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So, Star Wars fans everywhere are outraged over this video:

The fact that it started getting publicity around April Fools’ Day makes me wonder, but it seems like it’s genuine.

Well, what else are you supposed to do with the Kinect? They already have some kind of lightsaber minigame in it, so they had to throw in something else for filler.

I also seem to remember that in the intro to one of the Rogue Squadron games (I forget which one) there was a brief sequence of the Star wars characters dancing a disco. Nobody complained about that. And for my money, the elaborate dance sequences in Return of the Jedi pose a far bigger threat to the integrity of Star Wars as a space opera than this does.

Look: Star Wars is a whole mythos. It’s a fantasy universe, and as such it is only to be expected that laughable and ridiculous ideas occur in that universe as well as serious and powerful ones. It’s that way in the real universe, and so it might as well be in any fake universe. It doesn’t ruin the movies to have a video game where Han Solo dances, anymore than Rosencrantz and Guildenstern ruins Hamlet.

Also, it’s only a movie series, after all. If it were ruined, the sun would still come up tomorrow.

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I keep hearing the words “Hunger Games” being bandied about. I see signs with the words “Hunger Games” plastered on them. People keep making references to “the Hunger Games”. I believe there is even a blog on the front page of WordPress that has something to do with the “Hunger Games” on it. I never really paid enough attention to figure out what they were about or why I should care.

And then I read Thingy talking about “The Hunger Games” on her blog, and so I decided it was time to find out about them. I whisked myself to Wikipedia forthwith, and commenced to read. So, The Hunger Games is a series of books for young adults, which, like all YA books nowadays, has been adapted into a movie, which comes out tomorrow.

I have to admit, just reading the synopsis made me a little bored. “Post-apocalyptic America…dystopian totalitarian government… sacrifices by lottery…” It all seemed tired to me. As Thingy noted, the “deadly lottery” aspect of the story sounds a lot like “The Lottery” by Shirley Jackson. (Full disclosure: I only know about that story because it’s the model for Vault 11 in Fallout: New Vegas… another post-apocalyptic tale.)

But then,as Zaphodb2002 commented on this post: “It is more about how the story is told, not necessarily what the story is about.” So, just because it’s got a lot of familiar trappings doesn’t mean it’s not an interesting book. I’m willing to give it the benefit of the doubt.

I wonder why the post-apocalyptic idea is so popular. I guess because it gives the author a “clean slate” to build the kind of world s/he wants. And maybe because it lets you show familiar settings in a state of destruction, and that’s pretty dramatic. But it certainly seems like the post-apocalyptic genre is popular with audiences these days. I wonder why.

I’m not an expert on the genre, but I don’t think it was always thus. It seems to me that fiction that dealt with “the end of the world as we know it” used to be just plain apocalyptic–e.g. Dr. Strangelove, where the end of the movie is the nuclear annihilation. I wonder what the change signifies.

And another thing: is it true that one of two things almost always happens with the post-apocalypse: either there is no government, no law and order, and humanity is reduced to fighting gang-warfare style, or else there is a tyrannical, all-powerful government controlling the wasteland. Or is that just my impression?

As long as we’re on the subject, how is this related to another phenomenon both Thingy and Ferrerman have addressed lately: “preppers”? That is, people preparing for what they believe to be the imminent apocalypse. Are they fans of post-apocalyptic fiction? If so, since they all seem to be going the “gang warfare” camp, where’s the sign-up sheet for the “tyrannical government” camp? I bet the first 50 people in get cushy positions in the Thought Police or something.

Anyway… how depressing. Perhaps Tom Lehrer can make us feel better:

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I was thinking of watching the movie Ryan’s Daughter, since it’s St. Patrick’s Day and the movie is set in Ireland. And I usually like David Lean films. But I was reading some reviews of it, and it seems like a lot of people feel it has beautiful cinematography and a gorgeous location, but the story itself is weak. I don’t know if I’ll see it or not, but it did set me thinking about something, especially with this post still on my mind.

To me, for a movie or video game to be art, it has to do more than just look good; it has to have a good story and good characters. I’ve always taken this for granted in my posts on the subject, but I’ve lately realized that some people may not feel the same way. I mean, some people will argue that games like Rage or BioShock are art based on their settings alone. And I can’t argue that both Rage‘s wasteland and BioShock‘s art deco undersea city are beautiful creations.

