“First of all, Pokémon is primarily a competitive video game – a rarity in RPGs. Like a sporting event, it occupies the same space as StarCraft, CounterStrike, and most fighting games. It’s easy to eventually notice that those games don’t change a whole lot over the years – each sequel isn’t really a next level, but just a fine-tuning of existing mechanics.”-Daniel Sims

In essence I agree with this, but I still get thrown out of the boat from never having tackled any of the games in a competitive fashion (and the few times I have, they’ve never been my own creatures). Sure, I walk the path that the narrative leads the player through — ambitiously besting gym leaders and whatnot, but I essentially fall into glorifying the titles as a ‘Journey vs. Goal’ experience. It sounds incredibly cheesy, but from my first outing with Blue to my recent sessions with Heart Gold, the games have been more about sport and not competition. Of course the two concepts are married, but they’re not so stringently tied together that someone like me can’t easily fall through the cracks and enjoy the game around on a more solitary standard.
Well, there’s one big problem right there. People who share my opinion are for the most part — an extremely vocal minority. Considering how large the Pokémon fandom is and how much it generates Nintendo’s ‘bragging-rights revenue’, the company is only going to obey (and I mean that in the nastiest possible way) the flow of the interest in their product. This indirectly answers some of my musings in the last post, as the populous has now become so large, it’s accommodating a variety of game-players’ whims. This includes my own, which is mainly about the sport of playing — seeing the world, traveling, and meeting challenges to overcome. With this overly large audience however, things get boiled down for facile measures (meaning sport and competition simply aren’t allowed to be separated).

Sport is a general and nebulous concept often idealizing the aforementioned actions such as wanderlust. Competition is a bit more potent and is often hyper-perverse in any aspect of its manifestation (e.g. see any major sport and all aspects that form them). Playing the same opponent over and over may yield different, refined, and even consistently enjoyable results, but it won’t match the joy or progress that comes from challenging a variety of opposition.

“Pokémon developer Game Freak is in the chocolate ice cream business, and years ago they discovered a foolproof way to keep us happy: preserve the basic recipe, but every 18 months or so, stir in a new ingredient to surprise us and subtly enhance the flavor. No overhauls; no substituting chocolate for butter brickle; no willy nilly dumping in M&Ms, cocoanut, gummi bears, and rainbow sprinkles. Just a little stir-in to help us pay attention to the difference; to savor the enhancement rather than sort through a mouthful of colliding new flavors.”-Michael Abbott

Coincidentally, my close friend was allergic to chocolate as a child, but as is wonderous with plenty of children, many of us outgrow childhood allergies (which in most cases shouldn’t be classified as allergies to begin with, but that’s another topic entirely…). So, being allergic to both chocolate milk and in love with it as a kid, he often drank large amounts of it out of annoyance at to his own body. Luckily he was already well into outgrowing it by the time he made a moronic brute-force assault on he immune system (which is why he didn’t end up dead). This didn’t stop many months of sickly behavior however, much like that of the repeating of pokemon games generation after generation.

The more Pokémon grows in its own core premise, the more susceptible I’m going to become to this reality. Merely accepting the core games as is has become more difficult for me because three things have happened:

1 – The gamers driving the series have grown, and along with them, their understanding of the basic entrypoints.

2 - While the fictional world itself hasn’t exactly ‘grown’, its own impervious shell just keeps expanding, creating more room for ideas and venues. The simplistic nature of the game will become a vacuous burden if this continues too.

3 - I’m a lot more pissed off now.

Now perhaps Nintendo will live up to everyone’s expectations and continue to churn out horrible network play under the guise of their own flimsy disciplines, but I’m going to remain stringent on their easiest path being a Pokemon MMO. It doesn’thave to be some overhauled 3D engine, but I’m sure the Wii would be just fine at spitting out what Heart Gold/Soul Silver displays with higher and smoother effects. Considering how much the aesthetics define people’s time with the game, simply blowing it up would most likely be the best possible solution (if of course, we’re assuming the series’ stagnation is indeed a problem to be addressed).

So Nintendo, while I don’t expect much, I still maintain that you take luck into your own hands; leaving it to heaven has just left me in hell.

*Update* The ultimate irony would be the Pokemon games that finally to make significant changes being titled ‘Black & White’. Heh…

What never ceases to astound me in regarding these games is the simple range of people playing them (as well as their reasons for picking up the titles as well). However, at the same time — I also find myself infuriated at the amount of dropped balls (no pun intended) that Game Freak/Nintendo has let loose regarding the series’ strongest muscle, its populous (ON BOTH SIDES OF THE GATE AT THAT). On the reality-based side, there’s no real efficient way for players to connect with each other (I’m disregarding any online endeavor Nintendo currently makes because it just plain sucks), which leaves us to our own devices. Sure, that may play up to the affinities of someone such as myself, but even I could be broken with the right Pokemon MMO, provided the big N steps up to raise their online attributes as high as the rest of their design principles.

On the fictional side, the Pokemon themselves — while it’s not impossible to access every creature on one cartridge, the whole collectathon muscle becomes a very shitty mask to make money after a certain point. Nearly 500 of the little monsters and they’re all plagued by one of the series greatest strengths, its own minimalism. As I’ve highlighted before, I detest RPGS on a very general level, but have always loved Pokemon due to its own simplicity. The problem with that is the audience themselves has grown to match the game’s own development in shaping the world. Now that isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but when such a competition is created, we get problems like one of Pokemon’s largest: the main series hasn’t really changed since the first game. There are literally hundreds of ways to expand the game’s effectiveness without compromising its fundamentalism (e.g. god forbid I mention a console-based game in the main series which would remove technical excuses).

I noted with Earthbound last year that even beyond a superficial level, Pokemon is a ‘pretty tight cousin’ in terms of aesthetics, mechanics, and overall appeal. Hell, even the music is a similarly essential part of the game. Perhaps going back to analyze how the two series can positively influence each other (which even in Mother’scase would be pure perspective since no immediate future sequels are on the horizon) is what’s on the menu, but we won’t be eating that today.

Instead I think I’ll kind of end this post with that. To close with, I have six questions I want answered by someone…anyone (lie to me for entertainment if you must).

1 – “How is an individual Pokemon designed?”

2 – “Why is there no official Pokémon MMO?” (I actually found the answer to this somewhere and was incredibly unsatisfied with the crap I read so I’m looking for something else). If you tell me to go out and interact with people, kiss my ass.

3 – “It’s an incredibly charged question, but why are 70% of my ‘Pokefriends’ if you will — female?”

4 – “The series is not just about the childish image surrounding the games, which are inspiring nubile passions…is it?”

5 – “Which gen was the most influential in terms of substantiating the series as it exists now?” [I’ve obsessively been in every generation. Perhaps someone else can color my perspective a bit more.]

6 – “If you absolutely can’t stand (or are indifferent to) the series, why exactly is that?”

Off the top of my head, a relation that games share with modern writing is length. They’re both able to limit and extend at will, often elaborating their characters down to the most intimate bones of cognition that the reader (or player) can muster. I can spend just as much time immersing myself into an engaging book as I do a game (narrative focused or not). Most stories in games however, are regarded as jokes and in plenty of cases it’s actually justified. The ones that are actually an exception to that rule still get pissed on by cynical bastards that can’t understand the concept of all these things being relative and derivative to some extent. One can call themselves a “gamer” all they like but if they don’t want to encourage the “child” as it learns to walk, then throw it in the river, let it die and move on to something else. The line where the amount of context a game can handle before that in itself starts becoming detrimental to the experience hasn’t even been seen yet, but most will cry wolf the first chance they’re able to. This is why you’ll see such animosity towards games and their closet elder — film.

“A videogame can have all these amazing art assets but sometimes it can’t reach the narrative that traditional art forms can deliver.”
-Randy M., 1UP Blogger/Artist

Film in itself is still learning to adapt to dramatic literature, so games shouldn’t solely be learning structure through cinema, it’s problematic. All it effectively does is act as a filter where some truly beautiful things get lost. Focus and visions become compromised and the drive to create flashy sequences are only increasing these days. Developers have begun to pop up in various areas who able to strike a sense of balance in these areas, but as always — nothing is ideal. Valve and Nintendo for example, showcase the attention to the mechanics — a admirable mastery of game development (Nintendo’s cultural heritage makes them more susceptible to refusing change though), yet designers such as these desperately need to expand entirety of a game’s ‘world’ (Studios like Looking Glass fall here as well). After the entirety of what was the Orange Box however, I have to say at least that Valve is looking down the right road; titles likePortal at least prove that not only can a game mess with length, but it can succinctly capitalize on a narrative premise. Individual designers begin popping up when the narrative quality of a title becomes an issue, but they’re few and far in between — not to mention they get way more attention than they deserve to begin with (e.g. Hideo Kojima). More games need to be designed in this industry with a distinctly harmonic consideration to everything else that the game incorporates. This mindset is everywhere in the most acclaimed titles to the most deplored. In many contexts, gamers simply need to stop singing praises for Half Life 2, when there’s obviously a serious problem with Gordon Freeman — a problem we won’t see resolved until Episode Three; the point at which Valve will have to acknowledge the character’s relevance in his own world.

