Gamer Culture

They were discussing how many trophies they had earned in the new Super Smash Bros. game for the 3DS. Four hundred and eight, one said. Another chimed in with the rather robust number of six hundred and nineteen. Not sure how many I have over here…I don’t really remember where to go to find out, but I know it’s probably in the double digits. It’s not like these people have had it longer than me, I got it the first day it came out.

I really haven’t looked at my trophy count in the game and it seems like I go days at a time without playing. Don’t get me wrong, the game is perfect other than being on a very hard to hold and control system. I love it, really.

But I just don’t play games like I used to. I don’t feel like sitting down with the game for hours on end and even when I do it’s because there’s a story there and I have gotten really invested in it. My play through of Bioshock: Infinite kind of brought that out in me as did Last of Us. But these games are different than the kind of thing where you’re just in direct competition or you’re just running around on senseless missions.

I don’t think I’ve self identified as a gamer in years. I play games, sure. But I don’t really hang onto the whole medium the way others that I know do. When we started to see what is largely seen as gamer subculture arise with it’s own clothing, music and food I stayed away from that stuff. I’ve never been that enamored with Mountain Dew and besides mc chris nerdcore kind of wore on me. I just…never wanted to be seen as that person because I didn’t really identify with the other people that I saw in that group. Hell, I’ve never been one to identify with most groups.

And if you’re in the group that’s okay. I feel like at one point I was in there too…it’s just that I don’t fit anymore and what all of this means has changed.

Destiny

I guess this was the inevitable place for gaming to end up. We should have seen the signs, starting all the way back with Halo.

Multiplayer seems to have become all that matters. We saw people raving over Titanfall earlier this year and now we have Destiny. The spiritual successor to the “Game of the Moment” award that was once held by Titanfall.

These online only games for console seem to be the kind of thing we railed against when the X-Box One tried to make their whole system online only. What happened to multiplayer being a feature and not the whole fucking game.

I don’t know about others, but I play games for story. I play games so that I can get wrapped up in something and not be forced to interact with the jackasses that I know some other gamers are. I don’t understand when it became a point of complaint when a game doesn’t shoehorn a multiplayer in (like people did with Bioshock Infinite, using that as a complaint in a game that had a wonderfully crafted story).

Now, I have only watched the game being played. But it seems like every other first person shooter that takes place in a distance future that I’ve seen. The opening story seems like it might be interesting, but I read the rest of it and it seems to go completely to shit. It’s really hard to imagine a story where you could feel like your character was important when you’re one of thousands taking part in it. Either it’s cutting the other players out or it’s making you another brick in the wall that’s holding back the tide.

I don’t know when gamers will stop falling for the E3 eye candy. When I said that Watchdogs looked like a GTA clone, people claimed it wasn’t. Then it totally was. Titanfall pretty much showed how much Microsoft shit the bed because it still didn’t net them the sales they wanted and it was predictable because the game basically had nothing resembling a point besides online. Now we have this game that’s doing a very similar thing and people are lining up to shell out money, and I get there’s not much else out, but they’re also acting like what they’re playing is the most amazing thing ever.

On Cumia

In the middle of a lot, but according to a post that I came across on Jezebel, Anthony Cumia should have totally been fired because he’s a huge racist. Quoting him here for clarity:

“When you watch any of the footage of any of the Apollo programs over the years and you look at the control room of mission control, what do you see? Do you see diversity there? Honestly, let’s be honest. You’re seeing white males smoking cigarettes, drinking coffee at the console and putting people on the moon. How is this a horrible thing? How is this something to look at and say, ‘We need to change this by injecting people that do not pay attention to the laws of this country, do not assimilate to the cultures, do not work and contribute to this nation’?”

There doesn’t need to be much context given to this quote. It doesn’t really warrant much of one. Just like I talked about back when I wrote the post on the racism in Bioshock, there’s not really an easy line to draw between the excuses that people will use to justify what they think. Like the above quote by Cumia illustrates the racism and sexism of the time. Non-Caucasian men and all women were barred from holding many high level jobs. It’s not surprising that Mission control looked like it did. There was an entire institution of sexism and racism behind it.

Cumia is so far up his own ass that he doesn’t see that and that he defends his racism as a right because whites have earned it. The sad fact is this attitude is common and not all that surprising.

