tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-15815588128763569682024-03-12T20:20:29.501-07:00Haptic Feedback"When noise is the default, silence is what catches attention." - Amy DentataHaptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.comBlogger103125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-49840358735531859002016-08-01T08:22:00.001-07:002016-08-01T08:22:46.833-07:00"The Paradox Unseen" on DeOrbital<a href="https://deorbital.media/non-diegetic-lore-and-the-paradox-unseen-66cef78101b7#.s0acal7nw">https://deorbital.media/non-diegetic-lore-and-the-paradox-unseen-66cef78101b7#.s0acal7nw</a>Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-32877352110746944892016-06-19T05:17:00.002-07:002016-06-19T05:17:21.914-07:00On MGR at The Highest Level<a href="https://storify.com/AustinCHowe/on-mgr-at-the-highest-level-of-play">https://storify.com/AustinCHowe/on-mgr-at-the-highest-level-of-play</a><br />
<br />Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-67794269653955816432016-06-06T00:38:00.003-07:002016-06-06T00:38:33.801-07:00Critical Switch: DMC3 as Habitual Game<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><i><span style="line-height: 107%;">Devil May
Cry 3 </span></i><span style="line-height: 107%;">is, admittedly, a pretty strong argument for the sort of
mechanically based analysis that I usually stay away from. Actually, it’s kind
of frustrating. It’s a spectacular audio/visual piece that insistently breaks
the tone and continuity of its world to have characters speak utterly silly
dialogue and give you things like <i>grades</i>
and <i>points</i> and you pick up <i>orbs </i>and all the rest of those sorts
videogame-y things that make someone like me cringe. It also happens to be one
of the best videogames I’ve ever played so . . . you win some you lose some I
guess?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">I’d love to try sometime, but at least for today I’m not going
to be talking about <i>Devil May Cry 3</i>
as a piece of dramatic text. So I guess for today I’m calling a truce with
formalism.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">For today I simply want to talk about it as an action game,
because, given that the discourse is currently dominated by an action game of a
brutally difficult nature that I do not enjoy which shall remain nameless, I
feel like I can contribute to that discussion by talking about a game whose
approach to difficult gameplay is, in my opinion, much more mature and thought
out with gamers in mind.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">First of all, and this has been the subject of a lot of
discussion lately, Devil May Cry 3 actually <i>has
</i>difficulty modes, which is important for a number of reasons, including one
I need to come back to later, but for right now it’s most important to
acknowledge that it means the developers knew that different types of people
would want to play this game for different reasons.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">Second, the game always forces a break, both when you die and
when you succeed. Every time you die, the action on the screen pauses before
giving you three options.<br />
Continue: Would you like to start from right before where you were, get right
back into that difficult fight? (It’s worth noting that this almost always
starts from basically right where you left off, given that short iteration
cycles are a proven method of preventing frustration.)<br />
Restart the Mission: Maybe you feel like you didn’t play so well earlier and want
to give it another shot, or maybe you just wanna hype yourself up with some
easier combat before giving another go at that boss fight?<br />
Main Menu: Do you need a break? Are you done for the day?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">You get a similar set of options when you finish a mission, when
it asks you whether you like to go to the next mission, replay an earlier one,
or go back to the main menu. <i>DMC3 </i>know
it’s an intense game, and it also understands that being psychologically
well-rested is key to playing it well.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">As well, while at first glance, the style meter and mission
grading system feels somewhat judgmental, it is a way to encourage curious
players to come back to the game. It creates a visual metric by which one can
judge their growth as a player, a form of digital, external validation that
self-improvement in many other types of genres tend to go unnoticed.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">So, in contrast to many other difficult games, <i>Devil May Cry 3</i> is a game that is not
indifferent to your playing it. <i>DMC3</i>
is not just designed like a habitual game, it’s also built like a game that
recognizes our want to make a habit out of it, consistently rewarding player
growth with ever increasing difficulty levels, new costumes, new playable
characters, and thus becomes a game that gets an exponentially increasing