It’s just that, those game aren’t just about looking at the pretty setting. They also have stories and characters, and I found both lacking in these games. Especially Rage. BioShock definitely had some interesting ideas, but ultimately it just felt forced and too self-consciously weird to me. (That said, I’d still qualify BioShock as art for at least trying, just not great art. Rage is right out.) If you make a game whose art lies solely in its visuals, make a game about going around and looking at all the pretty stuff. Kind of like Pilotwings 64.

Talking of David Lean, consider his movie Lawrence of Arabia. Does it have awesome visuals? Yes, it certainly does. However, without Robert Bolt and Michael Wilson’s script, and the powerful performances by all the actors, it wouldn’t be a great movie. Cool to watch for the “match/sunrise” scene and the scene where Omar Sharif rides up out of the desert, but not a great movie. I’m not passing judgement until I see it, but some reviews make it sound like that’s exactly what happened with Ryan’s Daughter.

Now, of course, Lawrence would also be a lesser film if it had the same script and acting, but shot in black-and-white on one of those laughable “desert” sets that you sometimes see in old Westerns. But still, I think that people sometimes overstress the superficial qualities. Obviously, just having better visuals doesn’t make a film better. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin is not superior to Casablanca, even though the former is in color and the latter in black-and-white.

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I have said over and over on this blog that I believe video games are art, and I have posted examples to back up my case. I am quite adamant about this, and I believe that anyone who examines my arguments will find I am right.

However, I will say that I can understand how the non-gamer, and even perhaps some gamers who have never happened upon artistically ambitious games, would not immediately see this. That’s not their fault.

For instance, the revolutionary and widely acclaimed First-Person Shooter (it’s easy for a gamer to forget, but that term alone must appall the layman) Doom was made by id Software in 1993. It is one of the most famous games ever. And what is its plot like? It is as follows: demons teleport into a military base and kill everyone except the player’s character, who must fight through legions of demons and use the teleporter to get back to the demons’ own world and defeat them.

In 1996, id Software released Quake, another step forward in the FPS genre. Its plot is as follows: monsters teleport into a military base and kill everyone except the player’s character, who must fight through legions of monsters and use the teleporter to get back to the monsters’ own world and defeat them.

In 1998, Valve released Half-Life, another game hailed as a massive advancement for the genre, and widely considered one of the greatest games ever made. Its plot is as follows: aliens teleport into a research facility and kill almost everyone, but the player’s character must fight his way through legions of aliens and soldiers and use the teleporter to get back to the aliens’ own world and defeat them.

Based on this evidence, the non-gamer would be quite justified in concluding that video games are nothing more than an absurd diversion for people with little imagination who like to pretend to run around and shoot stuff. And the natural reaction to this could be anything from disinterest to outright horror, but definitely not “this is the stuff of great Art.” And this hypothesis would be further justified on finding out that Doom, Quake and Half-Life all spawned many sequels. And wait till the non-gamer got word of Halo or, God forbid, Duke Nukem!

Of course, this assessment is incorrect, but so many games, especially the really popular ones, are like this that it’s easy to see why someone couldn’t be blamed for coming to the “video games are not art” conclusion. They can be dissuaded by either showing them one of the few artistically meaningful games or by pointing out that the vast majority of movies, books, songs, paintings and so on are also nothing to write home about. Only the best of the best make any medium worthwhile.

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I still haven’t played Mass Effect 3, but I’m going to write just a bit more about some issues related to it. Mostly though, it’s about this video that Eric Schwarz at Critical Missive linked to. You’ll have to watch the video before reading this post. It has some NSFW stuff in it, so be warned.

The guy makes some good points in the video, but he undercuts his point stupidly by making irrelevant personal criticisms of Jennifer Hepler. But what I want to talk about is his comments on Hepler’s idea of allowing players to skip combat sequences to hear more of the story. The narrator of the video says:

Hepler’s suggestion would lead to game design where no story could be present in the gameplay, and no gameplay could be present in the story. (He says this around the 5:10 mark)

Well, that would be a bad thing, yes. However, I’m not convinced that it would automatically lead to that, only that it could lead to that in the hands of lazy designers.

Ideally, yes; gameplay should be integrated with story. The best narrative games make everything relate to the central theme of the story. However, there’s a downside: if the gameplay is not easy, people who would appreciate the story can’t experience it. I know people who would love the story in Alpha Protocol, but who just can’t handle the game’s fighting sections. So, they can’t play it. It’s good to be able to accommodate people like that.

