Borut
So after playing SCMRPG! and enjoying playing & reviewing that (well, enjoying the reflection that the game inspires while playing, obviously not a lot of “fun” was necessarily had), I went looking through Manifesto’s and Game Tunnel’s lists of games for something that might be similarly thought provoking.
Wow, was that ever depressing… I probably spent about an hour wading through all the clones – Diablo clones, space shooters, match-3’s, etc. The best or most intriguing games were the very polished genre entries, which had enough of their own style and well-thought out perspectives on established genre gameplay (so far all I downloaded was Mr. Robot, and I know I still need to get to Defcon). Still, not quiter what I’m looking to play at the moment.
Not a whole lot out there to satisfy this particular gaming fix – something that makes me think (think-think, and not strategize, I mean), and is something I can play for a half hour to an hour just once or more than once, depending on how compelling it is). I did remember reading about Peacemaker (you play either the Israeli prime minister or Palestinian president). The free demo only allows 8 turns so i just went ahead and bought it.
So I was reading my friend Isaac’s blog, his links specifically, when I came across his link to me:
“I have no idea why Borut chose the name ‘Plush Apocalypse’ for his site. I’m still waiting for him to explain.”
Which made me laugh out loud for some reason. It still does, actually.
That’s because I know I have a tendency towards obtuse titles for my own work – there’s a true art in coming up with a title, one that makes a person intrigued enough, but still unsure of what it might contain, that they open it up (or click & read, in this case). And I don’t necessarily know that I’ve mastered that art yet, so maybe I should explain a little.
First, I’ll admit I’m somewhat fascinated with tales of the end of the world – maybe a bit inevitable for any of us born in the shadow of a millenium, I suppose. We see stories about the end of the world all the time. Especially in video games (you’re also usually an orphan, magically healed by green herbs, and the ultimate evil threatening the world always shapeshifts into a much larger form just as you think it’s done for, but I digress).
There’s many versions of this sort of tale. There’s the cautioning of the evils of “Science!” (pretty much any story where something mutated into something bigger, uglier and, on average, oozier). There’s the warning of controlling our aggressive tendencies (as in Dr. Strangelove). Or our rampant abuse of the planet’s natural resources (ala The Road Warrior). And the zombies, can’t forget the zombies.
But one version of end of the world never seems to be covered much… the one where we basically grow fat and stupid saturating ourselves in meaningless diversions and luxuries – losing all sense of priorities, value, and meaning by slow, accidental degradation, causing many more dire, drastic, and horrifying consequences. To be fair, Mike Judge does sort of cover that in Idiocracy. And occasionally the zombies serve as a metaphor for this too (as in Shaun of the Dead, but not as in Night of the Living Dead, where they’re a metaphor for communism… Or was that Invasion of the Body Snatchers? Er, maybe both).
So what’s the point, other than maybe being a little depressing, and talking about zombies? Well, today, one of the lead stories on Yahoo covered what Paris Hilton would experience going to jail. The Iraq War? What the fuck’s that? Genocide in Darfur? Huh? Who’s winning on American Idol, that’s what I want to know. Or more accurately, that’s what I’m going to be told, regardless of what I want to know.
And in games, it’s the same thing. Games are “fun”. They can’t show you anything outside of that one tiny piece of the entire spectrum of the human condition. They certainly can’t have any meaningful message or can’t be used as a vehicle, directly or via analogy, to point out societal ills. We’d rather ooh and ahh over a controller that can be waved around in the air like a tennis racket, magic wand, or light saber, than discuss games that do that.
TV’s Angel tells perhaps my favorite apocalyptic tale, where the end of the world spans a 1000 year battle of good vs. evil. The war can never really be won, but if you don’t fight, it will assuredly be lost. And this version of the end of the world is much the same.
The whole reason I got into games was to be able to make games that talked about these kinds of things. When I was a little kid, spellbound by the games I was playing, I knew their persuasive power even then. Meanwhile I was also spellbound by stuff like the original Star Trek, and lots more science fiction of the time, which covered the whole gamut of social problems in various guises. And the problems of today, this disconnect between things like the horrors we support via our elected officials, and the things we actually choose to spend our time and mental energy on, it’s something that desperately needs discussion. My chosen medium of expression is games, which means I think a lot about discussing these problems in that form.
So, welcome to The Plush Apocalypse.
Every time I hear/read a designer talk about “abdicating authorship” to players, a little part of me dies inside.
So Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar doesn’t allow gay or certain interspecies marriage. Brenda Brathwaite argues against this design choice:
“Players are still creating their own experience. In a video game, it’s about abdicating authorship and letting a player explore a world.”
What?! The decision to include gay dwarf marriage (dwarven gay marriage?) is just as much an authorial choice as the decision to not include it. How about we try to understand what authorship means in our medium before we abdicate it?
(Not to mention, don’t dwarven women have beards? Who the hell can tell if they’re not gay male dwarves?)
The game industry has lots of problems with vocabulary – not just with the term gameplay (that one’s more useful when describe different sets of mechanics within a game – open world gameplay, for example. And against his point, you do actually say a book is a good read).
But there are oh so many more…
Next gen, for starters – now according to every publisher, and pretty much everyone else, the next generation of consoles has started. Can we just stop using this as a freaking meaningless marketing term? “This is game is next gen” is completely devoid of any actual meaning at this point, if you look at the spectrum of games that have called themselves that. If any game has to proclaim that about itself, it’s quite apparently not. It’s like when a person actually calls themselves a “straight shooter”. They’re not. The fact that they have to sell this idea to anyone is the strongest case against it. By it’s very nature, it’s supposed to be obvious. As an industry we’re always trying to push boundaries and innovate in various ways (maybe not always good ones), but to slap such a overused term, laden with preconceptions, on that process does nothing to help it along.
“Casual” vs. “hardcore” – By now the notion that the term “casual” gamers actually applies to any specific type of demographic should be pretty ridiculous. We attempt to distinguish games with these terms by labeling by their supposed market, which is has got to strike someone else as being silly. We really want to label them by form. Every medium has short and long form works, and there’s typically different terms for them (so people aren’t so stupid, as the game industry is, to compare them). The short story, novella, novel. A short and a feature. You get the idea.
This one came up at work as a pet peeve yesterday – fun factor. That should be self explanatory.
But most important is the lack of any proper verb. Ok, a game designer designs, but what kind of watered down verb is that? A writer writes, a director shows, meanwhile you use the same term to describe picking the color to paint your living room wall, changing the font size on this web page, or making a game. Everybody’s a designer these days. Plus there’s less conveyance in that term of the notion of making a work for someone else. You write, someone reads. You show something to someone, naturally. You design something… for someone? Meh.
Pretty much every review I’ve read about S.T.A.L.K.E.R. goes something like this: “There are so many terrible things about this game, bugs, bad framerate, choppy animations, problems on Vista, unpolished, blah blah blah. But you should still play it because it’s cool and has a lot of ambience.”
These reviews say more about the crappy state of game criticism than the game itself, really. They simply fail to describe what makes the game compelling. My other complaint about most of the reviews of this game is that they don’t mention the Tarkovsky movie or the book by the Strugatsky’s.
The game is a milestone (at least for me). But not the milestone you might expect. Yeah, it combines exploratory open world mechanics with an RPG in FPS form in a post apocalyptic world, but The Elder Scrolls series satisfies most of those tags (sans post-apocalyptic, until Fallout 3 of course)…