amount of playtime out of what is, if you want it to be, still a relatively
brief experience. It’s very emblematic of the design philosophy that guided
some of the biggest hits on the PlayStation 2 in that way.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">And I think the caring, encouraging nature of its mechanics
(which, for better or worse, were also reflected in the carefree nature of its
text) has shaped the community of truly dedicated <i>Devil May Cry </i>players in an important way. The famous Truestyle
competition really wasn’t a competition at all, but really more of a
non-judgemental talent show, with the competition’s third year featuring every
character and playstyle equally, and where the community voted on their
favorite videos in every category, but wisely avoiding trying to pick an
overall “winner” of the event. In their own words, they decided fairly quickly
that trying to find out the best DMC player was a fool’s errand, and to this
day, the PhantomBabies website still features every video submitted for every
category of the contest’s third year. And I think the contrast that shows with
modern gaming communities speaks for itself.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="line-height: 107%;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif;">From Olympia, WA, Play is Labor. I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-89861969704967397842016-01-22T09:11:00.003-08:002016-01-22T09:11:49.707-08:00Critical Switch: Fallen Shadows - The Destruction of Lahan Village<div class="Textbody">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="docs-internal-guid-7974590d-bffe-77f8-fa"></a><b><u><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Fallen Shadows: The Destruction of Lahan
Village in Xenogears<br />
<br />
</span></u></b><span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;">Last year I finally
finished Xenogears, that being my fourth fucking attempt at a full playthrough
of the game that had been in my backlog since high school. The first two were
aborted attempts from when I was emulating the game. I could never get the game
to run at a satisfactoraly, Playstation emulation still being a messy,
incomplete affair. Around Christmas 2012 I finally bought the game on PSN such
that I might be able to play a representative version. I played for 30 hours,
largely enjoying the experience until I got caught in a loop of bad game design
during the raid on Shevat. So, there I was, playing the beginning of the game
again after having put what should be enough time to beat the damn thing twice
already. There was a benefit to this however.<br />
<br />
Having played the beginning of the game so many times, I’ve come to more deeply
appreciate how Xenogears develops the town of Lahan into a complex place filled
with conflicted characters to make it’s imminent destruction more emotionally
impactful, which is in stark contrast the to the idealized Doomed Hometowns
featured in other games.<br />
<br />
What’s interesting is that this is partially accomplished through an absolutely
infuriating minigame of Rock-Paper-Scissors.<br />
<br />
In Xenogears you control Fei Fong Wong who one night was left at the doorstep
of the Lahan village chief, who then raised him as one of their own. Over the
years Fei grows into a talented martial artist and painter, and the villagers
come to accept him despite early skepticism from some. The day the game starts
is the day before the wedding between Alice and Timothy, two friends of Fei’s.
The gamer sends Fei upstairs where he talks to Timothy, who asks Fei to go
visit Alice and keep her some company, and Timothy’s younger brother, Dan, who
asks Fei to meet him outside. A crucial design decision: Fei does not follow
Dan outside of his own accord, the player must guide him to Dan. This gives us
the opportunity to explore the town at our leisure.<br />
<br />
In one of the houses in town is a man who is extremely good at
Rock-Paper-Scissors. He tells Fei that if he’s beaten five times he’ll hand
over a special item. Make no mistake, when one challenges this man they have no
clue what kind of shenanigans they’re getting themselves into. Of the 3 hours I
have currently logged in this playthrough, probably 45 minutes of it was
playing this asshole in Rock-Paper-Scissors. This NPC has a number of different
strategies programmed, and only one of them has been fully discovered to be
exploitable, and even then, he doesn’t always use that strategy, leaving
players to brute force their way into winning by using the strategy, even when
it doesn’t work, just so you can eventually catch him using the pattern that
the strategy responds to. Even then, it’s only guaranteed to work for three
games in a row. You have to win five times and after you win three times, the
pattern resets and he chooses one of the three options at random again. This
is, to say the least, frustrating. I probably had this strategy work for the
first three rounds at least ten times before winning the five games in a row.