We Were All Buried At Sea, We Just Didn’t Know It

A little over a year ago Bioshock Infinite launched to near-universal praise. I remember when I first got the game it was around midnight after work and I had a day off. I want to say I played it until well into the next day. The game pretty much blew me off my feet and when I finally beat it about a week later I remember the ending kind of had me reeling. We don’t get many powerful story-driven games like that.

That year we luckily had one more, Last of Us, but I had more love for Bioshock and despite really enjoying both games I could pick a clear favorite.

So when they announced the DLCs (Downloadable Content) I couldn’t have been more excited. Even after playing the first one which people complained was too short I still was in love with where the story was going.

And then I beat this last DLC last night and it all came crashing down. I won’t go into spoiler territory, but I didn’t like the direction the game was taking. The creator of the game, Ken Levine, called what he was making with the second half of the DLC “a love letter to the fans.”

It felt suspiciously like trampling all over everything we loved about something.

You know that strange thing that some prequels do, especially the ones that are made years after the original, where they spend a lot of time trying to make connections to the other work and tie up loose ends that no one really asked to be tied up? There was a lot of that in Burial At Sea Part II (That’s the title of the DLC).

Imagine if Rowling were to go back to the Harry Potter series and fill in all of the little divots in the plot and connect every small minor action to some meaningful action that came before. Hermione’s bed had actually belong to Harry’s mom at Hogwarts. And a whole bunch of other little things until there were so many little things connected to other little things and big things connected to little things that it just seemed too contrived and silly?

That’s the kind of thing that I’m talking about here. I love the world of Bioshock and I was all for the story in Infinite and even the second DLC, but this one seemed contrived and over thought out all for a reason that we had explained to us in the first game.

Now the game play and the mechanics in the game are wonderful, pretty much everything about the game is perfect except for the story. Even some of the call back moments are really well done, there’s just too many of them and the ending is unfulfilling.

It’s sad that Levine is letting the games rest in this position, but he’s closed the studio down that makes Bioshock, so at there won’t be anymore games for the property made by him and his team. I wish the guy the best of luck and I hope that he does well in whatever comes from here on out. I just wish I could feel good about this ending and this game, because I really, really wanted to.

Can We Stop Pretending Award Shows Matter?

It’s getting to be that time of the year again where Hollywood and the music and video game industries pat themselves on the back for all of the hard work they’ve done breaking ground and being extremely innovative. When I was younger and much more impressionable I thought that award shows like the Video Music Awards and the like mattered and that they had any bearing on the industry. Sure there are the really memorable times when someone who really represents what should be important wins, but more often than not we’re given more of the status quo towing the line.

The video game awards are pretty much the same. 2013 was a big year for women in gaming, for instance. We had three triple A titles that were headed by women or had women in prominent and non-sexualized roles. And it’s not just that, two of the three games had an amazing story on top of it. Stories that explored human nature or causality or love (and not romantic love). These are things that are rare enough in popular media, they’re almost unheard of in video games.

But more than likely we’re not going to see anything given to those games in terms of awards because this was the year another installment of Grand Theft Auto. Despite the fact that GTA is a fun game, it hasn’t done too much innovative besides make the world it takes place in bigger and add slightly more characterization. The latter isn’t saying much for a game franchise that started by letting you pick from a group of voiceless protagonists and moved on to thinly veiled versions of gangster movie protagonists.

I enjoyed Grand Theft Auto V. But it won’t stay with me. When I beat Last of Us I felt change inside. When I beat Bioshock: Infinite I felt deeply changed and sad that it was over (oddly enough, when the DLC was out and I played it I felt like I was revisiting old friends). Characters like Joel and Ellie and Elizabeth aren’t the standard fair in games and while I don’t doubt the creative work that went into making many of the games that came out this year, I think it’s sad that it’s apparent that special games won’t stand a chance when put up against the run of the mill titles that don’t really work as hard at making a change.

There were times when GTA V could have really gone a different direction. The torture scene early in the game seemed like it was trying to set up for something profound having to do with the sanity of one of the characters and him being a bad person. All that really ended up happening was it was kind of pushed aside like a joke. The game has taken this idea that it has to be satire too far and it really seems to be wallowing in it rather than thriving in it.

I think that sales are a simply bad way to judge things like this, movies like Avatar or Twilight might sell a lot of tickets, but they don’t deserve the Oscar for best picture. Likewise, I don’t think that we should set the goal so lofty that only artsy bullshit gets to win awards. But there has to be a happy medium when it comes to these things. We can’t keep giving awards to the same studio or game company when they bring nothing new to the industry and don’t try and push the envelope in meaningful ways.