The other point I’d like to make is that, towards the end of the video, he seems to imply that Hepler, along with the malign influence of EA, is responsible for all the awful romance sub-plots in BioWare games. This is not the case. I know this because BioWare romances have always been pretty bad, dating back at least as far as Carth Onasi in KotOR.

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I haven’t played Mass Effect 3 yet. I don’t even own it. I don’t know what’s gotten into me. Maybe I just don’t want the series to end, or maybe it’s something else.

In any case, I have been reading some reviews of it and I came across this Forbes article by Erik Kain. He’s addressing why there was a massive avalanche of negative user reviews for ME 3 on Metacritic, many appearing within hours of the its release. Kain initially attributed this onslaught to the fact that there are same-sex romance sub-plots in the game, and that this enraged many. However, he did sort of refine that view in his subsequent post.

Kain also links to a post over on the BioWare forums by a user called “Bastal” criticizing BioWare’s Dragon Age II. You can read his complaint in full, but the gist of it is this: BioWare wasted too many resources on the same-sex romance in DA II, even though–according to Bastal’s calculations–only about 5% of gamers are gay. He argued that since the majority of gamers are straight men, they should have designed the game to cater more their interest.

I’m probably a pretty bad person to comment on this, as I have not played either Mass Effect 3 or Dragon Age II. However, there are a few comments I can make. First, on Kain’s theory, I suspect his later conclusion is right: somebody somewhere has decided it would be amusing to bomb Mass Effect 3 on Metacritic. Who knows why? Who, frankly, cares why? The vast majority of user reviews on Metacritic are worthless. I mean, even though it’s on a scale of 0-10, the numbers 2 through 8 seem to show up far less than 0, 1, 9 and 10 in reviews of most games. Most users seem to have no clue how to do anything other than love or hate a given game. To me, it looks like the trolls were just faster than usual on this one.

On to “Bastal”s point about Dragon Age II. I understood that it was a choice which romance sub-plot you see in that game. Am I wrong? He complains that they “neglected the straight male gamer”, but I just can’t imagine that as being the problem. Like I said, I haven’t played DA II, but I can imagine that BioWare failed to come up with any compelling characters and romances in it. But that doesn’t follow from them trying to appeal to non-straight, non-male gamers. Obsidian’s Fallout: New Vegas has, shall we say, something for everyone; and it never detracted from the experience. You could play it how you wanted to play it.

Moreover, after ME 2, it’s hard for me to imagine BioWare ignoring the straight male. If you played the game, there is a scene involving Miranda Lawson that seems to dispel that notion quite thoroughly. You know the one I mean. Also, the Asari are an entire species of alien pretty much designed by and for straight men. And if BioWare did move away from that in DA II, well, who can blame them? They have one product, ME 2, designed for the straight-male gamer and one product, DA II, designed for others.

Anyway, the whole damn thing is sort of ridiculous, and makes gamers look like a bunch of immature jerks.

Well, maybe I’ll have to play this thing now. I can say it’s part of my researches into human psychology and sociology. “I’m Commander Shepard, and this is my favorite sociological issue on the Citadel.”

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“What can change the nature of a man?” is the central question in Planescape: Torment, Black Isle’s philosophical 1999 RPG. Well, among other things, playing video games. Studies indicate that video games can be good for players, reports a WSJ article:

A growing body of university research suggests that gaming improves creativity, decision-making and perception. The specific benefits are wide ranging, from improved hand-eye coordination in surgeons to vision changes that boost night driving ability.

Interesting. The research also finds that there are negative effects to playing violent games, as well. That doesn’t surprise me, but you have to weigh the pros and cons, which I think ultimately is something only the individual players can do.

However, I’m kind of disappointed at the kind of benefits they’re looking for in games. It’s well and good that they find they support better hand/eye coordination and such, but my contention has always been that the best games carry intellectual benefits; similar to great literature, there can be a very sophisticated emotional response to games that improves the player’s mind.

Still, it’s a bit of good news.

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Eric at Critical Missive has another excellent article,  this one about the importance of mystery in video games. He makes some great observations, even if he does have a rather different opinion of Half-Life 2 than I do.

I guess the difference is that I care less about mystery in gameplay than I do about mystery in story and character development. And this is one of the many reasons I consider Obsidian’s Knights of the Old Republic II to be the best game I’ve ever played. (Yes, I know loyal readers have heard this one before, so you can skip the following paragraph if you want to.)