I will be the first to admit that games have yet to find their own language or true form of narrative articulation. This is because they’re being made very immaturely, but not in the disrespectful sense that what developers are doing doesn’t require tremendous talent. The problem is that it’s a new era, and this medium isn’t going to translate nearly as easily as something like film did with literature. Writing birthed film, whereas games were created; they weren’t an organic emergence, but a construction of popular culture. It gives them depth and complexity, which is why we struggle with it. This outlook can easily be seen in how games borrow tremendously from other mediums. How many times have you heard an older person or just someone who isn’t generally familiar with games in say something along the lines of: “Wow, those games are becoming like actual movies!”. Statements such as that are among the most disgusting things I constantly hear, but at the same time — simply cannot argue with. Games do borrow entirely too much from film, and even when they do dip into things with more contextual density, it’s very minute and becomes lost when acting in harmony with the game itself. A great game does not make a great story and a great story does not make a great game. It’s been that way for a while now, as we keep separating the two out of some twisted need to validate ‘quality’. How inconceivable will the day be when a grandmother can look at her granddaughter and simply say “Wow that’s a great game!”?

As I just mentioned, a great novel by no means guarantees a great game, it extends far beyond that. All mediums focus on distinctive things very specifically and it all gives them shape or form as themselves (and this is before it even reaches the audience). However, they are all connected in not only this, but the influences and effect they have when playing off of each other. For example, what would your favorite film be nothing without its score? How about lacking its script? The answers to those are not as easy as they appear, but they’re not as complex either. Games are no different, yet their nature lets them ascend to an even more obfuscated realm by simply being themselves. Fantastic games exist that offer no real narrative in the traditional sense. This is even more significant with games that rely very heavily upon their plots to engage the player. Rez being something along the lines of the pure evolved to the complex, Endless Ocean being one of the desperately needed games that people don’t know what to do with when they initially look at it, and Devil May Cry 4, which consistently breeds its own sense of style. All of this is while providing the player with a narrative construct to care about and submit to in his/her own way.

This slow progress is also shown by the actual quality being put into how the narrative is conveyed. The critical crowd will rightfully splinter things such as this, citing production value in order to attain the unattainable — an ideal. Again, drawing back upon my constant metaphor of games in their youth, I’ll have to say that games are the poor child that wanders down groggily in the middle of the night to find all these other self-indulgent, problematic, yet still accepted forms of “sophistications” engaged in a party. Any cry or attempt at attention by the child is met with condescending statements (i.e the media), upturned noses (i.e. the cynical crowd of gamers), and uncles that want you to pull their finger (i.e. the developers/publishers that focus too much on their finances being thrown into a game).

I really think it’s hard for games to learn as much from literature as from cinema. This is because if nothing else, good pulp spurs our imagination like nothing else. Movies and games are mostly visualized to us, while books are told in the sense of engagement. I do agree however, that movies simply have too much influence in the games we play.
-Dustin R., 1UP Blogger

There is an issue of the disconnection between the story of a game and the game itself. I feel that anyone that argues fundamentally that game’s story does not matter is using a argument of closed circuitry to suit (rather abrasively) their own needs and that alone. People can’t view art with that form of logic and reason (at least not in my eyes), yet some people waste precious energy doing it anyway. The only thing we’ve all have grasped to the extent of being able to judge things in that context is mathematics; which in a rather gorgeous turn of irony — constructs these games technically from the ground up. Now is that good or bad? Is it even possible to be otherwise? There have been glimpses in far too many of these games where I have been connected with the protagonist or the ‘narrative’. We’ve already seen my take on this side, through how games like Assassin’s Creed or even Heavenly Sword are devoting entirely so much on presentation. I admitted to loving the overall experience of Nariko’s quest over Kratos’s, despite the fact that I find God of War the ‘better mechanical construct’. That in itself is a culmination in not only what I value in a game, but how they’re being made as well. I don’t just value any aspect of the game as a whole over the other, but how it works in harmony through all of its immersive appendages. Now for anyone who doesn’t know me or where I’m coming from, I’ll state once again that I’m a very ‘experience’ focused gamer. I hold everything — whether it’s style/presentation, mechanics, or narrative all on equal ground. They should meld at best and feel sectioned at worst. Deconstructing things is definitely sound and even scientifically useful, but it shouldn’t be the dominating factor in how one perceives, ever. Why? It begins to bleed into how games being made too, which is extremely troublesome.

“Both the narrative and gameplay should be more of a seamless experience; not simply spending their time competing with each other. As you pointed out, I think Valve is on the right track at least with titles such as Half Life. I do however think that gaming is becoming a bit more progressive in what makes the medium profound and unique.”
-Nel, 1UP Blogger

You’d be surprised at how many people still look at a simply drawing and judge it as art on how photo-realistic it appears. This is the average idiot’s take on art. Certainly that type of rendering is ideal for draftsmen to hone their skills with, but I’d argue that it’s only one of the first steps such an artist is meant to take. Drawing things to that degree takes more patience than anything else. It’s tedious, it’s boring, and requires no real connection with the subject. After one learns how to pay attention to things such as detail, shading, and line quality, drawing in such an archaic fashion really takes more tedious determination (not to mention valuable time) than anything.

You’ve no doubt heard the age old saying about the artist telling lies to show the truth. Once an artist starts to draw according to how they truly recognize/internalize things like shape, space, and form, they begin to actually draw. When they stop drawing the apple as an apple, it takes on an entirely different meaning and existence. Taking it in and internalizing it for themselves and putting it out on paper, canvas, or whatever is where the true beauty stands in a piece, not how close they stick to the useless guidelines that people already see day in and day out. The point here is that people should really stop trying to yank a game apart to determine its worth in such a fashion. If someone is going to do it that way, they will eventually have develop it far beyond the current modes of analysis. Mechanics are of absolutely no worth without the design to cradle it. Those designs lie on some sort of enrichment, which will then lean on something like aesthetics, style, or well-established fictional universes. Nothing in this realm truly stands on its own apart from the entirety of the overall experience, nothing.

I’m gonna pull out my +5 sword here again, Metal Gear Solid. Kojima has reached the point in this series where he’s gone so far, that he has irrevocably fused a distinct cinematic flair within the franchise. This is to the point where even though it’s not entirely a perfect hybrid of games and movies, it’s successful as its own type of game (moving the entire industry forward in the process). Small things the fans cherish such as the humor, excessive cinematic style, or the grazing of the fourth wall constantly get handled in tandem with the game’s own sense of ‘self’ (i.e. would it even be Metal Gear Solid without either one of those things?). I believe the Metal Gearfranchise is the limit to how film (as it is now) should affect games, because Kojima is the one of the few that’s actually making progress with it. The jump between your averagely told story in a game in the 80s-early to mid 90′s was why the original Metal Gear Solid unleashed such a fucking storm when it was released. It weaved a “tale” that wasn’t completely laughable and gave some characterization that people could earnestly appreciate and attach themselves to. Yeah, without Metal Gear Solid, there wouldn’t even be an Uncharted 2: Among Thieves; a title people are singing praises for now but will most likely question ridiculously by this time next year. I’ve already seen some of the precursor backlash there as it is, with statements such as:

”Uncharted 2 is definitely an exemplary cinematic game, but is it a good movie to begin with?” [WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?!]

I’ve always seen the Metal Gear Solid titles as a tiny kid on a see saw that has only recently been starting to budge the fat kid on the other end (the fat kid being everything I’m bitching about of course). It’s a very slow process (especially in Metal Gear’s case). I guess what most criticize the game for runs tantamount to the kid having to get off and find cinderblocks for his side of the see-saw — weighing himself down as best as he can. Yes, I know it is a horribly awkward analogy, but that’s kind of the point here if you’re following me. People constantly throw the “Would you kindly?” moment down as one of the greatest moments they’ve ever had in a game (BioShock), that it was so impressive because “I did all of that!, I was manipulated! OMG” Though that particular moment does plenty of things right, this kind of contorts my face a bit because that moment didn’t in any way shape or form move the medium forward just because of its interactive narrative manipulation…why?

“Me, dear brother…”
[Note: I originally had a YouTube clip up here with the Master Miller double-cross fromMetal Gear Solid. I’m too lazy to go find another one now, screw you.]

What does that say about how far games have really progressed (narrative-wise) in the past decade?. These are the top titles among the ‘hardcore’. Metal Gear Solid definitely wasn’t the first to have the player/audience manipulated for the means of the antagonist, but it was definitely one of the most memorable roles in the past twenty years, along with titles such as System Shock 2 as well (ironically, both came out the same year if I’m not mistaken).

It’s just a speculative opinion but I feel that anyone, especially those who focus on the mechanics of a game — get lost in defining aspects of various titles. It starts to form boundaries and limitations on not only how one enjoys a game, but why as well. These people would be the same kind of gamers that can consider themselves to the point of defining things that are inherently indefinable. It’s a horribly fine line to play with but the more one knows — the more they don’t know, and the more they don’t know — the more they do know. Knowledge has become dangerous to some gamers, and those who are really egotistical about it know it, yet still reject it. One can always judge how lost they are on this matter by examining their own grasp of what a game is in the first place. If someone believes ‘it’ to be a definitive quality that they’re able to pinpoint, access at will, and even judge to the most critical degree, then that person a terrifying gamer to me. Any critical analysis of a game at its best should be admitted at all times as an absolute failure.

