Worth Reading: 09/29/2014

One of the benefits of stepping back from video the last few months has been an opportunity to explore (and fail) when it comes to pursuing stories. I've also been writing more, as you've probably noticed.

Let me know what you think of the Sunday editorials I've filed on the site. I really miss when Alex was filing weekly musings about the week that was, but I understood why he gave up on them: it was burdensome to have something to talk about every single week. That's not my approach with these. Instead, since Worth Reading has bumped to Monday, the weekend is often an opportunity when people are playing games and reflecting on them. It seems like a perfect opportunity to drop an editorial. It won't happen every Sunday, it might skip a few weeks. We'll see!

The last two have been tangentially related to Destiny because it's the game I've been spending the most time with lately that's not called Danganronpa 2. That will almost assuredly not be the case going forward. If there any topics that come to mind, please let me know. I've been mulling Notch's recent statement about selling Mojang for a few weeks now, and I might have something to say about that next weekend. Till then!

You Should Read These

• "Self-awareness, Interactivity, and Metal Gear's Three Walls" by Andy Astruc

If you've been reading Giant Bomb for a while, you know my love/hate relationship with the Metal Gear series. (In short, I adore 1 and 3, but can't stand 2 and 4.) But Andy Astruc makes some salient points about Metal Gear's acknowledgement of the person holding the controller as being particpatory in the Metal Gear experience. This goes far beyond a winking nod at interactivity, the equivalent of an actor walking to the camera. Rather, Metal Gear embraces the player, and acknowledges this only works because of them. WARNING: There are spoilers within (and below) for Metal Gear and Assassin's Creed.

"Games frequently dabble in all things meta as well, from Max Payne‘s fractured realisation that he was inside a computer game (and inside a graphic novel, inside a computer game), to Batman Arkham Asylum and Eternal Darkness‘ fake system errors, to that unnerving part at the end of Assassin’s Creed II where Minerva talks directly to the player in the future through a pre-recorded message played by a very confused Rennaisance-era ladies man. But the introduction of interactivity makes this whole fourth wall business a little more complicated, what with the audience constantly reaching through the screen and fondling the cast.

Metal Gear Solid takes the only logical route, completely ignoring any established rules about the diegetic and non-diegetic to tangle everything into a big, messy ball of non-fictional unreality. Campbell is telling Snake, played by us, how to use the Codec, and since we are Snake, our reaction--absorbing and appreciating this useful information--is equivalent to his reaction. We both exist as the same person, but also separately."

• "The Japanese Firm Selling Videogames to Women, Using Sex" by Daniel Feit

999 and Danganronpa have served as my introduction to the visual novel genre, but generally speaking, I know precious little about it. That's why I found Daniel Feit's report from the Tokyo Game Show so fascinating. Japanese publisher Voltage found a way to bring elements of its popular dating sims--specifically, the aggressively forward gesture known as the wall-thump--to life at the convention. It's an instance of sex being used to attract women--quite different from what we're used to. Unique!

"The games were barely present--many are free-to-play smartphone apps already available, so few people had any need to wait in line to play them. The publishers focused instead on recreating the fantasy within their games.

Voltage’s booth offered a different scenario in each corner. Not only did each 'interact with a hot guy' situation have its own stable of male models, but visitors could vote for their favorite hunk in a booth-wide election. Talk-show stage events were held with popular television actors, who read romantic lines submitted by fans through Voltage’s website."

If You Click It, It Will Play

These Crowdfunding Projects Look Pretty Cool

• Battle Chef Brigade combines an action game with cooking elements, and it's made in Chicago!
• GameLoading is yet another documentary looking to cover the rise of independent games.
• Fortune's Tavern looks to simulate the everyday life of a tavern in an RPG.

Writing From Giant Bomb's Community, Courtesy of ZombiePie

• NathHaw was at PAX Prime 2014, and has a 30-minute video to prove it!
• MikeLemmer uses EVE Online to discuss why leveling prevent him from enjoying MMOs.
• GrantHeaslip bit the bullet and completed Final Fantasy VII for the first time.
• regularassmilk blogs about why Hideo Kojima's brand of lunacy is his type of lunacy.

