Category: Article (Page 1 of 2)

Valve Loves Mods

December 8, 2016 / Orange Juice / 0 Comments

Have you ever played a game and thought to yourself “I really wish that dragon looked like Thomas the Train?” Well if you have, then you are in luck, because mods allow you to do just that. And if you have never even come close to thinking that, then fear not: there is still a mod out there for you. Mods are a great way to make a game more personal and entertaining since mods can essentially change almost any aspect of a video game into something the player wants. However, mods would be nothing without the developers that make the games they are for.

One developer that has been particularly prominent in the modding world is Valve. In fact, Valve was actually born from mods. In 1996, two Microsoft employees—Gabe Newell and Mike Harrington—left Bill Gates’ company to go and try designing video games. To do this, they acquired the software development kit (or SDK) for the Quake engine and began modding. In 1998, they released their debut product Half Life. Essentially just a large mod to the Quake engine, Half Life was an instant hit and later was actually used by other people to create one of the most successful mods in history, Counter Strike. The Counter Strike mod was eventually bought back by Valve and is now one of their most successful games, generating huge profits for Valve.

It’s obvious that a prominent part of Valve’s foundation is modding but there is one thing that sets them apart from other companies with the same selling point, such as Bethesda Softworks: Valve actively encourages the modding community. This encouragement has brought tons of benefits to the company, but this is not just a one sided relationship. As the rest of this post will explain, Valve’s encouragment for modding benefits modders by offering simple ways to create mods through things like creation kits, quick and easy ways to access and share mods through the Steam Workshop, and by providing players with a wide variety of mods. At the same time, modders provide value to Valve by providing the company with “free labor” and increasing the value of its games through modders’ creation of “complements.”

Video of mod that turns dragons into trains in Skyrim, By Gampo

In order to fully understand Valve’s approach to the modding community, one first has to know what a mod is. The issue with defining mods, however, is that there are so many different forms they can take. Mods can be anything from an enhancement to a game’s graphics to the creation of an almost entirely new game via the original game’s code, as in the case of Half Life. This is why the best definition of what a mod is needs to be rather broad. Walt Scacchi, a senior research scientist at the Institute for Software Research, gives a great and widely accepted description of what a mod is in his article “Computer Game Mods, Modders, Modding, and the Mod Scene” where he states that a mod is basically just “a legal change in pre-existing code that creates something new.” Now that a definition is in place, we can explian how mods benefit Valve’s community and Valve themselves can be explained, starting with community benefits.

Valve’s encouragement for modding has benefitted the community by allowing players to easily create mods through programs like creation kits and SDKs. One way Valve has encouraged modding has been through the release of SDKs for certain games. SDKs are essentially development tools that allow its user to create applications within a game. A second way Valve has encouraged modding is through the release of creation kits for certain games. A creation kit can be downloaded upon purchase of a game that has one associated with it. Upon downloading the creation kit the user can then edit almost anything they want in the game. The biggest benefit of using the creation kit to mod is that the mods a user creates are not stored in the game’s files. They are instead stored separately, so that if a user edits something in a game that makes it run incorrectly or messes up a certain part of the game’s engine, the entire game is not destroyed. These programs Valve has created greatly benefit their community by making it is easier than ever to create mods. Take the example of Skyrim. Once someone has downloaded the Skyrim creation kit from Steam anyone can take game models such as walls, characters, items, or even buildings and build entirely new creations quickly and easily with them. Since Valve provides people with the necessary software to mod right off the bat, members of the community that want to mod do not have to spend hours figuring out how and download outside software; instead, they can just boot up Valve’s programs and have the ability to create any mod easily right then and there.

Making modding easier is not the only benefit these programs have had for the community, they have also made it possible for almost anyone to mod. Things like creation kits have made modding rather simple and intuitive; one no longer has to be a wiz with computers to create a mod. Instead the would-be modder can just boot up his or her creation kit and be ready to create. Creation kits also mean that new or rather unskilled modders no longer have to worry about destroying the game they are playing since everything they add or create will be stored separately. Valve’s encouragement for mods has made modding simpler and easier than ever, which is a huge benefit to people who play their games and want to mod. But creating mods is not the only thing Valve has made easier; they have also made sharing and accessing mods easier than ever.

Valve’s encouragement for modding has benefitted the community by providing them with easy ways to share and access mods through the Steam Workshop. In 2008 Valve released the Steam Workshop for their game client Steam with the intentions of creating a way for people to easily share and access mods they create themselves or want to use, and it did just that. The Steam Workshop was an instant success and people immediately began sharing their creations. Players no longer had to scour the internet looking for one specific mod they wanted; instead, they could just log on to the Workshop and search for it using the search tool. In fact, the Market not only made finding particular mods easier, it made discovering new mods easier too. The Workshop provided players with ways of browsing the top and newest mods for their favorite games quickly. Once a player found a mod they wanted, he or she could click the subscribe button for that mod and whenever the modder came out with an updated version of the mod it would update automatically.

Image from Counter Strike: Source, By Tamahikari Tammas

The Steam Community Workshop not only made accessing mods easier, it made sharing them easier too. The Workshop provided an easy way for modders to share their creations since they could just post them for others to find them. All of their creations were also easy for the creators to access within the Workshop so they could update them at any time. The Workshop also provided modders and non-modders with a simple way to share their favorite mods. People could “like” mods and send the links to them to their friends, making it easier than ever to share their favorites.

The final benefit Valve’s encouragement for mods has provided the company’s community is that it has created an expansive variety of mods offering a personalized experience for almost any player. With the implementation of the Steam Community Workshop, creation kits, and software development kits, it has become easier than ever to create, access, and share mods. This simplicity has lead to a seemingly endless supply of mods meaning there is a mod for almost anyone in any game. This allows players to make the gaming experience their own and tailor it to the way they like it, which is what mods are really meant to do. But the programs Valve has implemented have created such a vast quantity of mods that personalization has been taken a step further. Now players can basically make entire games into what they want them to look like or what they thought the game should look like.

It is great that Valve has encouraged modding and thus brought so many benefits to their community but they probably would not have been as encouraging if mods did not benefit them in some way. Valve’s encouragement for mods has benefitted them because modders act as a kind of free labor. As stated before, the definition of mod can be rather broad; therefore, a mod is not necessarily just an addition to a pre-existing game. Modders quite frequently actually create mods that fix bugs in a game or enhance certain other aspects of the game, such as graphics. These fixes or enchantments cost nothing to Valve and greatly improve the gaming experience. Thus, modders act as a type of legal free labor for Valve. In fact, according to Hector Postigo, an associate professor at Temple University, modders actually save game developers upwards of $2.5 million dollars a year in labor costs. Since Valve has encouraged mods through things like the Workshop and SDKs, the number of modders creating these fixes is constantly growing. This means that Valve’s savings from free labor can only increase.

Modders do not only benefit Valve by being free labor, however; they also act as “complementors” to Valve’s games. As explained earlier, Valve’s encouragement for modding has made it easier for almost anyone to mod, thereby increasing the number of modders out there. This benefits Valve because each of these modders offers their own “complements” to a game. How these contributions work to increase the value of a game is explained by Lars Bo Jeppesen, a professor at Copenhagen Business School, in his essay entitled “Profiting From Innovative User Communities: How Firms organize the Production of User Modifications in the Computer Games Industry.” He describes modders as being “complementors” who add complements (mods) to a game that a developer has created. They are complements because they add features that enhance the game. Modders/complementors can only add complements to a game though because the mods or complements they create are not crucial to playing or experiencing the game. When enough complements have been added to a game, the game will increase in value, and this will in turn most likely lead to an increase in sales. However, this does not mean that when a game acquires a lot of complements Valve will increase the price of the game. This is a huge benefit for Valve since more game sales means more profit. Sounds like a pretty good deal to me.

Gabe Newell, Co-Founder of Valve

A great example of this is the Fallout series, specifically the games before Fallout 4. Though Fallout is not a Valve-developed game, Bethesda Softworks, the game’s developers of Fallout, use Steam to sell and offer mods for their games. The Fallout series is available on all platforms including PlayStation, Xbox, and Steam (Valve’s game platform), but it consistently sells better on Steam than any platform. Why could this be? This is because Valve is the only one that offered mods or “complements” for these games prior to the release of Fallout 4. Because Valve offered the ability to create and download mods to their Fallout games, people would add “complements” to the game, increasing the game’s value on Steam. Thus the sales for Fallout on Steam were greater than the sales on other platforms. The value of games on Steam have thus greatly increased due to Valve’s encouragement for mods.

Many competitors such as Sony and Microsoft have rivaled Valve in game development but Valve has always dominated the modding scene. They figured out what works and know how to use it to create a simple, enjoyable experience for those who want to mod and profit off of the mods these people create. The key to doing this was releasing products that encourage modding such as SDKs, creation kits, and the community market. These encouragements benefitted modders and game players by offering simple ways to create, access, and share mods while benefitting Valve by giving them a source of free labor and increasing the value of their games. A Half Life 3 mod (or full game) would most likely benefit Valve and their community a great deal too.

Why Bee Movie is Government Propaganda

August 25, 2016 / worm [disambiguation]- (1): dance move / 21 Comments

I saw Bee Movie when it came out in theaters (whenever that was) and liked it fine (I was 10 or something–again, I don’t know when the film came out–but the point is that my critical senses weren’t as finely honed back then). I didn’t really get who Jerry Seinfeld was since I hadn’t seen Seinfeld, but he had a funny voice and that was cool (again, I was 10. Maybe 11).

However, this evening my brother mentioned that Bee Movie popped up in Netflix and that despite the provided two-and-a-half-out-of-five-star rating, he watched it and thought it was a fine piece of cinema. In an effort to join him in waxing poetic over Jerry Seinfeld‘s animation debut (?), I thought back on the plot of the incredibly forgettable film.

I found that all I could remember was the kitschy opening scene wherein the main character (a bee played by none other than Jerry Seinfeld, the only actor I’ve mentioned thus far in the article) goes over to his closet, which is full of a bunch of iterations of the same outfit, then ponders which of the outfits he will pick (comedy gold! Or comedy honey, I should say (ref:)).

