So, GC has a great article on Ludonarrative Dissonance. For those who can't be bothered to read the whole article, or its followup critique of Gears Of War, LND (for ease-of-typing's sake) is what goes down when the game's story, setting, et al collide with the options and incentives provided with the player. A game with a peaceful message, for example, would suffer from LND if the gameplay's best strategy involved shooting everyone with a sniper rifle from 100 yards (I'm looking at you, Metal Gear!).

A number of games suffer from it, usually to varying degrees. It is a little odd that Gordon Freeman becomes so rapidly adept at killing people, but there's nothing to say that he wouldn't be used to them (the narrative says nothing of hobbies, any previous wartime experience, etc. It could be as simple as Freeman being a National Guard volunteer). Then there's massive disparity between play and story that we can't reconcile those problems without being forced to ignore them, which is often a hell of a problem with sandbox titles. 

So, what type of games do you feel suffer the most from these issues? Things that take away your immersion, your investment, or just bust the fun? 

A few to start us out:

--Metal Gear Solid 2-4: The Colonel, Zero, and Otacon repeatedly tell us to leave no traces, interact as little as possible, but the game gives a tranq gun and free agency to do with as we please. Playing as an asshole exhibits the same rewards as the SIlent Pacifist. With Drebin Points 4, you're even rewarded for their stealing their gear.

--Fable: Great hero who stops/joins the Crimson Blades only to be thrown out of a bar by guards who womp him like kicking in an pumpkin

There's something distinctly refreshing about having someone about you can share things with. Everything, actually. 

Then there's things you don't care to share because you know how they'll go. 

Here's a bit from someone who I wanted but only in the ideal, and a person who wanted me save for when sunlight came. A letter I wrote under threat of solitude:

So, once upon a time, there was Rob Liefeld.

Now, if you're not familiar, Rob Liefeld is a comic book "artist". If it seems like I'm being perstickety, then maybe I am, but I also think I'm being charitable. A little background:

It's the bid-nineties. Todd McFarlane, Alan Moore, Niel Gaiman, all these names are the penultimate names amongst comic fans because of vivid art and wild, inspired storytelling. Cue an uprising when they catch wind that they're rockstars, and enter Image comics, where Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Todd McFalane, Jim Valentino, Jim Lee, and Marc Silvestri formed their own "studio" that was creator-owned and without a looming-large publisher booming overhead demands for retconning and more facetime for the Big Hero. 

Problem is, these were less than great people. Jim Lee can't be trusted to write more than pulpy nothings, McFarlane is the George Lucas of comics (best when others take his ideas and refine them), and the others, well, they're who they are. Everyone on board suffered growing pains, creative kids edging into creative puberty and wondering where all this hair came from. Not one of them was untalented.

Except, maybe, Rob Liefeld. 

Big pecs, big tits, big guns, as the lead from Chasing Amy put it in the late nineties, and it's an accurate assesment, at least of Liefeld. A man limited only by his imaginings of how many barrels a gun has, Liefeld was a pioneer of the dark arts of violence, genetic deformations of musculature, and other physical deformities present in his books. There's a few on my coffe table, presented like a joke, save that Youngblood, his Image Comics title, was a flagship work of the publisher, and that Rob Liefeld cries when we hurt him only to dry the tears with hundred dollar bills. He's a gent who still sees a significant amount of work, and even now has defenders who have failed to outgrow their childhood illusions.

So, I am left to wonder, when will we?

This isn't a new topic, or even a profound one; I'm not asking about our citizen Kane moment (P.S.: It isn't MGS4, much as I lik to pretend.) where we imagine an event horizon whereby our medium of choice explodes in public-vocalized validity. No, instead, today I'm wondering about our exact place in the scheme of growth. At a time in our lives, we like strange things, things that make sense to our minds and hearts as we see them then, limited as our sight is. Who didn't like Ninja Turtles, He-Man, Tolkien and its offspring? Who among us was not wowed by animation and lit and Mario marvels? 