Tweets That Make You Go "Hmmmmmm"

Oh, And This Other Stuff

• Beejoli Shah prescribes some solutions to avoiding media groupthink.
• Steven Wittens deconstructs the issues "serious" games have with incorporating mechanics.
• Viktor Eisenmann performs a thorough analysis of P.T. and why it works so well.
• Drew Mackie analyzes the gender (or lack of gender) for Toad.
• Cameron Kunzelman tries to figure out why Destiny's multiplayer isn't grabbing him.
• Joe Martin shares what he's learned about a version of Deus Ex 3 that never came to be.
• Suriel Vazquez fell in love with Dota 2's Earth Spirit before Valve decided to start patching him.
• Andrew Spearin relays a developer's perspective on Steam's new curation system.
• Evan Narcisse was surprised at his reaction to a card game about alien tentacle sex.
• The Economist tackles the reasons making video games are so damn expensive.
• Austin Walker found a way to love early access by playing Invisible Inc.
• Alexa Ray Corriea files an exhaustive look at Lord of the Rings and video games.

Yes, but does My Anime Superstore sell SUPER SWEET ASS FINGERLESS GLOVES!?!?!?!

That's a good article about fourth wall breaking in MGS.

Excited for the systemic f$%&very of Shadows of Mordor as well!

Did anyone besides me play the Fellowship of the Ring game for the GBA? What a terrible game. It had a bug in Moria (75-85% of the way through the game) where 3/5 times or so the game would crash and wipe your save. As I was playing this when I was 11 (and it being my first and only GBA game I owned at the time), I did eventually complete it. But man, it was not a good game.

I can definitely sympathize with the love/hate relationship with Metal Gear. But in my case, I think it's even more extreme than you, Patrick. There are parts in just about every game in the series that I love and hate in equal measure. Sometimes even in the same cutscene. The things talked about in Astruc's article are definitely on the "love" side for me and I almost always appreciate Kojima's attempts to get meta and weird. But at the same time, Kojima's tone fluctuates so wildly that it's hard to tell whether he wants you to laugh or cry at times. The game will follow a character talking about how "you like to play Castlevania games" with some overwrought melodrama or follow some of its more well-done emotional moments with a 2 minute diatribe on how Meryl has a cute butt. Kojima seems to want it both ways all the time. This was especially clear in Ground Zeroes, which seemed to have absolutely no idea what the hell it wanted to be.

Metal Gear is a series I wish I could just love unconditionally but every time I'm ready to jump on board, Kojima seems intent on pulling the rug from out beneath me. I guess that's kind of his shtick at this point but I wish the game was more interested in subverting my expectations as a player and less interested in subverting my expectations of Kojima as a writer.

Even with the restrictions placed on them, I just can't imagine that the story in The Third Age was the best the development team could conceive. The story they ended up with is just hilariously awful. Good on Alexa for that write-up. She's probably the one writer still at Polygon who's work I'd be willing to read.

I do not particularly enjoy playing Quake 1v1 but it's a joy to watch the analysis of a high level match like that.

Yikes, the formatting of the Deus Ex 3 article makes my eyes bleed.

Might blow your mind but they make harem VN games for both sexes. They have for a long time. There's one where you meet hot older guys in a cafe for hot older guys and all of the guys have some emotional trauma (and are hot). There's one where you hang out with sexy samurais.

And for some reason I expect a much more charitable response to these type of games compared to their gender-flipped varieties.

Also, "sex being used to attract women rather than the other way around"... as in, women being used to attract sex?

I always just assumed all Toads were dudes, except for when they're Toadettes.

Now, Kirby on the other hand...

@brodehouse: Don't forget hot late-shogunate era government cops that are also hot vampires.

Hakuoki is pretty rad like that.

@patrickklepek:

I really miss when Alex was filing weekly musings about the week that was, but I understood why he gave up on them

Me too! I miss Alex's writing in general; that dude can turn a phrase. It's cool to see him still reviewing stuff, but I always found his editorials to be his best work.

Anime Superstore, no CC Lemon = Fail.