I found that after focusing on the film for far longer than I should, I could also remember that he (the bee person/Jerry Seinfeld) leaves his hive (for surely contrived reasons that I’ve since forgotten) and then meets a human, falls in love with the human, somehow manages to communicate with the human, then discovers that humans take all the bees’ honey. Upon realizing that the entire life work of every bee he knows amounts to producing food for people, he goes to court and gets the humans to stop taking the bees’ honey. Now that the bees don’t have to give most their honey away, they get lazy. Then they (the bees) band together and save a plane from crashing (I forget how that improbable transition happens) and decide to allow their honey to be taken away from them again (or something like that.).

Going through the plot in broad strokes like this a thought occurred to me: it sounds like a really contrived argument for the benefits of taxation. Is it possible that Jerry Seinfeld worked with the American government to subconsciously remind people that if they don’t work for something larger than themselves (in this case, allowing their money to be put into the government) they will become unmotivated and lazy? I don’t know, he played a really dickish, shmuckish version of himself in that one episode of Louie (or is it Louis? I swear whichever one I try first is always wrong. It’s like I live in a synthetic universe in which some malevolent being is watching over my life and in this being’s grand attempt to fuck with me the only thing it changes is the correct spelling of the name of Louis C.K.’s television show). Answer: It is possible and, actually, would be fertile ground for further exploration in the form of an article.

I said so right then and there: “I’m going to write an article about why Bee Movie is government propaganda.” My brother laughed. “No”, I said, “I’m serious. I’m going to write something about that tonight.” “That’s stupid,” my brother replied supportively. Now here we are. I can’t outline my argument at this point because I’ve yet to google Bee Movie, as I’ve been too lazy to do so, but I now intend to gather sufficient information on the vile piece of cinema propaganda to expose Jerry Seinfeld for the crooked shill he is. I aim to show that he’s allowed the content of his films to be dictated by the government and is willing to subject the American people to being told what to think (despicable)–a surely libelous claim without proper support.

So I googled Bee Movie and the main bee’s name is Barry B. Benson (Jesus christ). In doing my investigation, I also discovered that the film was released in November of 2007, putting me at 11 years of age when I watched it for the first and only time. To be honest, looking into the film and investing energy into realizing this idea has made me not want to actually write this essay, but I’ve committed myself to it and so have to make at least some attempt at an argument.

The first hint that more cynical machinations are afoot than readily perceptible on the film’s glossy, Jerry Seinfeld-brand-honey-coated surface can be found in the film’s blatant attempt to appeal to specific demographics. The plot, in which a recent college-graduate bee be(e)comes disinterested with the monotonous life of a worker bee and leaves the hive, only to discover that bees are being exploited by humans and then goes on to sue humanity en masse, would probably not be able to suspend the disbelief of any reasonable non-child.

However, the film seems to be trying to appeal to teenagers and young adults who should be able to relate (?) to the concerns of the bee trying to come to terms with the fact that he is literally only going to be a worker bee his whole life. The cast also includes several actors who appeared on Seinfeld–including Jerry himself, Michael Richards, (either known to you as Kramer or the man who went off on a sudden racist shouting fit in an attempt to “shut down” a heckler), and everybody’s favorite doorman, Larry Miller (he played a doorman in one episode of Seinfeld)–in an attempt to please the parents of the small children who comprised the film’s target audience.

I went into this paragraph thinking I would say something about how the movie is trying to reach everyone so as to convince them they should be grateful to just be “worker bees,” (I’m pretty sure that’s the note the film ends on; I haven’t finished the wikipedia page yet), but now that I think about it, that just seems like industry-standard marketing–trying to appeal to the largest audience possible and the like. Really, if they wanted to brainwash people they would have been best off trying to embed a message that only the children would pick up on, as their brains are the most malleable.

And that’s exactly what the film did. They attacked the brains of the children but marketed to a large audience so as to avoid suspicion (that doesn’t seem like that should be the correct spelling of that word).

Actually–no. I give up. I thought of that segue and I was going to try and think of some way to make it work, but I just don’t care any more. My point stands, the movie’s apparent (again, I haven’t finished the wikipedia page) theme of ‘living for a collective instead of just yourself’ is sort of suspect. Actually, it’s not all that bad when you phrase it like that. I’m trying to think of ways to make the whole “be subservient to the government” comparison again, but it’s sort of hard to do without really knowing how the movie plays out. Oh well.

I don’t really know how I feel about Bee Movie. 11-year-old me thought it was pretty tight, 20-year-old me thought that the plot as I remembered it seemed to have some Orwellian overtones. In conclusion, my brother recommends Bee Movie starring Jerry Seinfeld (who may or may not be a dick; he was one on Louie and he seems like he’s capable of being a dick in real life). He says the plot “doesn’t make any sense” but it’s fantastic for that fact and it’s available on Netflix so hey, why not?

Addendum:

It has come to my attention that Bee Movie is not, in fact, on Netflix.

I can think of three reasons why my brother said that it was:

A: The movie was on Netflix but has since been removed (probably because Netflix decided they didn’t, in fact, want their site to be a platform for communist propaganda).

B: My brother is unaccountably stupid and nothing he says should be believed.

C: My brother had a Jerry Seinfeld-centric fever dream (ex), in which he watched and was greatly entertained by Bee Movie, the film itself being pieced together from the broken remnants that lingered in his mind from when he viewed it as a small child.

A seems unlikely, so that leaves us with B and C. I’m not sure which is, but they’re both very fun to imagine (it’s probably B, though).

Sleeping with Thedas

July 9, 2016 / Leigh Parrott / 2 Comments

As a company, Canadian-based game developer BioWare has been famous for its attempts at inclusivity of minority characters in its video games. Through the years, most notably in its two most famous properties, the Mass Effect and Dragon Age series, BioWare’s concern with inclusivity has been centered largely around that of minorities on the sexuality and gender spectrums. These attempts at inclusivity have been earned the studio commendations for their progressivity and forward-thinking, as well as appreciation from fans for targeting a somewhat atypical triple-A gaming audience—that is, people who are not heterosexual, cisgender men. Perhaps the most prominent example of BioWare’s efforts at representation is its most recent major publication, Dragon Age: Inquisition.

Of the three major Dragon Age titles published so far, Inquisition, released in November of 2014, is undoubtedly the most inclusive when it comes to gender and sexuality. While Dragon Age: Origins (2009) and Dragon Age II (2011) featured multiple straight and bisexual characters, Inquisition is the first of the three to feature not only gay and lesbian characters, but also a character who falls outside of the traditional male-female binary on the gender spectrum. For all that is laudable about its effort at greater inclusivity, however, Inquisition is not without its representational problems, and indeed the game’s approach to gender and sexuality has not met with unanimous praise from players. The game’s mixed reception in this regard is telling, for ultimately it stems from a problematic aspect of Inquisition‘s design: despite BioWare’s attempt to construct a universe equally inclusive of all sexualities and genders, their inclusivity comes across as more of an artificial construct, forced into the game, rather than a naturally occurring, organically integrated component.

Before examining the game’s reception in more detail, it is important to understand how BioWare and the Dragon Age franchise in particular came to develop such a positive reputation for inclusivity, and how the inclusion of romance has both created and escalated the attention drawn to the issue of representation in BioWare’s games. Historically, the company’s games have been popular with fans because they allowed players to initiate romantic relationships with certain characters in the games—a feature that was first included in Baldur’s Gate 2 (2002). However, as David Gaider, Lead Writer for a number of BioWare games, has explained, until the release of Jade Empire (2005), BioWare’s character romance options had remained strictly heterosexual. Even after romances for players and characters of the same gender were included, it wasn’t until the Mass Effect and Dragon Age franchises (which are BioWare’s most famous) that the company began gaining attention and publicity for their bisexual characters. To date, almost no other franchises have included “romance options” in the same manner that BioWare has, with a focus on the characters and emotions instead of romance as an achievement or merely a quasi-cosmetic option, as it is in such RPGs as Bethesda’s The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim (2011). Through BioWare’s character romances, the player is allowed to learn more about what makes the romanced character unique within the context of the game’s universe, which allows for a unique mode of immersion.

The Mass Effect player character, Shepard, and one of the bisexual romance options, Liara T’Soni, in Mass Effect 3.

Yet another layer of complexity is added to this feature when queer characters become involved—not only for the gameplay, but also for the developer and their fans. Like any traditional role playing game, the Dragon Age universe contains a significant amount of world building, and through the character romance system that BioWare created, they were able to construct an entire queer-inclusive social hierarchy, which the player learns about through dialogue and information in books scattered throughout the game world. The sheer size and intricacy of Thedas, the fictitious continent in which Dragon Age takes place, lends itself well to world building of every variety, and the inclusion of queer lore in the universe is done so in a credible, believable manner, which appeals to fans on many levels. Journalist David Silver, writing for VentureBeat, cites Inquisition’s characters, namely Sera (an elven rogue) and the Iron Bull (a qunari warrior), as being realistic and flawed, having “their own struggles, their own desires, their own motivations and backstory.” In other words, BioWare’s queer characters are presented as characters, rather than as tokens offered for the sake of being politically correct.

Because the integration of queer characters has been done so prominently in the Dragon Age franchise, as the franchise has developed, so has BioWare’s inclusiveness. What began as two bisexual characters, Leliana and Zevran, in Origins was raised to four (that is, every romance option) in Dragon Age 2. And in Inquisition, BioWare presented its most diverse cast of potential characters—and potential romance options—yet. Of them, four are straight (Cullen Rutherford, Solas, Blackwall, and Cassandra Pentaghast), one gay (Dorian Pavus), one lesbian (Sera), and three bisexual (Iron Bull, Josephine Montilyet, and Lace Harding). Among these romance options in Inquisition, six are characters who can accompany the player character, the Inquisitor, as party members when exploring and fighting in various parts of Fereldan and Orlais, the two countries in Thedas where the game is set. Two of the remaining three, Cullen and Josephine, act as advisors to the Inquisitor, while Harding is an Inquisition foot soldier and scout, and can only be interacted with at specific intervals during the game. The presentation of queer characters as both party members and romance options ensures that they play an active role in the game, at least so far as the player chooses to interact with them outside of story segments where they prominently affect the plot.

