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So, I know I just said that I don’t like to talk about political stories lacking in substance, but here’s one that plays nicely into something I’ve been thinking about lately:

“‘It was a long love affair with a boy and his gun that turned into a man and his gun, and it turned into a man and his son and his daughter and their guns,’ [Republican Presidential hopeful Rick] Perry told reporters before a pheasant hunting trip with Iowa Rep. Steve King in October. ‘It’s, I think, one of the great American traditions is taking your family hunting.'”

The story is mostly about Perry relaxing by going to a shooting range before the New Hampshire debate.

It’s an interesting choice of words, “love affair”. I know that Perry is joking around, and it’s not at all unusual for someone to say they “love” some inanimate object. But still, the gun certainly receives a good deal more than the usual amount of amorous attention bestowed upon non-living objects.

It’s a very common thing. I mean, I am a liberal and all, but it is nonetheless true that the vast majority of the video games in my collection feature guns in a prominent role. Doom, Quake, GoldenEye… and I don’t know of anything that compares with Black, a game which basically exists to showcase various guns.

Speaking of guns in games, there is a line from Metal Gear Solid that seems pertinent. I am thinking of Revolver Ocelot’s quip as he reloads his revolver: “There’s nothing like the feeling of slamming a long silver bullet into a well-greased chamber.” The voice actor’s delivery makes the metaphor even more apparent. Still, without being quite so salacious as that, I think everybody knows that something about weaponry appeals to a very primitive instinct in people, especially men.

Video games, though, are works of drama, and thus perhaps it is not surprising to find them replete with virtual firearm technology. They, along with books and film and television, might naturally be expected to feature a lot of guns, because guns mean conflict, and conflict is the essence of drama, as someone said. (Again, I know this myself. I was quite proud of the “full metal jacket” line in my poem from earlier today.) But then, Governor Perry was not speaking about art, but about the “sport” of hunting.

I suppose if you are going to eat meat, you could make the argument that it actually is more honorable to procure it by hunting than not, although the extent to which hunting is actually a challenge and not merely R&R for the hunter is not clear to me anymore. (This 2002 Rick Reilly column illustrates what I mean.)

Perry is, naturally, not the only Republican cavorting with instruments of death. Apparently, Rick Santorum has been getting his picture taken while wearing hunting equipment and carrying a gun, but it has not assuaged the fears of the most hard-line members of firearms groups.

That article about Santorum, by the way, raises another disturbing question: are there really voters who make their decisions based on the quantity and quality of a candidate’s photo-ops? Frankly, I don’t think people are that stupid.

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I loved the Fallout: New Vegas add-on Dead Money, which is about a heist in an ancient casino called the “Sierra Madre”. I therefore assumed it was based on the movie The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which I’ve heard about but never seen. However, Dead Money writer Chris Avellone tweeted when someone asked him about this that it was based more on the book that inspired the movie.

I hadn’t even known that the movie was based on a book. So, I decided to find out about the book, and maybe pick it up if it sounded good. But then, I got to reading about the book’s author, “B. Traven“. His life is quite fascinating–or more accurately, the theories about what it might have been like are. It seems he was something of a mysterious man. (I guess I should know, right?)

I won’t attempt to summarize all the ideas people have about who he might have been, but it’s quite intriguing. I don’t know how much of it is common knowledge to you, but I was surprised that I hadn’t heard about something so interesting before.

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Let me begin with a quote from a recent interview with my favorite writer, Chris Avellone, who said of his feelings on the digital distribution of video games:

“I love digital distribution… Of course, one of the greatest things about digital distribution is what it does to reduce the used game market. I hope digital distribution stabs the used game market in the heart.”

The used games market is upsetting to developers like Avellone because the developers make no money directly off of games sold in that market. Some say it is good for the industry as a whole, in which case perhaps the rising tide lifts all boats, but there is room for debate.

