theorizing excessively and this is all total nonsense.

Regardless, if I have a point here, it's that much like yesterday, it's hardly fair to attach qualities of gender to the Game of Thrones series in such a generalized, conclusive fashion. There are layers upon layers here, and as ever, I say it's more complicated than it may seem at first glance.