In addition to including more (and a greater variety of) queer characters than Origins and Dragon Age 2, Inquisition did a number of other things better than its predecessors. The greater variety of queer minority characters has been lauded by numerous critics, including GLAAD, which recognized Inquisition with a special award at its 26^th Annual GLAAD Media Awards. Another aspect that Inquisition improved on was Dragon Age 2’s “player-sexual” characters. Though arguably Dragon Age 2 was inclusive because of its high number of presumably bi- or pansexual characters, as all four of its non-downloadable content romance options were available to a player character of either sex, this also created a conundrum for players who wished to see greater development with characters’ own sexualities and stories. As game scholar Stephen Greer, writing on Dragon Age 2, explains, “While a ‘sexuality blind’ approach to game design may free creators from the burden of attempting to create an extended range of…characters and narrative variations…it also affirms a separation of the cultural politics of design choices from those of the wider world….[S]uch positioning also articulates a preference for models of inclusivity that preserve and privilege the status quo.” Though opinions differed, as the Dragon Age community is fairly expansive and diverse, many players expressed similar opinions, and were grateful for the change in Inquisition. Making every romance option “player-sexual” arguably deprived the characters of some autonomy, which Inquisition addressed and strove to fix. Inquisition’s romance options were all different and the characters had different sexualities, which gave them more of a sexual identity than their predecessors in Dragon Age 2.

One of Dragon Age: Inquisition’s heterosexual romance options, Cassandra Pentaghast, is also a fearsome warrior under oath of the Seeker order.

A third aspect that Dragon Age: Inquisition improved on was including characters, especially romanceable characters, of different genders. In previous games, there had been an equal number of male and female romance options for players to pursue, and for the most part, there had been a balance in sexualities of these characters—two straight and two bisexual in Origins, with all four being bisexual in Dragon Age 2—making it easy for player characters of any sex and sexuality to pursue a romance. In Inquisition, however, in addition to including a greater variety of sexualities, there are more potential romance options for a straight female Inquisitor than there are for a straight male, which confronted a long-standing concern in the video game industry that games are not marketed toward minority players (i.e. anyone who is not young, heterosexual, cisgender and male).

Dragon Age lead writer David Gaider addresses this in a conference talk he gave regarding the turn away from sexism and sexuality in BioWare’s games. According to Gaider, minority players “…play our games….but it’s not because anyone invited them to play. In fact, in a lot of cases, it’s clear that they play despite it being made plainly obvious to them that they’re not the intended audience.” He continues on to ask his viewers what would happen if developers decided to acknowledge what he calls an “untapped audience,” and to answer this this question points to Inquisition, which had not yet been published at the time of the talk. It is cases like this that have given BioWare its reputation for being inclusive, because they as a developer have taken active steps to combat the latent sexism in the industry by ensuring that their audience is not just straight, cis men.

In addition to their inclusions of romance options for minority players, BioWare also included the second transgender character in the Dragon Age franchise, Cremisius “Krem” Acclassi. The player learns through dialogue that he is biologically female, though he identifies as male. Although Krem is not a playable character or a romance option, he is a fairly significant character, whom players have expressed an active interest in, and his inclusion was a statement of BioWare’s trans-inclusivity, which has helped attract queer players to the game. Through targeting a fanbase of female and queer players as Inquisition did, BioWare was able to reach out to their minority audience through the game, and make the statement that they, as a company, valued their fans, and took every step necessary to make sure that they felt as included (or even more included) than their straight male audience did.

Perhaps the most positive result of the greater diversity of sexualities in Inquisition is the ability for players of all types to express themselves more freely through the character romance system. While romances are not necessary for the game’s central plot or quests, the fact that the option—specifically the option for queer romance —exists is an achievement for BioWare in inclusivity. Creating background and side characters, and even major characters as queer is one thing, but allowing the player to play as a queer character and choose their Inquisitor’s sexuality reframes the video game as a privileged medium for the safe expression of (and experimentation with) sexuality.

Although BioWare’s achievements in this regard deserve praise, there is still much that can be improved on for the future of the Dragon Age franchise. Inquisition is frequently cited as being one of, if not the most inclusive game(s) on the market, but it is not difficult to earn that achievement if most other game developers are not actively competing for it. While BioWare’s inclusivity is certainly a step forward, it is only one of many steps needed to make the gaming industry a place that can be dubbed inclusive.

One of the largest points of contention regarding Inquisition’s queer characters was Dorian’s personal quest which, according to some members of the BioWare community, was akin to the stereotypical “gay” stories featured in most other media. In this quest, the Inquisitor learns of a plot by Dorian’s father, magister Halward Pavus, to allegedly abduct his son and bring him back to Tevinter, his home country. After informing Dorian of this plot, the mage suggests that the Inquisitor accompany him, and the two travel to meet Halward, whose true intentions were simply to talk to his son and express his thoughts and feelings about Dorian’s sexuality and the rift it caused between them. Although this meeting turns out to be harmless, the Inquisitor learns numerous details about Dorian’s past, including that his father attempted to change his sexuality through a magic ritual. As one fan put it on the BioWare forums, “I’m a little disappointed that his personal mission was solely based on him being gay,” and many other commenters in the thread expressed the same opinion.

Although Sera has received much less attention, despite being the only other strictly gay character in the franchise thus far, there are stereotypical elements to her, as well. At one point, if the Inquisitor has a strong friendship with her, she will reveal that she feels as if she never fit in with other elves and was brought up by humans, which only adds to the common “misunderstood, angry lesbian” trope that has become all too popular in media representing the queer community. As Jillian, a blogger for FemHype, argues, “Sera comes off more like the widespread cocktail of self-righteous anger and incoherent babbling that make up your token lesbian character than an actual human being.” Jillian also highlights some of Sera’s arguably transphobic dialogue and questions why, if BioWare is meant to be such an inclusive company, they included so much dialogue related to the policing of genitalia?

Sera is Dragon Age: Inquisition’s sole lesbian romance option.

In addition to the story’s two gay characters being stereotyped, BioWare’s inclusion doesn’t quite extend to all sexualities. One of the largest examples of this is in the character of Cole, who is a spirit-like party companion who cannot be romanced by the Inquisitor. Arguably, this lack of romantic interest from Cole could be grounds for representation of asexual and aromantic individuals, whose orientations are too often skimmed over by the media and belittled to the point that many believe that these are not valid sexualities with which to identify. However, any hope of asexual/aromantic representation in Cole’s character was snuffed in the downloadable-content ending to the game, Trespasser. Late in the main story of Inquisition, the Inquisitor has the option to either make Cole more “spirit-like” or more “human,” which will affect how others view him for the remainder of the game. If they choose to make him more human, an interaction between him and Maryden, the game’s tavern bard, will occur in which he kisses her cheek and remarks that her songs make people happy. Up until the release of Trespasser, many fans had been happily projecting Cole as asexual and/or aromantic, a conclusion which made sense given his apparent lack of romantic and sexual interest in any other characters. However, during Trespasser, a more human Cole even exchanges the following dialogue with Dorian:

DORIAN. You have a lady friend?
COLE. Well, I am human now.

Kyra S., another writer for FemHype, observed that this dialogue made her feel as though she was “clearly not human.” “I want to be happy for Cole,” she explained, “but I kind of feel like Bioware is taking a shot at me. I know I shouldn’t expect representation but the fact that it’s Cole saying it makes it particularly cruel.” Until this dialogue was revealed, BioWare’s attempts at inclusivity had, on the surface, looked incredibly positive. Through Cole, they had apparently targeted a portion of their fans who still receive little to no attention from most media texts, and it had worked—until Trespasser. The ignorance contained in their creation of yet another needless romantic subplot was, this time, a reflection of the lack of attention that the asexual and aromantic community receives every day. Though probably not their intent, BioWare successfully alienated a portion of its players by essentially stating that they did not care about their sexuality or romantic orientation.

Another area in which people took issue with Inquisition was, surprisingly, in its romantic dialogue options. Players generally have no issue with the options which lead to an actual romantic relationship with one of the characters, but there is a baffling gray area contained in the romantic options with characters an Inquisitor cannot romance—for example, a female Inquisitor can flirt with both Dorian and Cassandra, despite neither of them being romantically or sexually attracted to women. It is only after this occurs multiple times that the character in question will attempt to set the Inquisitor straight and explain that they are not attracted to the player’s character.

The purpose of including these “flirt” options is unclear to many, and in some instances it even feels unfair to the characters being flirted with. For instance, a female Inquisitor can flirt with Dorian (who, to be fair, does enjoy flirting as a rule), but after the quest in which he encounters his father, he admits to the Inquisitor that he is gay and not interested in women. As a result, if the player chooses, the Inquisitor can accuse Dorian of having “led her on,” which seems like a potentially hurtful thing to say to a man who just had either a touching reunion with his father or a violent parting of ways, depending on the choices made during the scene. In a similar vein, the player can also inquire about Krem’s gender by either talking with him or to his boss, Iron Bull; the player can then ask a series of questions, or refer to Krem as a woman, which comes across as an extremely transphobic choice in a game where the developer has actively framed their game in terms of inclusivity. On the one hand, it can be argued that these choices add an element of unfortunate reality to the game; but on the other, having the player character play a queer-phobic person in the game is incredibly problematic. At the very least, it doesn’t promote the “equality” that BioWare is so concerned with achieving.

With all of these factors—both positive and negative—in mind, can Dragon Age: Inquisition really be considered a game equally inclusive of all sexualities, romantic orientations, and genders? The answer, undoubtedly, is no it cannot. With so many different types of people in the world, one could argue that it is even impossible to satisfy everyone with just one game, as the inclusion of so many different identities would surely raise issue with at least one person, even if the majority has given its approval. In spite of the game’s failings, though, it is important to remember that BioWare is still doing more as a company to combat majority privilege and include as many minority groups as they can.