Grand Theft Auto could have tried to write a more moderately sensible female character (before you go saying all the characters are a mess, it’s not true, even in the last game Franklin is pretty normal in terms of the games). They could have tried a new setting or a new type of setting, they could have changed how missions worked. They could have made the character creation in the multi-player make any kind of Goddamn sense.

I will say this, they did a good job with the three character thing and the switching between people. There’s an attention to detail that’s significantly well done and there’s some well directed portions of the game that rival that of most gangster movies (the small town bank robbery comes to mind). But the game tends to only take the predictable risk, never true risks the way something like Spec Ops: The Line did.

We deserve an industry that really pushes to be the best in more ways. Games are the youngest medium for entertainment out there and we need to make sure they don’t fizzle out on us.

Realistic Racism?

Zero Punctuation does some of my favorite game reviews. Ben Croshaw, or Yahtzee as he is known, does an excellent job ripping into games. I don’t think I can remember a single review I’ve seen that wasn’t funny and I have seen a lot of them. A few weeks ago in his review of Bioshock Infinite he said that while the game was great that he had a problem with the villain and how he’s basically irredeemably racist in an unrealistic way. I don’t want to give too much background on this in case people haven’t played the game yet. But here’s a pretty spoiler free piece of a recording featured in the game. These are the words of the villain himself:

What exactly was the Great Emancipator emancipating the Negro from? From his daily bread. From the nobility of honest work. From wealthy patrons who sponsored them from cradle to grave. From clothing and shelter. And what have they done with their freedom? Why, go to [area of the game], and you shall find out. No animal is born free, except the white man. And it is our burden to care for the rest of creation.

When I heard this in the game it was like a kick in the nuts. I was in combat and I got so distracted I think I even died. I had to go back and listen to it again to make sure that I heard correctly.

I’m not here to gush about the game again, but the game does raise several serious topics and this is probably the biggest of them. Race plays a huge role in America to this day and to say that race doesn’t matter and that racism is dead is straight bullshit.

There are some common lies about racism we need to all get out of the way before I even go on. 1. There is no such thing as reverse racism. Any race can be racist against any other, the idea of reverse racism is in and of itself racist. If you think that your race has to be separate from ordinary racism to the point of having their own term, that’s a problem. 2. Racism still happens. I don’t know how many times I have watched people try and claim that it doesn’t on TV and in person and online. But it still happens, end of story.

The idea presented in the above quote from the game used to be the standard rationalization for slavery. This excerpt by James Oakes speaks of paternalistic reasoning behind slavery and even goes a little bit into the idea of “Christian Stewardship”. These ideas, while not prevalent today, still exist in the minds of some and there have been issues where they reared their ugly heads in back-handed ways.

An American Pastor, Pat Robinson, is super famous and known around the country for being this revered man of God. A few years back when Haiti suffered their devastating Earthquake he made a remark that this had come to fruition as punishment for their deal with the Devil.

The deal to which Pat Robinson refers is the idea that the slaves held then by the French couldn’t have revolted against their white owners and won without the aid of the Devil. Similar allegations were made about the flood in New Orleans. It’s funny that whenever mostly black, mostly poor people are suffering from natural disasters we call it the Devil. When it’s done to other people here in United States we call it God testing them.

I don’t think Ben Croshaw will ever read this little blog, but if he did I would want him to know that it may be because he’s from a country that has grown past a lot of the racist issues. Issues that still plague the States and he doesn’t realize it. This kind of racism did exist and the traces of it can be found today.

Bioshock Infinite–A Love Story

From the moment that I started Bioshock Infinite I was a little worried. I had waited for this game since it was first announced. Way back before we really knew who was in it or what the game was about I had a feeling there was a chance for it to be an amazing experience. But I knew that there was a chance I would be disappointed.

But since I beat the game in the middle of last week I haven’t been able to get over what might have been my best experience in gaming. I feel in love with the story. I feel in love with the characters, especially Elizabeth and the Lucetes. By the end of the game I didn’t want it to end and I had earnest feelings of worry over the characters.

There are rare occasions when I feel like this about book characters after following them for a long time. In rarer instances I get like that about television or movie characters. In a single video game something like this hasn’t really ever happened. Even in games where I really like the story.

I don’t want to spoil anything for those who haven’t played it, but there is a lot of things in this game that make me think that there is some hope for the game industry. The new trend in video games making hard to stomach political statements is something that I really embrace. And the gaming industry subverting it’s tropes is another thing that needs to happen more often. It’s rare to see games starring women or with women in the leading role that don’t sexualize them or make them simply MacGuffins. While Elizabeth might seem like this she’s really the center of the story. Saying anything more would actually be a spoiler.