“Certain games can move you, entertain you, teach you, change you, and yet have very little story at all. Other times, storytelling could be the game’s main focus. There’s nothing wrong with either side, I suppose — since I appreciate both. Like you though, I like a balance of each aspect of a gaming, as opposed to having them separate or unequal. I can’t have fun with a beautiful game, and controls alone can’t save it. It’s got to have balance.”
-Cody W., 1UP Blogger/Artist

Do you really consider yourself able to hold the act of pressing a button as the ultimate and defining aspect of a game? Some people can say yes or no to that without any thought to it. While certainly being a major contributor to a game’s individuality and language, it’s not the bottom line for me. Experiences can be formed and conveyed in dozens — hell hundreds (and possibly even thousands) of different ways, but the most commonly known form for us is myths, stories, tales, etc. Pinning down any kind of construct on a game (in the way that it’s being done constantly now) just negates any insightful perception of what a game can and should actually be seen as.

I’ve said in the various entries that more games should strive to do bold, radical, and even simply unheard of things. I want tons of more games that piss tons of more people off, and throw tons more people for a loop. Ground needs to be broken and walls need to be obliterated, because people can’t deal with it any other way; violence is the most efficient way for us to progress, even if it’s a pseudo-philosophical conundrum such as this. We’re lucky enough not to live in an age where things like religion aren’thorribly affecting the way that art grows. What do we as a race do in order to compensate? We use our intelligence to offer unneeded and harmful roadblocks that are just as harmful to games as religion was to painting in eras long past.We’re a destructive, violent, and inherently dangerous race in every aspect of our lives — this is just a new playground for us to keep pushing each other off merry-go-rounds.

con·sum·er·ism [kən s mə rìzzəm]

1. protection of consumers’ rights: the protection of the rights and interests of consumers, especially with regard to price, quality, and safety

2. materialistic attitude: an attitude that values the acquisition of material goods(disapproving)

3. belief in benefits of consumption: the belief that the buying and selling of large quantities of consumer goods is beneficial to an economy or a sign of economic strength

We live in an amusing place, built on rules granted by pseudo-objective stances and contradictory natures. I’ve constantly alluded to my own personal weariness with the videogame industry’s reliance on both consumerism and commercialism. However, I will admit that it is part of a necessary system where we’re all meant to be a mitigating factor. Though there’s an ideal (or is there?), the drive to achieve a goal of satisfaction is seemingly embedded with various factors of emulation, perversion, and adulation. A core consistency behind the notion of consumerism is how we all attempt to simulate those ‘above us’ on the social hierarchy [emulation]. Before then, many simply become lost in eking out their own class to the most ostentatious extent [perversion]. Some even go on to acknowledge those ‘above us’ by providing them with the illusion that they actually deserve a higher rank in society — be it through talent, wealth, or general exposure to certain media outlets [adulation].

Videogames were born from this cesspool. Their father figure remains business, while ‘the mother’ is meant to carve out a nebulous sense of self from what many of us classify as the artistic zeitgeist now. People such as myself (and those who can stand reading the various things I have to write here) are nothing more than an extremely vocal minority. What little power we do have — we relinquish in lieu of banding together against an overwhelming torrent of ignorance. That ignorance is constantly pressing on our subculture from numerous directions (e.g. one of them is the change games journalism is making right now), which leaves us lost, scrambling to haphazardly defend fronts in order to make room for our medium’s ‘tomorrow’.

Since none of us can effectively regulate each other’s behavior, we’re forced to tolerate the alternative; wading around in each other’s social defecation composed of belief, desire, and various luxuries. Every one of us lives in an age now where directly questioning someone on any stance that may even remotely graze their inflated egos is taboo (which is why sects like fanboys even exist in the first place).The obsessive need to tie oneself to having new releases on a consistent basis isn’t at entirely at fault, we have to consider everything lying behind that curtain as well.

One of those backstage attendees is integrity. Integrity is instantly compromised in our industry now. This is even to the point where refusing to buy any game on a principal is attached to some notion of unnecessary silliness. Those who bring such types of emotions and ideals to their gaming are written off as elitists and/or dogmatic, while the counter-audience is seen as excessively (and shallowly) self-gratifying. The argument of over-thinking/over-intellectualizing for example, is typically condemned since it compromises instant gratification in lieu of academic exploration. The more hedonistic stance here generally ignores the pleasure that is granted to the more cerebral of gamers (since it’s something that crowd doesn’t get off on themselves, they don’t recognize it and therefore — don’t respect it). Like I stated though, since the stance of questioning is taboo now, the supercilious crowd in turn gets high-and-mighty when a fundamental counterpoint is presented (no matter how silly it actually is).

Where does the state of ‘All Play and No Work’ truly kick in? Videogames are an entertaining medium but if no appreciation is given to the current application of craft and artistry, nothing is gained from it at all (other than a shallow version of hedonism). Embracing hedonism past a certain extent freezes games into a state that so manygamers have struggled to detach the medium from for the few decades it’s been around. When the will to turn games into a childish toy only meant to amuse our whims inflates itself, some become increasingly volatile towards that growth. I’m one of them.

So, instead of expanding on that premise, I’m going to shift gears and use my common trick of coloring a self-righteous and pretentious allegory for your amusement. Fittingly picking up on a post-Christmas air meant to spoil other people’s fun, let’s look at the human digestive system (seriously).

The presence of general artistry in marketing stimulatesinterpretation, which squeezes our slightest interest towards an overwhelming desire. This interest, a whim that can range from general intrigue to outright obsession, passes behind the voluntary impulse of rationality and reverence for our own tastes and penetrates the will (a driving force behind desire) before reaching the ability to organize filth. Games advance through this canal by means of rhythmic contractions (tightenings) known associal interaction. The process begins when a gamer begins slamming his or her opinion in the face of their friends or enemies, to establish their commercial vanity. Games complete this quest ranging from anywhere around a few weeks — to a few years.

A tabooed emotion called greed then separates the desire and the from the player’s conscious mind. As footage and information on the game is revealed, this emotion relaxes, forming an opening through which the game can pass into a factory of filth organization. Then the emotion grows back, replacing desire for the actual game with personal affection, this becomes a rationalization that the entire thing isn’t just a waste of time. The emotion is the first of several such responses along the greed canal. These emotions act as valves to regulate the passage of information and keep it from being turned back on to the originator of desire, out of protection from self-actualization of the taboo presence (greed). This way, the gamers are allowed to feel better about themselves with no consequences whatsoever.

Most digestion, as well as absorption of digested food, occurs in the small intestine. This narrow, twisting tube, about 2.5 cm (1 in) in diameter, fills most of the lower abdomen, extending about 6 m (20 ft) in length. Over a period of three to six hours, peristalsis moves chyme through the duodenum into the next portion of the small intestine, the jejunum, and finally into the ileum, the last section of the small intestine. During this time, the liver secretes bile into the small intestine through the bile duct. Bile breaks large fat globules into small droplets, which enzymes in the small intestine can act upon. Pancreatic juice, secreted by the pancreas, enters the small intestine through the pancreatic duct. Pancreatic juice contains enzymes that break down sugars and starches into simple sugars, fats into fatty acids and glycerol, and proteins into amino acids. Glands in the intestinal walls secrete additional enzymes that break down starches and complex sugars into nutrients that the intestine absorbs. Structures called Brunner’s glands secrete mucus to protect the intestinal walls from the acid effects of digestive juices.

The small intestine’s capacity for absorption is increased by millions of fingerlike projections called villi, which line the inner walls of the small intestine. Each villus is about 0.5 to 1.5 mm (0.02 to 0.06 in) long and covered with a single layer of cells. Even tinier fingerlike projections called microvilli cover the cell surfaces. This combination of villi and microvilli increases the surface area of the small intestine’s lining by about 150 times, multiplying its capacity for absorption. Beneath the villi’s single layer of cells are capillaries (tiny vessels) of the bloodstream and the lymphatic system. These capillaries allow nutrients produced by digestion to travel to the cells of the body. Simple sugars and amino acids pass through the capillaries to enter the bloodstream. Fatty acids and glycerol pass through to the lymphatic system.

(The rest is far to graphic to include)

1 – Birth
2 – Nourishment
3 – Sex
4 – Propagation
5 – Death

I’ll be presenting these topics with dual strikes on both fronts. First will be the symbolism they represent for the medium and the other will be a literal translation, governed by how typically they present in games (generally speaking of course).

Birth

By my own observations, this has already happened for all of us, as most of us nerds are extremely aware of the culture and things surrounding it. Of course, we don’t often act in its best interests, but that’s something to be expected at this point. Birth is by far the easiest transition for “us” to make, that’s just the law of nature. No matter what one believes in, their consciousness isn’t allowed will before birth, therefore said life has no real choice in the matter on whether or not they will be born, they just are. Most of this applies to the ties that gamers have to their most beloved titles as well. What’s really humorous is to contemplate the reality of prenatal care being the equivalent to following a game two years prior to its release. At this point my own head starts to swirl around with the possibilities of “stillbirths” and “crack-babies”, but that’s a divergence we can save for later.
The second the player slips the game in its respective system, “birth” begins. “Neonate Experiencism” is an almost supreme constant for most gamers(in short, their first experience with any game). Ironically, the term infant derives from Latin and roughly translates to “unable to speak”. Considering that the player’s first experience with a game involves a mandatory dialect, it’s an interesting corollary to draw. The way that playing games has evolved now requires us to begin consuming them on an unfair level. Not caring for one’s own experience with a game turns it into a far more superficial and short-lasting form of escapism. This creates an extremely large antinomy for the journalistic side of the industry, as they have to stay on a certain track to an arguable extent (I’ve never envied them myself).

