Poverty Sucks--Pinball Rules

Originally published in January of 2011 by Classy Hands.

Proof that I am an immortal. In Fayetteville, NC, anyhow.

 

 

Poverty sucks, so I went to the cheap theater.

Now, when I was a kid, this joint was called the dollar theater, because… y’know… all movies cost a dollar to see. But due to inflation it’s gone up to two or three bucks a ticket, which is a real tragedy because “dollar theater” has such a nice ring to it. Regardless of the increase in price, however, you get what you pay for. These are the movies that have been available to rent for months, and aren’t terribly high caliber stuff anyhow. Even when I was little and was perfectly content to watch the afternoon lineup of “Step By Step” and “Full House”, I could tell that most of the movies at the dollar theater sucked. Stuff like “Ernest Rapes The Milkman” or “The Pebble and the Penguin 2: Gacy’s Revenge”. But what did we have to complain about? We were kids, and alone in a movie theater that we could afford–it was a level of freedom we had not yet seen at that point in our adorable, rapeless lives. We were bright-eyed and rosy-cheeked, filled with excitement, mirth, and not even a teaspoon of undesired semen. I mean, none of us were catholic, so that put us at a disadvantage right there, but really–not even a case of having some dude in a trenchcoat expose himself to us. I mean, that’s got to be a break of some sort of statistic–I don’t know. But we weren’t really a good-looking bunch of kids, so that might explain it. But seriously–not even once.

…Anyways…

I was in poverty and bored–funny how the two go together. I went to the cheap theater to see Aaron Sorkin’s “Guys Who Speak With A Better Vocabulary Than You”. It just came out, and I hear there’s a lot of Oscar buzz around it, largely because the members of the Academy fear Aaron Sorkin, who is known to roam the streets of Los Angeles, wielding an Emmy like a club and muttering darkly about “Sports Night”. Hollywood executives warn their children that if they don’t eat all of their gefilte fish, Sorkin will creep into their room while they’re sleeping and edit their screenplays into small piles of dust, leaving the fledgling screenwriters so demoralized that they’ll settle for meager jobs in the upper echelons of the Smithsonian Institute or the Federal Reserve.

The movie wasn’t half bad.

But what really struck me was where I ended up next. Everyone was filing out and I followed them. Because it was Saturday night and a high school girl had made eyes at me? Hell no. Because it was Saturday night and several high school girls had made eyes at me. A door near the rear of the theater lobby was opened, and dozens of them filed through. I crept in the background, hoping that they were leading me to a poorly-lit alleyway where they experimented with their first tabs of LSD and group sex. What I found behind that door was so much better.

Arcades are getting harder and harder to find. But when you do happen upon one at my age, you are filled with various degrees of excitement, fear, and a little bit of horniness. The trepidation comes largely from the arrival of a few new faces. “Dance Dance Revolution” and “Guitar Hero” have squeezed their way between the old cabs of “Street Fighter 2″ and even “Joust”. Even more frightening is the fact that it costs more than a quarter to play a stinking game of Ms. Pacman (which I will not play out of fear of getting beaten up by one of these surly teenagers). The most popular games in my old arcades were mostly concerned with beating the shit out of your opponent, whether with a gun, or more likely your oversized fist.

But nowadays, the most popular games are based on rhythm and matching colors and shapes to the tune of popular music. Think “R. Kelly goes to Kindergarten”. On second thought, don’t think that.

Ever.

Happily, the new mixes fairly well with the old. All the same, visiting an arcade in your late twenties is like attending your high school reunion. You see a collection of old friends that you haven’t seen in a decade. Like the “X-Men” or “Star Wars Trilogy” arcade games, some of them are just as freaking cool as you remember them. And you remember having a huge crush on the wild and crazy antics of “Mortal Kombat” (who had C cups as early as 7th grade), but now that you see her again ten years later, you can’t help but wonder what the big deal was about. And then there’s those other games, like “Revolution X: Featuring Aerosmith!” where music was the fucking weapon!

No, seriously–you blasted bad guys with CDs.