Alexa Ray Corriea writing about LotR?? Count me in!

Oh god, that Anime Superstore is actually really close to where I live. That was really freaky seeing the address just pop up and recognize the general location.

That Vazquez Dota 2 article was surprisingly honest. It's nice to see someone actually examine their play in a MP game without just blaming other players or the developers. I feel the same way about playing Puck (I'm like 1-10 or something ridiculous).

Can you see that real good?

That anime store video is pure gold. Redneck Anime Superstore now open for waifu business.

Oh man, now I just miss Guns of Navarro again. Even if that came back as a monthly column, I'd be overjoyed.

No offense to anyone else on staff, but Alex is my favorite games writer. He'd hate the comparison, but he's as much fun to read as Ebert or Sam Smith of Bulls.com.

But forcing stuff isn't a good road to take, either.

Wait, what were we talking about? Oh, right, Metal Gear doesn't break any walls because Metal Gear is LIFE.

• The Economist tackles the reasons making video games isso damn expensive.

Some ninjas on bikes with katanas will try to rob that place and he'll dominate them all with a four-barreled shotgun.

"The romantic fantasies playing out in the Romance Game Corner certainly used sex to sell products, but in sharp contrast to how videogame conventions usually use sex appeal. Every other booth at Tokyo Game Show featured a phalanx of women serving only as eye candy for the men. The Romance Game Corner was sexy but not lewd, and everything fit the context of the games being advertised.

The games were barely present"

ಠ_ಠ

Totally drove by that anime super store and joked with my wife about stopping to check it out. I've seen that video before but never paid attention to it's location at the end. Then I saw the sign in the video and recognized it immediately. It's weird. Van Buren and Arkansas in general are full of dudes that look and sound like that guy, but if I had actually gone in I would have been genuinely surprised if that was the dude running it.

Yo, Earth Spirit is still borderline OP.

@brodehouse said:

Yeah, this sort of took my by surprise. Plenty of Japanese games in general trade on cutesie tropes and sex appeal to attract a female audience just the same. It's obviously not as common, but it's far from new or unprecedented. And do some people not know Host Clubs exist, or something?

This is why I can't get a girlfriend!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iPhr6N-c8as

Trainer uses Woman. A wild SEX appeared! *Doodle doodle doodle doodle...*

It's an instance of sex being used to attract women--quite different from what we're used to. Unique!

It's statements like this that make me wonder if we're living on the same planet. Yes, sex sells to women, too. It has for a very long time. Boy bands, erotic novels, Chris Hemsworth's abs in Thor, gay romance in Bioware games, etc.

Your Anime Superstore is quite the thing.

@tehpickle: Sure is. It appears to have a large selection of everything.

@yinstarrunner: Games with romance/sexual content targeting women seem to be such a novel concept in North America that the idea Japan has been producing such dating/romance games for women, and covering such a broad spectrum of tastes at that, seems to fly over a lot of heads.

The anime superstore looks way cleaner than I was expecting.

Your Anime Super Store had a custom painted mural, you can't buy that sort of Japanese authenticity at any price.

No, literally you can't buy that, it is painted on the wall. When that storefront becomes a head shop/tobacco paraphernalia shop - with 'new age' herbs, counterculture art, and freaky magazines....the mural will still be there.

@monkeyking1969: Unfortunately it seems that he went out of business (store's facebook page). Maybe the world or Van Buran was not ready for such beauty.

Hmm, that "bernband" thing looks interesting.

Ha, My grandfather lives in Van Buren, AR, I'll have to visit him soon.

@nophilip: Yep, that totally happened to me when I was a kid, but I never actually finished it. The two towers action rpg on GBA was super rad though.

@sbaitso Yeah! That game was great. The Return of the King GBA game was pretty good, too. Although The Two Towers was better. I must have played through that game at least 8 or 9 times.

Things worth reading? Here's a very important thing which is written by TotalBiscuit. http://www.twitlonger.com/show/ngiujr

@hailinel said:

Yeah, it's kinda crazy to see Patrick thinking this is a new idea, considering it's been happening for a long, long time. Just goes to show that most "mainstream" games writers don't really understand what goes on in Japan.