If you read about KotOR II at all, you’ll see a lot of complaining that it’s “incomplete”. And it is–there was a lot of cut-content. And a lot of it was good content. But, as Zez-Kai Ell would say, “perhaps that is for the best”. The truth is, from the minute I woke up on Peragus to the very end, there’s always a lot of mystery in the game about who is doing what and why. It’s all deeply rooted in characters’ motivations, and I believe you can figure most of it out if you think it through, but it’s very mysterious. The answers are there, but the player has to piece them together; they aren’t spelled out. A lot of the cut content, once restored, just makes things too obvious, and introduces unnecessary elements. Good, but unnecessary.

Now, it’s true that the gameplay–fighting, walking around, swoop racing etc.–is not very mysterious in KotOR II. But that’s not what I personally played the game for.  What I look for is adequate, enjoyable gameplay that doesn’t actively get in the way of hearing the story.

There are other games that do give a great sense of narrative mystery–Planescape: Torment and Deus Ex are classic examples–but for the most part, games are focused on the playing and not the storytelling. Which makes sense, since they are still games and not just movies. But ultimately, the best games need to give you a sense of interest in finding out about the world you’re in, and making you want to do stuff in it. And mystery is a big part of that–if you know everything about a game, you don’t need to play it.

The bottom line is that Eric’s article is an excellent analysis of what’s wrong with games these days. The only thing I don’t get is why he see Half-Life 2 as an exception, not a proof. I mean to say, what Eric writes about Crysis 2 to show it as inferior to HL 2:

[M]uch of the game revolves around meticulously-animated set pieces and taking in beautiful vistas.  The shooting itself is fun enough, but the enemies you fight don’t really develop beyond the few basic types and the odd boss battle, and the weapons never stray beyond the ordinary.

…could pretty much be said of HL 2, in my opinion. (Although HL 2’s gravity gun was pretty cool.) But I don’t want this to turn into an argument over which is better. His larger point is totally correct, and his article is worth reading for any gamer.

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It is commonplace to speak of ours as a culture built on “instant gratification”. It is said today’s young people are used to instantly accessing whatever they want through the miracle of the internet, and that such ease of access makes us soft, greedy, and demanding. “Life, if it would be great, is hard” said the philosopher Spengler. As a corollary, this easy access to entertainment and information makes our lives petty and little.

Perhaps this is so, despite how clichéd it sounds. I would not want to live in any other period in the history of the world, but perhaps there is something in this theory nonetheless. If so, then it is something of a boon, in this day and age, to be able to experience the sensation of waiting, of anticipating our entertainment. To be able to await something and not know when it will be done, and be pleasantly surprised upon its completion—as opposed to merely having our expectations met when a date known well in advance arrives.

I am speaking, of course, about the experience of being a fan of Ross Scott’s darkly comic Machinima series Freeman’s Mind. Perhaps it is a series that can only be fully appreciated by a gamer, but even non-game playing people I know have shared my enjoyment of Mr. Scott’s reinterpretation of Half-Life’s taciturn physicist as a short-tempered, paranoid “neurotic individual”, whose questionable sanity is further eroded by his experiences in the absurd Black Mesa complex.

It is a difficult balance that Freeman’s Mind achieves—to be at once a criticism of Half-Life and an appreciation of it. For though Scott-as-Freeman routinely points out the oddities of the facility in which he is trapped, such as massive fans that can only be turned on or off by dodging the fan’s deadly blades, it is nonetheless done so well that it does not detract from the game at all. It mocks the game, yet it never veers into being someone just whining about the level design.

In a way, Scott’s Freeman is even more of an everyman than Valve’s silent protagonist. For he gives voice to what all of us gamers feel as we play Half-Life, or really almost any game of the sort, since such games are, after all, worlds designed to frustrate us. When Scott’s Freeman gives voice to his beliefs of the world being out to destroy him, he really is speaking the truth, for the whole place really does exist just to make him—in reality, the player–suffer.

Not that his portrayal is just an everyman figure. If I could be half as witty about a game I was playing as Scott is, I could entertain myself with just one game for years. Obviously, the Freeman of Freeman’s Mind is a distinct character, with recognizable traits and even—and this is one of the under-appreciated elements of the series—a bit of development. We shall know more when the series is concluded, but as of now the character has already undergone a noticeable personality change.