You may be lost with this still, so let me try and clarify a little bit more. Birth means the first connection one makes with their respective title, nothing more. Whether the title is “good” or “bad” doesn’t even enter into the equation at this point; it’s the equivalent to placing judgment upon a baby on moral grounds because he or she is crying too much. That connection is delicate, it’s sincere and it must be nurtured, anything else constitutes negligence on the part of the player. The process of “birth” in a video-game has and will always remain pure act of privilege. It’s up to the player to perceive it as such.

Nourishment

Nourishment for games means any collection of pixels that healthily stimulates emotional, spiritual, or intellectual growth. Extensions of perception can play big roles here. Most athletes can empathize with this at least. There’s a connection that people place between any two things in the world. For example, the feeling a basketball player gets before he/she even shoots the ball, between themselves and the goal (no, not the ball—keep up). Ever wonder why it throws some players off when there isn’t a net actually available? Cognitive perception is an insanely strong process, and games are no different. I’ve already traced educational sustenance, so go see The Education Theory if you need to refresh yourself with that. Feeding fanboys is not an easy task because developers have to do two things; they have to truly create something on their own while obeying fickle whims, two contradictory processes. Art and business have never mixed and any delusions to make it so are just plain sad.

Feeding fickle fanboys? Well, I can of course conjure up an example to speak for me. I’ll leave the interpretation of such to my reader(s). Here’s the first paradigm that my tortured fanboy psyche can cough up:

The Pregnant Narrative – A contextual innovation that can only be accomplished through narrative-based games, which have already proven themselves in terms of overall qualitative design.

Even among the company that exists as the modern day Willy Wonka of the of videogame developers (Nintendo), there’s room for an explosive increase in their timeless “romantic” treasures. Particularly with Zelda, there’s room for mechanics (that have already been hovering around an exemplary setup) to be even more amplified through a compelling experience. Stick with me on this for a minute; I’m not quite sure where I’m going with it myself.

What if Zelda, a tale which almost always revolves around the link between Ganon, Zelda, and Link through the Triforce was tinkered with just slightly? I’m not talking about a complete overhaul in what makes Zelda, most of the titles still stand firmly in pure form for what we have as a fairy tale from a videogame. What if it grew up with us as well? Should that be allowed, should they remain and possibly stagnate in the consistency of what they convey? I’m no deity, so I can’t answer that. All I can offer are my desires, which are in fact the will of a fanboy.

I won’t launch into some useless dribble analytically breaking down the game’s traditional mechanics (I’ll leave that to people who do it better). No, what I mean to address is what should always govern the will of a game’s mechanics, its own narrative. Don’t take that the wrong way either, I’m using the term very loosely here—as any context which a game revolves around is applicable. The relationship is not about one taking priority over the other, but both of them existing in an extremely delicate co-dependency (i.e. the government and it’s people). However, it’s pretty obvious that even with the best titles, there only exists sound game design (certainly not bad), with its own context existing as nothing more than an afterthought (which is bad in my eyes and thoroughly unforgivable).

Continuing on with my example, what if Zelda was actually a villain? There’s simply not enough female villainy around in the industry as it is and it would create a nice dynamic that would show some actual growth on Nintendo’s otherwise stationary stance regarding their own franchises. It would also be fairly easy to turn Ganon into an ally who is befriended over the course of the game (much like Zelda usually is). That’s nothing more than a minor tinker that would thunderously leave fans in “shock and awe” if done tastefully. The mechanics that could result from this are just simply useless to talk about as potential ideas have no limit. It’s something very different and very intriguing, but as a friend so obviously keeps reminding me, Nintendo won’t screw with their formula. Their rigid nature on developing their games is a sad (and good) thing in many ways…oh well.

Innovation…
Style shocks…
Overdone…
Underdone…
Quality Sci-Fi…
Compress the established…
etc…
etc…
etc…

So many dastardly enjoyable concepts squashed by the oppressive equilibrium holding the industry up…it’s actually quite elegant (as it is absolutely disgusting).

There is a height of enrichment; I actually stated this last year, but what about a game that goes in depth about the life of Sparda and his life leading up to the inevitable rebellion against hell? Shallowness and depth is one thing, but once one truly crafts and thread every single aspect of their “world”, they’ll wind up with something that transcends troubling terms such as “depth” and “quality” (which people apply on their own terms anyway). Instead they’ll be left with something far more important, “richness”. Right now Bayonetta exists as my earlier statement, extremely sound game design wrapped around a superficial package. At best, Kamiya will create another worthwhile character that fans love beating the hell out of things with. At worst, he’ll just make a good game with Asian sex-appeal directed at males and some females (it’s becoming trite here, but once again I assert that quality is irrelevant at this point). I don’t necessarily try to downplay the mechanics for a game; I just find the advent of thoughts for them more enjoyable to speak about, which IS IN FACT the context that surroundeds the stage. Displaying fertility in their presence, a truly rich narrative will give birth to many things across the mind of a gamer (and developer). The reality of Devil May Cry’s narrative is a moot point because not only can one NOT objectively judge quality of something that, they can’t dispel the actions of a game reacting in its own world. This has been proven for games time and time again. Example? Compare MGS3: Snake Eater to Lucas’ latter three Star Wars films.

When people walk into someone’s house and see a case full of books, they will usually automatically assume that the owner is knowledgeable in some sense. When most walk into someone’s house that owns a lot of games, they just simply assume that they are either spoiled, and/or have too much time and money on their hands. The last thing that crosses their mind would that the person has been granted the same sense of perception only granted to avid readers (I’d say film as well, but then I’d have to launch into differentiating between drama and Hollywood and I’m too lazy to right now). Now, I’m not going to go into an “will-we-ever-go-beyond-that” tirade, because I honestly I don’t think that’s going to happen for a very long time (and I’m being optimistic with that). We still have everyone and their mothers that watch the mass market of movies and consider themselves qualified to offer criticisms on it—to the extent of affecting other people’s fragile ability to enjoy anything for themselves. Nah, gamers are still watching the ignorant, moronic, and half-wit jackasses on FOX news pathetically attempting to grasp a 30 second scene in Mass Effect (totally out of context). If an entire group of five or six adults are CONSISTENT in their complete and total idiocy, then gamers just going to have to wait until the day comes that everyone can actually “see” games. I know that our Sun is due to boil this rock up in just under a billion years and I’m still questioning the worth collective human perception by then…way out of my own damn lifetime.

Exploration…

Engagement…

Experience…

Hmm…water cooler talk is awesome, but I haven’t experienced it myself in years…heh. The goal and journey debate is an interesting topic to think about though. I do plan to post a VGMA entry later down the line about what FAQS and guides do to rob (and aid) the experience…so I must keep my mouth shut for right now.

Sex

The notions of “Fun” & “Enjoyment” have become a simmering topic on the minds of most gamers and it’s creating a divide in the entire population overall. Gamers, developers, enthusiasts, they all have to sort through their own subjective takes on gaming in order to provide for the other two respective categories. Me—well my take on games was born in the primordial ooze of that old and archaic notion that video-games are at best enjoyable time-wasters, and at worst superficial escapism, which serve as convenient scapegoats for trash to blame society’s own fuckups on. That latter ideal or anything remotely close to it gives rise to someone like me, who serves as an abrasively opinionated and angry individual who demands the exact opposite. I’m not seeking to run away from the world through a video-game, I’m seeking to connect with it through one. I want all the fuckups, the horror, the hilarity, the outrage, and the hypocrisy to breathe back at me from a video-game. That means the exact opposite of escapism. What’s the opposite of escape…capture?

Thinking out loud here…enrapture…indulgence…detainment…encapsulate…ensnare, crap.

Yeah, well none of those really sound good with “ism” behind them, so I stand by my own doctrine of “experiencism”. I can live with that one until something better comes along.

When ”grounds of land” are formed, gamers engage in perverse actions towards them (e.g. war). This even incorporates those age old console wars, which I expressed my disdain for in one of Rob Zacny’s old blogs as well. In that post, I drew a direct corollary between console gamers (The Southern U.S.) and P.C. gamers (The Northern U.S.). I’m too lazy to elaborate on that, so I just urge you draw your own conclusions (if you’re too lazy to look through his blogs that I linked. If gamers are good at one thing, it’s what makes them human, the ability to fight brutally over trivial or self-traitorous matters. Star_Royal mentioned to me yesterday on my Thief post that the majority of gaming dialogue is skewed towards console gaming. He was right, I did already know this, but now I can fully appreciate it since I’m moving in the opposite direction of what the industry is chugging along towards right now. It’s the difference between knowing that there is death and famine in the world and actually experiencing it for oneself.

There’s no “romance” between any two sides of the industry now (most of the gaming industry just simply doesn’t know how to show it). Competition breeds the attainment of new heights, but that shouldn’t be at the expense of any two ideas converging or acting with one another. All gamers can SEEM to do now is conveniently wrap ideals around the simple act of “sex” (which is what quite a few do now with ACTUAL sex and love). None of us should be so proud of fucking each other…

If there’s one thing that’s extremely easy to find on the internet, it’s porn. For an area of “consumption”, people are extremely hesitant to admit that it’s not a ludicrous presence (at least compared to all the other weird shit going on in the world right now). It exists in such abundance for a REASON. Even calling it perverse is a matter of perspective and if there’s one thing that this blog states ever-so-subtly, it’s that I don’t stand for useless and pathetic social mores. If porn is guilty of any one real crime, it’s lying; portraying men and women in aesthetic states that are often confusing, arbitrary, and downright offensive. Let’s not pretend that EVERYTHING on T.V. doesn’t do that incessantly (THAT’S THE FUN OF IT!).