@LunarJetman: He lost me at "inject gender politics".

I think Stephen Wittens has some good ideas and interesting criticisms, but some of what he wants is really goddamn impractical. I agree with his sentiment, that many games and franchises have become reliant on some pretty bad, or outright exploitative, mechanics, and that needs to change. But I don't like where he's coming from. I get the sense that he wants games to fulfill a certain nostalgia that the limitations of old classics developed in him.

I think this nostalgia bias is part of the reason so many people disagree on what makes for a good game. Our personal understanding of what a game is was developed, for most of us, as we grew up, influenced by what we played and what we loved. We look back at why we loved those games and pick out what we thought worked and what didn't, and those elements then coalesce into our personal ideal game, either consciously or not. If reading "Worth Reading" articles have taught me anything, it's that we're nowhere near as objective as we like to believe we are.

@LunarJetman: Calm down, dude, there's no need for insults. For the record, I read the whole thing and still don't think much of it, but I'm especially unlikely to value someone's opinion if their opening sentence includes a snide remark questioning the motives of whoever they're disagreeing with.

The problem with arguments like the one Beejoli Shah makes is that she states, without reservation, that the media is overwhelmingly liberal, and then goes on to say that the solution to media group-think is increased diversity--but only lists ethnic minorities, women, gays and lesbians as those that should be included more often. If the goal is diversity of thought in a liberal media, why would one suggest that pulling in individuals from groups that demographically skew liberal would be a solution? While it's true that media is "overwhelmingly, painfully white", as she phrases it, it's also true that it is overwhelmingly, painfully liberal.

I know nobody wants to suggest hiring conservatives, but it's hard to ignore these kinds of contradictions.

TotalBiscuit might want to watch his back after posting something like that.

At this point, no well-known personality on any side of this thing is safe from attacks and harassment.

This is what happens when "I disagree with you" becomes "what you believe is harmful, and you're a bad person." Generalize people like Anita Sarkeesian and Zoe Quinn as man-hating feminist opportunists who aren't "real gamers" for long enough, and it's only so long until people will step forward to punish them. Generalize gamergate as a bunch of socially inept white misogynist assholes who want to keep women away from their hobby for long enough, and it's only so long until people will step forward to punish them.

More than ever, people everywhere need to speak out against this sort of thing. If you see generalizations and conflation, call them out. Do it respectfully, and tactfully, but let people know that no matter which side of any argument you take, you will not allow anyone to be demonized and vilified through generalization.

Which is exactly why I never identified with gamergate. I can speak for myself when it comes to sharing my thoughts on topics such as game journalism ethics and proper female representation in video games. I don't need to associate myself with any group to do that, and I've disagreed with quite a lot of what people representing "gamergate" have said as a whole. That's the problem with ideologies.

It's more of an educated observation than a snide remark. The most important part is that TB's piece points out factual inaccuracies. That's sadly something we don't see much of in the gaming media.

I also don't think that TotalBiscuit has anything to worry about. He has been one of the most reasonable and the most intelligent voices in this whole mess. Plus, he's huge. He can't just be trampled like others.

@spoonman671: Welcome to the world of academia, circa the last few decades. Although the notion of "political correctness" as an air-quote term probably developed with the best of intentions and with a legitimate need, replacing one dogma with another is functionally static. Today, any criticism that goes against the grain is ignored, mischaracterized, or worst, labeled "neo-conservative" in an effort to poo-poo any critical argumentation before it could potentially expose some of the shaky foundations of our very polarized methods of interaction. Such attitudes have their consequences, as some people literally can not believe that a person of color, a woman (or any gendered individual that doesn't identify as male), or people of any other "minority" group could self-identify as conservative, even though such a term is hardly the label some people think it is.

I welcome a lot of the criticism that has been thrown around in our tiny little world of video games and its accompanying press, but it's no small surprise that there is little diversity of thought and there's so much parallelism in the way that nearly every outlet pursues news, editorials, and reviews at this point in time.

The more things change, the more they stay the same.