In one incident, which has become something of an infamous internet spectacle, a gamer, stating that he spoke for all “straight male gamers”—whom he dubbed the target audience of video games—called out BioWare on their message boards for the company’s inclusion of so many bisexual characters in Dragon Age: Origins and Dragon Age 2. In response, lead writer David Gaider essentially told him to find another company who actually felt it necessary to listen to his complaints. Gaider wrote, “The romances in the game are not for ‘the straight male gamer.’ They’re for everyone. We have a lot of fans, many of whom are neither straight nor male, and they deserve no less attention.” He later received a reply from the same individual who attempted to clarify his point, but Gaider’s conclusion made it perfectly clear that BioWare was ready and willing to listen to all of its fans, not merely the straight, cisgender male ones. “The person who says that the only way to please them is to restrict options for others is, if you ask me, the one who deserves it least,” Gaider wrote. “And that’s my opinion, expressed as politely as possible” (for a full transcript of the exchange, check out Krissie Pearce’s piece on No More Lost). His response is telling; many other game developers would not express such a vested interest in ensuring that all of their players are happy, and it is this intent that sets BioWare apart from the rest of the gaming community.

That said, BioWare’s games still have a long way to go before they are truly inclusive. As it stands now, using Inquisition as an example, the company’s inclusivity feels like more of an intentional construct rather than something organic. In other words, the writing of the story and characters did not naturally result in a diverse cast in terms of gender and sexuality; rather, the diversity was—in part, it seems—artificially imposed. This creates a tension between BioWare’s need to include characters of all sexualities and genders and their commitment to the art of storytelling. In fact, it can even hinder storytelling if the goal of inclusivity is paid more attention to than the development of the story itself. There can be no mistaking that Inquisition has a good story and has intrigued many gamers, and that its inclusivity is groundbreaking for an industry which has paid too little heed to gamers who fall outside of the straight, cis male category. In the future, however, the key to creating more successful, inclusive games will be, paradoxically, finding a balance between telling an organic, epic story and being inclusive.

michael whelan anne mccaffrey pern the white dragon

The Original Dragon Lady

September 18, 2015 / Moira Mahoney / 0 Comments

Do you remember growing up, how your mother would always say, “Don’t judge a book by its cover”? Of course, she was referring to that weird lab partner you were always complaining about, but the principle has much broader applicability, because when I picked up Get Off The Dragon, I literally judged the book by its cover. And I’m going to be honest and say I was less than thrilled to have to read it for my Sword and Sorcery class. I have never been one to read fantasy fiction for pleasure or even consider reading science fiction work. I find the make-believe, magic, dragons and whatever else you want to classify as “fantasy” completely boring and unrealistic. But, after reading Get Off The Dragon, I have to give Anne McCaffrey serious props. The book was well written and not too long, and although many would classify her writing in the fantasy realm, I would say it’s more futuristic than anything, which helped make it more interesting to read. Many of the stories in this collection are believable, and if they aren’t, they are too entertaining to care! So, I’ll admit I was wrong to judge her book by the cover, but if I’m being honest, the book’s cover cover isn’t particularly representative of the content anyway.

Let’s start with the cover art. We have, a ferocious dragon breaking through the fragile walls of its shell, with a sickly boy covered in bloody bandages stumbling in the background. There are no signs of females or horsemen, or unicorns for that matter, which seems strange considering the title of the book is Get Off The Unicorn. Originally, Anne McCaffrey planned to title her book Get Of The Unicorn, meaning the offspring of a particular animal. In her introduction, she informs her readers that the mistake “although it fits most of the stories if you know the old tale about unicorn-bait, comes from a misprint in the Ballantine roster of unfilled contracts.” The publishing company, Ballantine, had accidentally printed her book with the wrong title, and rather than changing it, she just went with it.

Interestingly, the two titles appear to contradict themselves. While Get Off the Unicorn hints at the idea of removing oneself from the mythical creature, Get Of The Unicorn refers to the continuation of the species through reproduction. A contrasting parallel is drawn by this mistake, but one has to wonder, what is the symbolism behind the “unicorn” McCaffrey references? Why a unicorn? There are literally no unicorns in any of the stories in this collection, so why title it that? Traditionally, unicorns have appeared as a symbol of chastity and an emblem of God, embodying a sense of mystery and divinity. They are usually white, which hints at their innocence and perfection, as well as their purity and virginity. When Get Off The Unicorn was being published in the 1970’s, Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories were extremely popular in the sword and sorcery genre, depicting images of masculinity, grit, and bloodshed. Perhaps McCaffrey was trying to shift the focus and content of current fantasy /science fictions books from blood and gore to a gentler world with humanistic and relatable content? Being a female writer, it could also be that she wanted to create a gender-friendly fantasy world, one without the hypermasculinity that was so common in Howard’s books.

Published in 1977, at the height of the sword and sorcery craze, Get Off The Unicorn is a collection of short stories, most of which were previously published in science fiction magazines and fantasy anthologies. Many would also later come to be incorporated into larger fictional projects. “Lady in the Tower,” first published in a 1952 issue of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, is one of McCaffrey’s earliest stories. After its publication in Get Off the Unicorn, she would return to it as the basis for her 1990 novel The Rowan, the first book in a continued series about telepathy, psycho-kinesis, and other psychic talents. “The Smallest Dragonboy,” a standalone story originally published in Science Fiction Tales in 1973 and again in 1977 in Creatures of the Cosmos, later became part of the McCaffrey’s famous and long-running Dragonriders of Pern series (consisting of more than twenty-two books!) in a collection titled A Gift of Dragons in 2002.

An Author at the Top of Her Game

Aesthetically, Get Off The Unicorn looks grungy. The cover art isn’t particularly captivating and, as I’ve noted above, has no connection to the title. The misprint makes it clear that the book was significantly less important than McCaffrey’s other works. Why then did Ballantine publish it in the first place? Interestingly, McCaffrey actually acknowledges the book’s insignificance. In her introduction she writes, “Most of you kind people who are buying this volume will have done so because of the author’s name on the cover. I say this with due modesty because, Gentle Reader, you would certainly not choose to buy a book of short stories unless you liked other work by the author.”

When Get Off The Unicorn was published, McCaffrey had completed and published many different books and stories, as well as received a number of prestigious awards including the Best Novella Nebula award for Dragon Rider in 1968 and the E.E. “Doc” Smith Award for Imaginative Fiction award in 1976. By the time Get Off The Unicorn was published and available to the public, McCaffrey was a big deal in the science fiction/fantasy world. Being one of the first female writers taken seriously in this genre, readers admired her for her different approach to fantasy fiction writing. Rather than presenting her readers with archaic language, masculine heroes, and graphic violence as writers like Howard and L. Sprague de Camp did in Conan, McCaffrey considered her work more science fiction than fantasy, and tried to make it appealing to readers of all sexes and ages.

She believed dragons had a universal appeal, one that was not limited by gender, the color of one’s skin, or one’s economic status in society. McCaffrey’s dragons were the most notable elements in her books. She made her dragons so realistic through the enormous amount of background information she created for her readers, including a history of how the dragons came to be, descriptions of their eating habits, accounts of their interactions with humans, information about their emotions and psychological development, and examinations of their psychic abilities. Pern was a world where humans and dragons lived together in harmony and actually needed one another to survive. McCaffrey set out to subvert both the clichés associated with dragons from old European folklore as well as the negative slant given to the creatures by modern fantasy fiction. Her dragons are entirely friendly to humans and are not viewed as magical creatures, but rather as members of society. McCaffrey’s dedication to the creation of her dragons helped the popularity of her stories take off.

From her many popular books, a wide franchise of Pern merchandise was born. People could not get enough of the world of Pern. In the late 1980’s, a substantial amount of companion books were created using McCaffrey’s fantasy world of Pern. In the 1990’s the first graphic novel was published called DragonFlight. In addition to these prodcuts, there was original music, a television series, film adaptions, and several video and board games. So, if you were like me, wondering whether Anne McCaffrey and her books were actually legit, it’s pretty obvious that people loved her writing.

What’s happening in the World?

In Get Off the Unicorn, McCaffrey organizes the short stories into different sections, each starting with an introduction explaining why she wrote that particular story, if there are any important elements the audience should be aware of, and basically how she feels about her own work. She explains, for instance, that some of the stories were aimed at a younger audience, which is why she focuses on issues that young people can relate to: fashion, romance, education, identity, and family. These issues, which I definitely experienced as a teenager and am still experiencing as a young adult, are ones that enabled me to relate to the characters in the short story “Daughter.” She also notes in the story’s introduction, “I also had enough homosexual male friends–even before the Gay Liberation developed–who were bitter they could not adopt children because of their sexual preferences. I have never felt capable of writing a full-length novel about this situation as it should be written” (59). Her stories are not literally about the lives of gay men, but she presents stories that focus on the struggle of gender roles in society and how they affect the lives of her characters, similar to what gay men and other individuals not conforming to the norms of society were experiencing during the time this story was being written.

“Daughter” concerns twins Nick and Nora, who live in a futuristic world built on the belief that every individual contributes to society in some way, whether it be farming, computer programming, animal husbandry, or simply staying at home. This complex system keeps structure within this world through both gender roles and where people place during their “educational advancement” exams. This exam determines what a person is good at, and helps that person continue his or her education on that subject when at the university. Nora, who hates being forced to abide by these ridiculous societal rules makes a deal to help Nick with his duties if he finishes hers. Nick is pleased with this idea, since he isn’t good at farming anyway. Unfortunately, her Father discovers their secret when Nick accidentally plants turnips on his family’s farm, the Fenn Farm Complex, a foolish mistake, especially for a boy who is born to be a Fenn farmer. This story focuses on issues of family unity as well as identity acceptance.