Now, here is a quote from a not-so-recent interview with my other favorite writer, W.S. Gilbert, talking about the problem of Americans pirating his and Arthur Sullivan’s comic operas:

“It is the American pirates for whom we have a deadly hatred. But we shall soon be even with them… We… are determined to do battle with every American manager who attempts to produce one of our plays without paying the fee. We have fought, we are fighting, and we intend to fight, cost what it may. The pirates are beginning to fear our pugnacity, and I think we shall win in the end.” 

Reading these two quotes set me thinking about the similarities between the medium of video games and that of theatrical performances. While selling used games is not quite analogous to pirating stage plays, it may be, I think, even more analogous than pirating video games is to pirating stage plays. And really, all are almost identical from the perspective of the creators.

Avellone inspired some anger with his comments. (Gilbert probably did too, but there was no internet in his day, so we don’t know what his fanboys and haters thought.) Since eliminating the used market would make it harder to get games cheaply, some fear it would hurt the medium, both artistically and economically.

And indeed, one could make the same argument about theater performances. After all, if Americans were putting on unlicensed performances of Gilbert and Sullivan, did that not signify healthy demand for good comic opera? I mean, contrast this with the present-day when, I suspect, most people wouldn’t go see it for free. And indeed, after so many American productions of H.M.S. Pinafore, G&S and Richard D’Oyly Carte moved to get in on the action with their next opera. (About, amusingly, pirates.)

Economically speaking, used game sellers, game pirates and theater pirates are all quite similar in their effects on the market. However, if we consider games and plays from an artistic, and not economic perspective, there are also similarities. The first thing that springs to my mind is that the practice of “modding” games is quite analogous to some of the updating and setting changes given to stage plays. I don’t know if I’d say West Side Story is to Romeo and Juliet as Counter-Strike is to Half-Life, but the practices seem to me to be similar. (There is also the fact that in both stage productions and video games, it sometimes falls to the fan community to restore a piece to its originally intended form.)

There’s more freedom, I guess, in games and plays than there is with movies and books. I suppose you could also argue the same is true with music, as musicians may cover a song and in so doing change its meaning. But since many songs ultimately depend on the skills and intentions of one performer, as opposed to being collaborative like games and plays, the analogy is not quite as good.

If you are wondering what my point with this post is, there really isn’t one. I’m just kind of musing.

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Nathaniel Chapman, a video game designer at my favorite game studio, Obsidian Entertainment, had a good post on his blog about “A Theory of Fun”. He makes a great point that “fun” doesn’t describe a game, it describes the experience you have while playing it.

His post also made me wonder: do I play video games for fun? Do I, for that matter, read books or watch movies or otherwise indulge in such pursuits for “fun”?

I mean, I obviously do it for pleasure. But what is this sensation “fun”? For instance, are my two favorite games Knights of the Old Republic II and Planescape: Torment “fun”? I don’t know if I would actually say they are. The feeling I get from them is altogether a more powerful one. It is much more like “awe” or “wonder” than “fun”.

There are some games, obviously, which I play purely for fun. Sports simulation games, especially, come under this label. But I do not think of these games as being in any way “better” than those above, though they may technically be more “fun”.

This applies to many other things, as well. The basic romance or murder-mystery novel, is, or at least used to be, regarded by many as a “fun”, cheaply thrilling reading experience, whereas reading Great Literature (or in some circles, Holy Books) is not actually a “fun” experience but definitely a better one. The same goes for films: Star Wars and Jurassic Park are “fun” films. Are films like Citizen Kane “fun”, or is the feeling they evoke different?

People often do draw a distinction between “High Art” and “Low Art” to describe this kind of thing, but the trouble with that is that it can quickly devolve into labeling things you personally dislike “Low Art”, and then it becomes simply an issue of taste.

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Before I get to my main point here, I should begin by saying that it is thought by many that fictional storytelling ought to convey a “message” or “moral” or else in various ways make people think or challenge certain beliefs they held. There are also many others, however, who believe that fiction should only entertain, and should not question assumptions or in any way engender serious thought in the audience. Those readers who hold the latter view are to be warned that the following article proceeds from the premise that fiction ought to compel thought.

If this is the case, it still leaves the problem of how to go about challenging assumptions and provoking thought. However, if a work of fiction is to challenge a belief system, it is very difficult for it not to veer into the realm of what we call “propaganda”. (I use the word in its colloquial sense, to evoke the concept of “forced moralizing”.)