Now that I am done I’m playing the new Tomb Raider and I have plans to get my hands on a copy of Last of Us when it comes out.

Women in Games

Sexism in video games is one of those topics that we’re not supposed to talk about. When you attempt to you’re met with anything from ignorance (“I don’t know what you’re talking about”), to acceptance (“Well it’s not a game’s job to not be sexist”), to threats of rape and whatever this is (“She needs a good dicking, good luck finding it though” – real comment from You Tube).

Some of this misogynistic abuse came to light when a video entitled Tropes versus Women was being funded on Kickstarter and fueled all of this. The woman who started the project, Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency, describes it in greater detail at the bottom of the page:

“In addition to the torrent of misogyny and hate left on my YouTube video (see below) the intimidation effort has also included repeated vandalizing of the Wikipedia page about me (with porn), organized efforts to flag my YouTube videos as “terrorism”, as well as many threatening messages sent through Twitter, Facebook, Kickstarter, email and my own website.  These messages and comments have included everything from the typical sandwich and kitchen “jokes” to threats of violence, death, sexual assault and rape.  All that plus an organized attempt to report this project to Kickstarter and get it banned or defunded.  Thankfully, Kickstarter has been very supportive in helping me deal with the harassment on their service. All my backers have also been amazingly encouraging over on the project page too!”

While I don’t personally agree with all of the points made by Sarkeesian and whether you think that you agree with her points or the project’s funding, which is what some people claim was their problem with it, there’s no reason for the kind of behavior exhibited by these people.

No reason, except that this woman attacked video games and plans to ruin fun for everyone!

In 2013 with an increasingly non-white America with a slightly more progressive outlook (slightly less progressive than it should be) it’s strange to think of the number of times we see balanced characters that are women in leading roles in games. The lack of non-whites in lead roles—even in ensemble casts—is equally strange. When you look at the games and try to find roles where the women aren’t sexualized and the non-whites not stereotyped; this number declines even sharper.

Don’t think for a moment that I think this is just a problem with games. Books, movies and even television have similar issues. The difference is that with games when you discuss it you get things like this:

“I’ve never seen a female fire fighter in my life. And bitches like to bake cake, lick da dick, suck anus, and deepthroat balls.”

And this:

“This is fucking cringe-worthy. I’m all about equality, but this is idiocy. Games are, in general, marketed towards males, as most avoid gamers are, indeed, males. It makes complete sense that in this scenario female roles are over-sexualized, especially from a marketing perspective. Young teens going through puberty will jump all over that shit, and there’s nothing you do to stop them. Just when you think Kickstarter projects couldn’t get any more annoying, the hardcore feminists arrive.”

While the first comment is just random stupidity, the second one is full of misinformation and acceptance. The gaming industry has basically spent much of its entirety shunning women, so shunning them more  makes this idea that women don’t play games seem like a self fulfilling prophecy when more women aren’t playing. Even though women do play games.

This idea that young teens are playing games and that’s it is stupid because much of the gamer market is in it’s late twenties and early thirties. In fact, one of the huge arguments people make against games being childish is the fact that the gaming market is older.

Even if you believed that the games were only going to adolescents and older teens—what makes it okay to indoctrinate them with more of the same unhealthy opinions of women?

When games like Bioshock: Infinite and Last of Us have issues being made because they feature women characters in roles that aren’t sexualized enough it’s clear that we have an issue. But when a developer is told that they can have a female protagonist kiss a male character because it will make the person playing her feel too strange and possibly make them think about something gay it becomes more than just the game industry; it’s cultural. We’re so deeply homophobic and unaccustomed to being put in the shoes of anyone unlike ourselves that acting out that character’s desires on screen is too much for people.

There’s this really common argument against activism (women’s activism, gay activism and racial activism mostly) that every activist is pushing for their own superiority and not equality. That’s certainly not true. Somehow these few people that do push for that sort of thing become considered the norm and the rest of us are grouped with them so that the discussion never really has to take place.

No discussion taking place equates out to meaning there will be no change. Whether the debate is about something less serious about the roles of women in media or things like victim blaming in the cases of rape or even something where it seems no one is willing to have rational discussion like gun control. As long as long as we deflect important topics by claiming that everyone on the other side of the debate is a lunatic we’re only hurting ourselves.