In “Dull Drums,” we follow Nora, who greatly succeeds in her Educational Advancement, to university where she studies special Cybernetics, one of the most prestigious programs offered to qualified students. Nora’s experience at university focuses on issues of self-acceptance and romantic relationships. Due to her gender, she was mistreated and isolated at university and struggled with her identity. The underlying themes of both stories are ones that reflect real world issues occurring during the time McCaffrey was writing them, as well as today. Individuals struggling with their identity, either sexually or not, found comfort reading McCaffrey’s books. The fantasy aspects of her books are an escape from reality, while the realistic issues and storylines make them relatable and believable.

An Ode to Anne McCaffrey…and Dragons

Unfortunately, Anne McCaffrey passed away in November of 2011. Seeing how popular she was in the science-fiction world, I decided to do some research on her fans and how they handled her death, and let me tell you, her fans were heartbroken. Many felt close to McCaffrey due to her books and claimed that her work changed their lives for the better.

The Pern Museum & Archives, created by Hans van de Boom, caught my eye immediately. Not only is it an extremely well-organized site, but also you can tell that this guy really loved Anne McCaffrey. The website is set up like an actual museum. Different links lead you to different sites, focusing on many of the different elements exhibited in her books. There is the Dragon Room, devoted to all things dragons: Dragon art, McCaffrey’s inspiration for dragons, their relationship with humans, and fans’ perceptions of dragons. The Map Room has every map of Pern every created during McCaffrey’s lifetime. The Art Gallery displays official cover art from her books and fan art. I could keep going, but trust me, once you’re in this site you are in it for the long run. He even has a page devoted to character bloodlines from her stories.

In 2013, McCaffrey’s son, Todd, wrote and published Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern, a collection of memories and stories about his beloved mother and author, along with insights into her world of writing. Dragonwriter: A Tribute to Anne McCaffrey and Pern was the thing to buy if you loved McCaffrey’s work. After reading a chapter in the collection that consisted of fan appreciation, it became vey clear that McCaffrey’s stories brought people together. Her works encouraged millions to create fan sites and share their own work with each other.

While McCaffrey was the cause of an eruption of fan-based activity, she also created fan-fiction policies, which her fans respectfully followed. Her fans were not allowed to publish any work that involved white dragons or canonical characters. There were to be no plot crossovers, and all fan magazines were to be approved by Anne herself. She also prohibited any fan from creating a pornographic site based on her literary world of Pern (that would have been pretty interesting right?).

It’s obvious that McCaffrey’s work touched the lives of millions during her lifetime and today continues to affect the lives of her admirers. So, was I wrong to judge Get Off The Unicorn when I first picked it up? Is this book, and her other novels, meant to be collecting dust on shelves, or is it a beacon of hope for some dragon-loving individual just waiting to be read? If you’re like me, I heavily judged her work and I believed the book to be of little importance. After learning more about her life and how her work has changed the science fiction world, affected the lives of her readers, and is still very popular today, it’s pretty her work deserves credit.

Cosplay vs. Nerd Elitism

June 16, 2015 / Theo Xenophon / 2 Comments

If you’ve been to any comic, manga, or video game convention within the past twenty years, chances are you’ve encountered some convention-goers masquerading as fictional characters in colorful, creative costumes. What you’re seeing are not amateur actors, untimely trick-or-treaters, or delusional folks going through cartoon-based identity crises. These are passionate fans, dedicated to representing their favorite TV, movie, game and comic book characters. These are cosplayers.

Cosplay, coming from the Japanese term, kosupure (コスプレ), is a portmanteau of the words ‘costume’ and ‘play.’ It’s a growing hobby in which fans create and wear costumes in order to show them off at conventions, enter contests, meet fellow fans, and further embrace their interests in the characters they’re portraying. Though originally the majority of cosplay was devoted to anime characters, the hobby has expanded to include characters from a variety of genres including science fiction thrillers, blockbuster action movies, and even occasionally characters that are entirely made up by the cosplayers themselves. Some are incredibly complex, such as the woman with sword and pink hair pictured on the left below, while some, like that handsome devil on the right, are a tad simpler.

You’d think such a niche hobby would fit wonderfully into the sort of “nerd culture” associated with conventions and pop culture. And yet here’s what Pat Broderick, a popular comic book artist who has worked on such characters as Batman and Captain Marvel, had to say about cosplay via Facebook: “Today’s heads up. If you’re a cosplay personality, please don’t send me a friend request. If you’re a convention promoter and you’re building your show around cosplay events and mega multiple media guests don’t invite me. You bring nothing of value to the shows, and if you’re a promoter pushing cosplay as your main attraction you’re not helping the industry or comics market. Thank you.”

There seems to be a pushback against the hobby, even from some professionals in the comic industry such as Broderick. Broderick goes on to denounce cosplay as “selfies in costume” and as a blatant form of “narcissism” that has been gaining a disturbing amount of support from fans and others in the industry. Complaints such as these put cosplay on the front of a growing conflict between casual and “hardcore” nerds.

A sort of elitism has grown around this conflict, leading to a form of “gatekeeping”–that is, the process by which one group keeps another group out of its culture (Ravishly). Some self-proclaimed “real nerds,” such as blogger Tara “Tiger” Brown, seem eager to draw a distinction between themselves and those they view as “fake,” whom Brown, for instance, calls “Fake Geek Girls.” Tara Brown and those similar to her seem to believe that being a geek is something that must be earned, but that nowadays, people, especially women, want to “pretend” so that people will give them attention. A lot of nerds may feel as though they’ve been persecuted for their hobbies, and thus, feel more protective of those hobbies, taking any bullying they received as badges of honor and viewing those that bring popularity to the hobby as a threat to what makes that hobby unique.

So why is cosplay so tied to this conflict? Well for starters (and returning to the gender issues of the conflict), cosplay is one of the few female-dominated areas of nerd culture. It’s a much easier entry point into the subculture for women who may feel more intimidated going into a comic or game store and being surrounded by mostly men. But the backlash against cosplay also goes beyond gender. Cosplay is an easy way for anyone–male, female, or other–to get involved with geek culture in a casual sense. Video games require skills and money to spend on the tech, comics draw on decades of knowledge and convoluted continuities, but dressing up is easy to get started with if you have a little creativity and can find (or make) a costume. Elitists naturally find themselves against this easy point of entry for casual fans, and assume that cosplayers don’t care enough about the subjects they portray.

To assume cosplayers don’t have the same level of passion as “real fans” or that they’re just in it for the pictures is a gross generalization, however. For this article, I’ve interviewed a few cosplayers to learn about their experiences and wound up finding a wide variety of motivations. Here’s what some of them had to say when asked to talk about what draws them into the hobby and to respond to Broderick’s claims that cosplay adds nothing to the industry and that it’s a form of narcissism:

“Sure it’s nice to take pictures of your own costume and others because they look cool or you’re proud of your work and want to remember it or show it to people who didn’t get to see, but it’s also about the experience while you’re there. . . . It’s also a way to express one’s enthusiasm for a certain work by putting in all the time and effort to get a costume together, so I would think to some artists it would be flattering to have people so excited about wanting to represent a character that they created. . . . For me, I just love the atmosphere of cons. I go to a few panels, but for the most part I like walking around and interacting with all the like-minded people. A convention for a lot of people is a gathering of ‘comrades’ (if you will), and a big meet-up of people who enjoy the same things. Having cosplay is just another way for people to come together over the things they all love.” —Mackenzie Stricklin (on the left) cosplaying as Misty from Pokemon

“For me personally, it’s that I get to be someone I’m not usually. When I cosplay, I get to place myself within the context of a world and a character, which I deeply admire, and it’s also a lot of fun during the creative process too. Part of my enjoyment is being able to construct a costume for myself and be able to watch it come together and look fantastic when I’m done.” —Leigh Parrott cosplaying as Black Rose from .Hack

“Creating a costume feels like an achievement when it’s done, and something fun to do in my free time while it’s being made. Usually the only people who get what I am are my friends, so when someone I don’t know recognizes it, it makes me feel happy, like I’m not an outsider. That’s why I want to go to more conventions. At Katsucon the Crunchyroll booth had a camera feed livestreaming on their website where the people at the con could see what comments the viewers were making, and when I stepped in front of it as Kurisu, a whole bunch of comments on it started coming through and I felt so proud and recognized. It’s a feeling I don’t have too often, so it’s really nice.”–Megan Hansen cosplaying as Kurisu Makise from Steins;Gate

At the end of the day, most cosplayers like to dress up for the same reasons comic fans read comics, gamers play games, and TV and movie fans tune in to watch shows and films: because it’s fun and they get to be a part of something greater than themselves. To respond to Broderick and other naysayers, what cosplay brings to “the industry” is both a new way to enjoy pop culture and a hoard of fresh new fans who may have previously missed out on the nerd subculture. There’s no reason to exclude fans of any kind, and artists, writers, and their followers aren’t doing any worse from a little extra attention. At the risk of sounding too preachy, perhaps what fans and creators who consider themselves more hardcore than others need to wrap their heads around is that they do not, and cannot exclusively own the right to enjoy any form of genre or media.

Mobile Gaming: Are You Really Having Fun?

May 27, 2015 / Patrick Meier / 14 Comments

Smartphones are pretty amazing. Seriously, I only just got one a few months ago after having the same dumb phone for 5 years, and it has changed my life. And by “changed my life” I mean “it’s made me waste a whole bunch of time.” Some of this time is wasted on YikYak, some is wasted watching Whose Line clips on the toilet, and some is wasted swiping right on every single human being on Tinder. But all of those pale in comparison to the time I’ve wasted playing games on my phone. As we all know, the gaming and smartphone landscape has been transformed by the emergence of mobile games, but why are these games so popular? No doubt their price, easy access, and simple play mechanics–but I would argue that there is one more element not usually considered. These games trick us into thinking we enjoy them.

Quite an accusation, right? Trust me, I can back it up. I spent this semester helping Prof. Steirer with research on mobile games, and my job involved playing every mobile game that was related to a console game or franchise from the last three years. This came out to about 35 companion apps and around 30 actual games that could be played without owning the console game. I think I could argue that almost all of the games I played involved tricking the player into thinking he or she enjoys the game, but two stand out above the rest: Injustice: Gods Among Us and Marvel: Contest of Champions.