A novel which challenges its readers beliefs could be viewed as merely a work of propaganda, and therefore discounted. Since the author controls all events in the narrative, it may be said that there is no lesson to learn from his/her novel, because he may manipulate it to prove whatever s/he wishes.

Because of the nature of storytelling, it has long been the case that the interaction is fundamentally one-sided. The audience is told the story, and judges it as they will. If it is a story with a “moral”, and that “moral” is in harmony with their beliefs, they will likely praise it, and if it conflicts they will probably dislike it.* They must, however, “take it or leave it”.

In this respect, video games are different from other forms of storytelling, in that audience input can change the outcome. For this reason, video games have the potential to allow a degree of give and take not allowed by the other forms. Whereas in a book or film, the audience sees the maker’s characters enacting a set piece with a particular aim, or, if it is really sophisticated, some amount of ambiguity; in video games one may choose one’s interactions with the characters and plot elements.

Now it’s true that most games are not taking full advantage of this capability, and small wonder; as it requires more work on the part of the author(s) to do it well. Most games do not even try, and even of the games which do afford the player the chance of impacting the story, many simply allow a choice between being a selfless good Samaritan and a cruel psychopath, as excellently documented by Eric at Critical Missive. There is very little in the way of true moral choice; the player merely plays through both ways so s/he can claim such as another notch on the controller.

However, there are some games–Planescape: Torment and KotOR II are my personal examples, as longtime readers were no doubt expecting–which I think do elicit an emotional response from the player so strong that the player is compelled to make a certain choice each time. At least, I am.  This is not due to unbalanced “gameplay bonuses”, but because of genuine feeling about something in the game’s story. In this respect, such games act almost as a kind of self-test, revealing something to the players about themselves. This, in turn, may lead to the player examining their own beliefs.

I am not sure that this is possible with any other medium. You might have your views on something changed by reading a novel that makes some point, but it seems more likely it will impact your view of the world around you–a very important thing, of course–but because reading a novel is rarely a test of its reader’s ability (unless it is a very bad novel) it is hard to feel the sense of personal involvement. Doubly so if the novel is trying to persuade its readers of something they are not inclined to believe.

I am not, by the way, attempting to claim that games are superior to novels or movies or anything like that. They are merely different forms, each with pros and cons.

*There are undoubtedly cases where people’s minds have been changed by works of fiction, but I still believe these are not that common, especially regarding political or religious issues. Feel free to chime with any examples of it you may have, however.

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I’ve been hearing a lot of talk about this new Bethesda game The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim. It’s been getting quite a bit of hype, but I just cannot get interested enough in the setting to buy it.

I have just never liked the “sword and sorcery”, medieval setting. Not just in video games, but in movies and books as well. I’m one of the few people I know who thought the Lord of the Rings movies were boring. Not because of length, but because the setting is not interesting to me. I also tried to read the books, and I don’t think I made it past chapter one of book one.

I’m sure there are good stories to be told in this setting, and probably some I would really enjoy. (In fact, I did kind of like the games The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time and  Neverwinter Nights 2: Mask of the Betrayer, but I can tell I liked them in spite of the setting) But in general, I can’t make myself care long enough to discover them.

Anyone else feel this way about the fantasy genre, or indeed about any other fictional setting?

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Via Hacker News comes a fascinating article by Tim Rogers on the decline of video games. It’s quite disturbing.

The closest thing I’ve played to one of these “social games” was Animal Crossing, which was quite enjoyable in its way, but after playing it regularly for about a year, I’d had the experience and have never since felt a desire to play a game that simulated doing everyday activities.

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One of the greatest writers and game designers of our day, Chris Avellone, has often said that even his best stories aren’t as good as the stories which players make for themselves just playing his video games. As he himself put it in an interview with Iron Tower Studio:

“[A]s a narrative designer, I can’t compete a player’s story about how their dwarf fighter with 3 hit points exploited a crack in the canyon terrain and the limited range of motion of orcish axes to lure 20 orcs to their death one by one. Simple, but that’s a legend being made right there.” 