But, of course, we leave these things behind. Not because we should, or because we need to (there's a certain love of the untainted that cats like Pixar have succesfully tapped), but because we know more now than we did then. The bad guys aren't bad because they want to end the world, but because they think they're doing good. David Bowie isn't the Goblin King, Miss Moppett isn't an ass, and the world has not been devided into good-guys bad-guys. Everyone has complex emotions, complex heartbreaks, desires, hatreds. Everyone wants to climb the Tower. 

But, see, in videogames, we're still limited. One of my favorite things about the Metal Gear series is that, even at the very end, you're not sure who to thank, who to like or to hate, or why. It's not that it's because the story is convoluted (although it is that, an opus of unwieldy size), it's that because you're still not sure of all the strange worlds that live and breath and have died a thousand deaths inside each character. In each there is enough pathos and desire to fuel any number of hair-brained conjecture, and this is merely at the end of 4, not to speak of the sidestories or so on.

So, why is it that we have Gears of War?

This isn't a fair argument, but one I none the less want a legitimate response to. Gears has paper thin macho characters where theire motivation is to kill a bunch of guys to reach something they love a whole lot. This isn't morally amiguous, either; at no point are we made to wonder whether or not the protaganists, two charicatures of  military men who have personal home lives waiting, are doing moral, just things. Their opponents are vicious inhuman mosters. Halo does does a better job emoting with their antagonists for Christ's sake (thanks in no small part to Keith David.)

Often in games we're faced with thin motivational devices. One of my favorite, Final Fantasy XII, has the (pseudo) main-character trying to place harness over his grief and anger that will inevitably grow bitter and furious in time through neglect. Even Max Payne has it's titular character, ridiculous name and all, grieving over the ruins of his life, digging himself deeper and deeper into something sinister and tumultuous to reach even the barest of catharsii. Campbell's journey, they're not. 

But why can't we find more than those simple feelings to explore? Even from a capitalist point of view, they're not effective moneymaking devices (although I'm sure the Bobby Koticks of the world would deny me that.) Is it that gamers don't want to relate? I feel marooned on an island where only my own empathy has given root, and each foothold on other isles is made of purist escapism. I want something to question my path in life. I want things to challenge me. I want change. 

The problem, of course, is sales. And demographics. And, as always, market values. Because us morons like to forget this is a business. 

I'm never really sure where this is going, where I start one of these bloody things, because I begin with a piece of knowledge and ond as confused as I had ever been. Se, let's rectify that.

In Metal Gear Solid, you are a retired soldier who is pulled into action once more to stop a terrorist uprising. And yet, despite Japan's jingoist tendencies, Metal Gear Solid (the first' at least) is still hailed as revolutionary in its field for narrative strength, which I will not fight in the least. But, by the same token, you're never presented with "thiss is the american way!" sort of singlemindedness.  Often the game, and even the series as a whole, seems to disdain the monsters in and out of power. 

On the opposite end of the spectrum, you have titles like Medal of Honor, where it's clear from the outset that one or another side is undoubtedly the victor and moral superior. Nazis are bad, everybody agrees, yay? But this isn't brave, or even nobel. By delivering the easiest target of any memory to the hands of eager gamers, it's only solidifying the us-versus them cognitive dissonance. There is no gray scale; this is Spielberg's arena of war, where the allied forces are to mow down the enemy reluctantly, be they GoW locusts or WWII-era nazis in spite of the protagonists undoubted humanity.

My problem with these kind of stories is that not only do they set the medium back, as comics are still far from mainstream despite their hippie-like revolution of disappointment, but they hinder the people playing them, and marginalize those trying to make change. If I pick up a book, His Dark Materials makes the same dimp as Twilight. Despite the latter's prominence, the former isn't dropping out of sight anytime soon. But with games, this is a vastly different arena, where (again, like comics) shelf space is forced to compete between the newest and brightest and the most new-game-console-ist. SNES games don't sell like modest continual revenue streams, they sit and molder and die when they have became outmoded pieces of nostalgia that only collectors or obsessives desire while FIFA2044 brings in money like a Michael Bay film.