Both games are superhero fighting games with an emphasis on collecting heroes and building up their stats to fight against other heroes. They differ in the fine details (Injustice features teams of three heroes in each battle, Marvel has a map screen where you can decide what battle to do next), but these differences are mostly irrelevant. The core gameplay remains the same for both games. I won’t go into detail as to how the gameplay works, as the games are way more complex than they need to be. Plus they’re free, so you can go play them for yourself if you’re really curious. Simply put, the gameplay of each game involves picking a hero on your team who is stronger than your enemy and tapping the screen until you win. I wish I were joking. And yet each game has over 10 MILLION downloads, and some surprisingly active communities on Reddit and on the games’ respective official forums. So why then are these games so popular? Because each game adds a few simple features that make the game feel rewarding to play without actually being an engaging experience.

Both of these games use design choices that help disguise how boring the gameplay actually is. Essentially, the game is designed to make the player think he or she is having fun when really he or she is just enjoying being rewarded by the game. The games reward players do in a variety of ways. For instance: Booster Packs. Both games have “booster packs” (Marvel calls them Crystal Packs because I guess superheroes all come out of crystals now) where you pay some in-game currency (or real-life currency if you’re that bougie) to get a few random heroes or power-ups. What makes these packs feel rewarding is that getting something really good isn’t guaranteed. Rather than being like a store transaction (boring…), they’re like gambling (exciting!) where gains are determined by chance, thus making any gains feel much more rewarding. The impatience aspects of Injustice and Marvel serve the same purpose. Because your “energy” (ability to just play the game) will run out after a while, you start to look forward to when your energy will be refilled and you can play again. Or in Marvel you can just spend some money to be able to play again. You know what they say, “absence makes the heart grow fonder.” And in this case, the game is purposely being absent to make you miss playing it. It’s deceptive and annoying but it seems to work.

Injustice and Marvel also make use of RPG elements like stats, leveling up, power levels, and experience. Again, the fine details differ somewhat. For instance, Marvel makes you spend an in-game resource called ISO-8 and gold to increase your heroes’ stats, whereas heroes in Injustice will level up from experience alone. And once again, these differences don’t really matter because they don’t change the way you play the game. Injustice levels up the character that I use the most, and Marvel lets me choose which characters to upgrade by spending money and ISO-8. But I’m only going to upgrade the characters that I use the most anyway, so Marvel is just putting extra steps in between playing the game and leveling up characters to make it feel like I’m accomplishing more than I am. Heroes in each game can also be promoted (subtly different from leveling up) by spending yet another form of in-game money. Two types of leveling up means twice as much opportunity for the player to feel like they’ve accomplished something! This leads to a complicated interface with over-designed, confusing menus that serve to help me do something that could just be automatic. But the games employ effects that compliment what should be an annoying time-waster to make it feel fun. Leveling up in Marvel feels good because of the flashy visuals and big sound effects–never mind the fact that you don’t ever get to really feel the effects of leveling up a character, because every battle plays out the same way. Tap the screen for a while (maybe swipe left to right a few times too) and if you’ve spent enough currency and have better numbers you win. Which brings me to my next point…

Money. Currency plays a major role in both games. Injustice has three different kinds of money (challenge credits, power credits, and alliance credits, plus you can spend real money to get more power credits). Marvel has five! FIVE different kinds of money! If Marvel: Contest of Champions was a country, it would have the most insane economy of all time. Battle chips, ISO-8, gold, alliance points, loyalty, not to mention crystals, experience, “units”–GOOD LORD, WHEN DOES IT STOP?! Marvel and Injustice have so many different ways to reward the player, but none of these things have any real impact on how the game is actually played! Collecting things is fun, sure. But what’s the point in having an inventory screen full of stuff and a virtual wallet full of money if there’s no fun way to use it? The thing to note about all of these RPG elements, items, and currencies is that they make the games incredibly complex, but not at all deep. Complexity is simply the number of rules that a player needs to know in order to play the game. Depth is a measure of how many meaningful choices a player can make given a rule-set. Having a ton of stats, upgrades, currencies, and items adds a lot of complexity. But the only choice a player makes during actual gameplay is which hero to use in a fight (and Marvel already tells you which character in your party has the best chance of winning so even that isn’t really a choice). With all of that complexity, the games have almost no depth because the player doesn’t get to make any real choices during gameplay.

All of these elements serve to reward the player. These games feature tons of different items and currencies so that after a battle the player is rewarded. Finishing a fight and seeing a list of stuff that you earned feels satisfying! But these rewards are artificial and don’t change how we play the game in any meaningful way, so what’s the point? The point is just to compel us to keep playing the game even though the game isn’t really engaging. The rewards exist for their own sake, and don’t really factor into any greater purpose. Getting rewards are just a means to get even more rewards. To me, the most well-designed games are ones in which simply playing the game is its own reward. The reward in a fighting game should be that you won the fight! Not that you got some upgrade stuff and some money. Getting to the end of the story and beating the bad guy should be the reward of games with linear narratives. But maybe we don’t want all that depth in a mobile game, right? Maybe we just want something fun to makes us feel satisfied that doesn’t take much thought. I would counter that with one example: 2048.

Everyone reading this has heard of and likely played 2048. The gameplay is simple: swipe numbers together to create bigger numbers with the ultimate goal of getting a tile worth 2048. There’s no RPG elements, no upgrades, no money, no levels, and no rewards beside the main goal of the game. It is a game with little complexity, but a surprising amount of depth. The game gets harder as it progresses, rather than keeping the same level of challenge throughout and just giving the player higher numbers to throw around. And the good news? There’s actually a lot of games out there like this (1010!, Cut the Rope, even Flappy Bird could be argued to be like this). More and more unfortunately are starting to include elements of trickery like the ones used in Injustice and Marvel: Contest of Champions. Cut the Rope when it first came out didn’t have any fake rewards or impatience aspects. But Cut the Rope 2 came along and gave us solar energy that drains as we play, superpower upgrades to let us do the levels without actually doing them, and a silly pointless map screen to give the player an artificial feeling of progression. Games don’t have to be like this. Playing a game, even a mobile game, can still be an engaging experience in and of itself; designers need’s doesn’t resort to trickery to get us to keep playing.

So next time you play a game on your phone (or anywhere else for that matter), think about how you’re experiencing the game and ask whether you’re really having fun, or if the game is just trying to trick you into thinking you’re having fun. And don’t be satisfied with games that do the latter when there are so many better ways for games to engage players.

The Dick Van Dyke Show

May 3, 2015 / Claire Colburn / 0 Comments

The Dick Van Dyke Show can be seen as one of the first sitcoms that resembles our modern conception of the genre. The show strayed from its predecessors, with Mary Tyler Moore’s spunky take on the housewife role and a new mobility evoked between home and work. At the same time, The Dick Van Dyke Show has roots in the older Vaudeville-variety style of the 1950s. This in-between existence is perfectly exemplified in the season one episode “Oh How We Met the Night We Danced.” The popularity of this episode most likely stems from Van Dyke and Moore’s incredible comedic and dancing talent, both of which were hallmarks of the show. However, this seemingly simple episode reveals much about the historical, political, and industrial contexts of the series.

One of the most popular episodes of The Dick Van Dyke Show, “Oh How We Met the Night We Danced” reveals how Rob and Laura Petrie, the protagonist couple, first fell in love. When Laura comes upon Rob’s old Army boots, Rob tells the story to their son Richie (played by Larry Matthews) through a series of flashbacks. The scene opens on a dance number for the USO during World War II. Rob is working as an emcee for the stage, and meets Laura during rehearsal. For him, it’s love at first sight, but Laura is utterly disinterested, prompting Rob to go to great lengths for even a second glance–but, of course, ultimately winning her over in the end.

This episode heavily spotlights Mary Tyler Moore, whose take on the housewife character offers insight into the changing representations of women throughout the series. Given that The Dick Van Dyke Show premiered the same year the National Organization for Women (NOW) was founded, the nascent radical feminist movement is nowhere evoked in the show. Instead, one can glean progressivism with regards to gender roles from certain creative choices behind the show.

Even today, Laura Petrie remains iconic, from her warbling exclamations of “Oh, Rob!” to her fashion-forward cigarette pants. This sartorial decision in particular–apparent throughout “Oh How We Met the Night We Danced”–is symptomatic of the understated feminism throughout the series. Originally, Moore was supposed to wear the classic pearls and dresses of the 1950s, but at her insistence that this would not be an accurate representation of the modern housewife, the costumers agreed on her soon-to-be ubiquitous pants. This decision to break away from previous tropes, however trivial, foreshadows the atypical housewife that Laura would prove to be. Unlike the unobjectionable domestic goddesses of The Donna Reed Show and Leave it to Beaver, Laura had a more fully developed personality. Like Lucille Ball’s Lucy, another exception, Laura was depicted as sarcastically funny, physically attractive, and domestically gifted, all simultaneously. Also like Lucy, she sometimes longed for a life beyond the kitchen, fondly remembering her days dancing in the USO, as seen in “Oh How We Met the Night We Danced” (and in one early episode even going back to work as a dancer). Though she was by no means a major agent in the then-burgeoning women’s liberation movement, Laura presented her own discreet, feisty, sharp-witted kind of feminism.