And if you’re like me, the gauntlet of nostalgia and fear brings you to the pinball machines. Like the girl you dated for a year and half as an upperclassman, you greet each other with a bit of awkwardness, but a definite twinkle in your eye. You make small talk, casually graze her flippers, and before you know it, you’re grunting and banging away in the corner while everyone pretends not to notice. Yeah, that’s right girl–tilt for me, baby. But the pinball machine is a fickle bitch–the only game in the world where you can rack up 9 million points and still feel like a damn loser. And tattooed in red ink she still has the initials of all the guys who did a better job than you. And you’re a freak and a failure (but mostly you’re out of tokens), and in the shadow of the nearly-as-cheap-as-a-dollar theater, you know that you’ll be back tomorrow.

Tomorrow that bitch will feel the pain.

Also, while I have your attention, I'd just like to say, "Fuck Sagat".

Let's Be A Bad Guy.

In my latest editorial at Bell of Lost Souls, I asked a simple question: What attracts us to the bad guy?  The response was varied in both passion and opinion.  Some posited that everyone sees their actions as justified, and therefore there are no real villains.  Others drew cultural lines.  Others still argued that villains tend to have the best uniforms.

No comment.

Certainly this has been a question on everyone's lips, as it seems our culture just can't get enough of the villain lately.  Everything from the resurgence of the vampire as an antihero, to zombie fixation, to Walter White and Tyrion Lannister--we just can't help but root for the bad guy.  My hypothesis is that we envy their freedom.  Villains follow no code or logic beyond their own, whereas even the roughest, toughest good guy has some sort of moral compass to follow.  That's what makes him a good guy. 

In theory, anyway.

And so, despite all the horrors a villain submits his friends, family, and community to, we're thrilled and awed by his or her ability to do just anything that they want.  And if they can do it with style?  Even better.

Now this is all very well and good for a passive form of entertainment like a book, movie or comic--but what about a game?  The infamous "morality meter" has been a hook for many games over the past decade, and our heroes are getting more antihero by the second (see: Max Payne vs. Max Payne 3--in which they somehow did the impossible in making Max even more broodish and hard-boiled).  And when it comes to making choices in games, I tend to go with the more tenderhearted route. 

But does playing a villain effect my overall enjoyment of the game?

Thus I am planning a reoccurring series of essays entitled "Let's Be A Bad Guy", wherein I will take you through my experience of playing a video game as the villain.  This might involve choosing less than moral choices on a morality meter (Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic), games where your protagonist exists permanently in the gray area of good and evil (Papers Please, GTA), and games where your character is clearly on the side of scum and villainy (Overlord, Deadpool).

Of course, the very notion of what makes a character "good" or "bad" is highly subjective, and there's a good chance that people will argue about their opinion, and that will lead to fighting which will lead to murder and blood in the streets.

And then I'll ask if pushing that domino effect into existence makes me evil.

A Snippet From "Why Do We Love To Play The Bad Guy?"

I keep writing and I don't know how to stop.  Here's a love tap from my latest editorial for Bell of Lost Souls.

"So how did I get there in the first place?  Everyone has their "main", and at gaming events you can see the line drawn in the sand.  An obvious example of this is Warhammer 40k, where the divide appears to be between the Imperium and the Xenos/Heretic.  And you Black Library fans out there can affirm that our supposed "heroes" of the Imperium are... well...

Well, they're just bad, bad people."

Soak up my drippy words with your ShamWOW eyes here.

A Snippet From "Counts As Awesome"

Here's a rumbling from my latest editorial for Bell Of Lost Souls:

"Citizens of the Imperium lie awake in their beds imagining the horrible screams of terror as a horrendously scarred and babbling Pinkie Pie leads the charge of swarms of vicious little ponies.  Their cries of agony go unheard as bones are torn from the socket by the most adorable monsters the universe has yet seen.  Seriously: through all the blood, the whole thing's just precious."

Read the whole ridiculous thing here.

Why Books Are Books And Movies Are Movies.

I'm getting sick of adaptations--even when they're good.

When I taught playwriting, there was always a very important lesson that I tried to put as early on in my schedule as possible.  The lesson was fairly simple, and began with a single question:

Why are you writing a play?