Sometimes, I'm embarassed to love games as much as I do, to love their stories and their alternate visions of loneliness and grief and desire, where they move worlds about them in vaguenesses of morality. Most days, I just like playing them.

Maybe that's enough.

Videogames and their censorship is what's gonna start us out, because something that I had predicted way back is finally dropping</a>. For the link-impaired, the FCC wants some of that Fat Pie and is conducting some inquiries regarding the feasibility of a medium-spanning ratings system, not unlike movie ratings, but for everything from videogames to mobile phone games.

Now, my opinions on the fact seem pretty obvious: Blah blah censorship, blah blah cumbersome, etc. They're aside from the point.

The blogosphere, of which I am however-reluctantly a part of now, are a knee-jerk community of babbling 20-somethings. This is not an indictment. Censorship is an important issue, and for a lot of people the medium is their pastime. No one wants to see some people infringe on their ease of acquisition to their favorite title.

But that said, it seems pointless to suddenly sour their shorts just because the government is making an attempt to address  issues certain groups raise regarding the wellfare and mental care of children. After all, a government's job is the wellbeing of its people. While opinions may be mixed regarding it, there's a lot of conversation even less than a day after this announcement to the effect of "Big Brother Is Watching" and other hyperbole nonsense. It seems prudent to at least hear any proposals out; the only thing announced is inquiry, not a sudden crackdown at retail shelves. We are not a stone's throw away from an armed guard at every checkout counter.

So, why do we, in the blogosphere and outside it, freak out to news; railing against or salivating wildly? I'm sure part of it is pack mentality, and this isn't something to be ashamed of, within reason. 

An analogy: You're on a streetcorner, when suddenly you hear a bunch of people running, and sure enough they're barrelling straight for you, screaming in terror. Obviously there's a reason they're running, so you follow suit. That's logical pack mentality, and helpful.

Unfortunately, it's so ingrained in us that it applies to opinion, which is where it becomes dangerous. Just because a bunch of people agree doesn't mean shit when it comes to opinion. Everyone is unique, different, and special, and no amount of cynicism is going to change my opinion of that. Our likes and dislikes will and should be as different, naturally. So to take others opinions, especially on the internet, as a good basis for a logical discourse thereafter is intellectual suicide.

Okay, like everyone else with an internetweb, I have had blogs. They fizzled as interest waned. But I'm going through another Ubermensch thing again, so I'm going to try juggling work, getting a new job, throwing a Team Fortress-themed party, playing videogames, talking to the interbutts, reading,  and my sex life. This is because I'm stupid. 

I'm also going to try to resuscitate my blog. 

Here's a pair of old entries. Fucking things.

I used to have a terrible journal.

At the time, it felt right, and the concept I had was an ongoing memoir that I could look back on many years later with some degree of insight into how cool or terrible or funny or boring I was. I wanted to feel vaguely accomplished.

As it turned out, I was only the last one.

It was summer of 06/7/something, and I was working a job I was growing increasingly less enchanted with (and quit shortly thereafter for a job I loved and have since left.) I wanted some way to flex creative muscle, to entertain, and also to put something on my mind to words, when it ocurred to me I really didn't like what I was writing in the least. I got really bored, and now I want somewhere to rant at again that doesn't mean subjecting other human beings to mass diatribes when they don't care or don't want to hear it. Ranting isn't conversation, it's getting something off your chest.

So I'm going to stop reinventing the wheel for now and just put things down.

But first: Shopping!

Do people still use these? Honestly?

I'll probably link to some shit soon, or maybe try to get back in the habit of blogging srsly. I love me some Michael Abbott, and if he can do it, I can too!