Though The Dick Van Dyke Show can be seen as politically progressive, it should be noted that stylistically it bridged the gap between the classic vaudevillian-comedy shows of the 1950s and the more realistic products of the 1970s, but often retained some of the increasingly old-fashioned comedic devices of the former. Throughout “Oh How We Met the Night We Danced,” the influence of vaudevillian comedy is particularly evident. First, the flashback opens on a soft-shoe sequence, one of several such scenes. This focus on stage performance hints at the traditions of old-style variety shows in which dance numbers were a major attraction. The climax of the episode occurs when Rob and Laura finally dance and sing together, strengthening the importance of the stage through the show. Perhaps even more revealing of vaudevillian influence is Rob’s comedy intro to the dance performance, a programming format directly derived from variety shows. With slapstick physical comedy, Rob entertains the troops before turning the stage over to “The Idaho Potatoes,” a jazz band, thus alluding to the show’s vaudevillian origins. To heighten this similarity, the scene is shot head-on, effectively putting the viewer in the dance hall audience’s position. It is unsurprising that the show features vaudevillian characteristics, since many show regulars, including Rose Marie (Sally) and Morey Amsterdam (Buddy) started their careers on the vaudeville stage. Carl Reiner, the show’s producer, also sometimes sent scripts over to radio scribes and vaudeville fixtures for “punching up.” With this continued influence of variety, it’s clear that The Dick Van Dyke Show was truly between eras.

Many sitcoms that followed this iconic series borrowed ideas that either originated from or were made popular by The Dick Van Dyke Show. This sitcom was one of the first that explored the meta-subject matter of a show-within-a show. Largely basing it on his experiences with Your Show of Shows, producer Carl Reiner created the predecessor to 30 Rock and The Larry Sanders Show, which also followed the behind-the-scenes of fictional TV shows. Like these later iterations, The Dick Van Dyke Show used self-referential humor to poke fun at the entertainment industry in a refreshing new brand of comedy.

The Dick Van Dyke Show was also original in its focus on both the home and the workplace. Previously, sitcoms such as I Love Lucy mainly followed domestic life. In this series, however, Rob moves freely between home and work, as plotlines weave among all the characters. In “Oh How We Danced the Night We Met,” the story shifts from the home to the professional pasts of both Rob and Laura. Indeed, Laura’s background as a dancer, an unconventional career for a sitcom housewife, is a surprising variation from her wholly domestic predecessors. This mobility is representative of the increasing movement of women between the public and private spheres occurring on a larger societal scale. In terms of sitcom history, this mixture of settings paved the way for future shows to provide insight into the workplace and the home, a feature prominent in modern television.

Perhaps the strong influence that The Dick Van Dyke Show still has on modern sitcoms is the reason for its ability to withstand the test of time. Over fifty years later, “Oh How We Met the Night We Danced” continues to be utterly hilarious. Van Dyke and Moore delight audiences with good-natured sarcastic banter and charming chemistry. The dance numbers, though they were actually challenging for Van Dyke and Moore to master, look effortless and hold timeless appeal. Like the rest of the series, this episode feels both modern and decidedly vintage, as universal humor mingles with classic vaudevillian presentation. A time capsule from the Camelot era, this upbeat, sharp-witted show will remain a classic worthy of its place in the annals of television history.

Frank Miller’s Martha Washington

March 11, 2015 / drabkins / 0 Comments

Writer and artist Frank Miller is a sort of paradoxical figure among comic book readers. On the one hand, he wrote The Dark Knight Returns and Batman Year One. I mean, he basically invented the modern Batman. Those titles, along with his Daredevil run, helped usher in comic books “adult” enough for us to read in classes. But it’s also pretty widely understood that Miller is kind of, vaguely, a fascist. And sort of a racist. And I guess if we’re going to get into it, he’s not particularly fond of gay or disabled people either. It also seems really hard for him to write a female character who isn’t a sex worker and he certainly doesn’t like Muslims. These exaggerated, though not entirely unfounded, accusations make for awkward conversations about the roots of modern comics. Though Miller’s written some of the greats, he’s also written a few of the worst. Miller is thus one of the last people we would expect to write a strong, believable woman of color as a main character or deal with real social issues without being preachy or disrespectful. And this is weird, because he wrote Martha Washington.

Martha Washington first appeared in Give me Liberty, a 1990 4-issue miniseries published by Dark Horse, written by Frank Miller and drawn by Watchmen’s Dave Gibbons. Give me Liberty begins in the not-so-distant future of 1995 with the birth of Martha Washington. The following year Martha’s father is killed in a protest against the economic policies of President Rexell, a thinly veiled caricature of Ronald Reagan. The story follows Martha surviving in the government created slums until her eventual enlistment in the military.

Although the comic focuses on Martha, it is situated in a developing story about the political climate in America. Rexell is replaced with an idealistic liberal president when the white house is blown up by Saudi Arabian terrorists (I mentioned Miller’s feelings on Muslims, right?). The new president decides to deploy forces to save the rain forests (which I guess is what environmentalists cared about before climate change). This is when the story starts getting really weird. The rain forests are being threatened by Fat Boy Burger, a multinational fast food restaurant that wants to cut down the forests so that they can grow cattle on the newly cleared land. The Fat Boy Burger corporation fights with giant piloted robots that look like fat boys holding burgers. They also fight with horrifying chemical weapons.

Something Give me Liberty does particularly well is pairing the surreal with the serious. There’s a beautiful splash page of Martha breaking down into tears and then brushing them aside and gritting her teeth after all of her fellow soldiers are killed with poisonous gas. It’s a pretty grim scene. Later she takes down one of the giant burger robots with a helicopter. The comic jumps back and forth between silly and scary without making either seem forced. There’s an earlier section where Martha is institutionalized at a mental hospital that is secretly doing experiments on children to turn them into psychic supercomputers. Then everyone in the hospital is sent out onto the streets because government funding for the hospital is cut. We have a very real issue, poor funding for mental health facilities, paired with the very fantastic idea of psychic supercomputers. Despite all the talk of Miller’s gritty realism, I think he excels when pursuing this sort of juxtaposition. He brings real issues into a world that is still distinctly a comic book universe. In this way, he touches on important aspects of our culture; but unlike many of the other authors coming up around the same time (I’m looking at you Moore), he doesn’t sacrifice the thing that make silver age comics great: absurdity.

I’ve mentioned that Martha Washington is a strong character and I stand by that. However, before I can recommend this comic, which I strongly do, I should mention that it’s not a perfectly progressive comic. There are a few more gay Nazi’s than I’m comfortable with. Miller is able to get away with so much partly because he makes fun of virtually everyone. Conservative or liberal, Miller guns for them and the only one who really comes out looking good is Martha. The story is beautifully drawn, fun without being stupid, relevant without being preachy; it exemplifies the nuance that characterizes Miller’s early works.

League of Legends for the Uninitiated

February 9, 2015 / Patrick Meier / 0 Comments

The sudden popularity of a certain new video game has a lot of people asking a lot of questions: (1) What is this new video game contraption that all the young folks are doing? (2) How does one play this game? (3) Why does my chest hurt after drinking a bunch of lemonade? (4) Will I ever truly be happy?

Let me try and answer some of those fascinating queries:

League of Legends.
Read the rest of the article
You might have acid reflux
Probably not but hey might as well try

Not that all of those questions aren’t worth discussing, but I’ll be focusing on #2 for the remainder of this article.

There are a lot of reasons you might be reading this. Maybe you want to be the next Faker (Korean pro player, some call him the Lionel Messi of League, others just call him… Faker-sempai) and be a professional League of Legends player. Or perhaps you’re just wondering what it is your roommate is doing that has him clicking so loudly that it sounds like a woodpecker lives in your ear! Whatever the reason, read on, and find out just what the hell your roommate is doing awake at four in the damn morning on a Wednesday night. (Seriously, Jeremy. I’m trying to sleep. I have a math test tomorrow, I’m late with this article– I do not need this right now.)

Basics of the game

We’ll start out simple. Two teams of five players each face off in a large square arena, with one team’s base in the top right corner, the other in the bottom left. Three paths (lanes) connect the two bases. The object of the game is to get into the other team’s base and destroy their nexus. Getting to this point and finishing the game will typically take around 30-45 minutes. With me so far? Good, because we’re just getting started. In each lane is a series of turrets. These turrets do a LOT of damage, so the game helpfully provides mindless minions to die for you! Small, weak, computer-controlled minions (or creeps) regularly spawn in each lane, and will slowly walk down the lane towards their enemy. Walk into the turret without a healthy supply of minions to back you up, and you might as well drop your weapon, pick up a shovel, and start digging yourself a grave. The players in each lane try to kill enemy minions so that their team’s minions will push towards the enemy’s tower. As long as your minions are in range of the tower it will prioritize the minions instead of you. This will allow you to hit the tower without fear of being pounded into the dirt. Be warned though, the towers do not take kindly to you attacking the champions of their team and will turn on you as soon as you damage a champion, minions or no.

Through landing killing blows on minions, blows on enemy players, and blows on towers, and through just sheer persistence (you generate a small amount of gold every second just for participating) you will acquire gold that can be spent back at your home base to buy items. Each champ can carry six items, and it takes quite a lot of time and gold to get all six. But with close to 200 items in the game, there are tons of possible item combinations (typically called item builds) that a player can have. Each item’s primary function is to give stat bonuses, and every champ requires different stats to do well. Every character has certain things they are good at and things they aren’t so good at. So pick a champion that fits a play-style you like and build items that fit that play-style! You wouldn’t buy a hockey stick for a football player, right? So don’t buy Archangel’s Staff for Garen. Just don’t. Please don’t. You’ll understand when you’ve played a few games.

Phew. Well there you have the basic objective of the game. Let’s make that a list so it’s a bit easier to understand.

Go to a lane and start killing minions.
Your minions will help you destroy enemy towers.
Use gold gained from killing minions to buy items to make yourself stronger.
Keep taking towers until you reach the enemy base.
Destroy the enemy nexus.

Of course, your opponents will be trying to do the same to you the entire time, so you can’t just walk into lane and mindlessly hack away at minions. You have to deal with a human opponent, controlling a character of similar strength to yours. This is where the “meta game” comes in.

At this point, it would be the acme of foolishness not to mention that the game is free to download and has a tutorial built in. If what I’ve just described sounds like a game to which you might enjoy devoting a bit of time (or your entire life) and spending no money (or over a hundred dollars) then download it and give it a shot (I’m so lonely). There are a lot of small details that I won’t be going over (damage types, resistances, scaling, turret agro, ip and rp, possible item builds, how to last-hit, runes, masteries, summoner spells, how to play while eating a sandwich, wards, dragon and baron, blue and red buff), which are all kind of boring, require lengthy explanation and are best learned by simply playing the game a bit. Those are the mechanics of the game, but what really makes League of Legends (or LOL, for short) so much fun is the massive number of characters that you can play. You thought Super Smash Bros. had a lot of characters? Man Smash Bros. ain’t got NOTHING on League.