Why do you think sex isn’t a more prevalent issue in games? People can’t even handle it in reality anymore let alone accurately (and consistently) portraying it in a game (don’t offer me scarce exceptions to the rule either, I’m aware of them). Successfully doing so would mean that my aforementioned “cyniquip” (I’m really loving these self-created portmanteau terms) regarding the person’s perception of love is entirely invalid. If there’s one thing I can say with absolute disdain these days, it’s that I’m hardly ever just plain wrong, especially about things like this.

Propagation

There’s something a tad decent AND horrifying at the same time when considering the generational influx in regards to games. Adults are adults, teens are trees, and children are children. As this constant continually provides a mainstay for the times, the games have not—instead they’re growing ever so co-dependently with the tech. The corollaries between biological physiology and technological structures are not an old idea (i.e. the brain and a computer), and every few years the reality continually nears the realization of how far (or how close) both processes have evolved in tandem. In the context of games, let’s look at it another way. For example, a game engine is propagation. Hell even the concept of the uncanny valley is propagation. The way in which stylized organizations of code create their own cults, trends, and fads is only surpassed by their ability to motivate others to create.

The flaw that is disrupting the more positive traits would be the perceived limits of games in general. The genre for example, has become a downright offensive umbrella notion that categorizes a great deal of games for no other reason than cheap convenience. Think how modern and even indie titles have strengthened the bloodline of concepts presented by Mario over twenty years ago. Now think how the multitude of great titles all paying homage to that spirit suffer because they’re seen as nothing more than Mario clones. Furthermore, consider how others knowingly commit to just being Mario clones and nothing else.

Curiosity experiment (leave your ethics aside for the moment):

1 – First take a newborn child and strictly confine him to solitude while he grows up.

2 – Nurture his life and provide sustenance, but don’t proceed to teach him anything other than base necessities.

3 – Let any instinctual or “natural” developments occur as they will while maintaining a healthy environment for him/her.

4 – Choose a ripe, young, and spongy age for the child’s mind and present him/her with some options.

5 – Give them a book, a movie, a game, and a pencil & paper.

6 – Judge and measure how the child interacts with each one of them.

Now this isn’t some experiment to empower the concept of a game, but rather to suggest the cognitive development’s requirements around grasps of relations and concepts. Strict controls would have to be placed around how all the items are set up of course, but all the possibilities here are endless. Examples include:

Without the ability to read, will the child simply draw on the book?

Visual stimulation of the movie and any structural developments while watching it?

The pen and paper is an obvious choice, but what interaction would the child make with it? They have no sense of our reality, so they’d be just as likely to draw on the screen that’s playing the movie.

Will they not be interested in any of them? Perhaps there’s some innate desire to escape their current situation? Without any moral constructs to stand on, the only thing left are raw genetics which can skew into any number of categories.

Will they simply harm themselves by misuse of the items?

All of these are extremely important, but in the context of this blog, the most important moment is what will happen to the child’s perception when they press right on that pad (assuming the video-game is left standing idle with Sonic tapping his foot). How will the accumulated knowledge and understanding of” developlay” (the player’s acquired knowledge game-wise and the developers laboring on building it) hit them exactly? The “sad part” regarding this is that the experiment would have to occur with more than one child and various control groups to get any worthwhile knowledge. The type of game is relevant as well. Imagine the difference generated by locking a kid in a room with either Mario or Silent Hill. How will the ideas we mess over and take for granted each time we pick up a game, affect this child. How will the propagation evolve at this point? What ideas will be produced? What ideas will be reproduced? What types of concepts and notions would be expelled forth as a result?

All curiosity…on my part. You can put your stupid “ethichats” back on now…

Death

For all the emphasis placed on life, we don’t seem to flinch at death anymore. No, I’m not talking about a game either. Do you know how many people lose their lives over the course of a single day? Go look it up, you just might be surprised. Even more surprising is the understanding is that these people have to lose their lives, they should lose their lives. Even by the moral foundations that this entire race has built for itself, prolonging life is extremely damaging for us in the long run. This is for no other reason than we only have one planet, which we’re already not good at sharing or understanding anyway. Our minds are like a disease, and so is our understanding of the world we’ve formed around us. That world sadly doesn’t exist and it never will…not so long as this race thrives in thesingular fashion that it does now. We can’t even embrace spiritual enlightenment anymore *cougheveryreligioneverconcievedcough*, let alone the disgusting strings attached to furthering the race’s needs with science and the arts.

One of the best things about the first Matrix film was a machine expressing actual disgust at mankind:

“I’d like to share a revelation that I’ve had, during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species and I realized that you aren’t actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply, and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? –A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we… are the cure.”
—Agent Smith, The Matrix.

How does this affect the realm of games? Yeah well—we learn structure and discipline through trial and error, but how close does the gamer actually come to tasting death, truly? This was popped into my head a very long time ago by 1UP user Nel and I wrote this in response to it. It’s not new to any gamer certainly, but there will always be a difference between knowing the path and grasping it. Death only means something to a gamer in their formulative years as such. After that, it just becomes an archaic form of slapping them in the face with their own mortality AKA Human Error. Is there any way to establish that form of loss again? Of course that shouldn’t be applied to every game, but don’t use that argument without considering the number of games that would benefit from this. The most obvious example of this would be having a game literally pull the Mission Impossible stunt on the player upon dying (“You’ve died, this tape will self destruct in five seconds”).

Imagine that after twenty hours of playing Oblivion, you die for the first time…now imagine that the disc literally melts in the console in response to that death. It’s even possible to envision a game where the mode of play could shift from a Shenmue based mechanic to a Devil May Cry one, simply in response to a player losing their life. Now me…I’m just presenting outrageous ideas that will work stiffly in the context of games willing to put meaning behind their play. There’s more to death in games than simply having “Game Over” flash across the screen. More accurately…there SHOULD be more to death in games than that…or should it? I’m more than open to any argument contesting it. Death is an antiquated novelty in video-games, but that doesn’t mean it’s above being challenged—nothing in this universe is.

Stay tuned for next weeks entry Doctrine 3 and then the week after that is how walkthroughs hinder the game experience

This weeks topic is violence in video games. (The italics without the bold text is my thought process for this article)

Violence in real life is terrible; violence in the movies can be cool. It’s just another color to work with.”

-Quentin Tarantino

“What exactly was 2009?”

“A year of identification as a gamer?”

“Does that really mean anything? You could just as easily say classification, which is all kinds of irritating, classifying gamers is so — three years ago.”

“Well think about it, the only thing we even remotely played this year was The Path, and we didn’t even finish it in a context worth writing about yet.”

Over the weekend, I watched Quentin Tarantino’s Reservoir Dogs for the first time. While I don’t necessarily hate his films, I’ve always been pretty distanced from them outside any critical light. This is mainly because he uses tools in a sense I’m rather envious of myself. To put it bluntly, I always end up simply feeling irritated with the fact that the man is enjoying his job so much. It’s comes through profusely in every single one of his films that I’ve seen. With RD, I didn’t see anything different — HOWEVER, it was the first of his films to lead me to what violence means in a video game.

The most obvious example here is also the most irrelevant, which is what the media is still famous for pumping out to this day. Inane ax-grinders and politicians with some demented foundation that video games are damaging generations of children, stifling education, and desensitizing violence. These people don’t bother me so much anymore, as they’re truly just stupid animals, meant to be herded by higher intellects in the classiest fashion we can muster. Jack Thompson is after all, really only a danger to himself now.

“There is only one truly malevolent form of ecstasy, and that is the ecstasy of hate and destructiveness. In this ecstasy the person becomes completely absorbed in his hate and destructiveness; he is ‘beside himself’ because he is completely seized by fury and the wish to kill and to control. In this absoluteness of hate he is thoroughly unified, but at the same time he loses contact with the world outside him and also with his own self. This ‘sacred fury’ leads close to the border of madness and to a sense of isolation by the loss of all solidarity with life and the living.”

- Eric Fromm

“A year of regression just sounds more accurate to me.”

“For us or the games…?”

“Us…though I could be mean and —“

“Nevermind, you’re wrong anyway. Regression implies a step backwards, and we’ve only ever played games ‘normally’ the younger we were.”

“And now?”

A newer instance however, stems from a key ingredient in the formation of videogames themselves. An established system in which the player will engage opposition is still a mold that’s being left intact. I attribute this to the fact that gamers have all mechanized violence in some form or another (be it internally or pseudo-obejectively). Developers have simply been using it to feed tactile precision since blood was first spilt on screen. Effectively, violence is being avoided by this mechanization. I separate it from desensitization in the sense that I miraculously consider people smart enough to acknowledge the difference between the two (i.e. a game and ‘reality’).

So the big problem with violence in games (as the media would sensationalize anyway) is that the player will actually engage in various disturbing actions. The capacity to participate in such actions scares people because they wantonly think ‘actual violence’ translates with ease from its virtual counterpart. In actuality, it’s the duty of society (not to mention a couple of biological imperatives) to instill a sense of recognition meant to be inspired by scenes of actual violence. Now don’t get me wrong, games (not to mention various other entertainment media) have a factor in affecting the perception of violence, but it’s minimal as far as anything conclusive goes. For it to have the effect the media would lead us to believe in, a child (when neuronal plasticity is at its most flexible & absorbent) would have to be locked away with a violent game in complete isolation(something I will discuss next week).

“Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between reality — and a game…”

“Diminished sense of reality huh? VR training will do that.”-Solid Snake and Raiden (Metal Gear Solid)

“The love isn’t gone — in fact it’s grown tremendously, but it isn’t exactly the same. It’s not just the typical burnout either; we’re far too obsessive for that to begin with.”

“We’ve definitely transitioned into a period where the thought about games is just as valuable as actually playing them.”

“Yet, that remains a minority amongst a minority amongst a minority of an already insular audience of selfish pigs, which is fundamental in the mindset for the ‘satisfied idiot’ stance yet again.”

“Yeah, none of ‘us’ is ready to compromise on the mindset that ‘over-analyzation’ is even valid.”

Most gamers, have the luxury of not knowing what violence looks like (not the physical type anyway), so others claiming on their behalf that their capacity to be separated from it without actual interaction with it in the first place — well it’s a little absurd. I personally begin to hear a loud buzzing sound whenever someone vocally tries to purposefully steer clear of violence altogether. The will to avoid violence is based on the irrational and selfish impulse to preserve happiness (either on behalf of oneself or those around them). To understand it, one must first embrace it to some extent. We’ve [humanity] proven consistently and irrefutably that we’re prone to react negatively towards presences we do not understand. People avoid such topics because it’s based once again on selfish grounds that they may contribute to the fire in some compacity. Violence is one of the oldest facets of this race, so when people try to morally buck it, they typically end up becoming more violent than what they’re trying to squash to begin with.

Trying to artificially manufacture peace by cancelling out violence is one of the most destructive intentions in existence; it relies on ignorance to accomplish its ends. It’s never worked because it’s the equivalent of trying to drop a marble into a shoe from the top of the Empire State building.

“Any intelligent fool can make things bigger, more complex, and more violent. It takes a touch of genius — and a lot of courage — to move in the opposite direction.”- Albert Einstein

“So, identification is wrapped around the notion that we’ve grown even more malcontent and hateful of a medium we claim to love?”

“You used that to extrapolate to regression. What I’m suggesting is merely that we know where we stand even more now. It was fine when we could sit back and lurk amongst the thoughts of other people, but I’m too arrogant to take solace in that comfort anymore. I have opinions, and have been compelled to flood the ‘byte-tunnels of existence’ with them now. Communicating thoughts for oneself is simply the first step we’ve taken. “

“Oh no…”

“Yes, first step implies a second, which means 2010 should show some actual enactment from our groundings this year.”

Roping this back around games leads me to divulge my own stance in the matter. That is to say, I of course believe violence is an inherent piece of our racial character. Perhaps it’s still debatable on nature of lustful violence (sex is another piece of the puzzle entirely), but even that has an area to which games rarely explore (which they must as well). Classically, I suppose this is what’s known to most people as ‘aesthetic violence’. This is when a medium showcases an excessive and purposeful stylization of the gory, fierce, and horrific to further connect the audience towards meaning. Games have yet to accomplish this because they quickly jumped to ‘mechanic violence’ due to the nature of the medium (not to mention the short attention span of the creators and their audiences), interactive entertainment. Enemies still come amongst the player in droves, respawning caricatures meant to induce a sense of hollow accomplishment.

Despite my personal desire for games like this to increase in number, I will admit to it not being a pertinent matter in the big scheme of things right now. Gamers have to grow up before they ‘start playing with knives’. Mechanized violence is what I define more as the perpetuation of the perception to keep the act of combat within a game as a cog, turning the wheel of enjoyment on the title proper. Its functionality may drastically affect how the entire machine works (i.e. see any dork complaining about broken mechanics), but it’s so separate from the act itself, that most of the meaning is lost as well. This is a critical distinction in how gamers are meant to see the act, as some will use this sense to fuel the desensitization argument while others will defend their unearned right to keep things shallow and simple.

“Murder Considered as One of the Fine Arts”

Thomas De Quincey

“Does that mean I’ll actually have to clean up my writing now…?”

“Not really, though it’ll probably be a side-effect of where we’re going now anyway.”

“Where’s that?”

“Farther away from what we hate of course. The discussions of ‘silly’ game narratives, the insatiable addiction to playing games as they roll off the assembly line, and a distinctly growing hunger for games to exercise more literary muscle as opposed to a technical one.”

A lot of gaming’s problems stem from how insular the audience is. While Nintendo is opting in for the slow and methodical route of saturating new generations with gaming, some of us are still left by the wayside with what they had a hand in inspiring in the first place (I should also make a post-it-note of the splint between Western and Eastern Game design philosophies here). Objectifications, sequelitis, and artistry debates all stem more from a lack of variety in the industry than some silly moral imperative.

In order for games to move past having their mechanics simply ‘decorated with blood’, they’ll have to slice past the comfort zone of the audience and embrace the catharsis that violence induces in a positive manner. All preceding mediums have done this, whereas games have only been allowed allude to it because of the assumptions society (and the medium’s own fans) has placed behind them. Now I don’t know who really started the non-linear narrative constructs in film, as I haven’t studied the medium to that extent (not to mention I don’t really give a damn), but Tarantino certainly owes a lot of his fame to this simplistic retooling of the modern film. This and Reservoir Dogs does something slightly brash yet fundamentally significant; it purposefully removes a major portion of the story. It’s about a jewel heist that went bad in which everything is shown but the heist itself. The precedent events, the aftermath, and back-stories are all what form the film’s primary composition.

“The only difference is that the stress and the violence is worse at home, because it happens younger, it happens at the hands of someone you love, and there is no recognition that this is the enemy.”

Gloria Steinem

“Yet we can’t completely turn those drives off. It would be a sin.”

“Of course not.”

“That means SP write-ups will have to be even more methodical than originally planned. Perversion indeed.”

“That’s good considering I rather enjoy picking one ‘new’ game over the course of a few months to completely dump myself into.”

“Double that if it’s an RPG…”

While I’m certainly not interested in using the film-to-game correlation, I am (once again) willing to acknowledge that something significantly worthwhile to the medium must be removed in order to spur growth. I’ve been very secretive about the dinky little ‘paper-theory’ Metal Gear remake I did earlier this year (apart from initial draft sketches of some of the characters), but I am willing to divulge a specifically major aspect of the design I was rather proud at fleshing out:

I stripped all respawning, conformity, and multitude from the soldiers themselves. My Outer Heaven has a stringently set number of soldiers throughout the entire game (who all meander and interact with each other). With some half decent programming, even the most rudimentary AI can define individual personality in an NPC soldier now. This means the act of taking those soldiers’ lives will actually mean something significant in the game now (considering Metal Gear’s overarching theme is one of pacifism in conflict with perpetual violence). The difficulty of the overall game becomes a bitch at this point when trying to support this, but the payoff is more than worth it.

“I would be quite happy for men to hit women if there was a law saying that women could carry guns. Because then, if a man hit you, you could shoot him.”

Jo Brand

“It will be nice to see what Assassin’s Creed 2 becomes in that regard, something once again raising that tired argument of silly game plots.”

“This coming from someone who refuses to let go of the god damn art tirade. At least we’re almost finished with that crap.”

“Some of us think it’s a discussion still worth having.”

“And some of us refuse to entertain other people’s tired opinions that mean absolutely nothing when weighed in the context of our own.”

t also led me to a totally separate project/theory of a game with a young male protagonist avoiding a female rapist in a dystopian setting; propagation of the species would be nonexistent lest they mate (Rule of Rose & Haunting Ground just weren’t enough by the way). Film is mostly sedentary and narrative-based, so tweaking that narrative is why films like Tarintino’s Pulp Fiction and Reservoir Dogs (or even Nolan’s Memento) have such an impact. Games are more mechanical however, so affecting those mechanics is what must be done first and foremost; the craft of narrative is the spouse of the working mechanics in games. One aspect will be more prominently active in a certain medium, leaving the ‘significant other’ (pardon the pun) to cradle and support whatever meaning it can provide as a communicative artform (which all good art does in the end, it communicates).

So for games to make it through puberty, a catharsis of murder is required. Something to provide the audience with an outlet or glimpse of their own ugly tendencies is more important than suppression (it’s much less dangerous too). Now very few will be able to operate solely on that frequency for personal satisfaction (like myself), but I refuse to acknowledge the existence of any kind of Jesus archetype that’s above seeing the beauty in humanity’s violence. Truly connecting gamers with their own actions within games will be one of the most significant advances this medium ever makes. I’m impulsive, obsessive, and permanently incensed, but I’m patient enough to wait for games to do this. It’ll certainly be worth to wait.

“Today, thinking and feeling are more and more separated from each other, and this separation leads either to an almost schizophrenic intellectualism or to a neurotic, irrational emotionalism. Only if emotions and reason are brought together can man function in a way which makes life interesting and hence creates the possibility of a productive and nonviolent life. To put it briefly, what we need is not increasing control of aggression and violence but reduction of destructiveness and violence by making individual and social life more meaningful and human.”

- Eric Fromm

“Either way, I just think it’s far more cathartic to twist, obsess, and eke out something that took years to make. I feel more at peace matching the developer in that regard, flaws and all.”

“Discussion about games is simply becoming more interesting than staying up to date and actually playing them as —“ *snap fingers rhythmically*

“Even with 2010 having three games I’m actually interested in, I’m finding myself more in need of ‘Gaming Viagra’. One’s a handheld, one’s a P.C. multiplayer life-zapper, and the last is a wild-card we have no clue about. I’ll have to pop a couple pills just to make a run at Peace Walker, which tortuously comes out during our annual Metal Gear May timeframe. “

“The goal is then?”