Word of advice, as is often given in the Xenogears fan community: if you win,
save, then copy that save.<br />
<br />
If you lose to this dude, you lose 50g. If you win, you get 50g, and you can’t
challenge him unless you have at least the 50g to lose. When you start the
game, Fei doesn’t have any money to begin with. So what else can you do but
send him to go look for it? Well first of all you can find 200g in Fei’s bed,
but that’s only four losses in a row, can’t we buffer that out some? If you
investigate rooms close to Fei, you can find various items just by pressing X near
barrels or the jump button near a spider web, and pick it up. This piques
curiosity. Perhaps there are money and items in all corners of the town? And in
fact there are. Gamers do things like jump down the water well and they’ll find
a number of items, but to really rack up some loot they start talking to the
townsfolk. Then something happens: the townsfolk are interesting.<br />
<br />
A gamer with any genre-savvy already knows as soon as the happy music kicks in
and the bright colors show up onscreen that this town is some variety of
doomed. And the game shows it’s hand upfront with a short scene that shows the
village destruction already in progress. In other games, it would already be
difficult to care especially given how utterly typical this all is. But there’s
a specific contrast to be made. The townspeople of Lahan do not live perfect
lives. They live fragile, human ones. Certain characters I talked to to get
money, or specific items like the Mermaid’s Tear, but I found myself so
compelled in these stories that I had to talk to more of them and see the lives
they were living.<br />
<br />
There is, for example, a drunkard at the bar you can try and console. There's a
woman next to the cow-creature thing that tells us about her insecurities as a
woman in this small town. The other women simply get married to the men in
town, but she wistfully thinks of a more independent life that she doesn’t
think is possible in Lahan. There’s a child standing on the roof of a building
who misses his father who’s chasing his career in a distant city, and his
mother, who misses her husband and worries for the state of her family. Alice
and Timothy are set to marry the next day, and the bride-to-be openly wonders
whether she might've ended up with Fei instead had he arrived in her life years
earlier. Cold feet? Genuine remorse? We don't know and we never will.<br />
<br />
These stories all come to brutal ends when the two warring nations of Aveh and
Kislev end up sparring over Lahan. Neither is directly responsible for the
town's destruction though. That would be Fei. He, in an attempt to defend his
adoptive village, commandeers one of the military mechs and loses control of it
and himself, causing a blast that absolutely levels the town, and kills most of
the villagers. Why did Fei lose control? What mysterious forces is he wrestling
with? And what would've happened to these people had such a sudden tragedy not
occurred? These questions become so much more compelling because they are
directly related to the guilt that Fei feels continuously throughout the game
that we as players empathize with being we spend so much time with Fei
throughout the game, and they're the questions we ask continuously as we probe
the mysterious secrets of Xenogears.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span></span></div>
<div class="Textbody">
<span style="font-family: "Georgia",serif;"><span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">From Olympia, WA, Play is Labor, I'm Austin C. Howe</span></span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-77862311076365408862015-12-31T18:27:00.001-08:002015-12-31T18:27:54.364-08:00On 2015<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Was It A Good Year?</span></u><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Honestly, yeah, pretty good, all things considered. The road to the ending has been mercilessly stressful, but I think I'll be alright.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Greatest Professional Accomplishment</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This year was chock full of 'em: Moving out, the Alternative Digital Arts Festival, finishing the first draft of the <i>FFVII </i>book (tentatively titled <i>Heroism Is The Labor of Sacrifice</i>,) but probably the biggest is now being able to earn all of my rent and utilities entirely through freelance writing.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Biggest Personal Accomplishment</span></u><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Coming out as agender? I guess? It feels like a non-event honestly, probably since it means identifying as a non-gendered person.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Best "Weird" Console Title</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">None. (Technically <i>MGSV</i>, but, eh.)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The Reason There Is No Best "Weird" Console Title</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I'm really not sure why I held out hope for <i>Xenoblade Chronicles X</i> to be any good.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Best PS4 Game</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Well <i>Metal Gear Solid V </i>is great, but it has a hot contender in <i>Final Fantasy VII, </i>new and improved with a no random battles feature that more easily accommodates low level runs.</span></div>
<div>
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Best Indie Game</span></u></div>
<div>
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">We Know The Devil</span></i></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Worst Game</span></u></div>
<div>
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Bloodborne</span></i></div>
<div>
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Least Favorite Game</span></u></div>
<div>