I’m not sure that this is always true; as Avellone’s stories are, to me, some of the best I’ve ever seen in any medium. But it’s probably true for most video games.

However, as I was thinking about this post some more, it occurred to me that audience experience might be more vital to a work than people realize, even in media like books and films. Obviously, such passive forms don’t offer the same opportunities as games, but there is still room for spontaneous occurrences in the audience’s experience.

Let me give an example of something that happened to me once that illustrates what I mean. I was listening (with headphones) to an audiobook of some horror novel. I was getting to a suspenseful point in the narrative when I became conscious of an odd sound, barely discernible, in the background. I thought it might be my imagination, so I kept listening to the story.

The sound gradually built just as the story began getting really ominous, eventually becoming an outright roar, until I became certain it was not merely my imagination. A moment later, I realized it was also not a sound effect in the book. At this same moment, the narrator of the story announced the arrival of the monster.
Simultaneously, I removed my headphones and realize that this roar I’d been hearing was… merely an aircraft flying over my dwelling.

This is a minor incident, and it took only about 30 seconds to occur, but it worked with the story well enough to dramatically increase the effectiveness of the scene I was listening to. And it was something that neither the novel’s author, nor the audiobook people had any control over.

True, they could have put in some sound effect to achieve the same effect, but it’s hard to create the same effect with something deliberately planned as opposed to something spontaneous. Even if you succeeded, it would only work the first time somebody listens to it.

I’ve written before about reading books and watching films at particular times of year, and under particular weather conditions. Perhaps this is another important element in the horror genre: getting the external conditions right to allow for spontaneously scary experiences. 

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I often write on this blog about what makes a good scary story. However, it occurs to me that part of the problem the genre faces is that horror, at least, that brand of horror which I prefer, derives from the unknown and the unexpected. And when you take in a work that you know and expect to be frightening, you will expect to be frightened, which makes actually being frightened less likely.

One way around this, of course, is to disguise the horror. Place it within the context of another sort of story. This mixing of genres is quite common nowadays, and that’s a good thing for this purpose. As I’ve said in the past, two of scariest things I’ve seen in video games are Ravenholm in Half-Life 2 and the cemetery in Jade Empire, neither of which are actually “horror” games.

Another way is to begin the story by using familiar tropes of the horror genre, so that the audience expects a conventional horror story, and then switching things up somehow so that the frightening part comes from a wholly unexpected direction. But this is easy to say, and very hard to accomplish.

The last solution I can see is to take the audience expectation of horror and run with it. By that I mean use the sense of inevitability about it to your advantage in heightening the horror. This might be why the film The Omen works so well. The scary thing about it is that the events of the film have already been prophesied, and sense of inescapable doom weighs upon everything.

(This film also does a good job messing with the viewer’s expectations. For instance, there is one character whose death is foretold early on in the film. During the film’s second half, this character is several times put in obviously contrived, dangerous situations–e.g. wandering alone into deserted catacombs–and yet he survives them, defying audience expectations.)

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With its last two DLC packs releasing today, it seems that this is a good time for me to reflect on Bethesda and Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas. 

I have already said I liked the core game after its release last year, but the four downloadable add-ons really push it to another level. The dark, intense Dead Money and the hilarious Old World Blues are the best, but all four are excellent additions to the game, and these add-ons seemed to require a re-evaluation of the game. Once you factor them in, the quality of the game goes up dramatically. For instance, the disappointment I felt over its lack of deep dialogues disappeared completely after Dead Money.

Having said that, it still has some issues. The story, while a huge improvement over Fallout 3‘s, still seemed a little lacking. There isn’t really any “theme” to New Vegas, as far as I can tell; and the add-ons, while all individually good, are all so different from one another they almost don’t really feel like the same game, although valiant efforts were made to tie them all together.

It’s also true that the game has its share of glitches, but I felt it wasn’t too bad when the size of the world Obsidian created is taken into account. Overall, these flaws aside, it’s one of the best games to be released in years, and I have to say it was almost everything I hoped for.