“To simply establish more synapses to ‘play with’. Finish the GaA, direct SPs with a bit more tact, less time playing games and more time just playing.

“Decorating a Christmas Tree to be honest doesn’t interest me anymore. Setting it on fire however…that at least makes a statement.”

[About two weeks ago, I decided to make a short series of posts examining science fiction films for gaming purposes (I started with Ridley Scott’s Alien). More specifically, this is designed to create a set of analytical dissections for something that games could use to their advantage in current times. The downside for this of course, is that I have to sit films beside games once again (a practice that’s becoming boring by my own standards). The positive to take away from this though, is that my pairing of the two mediums here isn’t meant to emphasize a superficial comparison (as it usually does), but a profound sense of creative corollaries.] So I chose an even older film for this second entry, Stanley Kubrick’s 1969 film 2001: A Space Odyssey.

People often disregard the amount of education imparted on the mind by a video-game. In many accounts, one could make the argument that a game’s ability to educate could be a formidable opposition to the vast majority of modern schooling. Of course, I’m not suggesting that games are an exemplary replacement for acquiring knowledge; I am however suggesting that it fills the otherwise cavernous holes in people’s individual academic edification. By the “numbers argument”, it’s still a mandatory necessity that we all experience schooling as it generally is now. This educational experience is defined by having mounds and mounds of acquired human intelligence (gathered across our trivial time on this rock) slammed against our intellectual walls. This in turn will play some part in the definition of our scholastic character, as a great chunk of those things will simply have stick to the damned metaphorical wall.

A great observation I saw from fellow Twitterers regarding the past video game conferences was that the “big three” were trying to turn everyone into gamers. I apologize to some for the aristocratic tone, but it’s just how I see things now so I won’t temper it. To those of you that feel that way, don’t worry. Gamers will not lose their individuality through this process of casualization and development, it’s impossible. You know why? It’s because we’re all big nerds first and foremost. We’re not the “frat-mind”, we’re not the technological layman, and we’re far from stupid. Our pleasures are rooted typically in learning and acquiring further insight/experience for ourselves. It’s a personal catharsis that will define only a select few individuals throughout the course of their lives. We’re just simply not created or formed (whichever you believe in) in the same way, so some of us find pleasure in certain things while others don’t. Generally smart people don’t let go of gaming because it satiates that desire as well. Maybe not the same way that reading does, but I’d argue it’s a close second.

I commonly hear those age old corollaries when games are touted around for their value this category (it’s particularly insulting in mainstream media). It typically centers on that dead horse, “hand-to-eye” coordination. Of course that’s true, but pretending like that’s where a game’s arm reaches its limit is ludicrous and a bit silly on the side. There’s actually a long list of things that video-games accomplish which make nerds what they are:

I – Spatial Awareness
II – Problem Solving
III – General Patience
IV – Inquisitive Nurturing
V – Mental Stimulation
VI – Biological Neural Exercise
VII – Memory Foundations
VIII – Social Engagement
IX – Amalgamated Competent Processes
X – Eternal Enlightenment & Inspiration

The list definitely goes on, especially if one begins to break these categories down into subsets. These were just the ten that rattled off the top of my head when I shook it around for a moment. For the sake of living up to my comprehensive reputation, I’ll briefly comb through all of them.

I – Spatial Awareness
This is acquired in youth and depending how said child spends their time, it can quite literally open up a whole new world. Though we’re all over the place these days, which I could diverge in any direction with, I’ll snap it old school to keep this short with Super Mario Bros. The comprehension that comes with knowing how Mario will and will not jump is a pinnacle of essence no other medium can claim for itself. The kinesthetic response that generates an instinctive corollary between holding the jump button down and simply tapping it is as primal to a gamer as eating a meal for a general person. Games further the abilities of the avatar by giving them environments to operate in. Design picks up here and dictates the competence of a development team’s prowess.

II – Problem Solving
Games all give us rules and an area to exercise certain tools in. We gain a certain degree of discipline and understanding by this process. Games all create problems and conflicts to deal with. From the most superficial and cursory sequences to the most in-depth and cerebral, gamers are privileged with the act of always solving problems at any given time. Some of them even occur on the nano-scale level (i.e. avoiding the damn squares in Geometry Wars). The degree of variation in which we can solve these problems is only surpassed in excellence by the means to which we acquire our tools to solve them. The structure for some games showcase how much this design muscle has atrophied over the years, but it remains a forte games can always access at will. That’s got to count for something, right?

III – General Patience
It’s a given that when you encounter problem solving constructs designed to entertain, flexibility is next to a necessity in order to accommodate failure. This is something I’d imagine to be difficult for games to convey now, as they seem to be on some grand pilgrimage to maintain accessibility. Frustration is a novelty in games that’s become a near-dead art. In my opinion, an infuriating game doesn’t necessarily equal bad design; it’s simply a typical given in today’s industry. Gamers seem to have the sole option to returning to fundamental or progenitor titles these days, as titles just don’t cultivate such rigorous play anymore(nor to most adult gamer’s lifestyles). If someone doesn’t learn how to accept failure in their lives, they’re going to be a really screwed up person in the long run. People messing up is a grand pinnacle of gaining a true appreciation for anything worthwhile.

IV – Inquisitive Nurturing
Plenty of games also encourage the drive to explore, something not readily available in any other medium. Curiosity is one of the basic necessities of maintaining a healthily learning mindset. Whether it’s actually a built-in feature of the game, or a glitch that leads to further insight of the live-code, most games show the capacity for this. Sometimes the game even rewards exploration, which is another topic in itself. For such titles like Oblivion or Fallout 3, exploration is mandatory for appreciating the scale of Bethesda’s recent releases. The drive has been there since the early days of platforming, when gamers were awarded power-ups, alternate routes, and extra lives for their sheer act of curiosity. Before the days of GameFAQS robbing and mucking up the novelty of this gift, gamers were allowed such a blessing, nowadays it’s damn near a fossil fuel. I don’t care if someone doesn’t even know what two plus two equals, the desire to actually know what it equals is more important than the answer itself; always has been, always will be—the destination is never the goal.

V – Mental Stimulation
Through the use of problem solving and such, it remains a shocking reality that games haven’t gained more ground here than I’d like to think. Very loosely speaking, games tend to opt for the cursory routes and cheap highs, you know—things blowing up and the like. Some titles gain followings however, and it’s usually attributed to how the titles honor their own self-perpetuating source material. Be it God of War or Silent Hill, some titles are just able to communicate from their own world to the player beautifully. It doesn’t have to be, but is usually attributed to narrative-based games. There’s also the literal manifestation of mental stimulation in games (e.g. something like Brain Age), which have their place no doubt, but just aren’t as important to me personally. To look at this in a simpler more and more understandable way, most titles that obey mental stimulation tend to have their own fan-maintained Wiki-pages. Wikias certainly aren’t the final and credible authority here of course, but they do stand as a proof of concept that gamers have been engaged intellectually. Watching them output such information in such a positive fashion is always a plus in my eyes. Can you even imagine what the Internet will be like in just thirty years?

VI – Biological Neural Exercise
Stimulating the mind is one thing, consistently helping it grow is another entirely. The brain is simply another organ in our bodies and without a certain degree of exercise, it won’t amount to much more than a big pink thing in our heads. I guess you bo-bo heads can shove that hand-to-eye coordination crap in here as well, but exploring that even further, all actions in our bodies are dictated by how our brains operate. Whether the player is simply pressing start, or trying to wrap their heads around a convoluted puzzle in the depths of Magmoor, axons and dendrites are hard at work, helping the conscious mind comprehend such acts and feats. Nintendo is probably what raised the majority of us in this area, so kudos to them for that. Luckily, the industry has grown far beyond what Nintendo’s regimented design process usually accommodates. This leaves gamers to choose their own arenas and customize their own cerebral calisthenics down to the most fickle whims (creating yet another problem in itself).

VII – Memory Foundations
Have you ever had a multiple memory merger? Yeah, I just made that up, but I’d like to think games are the prime generators of MMM. Usually, this gets lumped under nostalgia, but I think there’s more to it than that. Having a powerful experience relate in one’s mind as if it were an actual occurrence (and who’s to say it ISN’T an actual occurrence anyway?) in their lives is not something to scoff at. The moniker’s ”multiple” tag is not simply meant to convey plural memories, but acknowledge that the memories don’t exist on the same plane of reality. When they actually merge, the lines between such actualities are less distinct and drive gamers to seek out the sort of natural high that it generates. The first time the Cerberus dogs smashed through the windows of the Spencer mansion, it provided a new footstool for gamers to stand on. This is why there’s such a growing schism in fans regarding the Resident Evil series now (they demand that air of unease that was lost, that they REMEMBER). There are many subsets for this category including: muscle-memory, general memory, and the rare eidetic memory. I personally hold this area in high priority, as it’s not only a requirement for creating games, but enjoying them as well. This is a very thorny topic to delve into with any directed point, so I’ll simply state there’s an untapped well developers can key into this arena specifically (as mentioned in Quantum Gaming)

VIII –Social Engagement
I will do something unheard of on my end and stand up for multiplayer here, as interacting with other people through games is an experience that remains unmatched by anything else. It’s typically through the brutal competition of a title like StarCraft that a gamer will hone individual skills to the degree which will ram the reality of the code to it’s absolute limits. All those insanely competent multiplayer gamers have some degree of familiarity with this. Establishing clever strategies, maneuvers, and techniques are key and the mind being trained to a digital Olympian physique is admirable in any respect (though I personally detest it myself). The other side of this of course is well—THIS. Things like this blog, the internet, and the recently evolved flow of communication that have been established by gamers across the globe all show progressive activism on our part. For all my hatred of associating with people on a day to day basis, I will admit to the beauty of things like the Internet.