One of the subtleties of the series is that, in the beginning, Scott’s Freeman isn’t a complete jerk. He’s an arrogant, wise-cracking slacker, to be sure, but when one of the scientists is clinging desperately to a ledge in Episode 5, Freeman does offer him assistance—in vain, of course. It would have been easier, for some quick laughs, to have him mock the unfortunate NPC or something, but it would have cheapened the character long-term.

As a comic work, Freeman’s Mind is successful both as a piece of funny characterization and witty criticism. I suppose the closest parallel is Mystery Science Theater 3000 or something of that sort. But Freeman’s Mind is more closely integrated with the original work than a simple parody. And moreover, because Half-Life is a video game, there is a certain degree of choice in how its creator approaches each part of it, and wondering what choices he will make in future episodes is part of the appeal.

I sometimes wonder what Roger Ebert, who famously claimed that video games can’t be art, would make of Freeman’s Mind. Certainly, the non-gamer I have watched it with thinks it is immensely funny, while also commenting that the game itself looks unbearably dull. It bridges the gap between “game” and “movie” in a way that most Machinima productions I have seen don’t, though I admit I am not a connoisseur of the form.

Freeman’s Mind is part character-driven comedy, part video game criticism and part player’s guide. Most people will probably only really notice the first part, but even that by itself is more than adequate for a good gaming experience. If nothing else, it is the funniest action series I’ve seen in years.

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Apparently, gamers have been “protesting” to demand more information on the status of Half-Life 3, hoping that Valve will tell them something. Personally, although I probably will end up playing Half-Life 3, I can’t quite understand why some people are so desperate for it. Because I, apparently alone of all humanity, didn’t think Half-Life 2 was that great. Call me “anticitizen one”.

I have played it yet again to be sure, and I have come to the same conclusion I always do: Half-Life 2 is a good game, but it is not the wonderful masterpiece it is made out to be. In terms of actual gameplay and level design, it is quite flawed, in my opinion.

Half-Life 2‘s level design suffers from being too lengthy, too tedious, and too hostile to the game mechanics. The levels frequently go on well after they have worn out their welcome. Moreover, they are not all that great to begin with. For example, “Highway 17” goes on far longer than it should, and involves the player needlessly in a repetitive series of roadblocks. And if I have to use the gravity gun to take the power cord from another shield, I’ll go mad.

Moreover, this tediousness is heightened by the fact that the scenery, while very beautiful, is shown for so long that it becomes boring. There are shockingly many dull little farmhouses and tunnels scattered throughout the land, and after the first three hours, they lose their charm.

All this, however, was not nearly as repetitive as another problem which crops up again and again, and which  befalls even the better-paced HL 2: Episodes  1& 2: the damnable enemy dropships and striders. These things serve much the same function as helicopters do in “James Bond” films; which is to provide the hero an opportunity to prove himself against a seemingly overwhelming foe. And fortunately, they have the terrible habit of only appearing when a miraculously infinite supply of missiles is lurking within reach. One or two instances of this would have been fun, 10 or so is predictable and tedious.

But these flaws might easily be overcome; for they are hardly unique to HL. No, where Half-Life falls distinctly below average is its needlessly confusing and frustrating layouts. Why, for example, is it necessary to leap about on jury-rigged automobiles to move about in Ravenholm? Why is it necessary to leap across chasms on to ladders? Why does poor Dr. Freeman always have to trudge up confusing flights of stairs which lead to rooms with nothing but a radio and a monster, when all along the exit was at the other end of the hall?

Why, in other words, is it thought to have been a good idea to introduce a ridiculous amount of platform navigating into a genre that is singularly ill-suited for it? Imagine trying to play Super Mario 64 in first-person mode, and you will see why this is a bad idea. If a platformer is to succeed, you must be able to see your character, or else you have no idea where things are.

All this adds up to make navigating the beautiful, rich world of Half-Life 2 amazingly frustrating. Now, understand that in many, many respects, including those respects which I value most highly in video games, Half-Life as a series is vastly superior tomost shooters. The characters are all more interesting than those typically found in the genre. (Look at HL‘s Breen vs. Doom 3‘s Dr. Betruger, for example.) The graphics in Half-Life 2 and its sequels are gorgeous. The writing in Half-Life 2, while not excellent, at least feels like it wasn’t thrown together at the last minute. In every way except actual gameplay, Half-Life 2 cleans many an FPS’s clock. But if you asked me which I’d actually want to play, I would sign on for another run through a more typical FPS like Doom 3 or Quake 4 before Half-Life 2.

Well, that’s my opinion. Feel free to flame me.