I didn't (and don't) mean that in some sort of extreme, existential way.  Indeed, my least favorite day of any art school class was when the professor insisted on writing "What Is Art?" on the dry erase board.  No, I mean that question in a very practical sense: why is your story a play?  Why not a short story?  Why not a poem, or a screenplay?  The question came from years of watching myself and others write plays that included a couch dominating the center of the stage.  Or a hundred thousand scene changes.  We weren't writing plays, we were writing teleplays and screenplays. 

So why did we keep falling back on plays?  Well, it's simple to pull off a play, in the grand scheme of things.  People have been doing it for millennia.  You've got the high school auditorium and fifty bucks to spend at the goodwill on ill-fitting costumes?  You've got yourself a play, my friend.  And I don't care what your friends smoking skunkweed outside of the Starbucks told you: plays are not inherently better than film or television.  Not as far as the medium itself is concerned.  A medium is simply the ocean you float your story-raft on.  And with recent word that the World of Warcraft movie is officially a thing that is happening, I think it's important to remember that video games are a medium that is just as valid as any other, and that adapting them to any other medium isn't necessarily some sort of victory, whether that adaptation is a film, television show, or even a book.

Daniel Hope recently published a column on LitReactor entitled Five Video Games That Would Have Made Better Novels, and I'll admit that it pissed me off.  Daniel didn't set out to do that.  Indeed, his column is well-written and not snarky toward gamers in the slightest.  He clearly set out to make the piece fun and as non-controversial as possible.

And yet I was still angry.

If you parse the comments section, you'll see a tepid response from me, and that was only because I knew I needed to go home and eat an egg salad sandwich and collect my thoughts before I became some sort of gamer troll that blows up at the tiniest provocation. 

That'll do, internet.  That'll do.

 

My frustration stems from the notion that books as a medium are superior.  That any story or any idea is made better by it being a novel.  Which, I'm sorry fellow nerds, is nonsense.  Games are having a hard enough time being taken seriously as an art form without it being implied that everyone involved in making them is essentially too lazy to tap out 100,000 words instead.  That notion is insulting and ridiculous.  Take, for example, his choice of "Any LucasArts Adventure Game".  He says that "every last one of these games are perfect".  Well, if that's true, why are they on the list?  Curse Of Monkey Island isn't made somehow superior if it's written out as a novel.  It's already done.

 

Don't misunderstand me: I love books.  I truly do.  Anyone who utters the words "I don't like reading" around me might as well not exist--they have been written off in my mind.  But interactive activities such as video games are no less an artform.  Sure--we've got 12 year olds screaming slurs into headsets all over the country, but that doesn't make Papers, Please or Spec Ops: The Line any less magnificent.  Neither would accomplish half of what they do as books or films, because they are saying something that only properly comes across when being played.  You need to interact with them for them to work their magic.  And as long as Twilight, Pride & Prejudice With Zombies, and Snooki's autobiography exist, books aren't allowed to claim some sort of immunity to the disease that is cultural idiocy.

 

Daniel Hope isn't some video game virgin--reading his article proves that he knows his business well enough.  But to suggest, for example, that we're missing out on something in Bioshock by actively experiencing the world around us instead of reading about it through the eyes of a third person, is damned insulting, and misses the point entirely.  The failed paradise of Rapture, the dream of Andrew Ryan, the terrifying Big Daddies, the sweeping twist and the illusion of independence--all of this is experienced, firsthand, by the player.  I have no doubt that a talented author could make something terrific out of that. 

But it's already done.  And it's done incredibly.  And to suggest that it would have been better as a book seemingly because "books are better" only relegates this artform into the kiddie pool when it has barely cracked the shell that surrounds it. 

 

Hope was clearly trying to make something fun out of this list.  His addition of Duck Hunt to the list makes that clear.  And that's fine.  But I seriously doubt that I'm the only person who found this whole notion pretty insulting.  Games are capable of so very much--but the longer you pigeonhole them as a medium that is somehow "less than", the longer you have to wait for the next work of art to hit your computer or your console.

 

And Fifty Shades Of Grey would have made a better Mario game, so bite me.