IX – Amalgamated Competent Processes
Games very admirably incorporate the three big attributes that appeal to anyone willing to learn: auditory, visual, and kinesthetic learning. I think people all have varying strengths in these categories, but one will always outclass the other two. Personally, I’m a kinesthetic learner, I internalize information best by actually utilizing it and nothing screams that more beautifully than a video-game, which is why I think a great deal of gamers are of the same type (or can at least tap into their own variance of the ability). Even schools have a shifty way of implementing such mechanics and half the time it isn’t set up to accommodate us all (hence the term “falling through the cracks”). Some people simply can’t listen to lectures for hours on end and be expected to recall it all (or at all). Ironically enough, I have an indirect audio processing system. In other words, if I’m in class, I actually comprehend lectures better if I’m multi-tasking—which is further tied my visual learning ability, usually manifesting itself through artwork—heh (nothing was more satisfying than shutting a teacher up who thought I wasn’t paying attention to them, NOTHING). I’m fortunate enough to be reasonably blessed by all three categories, with one standout natural affinity. Things are wired very differently for us all, and games are a medium in which a certain degree of individual flexibility is possible to facilitate everyone involved, even those that go tumbling through the cracks.

X – Eternal Enlightenment & Inspiration
At the end of the day, it’s about what we do with our acquired knowledge that will mark what’s left behind long after we’ve perished. Fact of the matter is that games encourage learning, they also inspire…a great deal at that. Witnessing the variety of INTELLIGENT people that come to the table regarding video-games always fascinates me, if for no other reason than they all come from different walks of life. What’s really cool is that they’re all adding to a fairly dry pot. This makes us nothing more than primordial blog-cells, for the future of the entire industry nonetheless. Consider that collectively we’re the “artists” as well, and you should be able to ascertain exactly what I mean with that.

So, I come back to a fundamental question: Can games incorporate or amplify the technique in which they can teach the player? I think that by this point, you should know that I’m not necessarily talking about practical and cursory methods of tutelage. The arena is there for any designer to break ground with; it’s simply just a matter of time. We’ve become accustomed to frivolous priorities (e.g. a game’s “technical visuals”) and while growth like this doesn’t deteriorate intellectual process, it slows it down to an almost lethargic rate. This is ironic because the same people who argue for those superficial “necessities” are the first to the table when it comes to bitching about a game being shallow and/or uninteresting.

I think a big step in furthering “Experiencism” is establishing how oneself is constructed from a cognitive standpoint. How one learns dictates how they interact with the world, let alone the alternate realities presented by modern video-games. It’s very rarely about simply running out and buying a $50 title to go home and pop it in anymore (it never was for me). The process is a overly convoluted and intricate phenomenon from any standpoint. Appreciating it from these multiple angles will help how games are meant to evolve, through us—the other side of the canvas.

1 ~ What is control?
2 ~ Where do we need ‘control’ in games?
3 ~ Where do we (or I) need to just shut the fuck up about it?

The first thing to note is that I just recently glanced at Brandon Sheffield’s opinion piece on first-person video games. I honestly never thought to question the undercurrent of accepted prominence that first-person titles have accumulated for themselves over the years. Some of that is due to me mainly being a console gamer and therein likes my theory on why some of these more selfish memes exist.

I’ve always preferred third-person to be completely honest…
I realized that the very nature of the first-person view has consistently been one thing to me, an absolute failure. In many cases, I consider that particular point of view a very intimate process when I’m placed in the ‘eyes of a character’. This is so intimate in fact, that all surrounding context and mechanics get warped around it for the sake convenience. That’s my problem, I’ve no qualms admitting that, but my attacks from the stance are no doubt relevant to this post, so let’s keep going.

Context & Control

The context of whatever game is in question is first and key to the experience. From the various masses of P.C. gaming purists, a very stubborn and elitist meme has been born that is interwoven with the first-person view (and therefore narrative) becoming attached to the notion of gameplay being the most pertinent part of a game. I call foul on that because it’s based off the assumption that one notion translates to all. That notion is of course…

“Gameplay comes first.”

That’s not a rule I’ve ever played by and it’s not something I’ll waste my time entertaining in-depth now. The insularly argument that ‘gameplay (I’m hostile towards that word to begin with) comes first’ is built on the false foundations of gaming itself being a product. Fundamentally, yes…video-games are still being run and developed from a very business-oriented mindset. That won’t change for a very long time either, as the diversity most people are clamoring for now will take decades more to build up at best. This doesn’t mean that the consumerist culture videogames have accumulated for themselves is anything other than specious as best.

Control itself is only defined in this sense by how much influence we can direct over
any certain form. Its not even tied to characters and such from a base form, and therefore narrative is free from those shackles as well. When gamers try to blanket what defines a game (DEFINE NOT DICTATE) over what it potentially can mean for its audience, two things are disregarded entirely: the player’s own perspective and the games surrounding world that’s laid out.

At this point, we’re kind of getting into an ontological game argument. As an example, I’ll pose this question:

Does System Shock 2′s performance entirely outstrip BioShock’s weight as a game? How much is the latter diminished by the former’s mere existence? If we’re looking at it in in the B&C (Business & Consumer) sense, then it’s a formula not to be broken. However, if we look at in any kind of artistic light whatsoever, the lines are not defined at all, which is why there’s such discourse on matters like this. That artistic light people give games doesn’t just cancel out the flimsy ‘gameplay comes first’ structure, it totally destroys it along with the B&C construct as well. This is because there’s never gonna be a game that comes out and is unanimously hated by every person on the planet. Someone somewhere will be able to find subjective force to infuse into a title, and depending upon the circumstance—the context, nothing will be able to objectively nullify that (which is assuming that anyone can objectively judge a certain situation to begin with, which is pretty damn rarely).
Mechanics & Multiplicity

After the context is established, it should be a given that setting up mechanics to accompany it will be key to that game’s success. This all depending on the designer’s vision and authorship itself is a fairly ‘new’ concept to games, as designers like Hideo Kojima are still lambasted regularly on countless forums throughout the world (doesn’t his own son say the series sucks?). There’s also the directive of obstacles here where both third-person and first person-titles turn their respective crowds off, whether its the camera or the disconnect offered by a character such as Gordon Freeman. Developers are constantly fighting a game of trial and error in a market of fickle consumers, which denotes idiocy on both grounds (and I include myself amongst those idiots). I realized while playing Thief that I prefer the exact mechanics of how the lock-pickings works in the game, as opposed to what something like Splinter Cell is known for. Button-presses and timing are only factors when concerning how they influence the myriad of titles available to gamers. It’s when the players try to deify certain mechanical memes (compare Half Life’s cutscenes to that of Metal Gear Solid’s for instance) that I begin to get annoyed with things.

Perspective & Petulance

I find third-person perspectives more engaging simply because they allow a sort of visceral fluidity in a character’s movement. That engages me far more than the makeshift eyes I’m meant to have in the context of what Master Chief sees. So while I do consider most first-person games a true bastardization of my actual sight, I’m not going to fault any title for it past a certain extent and I won’t let that dictate my own enjoyment of it either. Two exemplary paradigms I can put up here showcase the P&P (‘Perspective & Petulance’) which formulates my own opinion that gamers need to take a swim in a landfill somewhere.
The Resident Evil Argument

Look at the pictures on this blog. See the relevance for them now? As far as games go, this is a fantastic and abashedly nuanced representation of art vs business; two of mankind’s most bloated creations that despite their co-dependence on each other, are constantly at war. A couple of quick observations on these pictures though:

1: How many of the nostalgia-grabbers are disregarding their own frustration with Resident Evil’s prior fixed camera in order to idealize the franchise’s former standings? How do we even begin to draw lines in where we establish what made the prior titles so memorable, be it the fixed camera or tank controls?

2: The fellators who grab on to the over-the-shoulder mechanics very fucking often overlook the fact that the franchise’s story has suffered in lieu of embracing of two deluded falsehoods; either all theResident Evil games have had crappy stories or they don’t come to any game expecting a great story to begin with. There’s something significantly wrong with that stance, and I won’t say what it is because it’s pretty damn obvious what kind cowardice fuels this.

3: Why wouldn’t Capcom release Resident Evil 1-CV with RE4/5′s perspective? Would it infringe upon the prior title’s significance or is there too much money involved in ‘properly’ revamping them? It wouldn’t be as easy as the GameCube’s REmake of the original Resident Evil nor would it be any less risky as what Konami/Nintendo/Silicon Knights attempted with the Metal Gear Solid: The Twin Snakes. Also, given that players HAVE idealized the Pre-RE4 titles, doesn’t the fear of remaking them in that manner prove how flimsy their initial deification of the titles were to begin with?
The Mouse-Abuse Argument

I’m too lazy now. Go see any P.C. gamer’s rant or stance on why FPV works soooooooo much more efficiently with the mouse & keyboard rather than with a controller. I don’t want to get into this argument in this one

P.S. For the full list of the responses that that ‘Wesker’ got from his question, click here.

P.S.S Next article is the 2001 A Space Odyssey and following that up with our second doctrine on Audio