Garen: The League’s favorite Beyblade

Champions

There are currently 123 champions to choose from, and a team must have five UNIQUE champs. There are millions of potential team compositions, which by itself should suggest the complexity of the game. Champions are divided into a few categories based on how they play. Assassins are champs that do a lot of close range damage extremely quickly but are very easy to kill. Most mages function similarly to assassins, but their damage is usually long range. Tanks (my favorite role) are beefy damage sponges that like to wade into a fight and soak up damage, but they aren’t too good at dishing out hurt themselves. Marksman (usually called Attack Damage Carries or ADCs) are long range champs that prefer to stay in the back of the fight while pumping out a steady stream of damage per second. Obviously these are just generalizations and there is a lot of diversity within each category. You’ve got bruisers, bursty marksman, melee damage-per-second champs, champs with high mobility, low mobility, split-pushers, champs with no crowd control, champs with lots of crowd control, fat champs, skinny champs, champs who climb on rocks. (If you got that reference give yourself a pat on the back).

Though each champ differs greatly, there are a few aspects that every champ shares:

Stats – Every champ has stats that all do different things. (This, by the way, is the kind of in-depth analysis that makes my article a must-read). The most important stats are health, mana (some champs use other resources or no resource, but that doesn’t matter right now), attack damage, ability power, armor, magic resistance, movement speed, and critical chance. Most of those are pretty self-explanatory if you’ve played an RPG before, but the main thing you need to know is that every item gives stats, and certain stats are good on certain champions.

Basic Attacks – All champions get basic attacks, some ranged and some melee. Basically all the dudes with axes and swords have melee basic attacks, and everyone who uses a gun or magic staff has ranged basic attacks. The higher the attack damage stat, the higher the damage on basic attacks. Easy enough.

Abilities – Every champ has a passive ability (no key binding), three basic abilities (Q,W, and E), and an ultimate (R). The maximum level in the game is level 18 and each level gives you one point to spend on your abilities. Each basic ability can be skilled five times, and your ultimate three times. All your basic abilities are available from the outset but you’ll have to wait until level 6 for the extremely sexy ultimate ability. Most abilities increase their damage the more ability power you have (wow, what a coincidence!) but some will cause more damage more as your attack damage increases. Every ability costs mana, so keep an eye on that pretty blue bar under your health.

So before we end this thing, quick wrap-up on how champions work:

You control one character, and you use basic attacks and abilities to do the big damages
As you disregard real life and acquire currency, spend that currency on items that fit your champion. Ex. Attack damage on Ashe, Health Armor and Magic Resist on Garen, and Ability power on Annie.
Proclaim your victory, dance on the desecrated corpses of your fallen foes.

So what are you waiting for? Get out there and give League a try! I’ll see you on the Summoner’s Rift or at Gaming Club in Tome 115 on Satudays at 8pm where we play lots of League and other games. Be there or be square!

A Problematic Vision of Gamers

February 9, 2015 / Jeremy Barnes / 0 Comments

I like video games. Some say I like them too much, but only those who’ve seen me write “Mrs. Jeremy Games” on the inside of my school notebooks. Recently, my interest in them has started to become academic in addition to recreational; I’ve started to think and write about video games from a scholarly perspective, as you might do with a classic film or piece of literature. To many, writing academically about video games might sound completely ludicrous, like if someone wanted to exhibit paintings of Nicolas Cage at the Louvre or if someone said that spray cheese actually tasted like real cheese. Why is it that most people fully accept paintings, novels, or films as works of art with the potential for analysis, but video games are merely toys for children, not worthy of any scholarly merit?

While it is true that video games are becoming more popular among scholars, they certainly don’t have the widespread acceptance that other forms have; it would be rare to find a professor of video games or someone majoring in Sonic the Hedgehog for his or her college degree. While it is true that video games are a relatively young art form, I think a bigger problem is how the public perceives games, and even how video game fans perceive games. Games are often seen by more traditional and conservative media outlets as purveyors of violence and sex, objects that seek to corrupt our children and turn them into gun-toting sex fiends. Not only can detractors harm the public perception of video games, but sometimes supporters can as well. Both people working within the industry and self-proclaimed video game fans and supporters often infantilize video games and create another juvenile image of the medium as a whole.

While it is often true that new forms of entertainment and media are met with disdain and scorn from members of the old-guard way of doing things, it seems like video games have gotten an especially bad reputation within traditional media. As far back as the Columbine shooting, video games were blamed for heinous acts of violence; Doom was partially blamed for influencing the two teens that then went on to shoot up their school and harm their fellow classmates. The 1992 game Night Trap was also put on trial by Senator Joe Lieberman for encouraging rape fantasies and violence against women.

Even today video games are still being demonized. For example, take the release of Mass Effect in 2007. Fox News aired a segment that put Mass Effect on trial for its depiction of “graphic sex” and questioned the game’s general merit. Most of the conversation focused on its potential impact on children, and how depictions of sex and violence such as those they thought depicted in Mass Effect could inhibit or damage the development of a child. In fact, all of those on the panel that attacked the game had never actually played it; they had only seen trailers and pictures, and actually scoffed at the idea of actually playing the game. All of these controversies begin with the assumption that video games are inherently for children and that children will find some way to get their hands on them. Even today when many modern games explore very adult themes and involve extremely mature content, why is it that many still assume that video games are children’s toys? I believe that one of the biggest factors keeping this myth alive are members of video game fandom whose intentions come from a place of enjoyment and admiration, but whose actions ultimately betray their intentions.

A number of events and films that appear to be on the side of video game success, for instance, can actually do more harm than good. Events and features that are meant to celebrate games and those who play them, such as the Spike TV Video Game Awards (VGAs) and the documentary Video Games: The Movie (2014), treat their audiences (and their source material) like children. The VGA’s are meant, in theory, to celebrate the best titles of the year; however, their actual purpose and existence is something far less noble and worthwhile. The awards are actually something of an extended commercial, with various trailers shown and revealed for the next year’s upcoming releases. When they’re not trying to sell you something, the VGAs fill the rest of their air time with skits that would make Dumb and Dumber look like a dark satire on the duality of mankind. Nothing impresses twelve-year-olds more and says ‘class and elegance’ like Neil Patrick Harris’ entrance to the 2010 VGA’s where he shoots up an entire troop of dancers. At the 2007 awards, the nominees for ‘Game of the Year’ had their likenesses painted onto scantily clad women who then presented themselves on stage. All jokes aside, the VGAs aren’t bad because of the trailers or the lack of awards, but because the awards assume that their audiences can’t be entertained without a copious amount of blood and boobs.

The recently released Video Games: The Movie aims to justify a love for video game and seeks to briefly chronicle their history, but comes off as more of a love letter or a puff piece. Stated more harshly: it doesn’t do anything but lick the metaphorical boot of the video game industry. Director Jeremy Snead, along with an ensemble of movie stars and video game industry figures, guide viewers through a very condensed history of video games. Although informative for the uninitiated, the history that the film outlines feels like an encyclopedia article with little to no insight or analysis put forth. The film itself is a sort of pre-pubescent love poem to the video games industry: video games occupy the place of a middle school girl who’s just bought her first bra while the generic video game fans are like boys trying to get a gander at them yams.

The whole film is filled with larger-than-life claims about video games and their potential, but not a lot is said with actual substance. Various celebrities who have nothing to do with video games, such as Zach Braff and Donald Faison, have their voices heard in this film not because of any expertise that they hold, but just because they like video games. While there are prominent figures from within the industry in this film that do offer their insight–for example Cliff Blesinski and Reggie Fils-Aime–they too offer little more than their childhood experiences with Space Invaders or their first time playing the Legend of Zelda. While there’s nothing inherently wrong with sharing these experiences, when put into a film that places itself as an ambassador for video games as a whole, it makes the industry and the medium look extremely childish and unsubstantial. Moreover, the formal elements of the film are often lazily done and riddled with errors; at one point, one of the graphics has a typo and instead of displaying ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time’ the text reads ‘The Legend of Zelda: Ocatina of Time.’ If a film can’t even be bothered to check its spelling, how can the viewer trust that the film’s message and content isn’t any less erroneous?

If VGAs and Video Games: The Movie are the wrong ways of talking about video games, then what are the right ways? I think that some form of justification of the medium is probably necessary, but not to the point of worship. One example of a representation done well is Indie Game: The Movie. It manages to tell the story of three groups of game developers without turning them into jokes, or worse, Big Bang Theory characters. These developers appear to be real people with a passion for video games, but not to the point of worship. I think the best part of Indie Game is that it doesn’t treat its audience with contempt; it assumes that the viewer can do his or her own thinking without having his or her hand held.

But seriously, liking video games doesn’t make someone a nerdy caricature because there is nothing wrong with video games in the first place. Video games can be taken seriously, but not if the only reasons given for the validity of the medium involve childhood memories and exorbitant flattery. If the general public is ever going to take games seriously, those who enjoy or play them need to take them seriously first. Not everyone needs to be the next great video game scholar, but simplifying games down to boobs and guns doesn’t do justice to the potential that video games offer as an art form or as a mode of storytelling. Hopefully the problems within the medium are caused by some kind of formal puberty, because I know that the medium of video games should and will one day become an art form that will be respected in its own right.

Category: Article (Page 1 of 2)

Valve Loves Mods

Why Bee Movie is Government Propaganda

Sleeping with Thedas

The Original Dragon Lady

Cosplay vs. Nerd Elitism

Mobile Gaming: Are You Really Having Fun?

The Dick Van Dyke Show

Frank Miller’s Martha Washington

League of Legends for the Uninitiated

Basics of the game

Champions

A Problematic Vision of Gamers

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