Bullets And Creativity: Thoughts On Shadowrun Returns

Everything about Shadowrun Returns intrigued me to the core.  Kickstarter-funded with some lofty ambitions, gamers all over the country were waiting to see if they would pull it off.  Because what the fine folks at Harebrained Studios were aiming for was simple, but at the same time something old-schoolers could salivate themselves into dehydration for.  Namely, a new spin on the world of Shadowrun, based heavily on its two equally epic (and vastly different) 16-bit games--but fully moddable, so that lonely gamemasters could create works of roleplaying goodness for strangers all over the globe, Neverwinter Nights style.

This is an odd time to talk about a game like this one, I'll admit.  This week, Grand Theft Auto V will be decimating you and everyone you know.  Its gameplay, storyline and soundtrack will set your brain on fire like an LSD-dipped Jolly Rancher.  And yet I insist on talking about a low-tech indie RPG.  I'll explain.

To me, the greatest experience I've ever had as a gamer was the ability to shape the world around me--to see consequences to every action I make.  If not in the story itself, then with the character I was playing.  Hell, at least let me name the guy.  It's this kind of mindset that got me into the grand old world of paper and pencil roleplaying games.  Of course, I still played video games (Shadowrun for the Genesis smashed my teeth in with a ball-peen hammer of nuyen-flavored goodness), but I still craved that level of customization. 

To put it bluntly, I wanted to make the game mine.

Shadowrun Returns is this year's attempt at letting us do that very thing.  With a mod system built right into the game, it allows you to create your own metamagical adventures and invite everyone to try it out: friends, strangers, family members and the chainsaw-wielding child molester down the street.  The pre-installed campaign itself is excellent, entry-level fun.  Seasoned 'runners will find it linear and a bit routine, but I feel that the point was to introduce you to the basics of what the mod was capable of. 

Playable races include (from L to R): Dwarf, Troll, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Ork, Elf.

 

Reviewers have often kindly dismissed the lack of bells and whistles on the part of Shadowrun by pointing out its limited budget.  While I'm sure that this is true, I think that the game does better without voice-acting or lengthy cutscenes.  The game is meant to feel like something of your very own, and I believe that Harebrained Studios pulled this off with flying colors and flashing lights.

 

I was surprised to find the game in the App Store for my iPad, and gave it a download.  I have always been eager to see what the future of gaming is as far as tablets are concerned.  It's true that there have been some amazing games that have been ported to tablets (take Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic and XCOM: Enemy Unknown for starters), but I'm more interested in what will be developed specifically for my favorite touchscreen--it just feels like there's so much to mine there. 

 

Shadowrun Returns, unfortunately, is a fraction of itself when transported to the iPad.  The level modding application has been removed, and the game crashes constantly.  This is made all the more frustrating when you consider that the save feature only comes around at the end of each level.  Without modding, Shadowrun Returns is reduced to a fairly enjoyable 15 hour campaign: fun, but not the impressive environment of a game that Harebrained Studios released. 

 

That aspect aside, though, Shadowrun Returns is absolutely a success on the desktop computer.  This is the sort of game that was created for writers and designers to drool over--it's the sort of game that creates these people.  So I am very excited to see what sort of campaigns come down the pipeline in future months and years.  I'm convinced that it's capable of amazing acts of creativity. 

 

With Friends Like These: Thoughts On Virtual Ascendance By Devin C. Griffiths

In every age of culture there have been those few stragglers who refuse to adapt and enjoy the microchip-infused fruits of the most recent generation's labor.  From radio to television--from silent films to talkies--we put on our 20/20 nightvision goggles of retrospection and laugh at those people, pausing between heaving breaths to opine that the Xbox One is going to suck, not knowing that Microsoft's next-gen console will be eventually outfitted with nuclear-powered Godzilla mods designed by a power-mad Bill Gates, and that those mods will transform our Halo engines into skyscraper tall beasts that will annihilate any home with a Playstation or a Wii in it--and who'll be laughing then, you bastards??  It'll be us!  The people who bought local!!!

Ahem.

So every age needs a little prodding along.  Written by a former gamer of the Golden Age (he wistfully recounts playing games like Zork, Joust, and Ultima), Virtual Ascendance seems to be the book for just such a need.  And while it covers no new ground for a seasoned game historian, it's fairly intriguing to see Griffiths peer at the gaming world from without.  His eagerness almost seems as if he's finding out some of this information at the same time the reader is--you can imagine him practically shouting "People get paid to play video games??  Holy shit!" 

Right off the bat, it becomes clear that this book was written for a fairly specific audience--one that I don't belong to (one of the chapters is subtitled "Casual Games (or, Gaming for the Rest of Us)).  Indeed, Virtual Ascendance could be a terrific primer for involved parents concerned with little Skyler as he bends himself into a C shape to play Pokémon on his Nintendo DS.  The anecdotal introduction lags, and the writing feels first draft at times: Griffith actually spends time explaining the metaphor of an iceberg to his reader, something you'd think he or his editor would recognize as one of the most well-worn chestnuts of the creative writing world. 

Griffith's focus shifts across a great number of video game specifics.  His brief history of gaming time periods is well-researched, and never once do you question his enthusiasm.  What you do question, however, are his intentions.  Initially, I found moments that heartened me to what Griffith was doing with his book.  At times, it felt that he truly believed video games to be the next great art form.  But time and time again, he came back to the money involved--professional gaming, movie adaptations, and the big budget AAA games that explode onto the scene out of cocoons woven out of their billion dollar budgets.  The desire here, I suppose, is to shake people by the collars and force them to understand that video games are legit because look at all this money!  When he isn't paying too much attention to the explosions and flash of dollar signs, he brings up negative aspects that are in no way related to games on the whole.  Too much of Virtual Ascendance focuses on fringe elements of gaming culture for me to take it all that seriously in the long run. 

Not to suggest that he doesn't try to cover his bases.  When he focuses on marriages being destroyed through virtual infidelity, or a case in which a Chinese man was murdered over a virtual theft, he makes sure to point out that these events are in the minority, and that they are exceptions to the rule.  He then points out examples of people finding love and creating trust-filled relationships with others, using video games like Second Life as a buffer.  And then he goes right back to horror stories of virtual rape and PTSD. 

Now, to be perfectly fair, Mr. Griffith's intention here was to illustrate how very attached a player can become to their avatar, and that there is scientific evidence to back a very real emotional connection between the two.  But by focusing on the negative events as he does, his interest in how far games have come turns into a quiet sort of fear that puts me back in the mindset of parents blaming Doom and Marilyn Manson for the Columbine massacre.  This is made doubly damning when you remember that Griffith has made a point to say that he's never played MMO-style games like WoW or Eve, "for fear of becoming irretrievably lost in their virtual realms".  He takes several opportunities to say that his cited examples of violence and rape are extreme examples of what could happen in a virtual world, but when you dedicate as much space on the page to the negative 1 percent as the positive 99 percent, it feels like the damage is done.

Shortly afterward, Griffith extols the virtues of using game technology for military training--a fascinating idea that deserves an entire book to itself.  And therein lies the problem: what sort of book is he writing here?  The subtitle, "Video Games and the Remaking of Reality" tells us nothing beyond the generally vague notion that this is a book about games.  It's too editorial to be a history book, and it touches on several subjects without cracking them open and getting to the deeper nougaty center within.  So what we're left with is another vague book about video games that implies a great deal and only says a little. 

But what it does say is important.  If I had to pinpoint Virtual Ascendance's main virtue, it would have to be an overarching theme of "We're All Gamers".  This message is one that I think we could use a little more time to ponder.  The fact that a love of games doesn't set you apart from society, but does the exact opposite, pulling you deeper into the fold of humanity. 

Despite all the vagueness of Griffith's ideas, he clearly has an affection and wistfulness for his subject, and a desire to see their wonders go even further mainstream than they already are.  At best, Virtual Ascendance is an enthusiastic piece, perfect for the gamers and open-minded parents of gamers who don't understand the background behind their favorite flashing lights and sounds.  At its worst, it's a book that feels vague and undercooked--something that could take the paranoid mumblings of uninformed politicians and parents and make them into shouts.  This is exemplified when Griffith says that video games are neither good nor bad, that "video games simply are".

Personally, I'd like to see him pick a side.

Virtual Ascendance was written by Devin C. Griffiths, and is available on Amazon for hardcover and Kindle.