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Xenoblade Chronicles X</span></i></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Best Old Game Austin Just Played This Year</span></u><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Resident Evil</i> (2002)</span></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Best Movie</span></u></div>
<div>
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Mad Max: Fury Road</span></i></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i>
<u>Only Movie Austin Went Out And Saw This Year, But Fuck It</u></span><br />
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Mad Max: Fury Road</span></i><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><u>Movies Austin Managed To See Before The Year Ended He Enjoyed</u><i>Star Wars: The Force Awakens<br />Ant-Man</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Best Metal Album</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Two-way tie: <i>M </i>- Myrkur and <i>The Ark Work</i> - Liturgy</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Highest Concentration of Bangers</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Trivium - <i>Silence in The Snow</i></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><u><br /></u>
<u>Austin's One New Rap Album This Year</u></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Travis Scott<i> - Rodeo</i></span></div>
<div>
<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Degree to Which <i>FFVIII</i> Improved With Age This Year</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Bigger leap than in any previous year, arguably deserves some kind of "Most Improved" award.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Worst Pieces of Games Writing This Year</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Tim Rogers' <i>Bloodborne </i>article on <i>Gamasutra </i>(#GamaHateReads), Frank Lantz's response to "Ludocentrism," (#GamaHateReads) but the worst without question was Phil Owen's <i>What The Fuck Is Wrong With Videogames</i>, which comes to us courtesy of The Year Two-Thousand And Seven.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">New Year's Resolutions</span></u></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Put out the book and make this the last year I don't develop a videogame. Record (and release?) the metal album I've taken the past year and a half to write. As well, take more responsibility for myself, and be aware of and uphold my responsibilities to those around me.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Destroy any doubt that I am among the best at what I do.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<div style="text-align: right;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">- Austin C. Howe, Washington and Florida, December, 2015</span></div>
</div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-59461087598704876982015-12-22T17:27:00.004-08:002015-12-22T17:27:15.502-08:00Critical Switch: The Joy of Bob Ross<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>On
Bob Ross</u></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> Hi,
glad you could join me. Today I thought I'd share a happy little page
of some thoughts on the benefits of watching Bob Ross before bed each
night, for the growing creative.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>Relaxation</u></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> Bob
Ross' gentle voice and tame Floridian accent, along with the
comfortable patterns of his speech, (his catchphrases in particular,
parental in their practical wisdom and comfort) and the simple,
procedural instructions he vocalizes make him the perfect thing to
listen to while getting ready to sleep. Sometimes I even turn on an
episode of <i>The Joy of Painting</i>
and turn the phone over such that the video doesn't glow in my eyes,
and simply listen to Ross speak. This is a man of a particular
expertise, with decades of experience in his craft. If we are lucky,
someday we might be able to instruct in our craft with similar ease
and comfort.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>Welcome</u></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> Bob
Ross shows that anyone can paint, including you, and all you have to
do is <i>do it</i>. And he
does it by demonstrating his techniques, each day, from a blank
canvas (covered in magic white.) This is incredibly important as a
rhetorical technique: the first step to doing something is of course
to start, regardless of whatever happy accidents we may make along
the way towards creating a finished product.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>Craft</u></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> The
purpose of <i>The Joy of Painting</i>
is extremely simple. Using a limited color palette and a limited set
of painting tools, Bob Ross instructs beginner painters in some of
the basic techniques of wet-on-wet landscape painting. When we watch
<i>The Joy of Painting</i> we
are witnessing the practice of craft, in the most literal sense. By
the time Bob Ross began hosting <i>The Joy of Painting</i>,
he was already a master of the techniques he presents, but each time
he performs them for us, he keeps his skills practiced and refined.
Ross was lucky that any number of people paid him to practice his
craft, many of us are not so lucky, but we should strive to work like
Ross and refine our basic technique, constantly, and consistently,
such that we get better at what we do, and stay good at it.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>Purpose</u></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> Ross reminds us that, when painting, we
have control over the world we wish to paint. For Ross, this meant an
opportunity to create images of idyllic landscapes, separate from the
petty toils of living, and the corruption of society, a world that is
happy. As writers, musicians, visual artists, what have we, we often
choose other purposes than to make our audience our ourselves happy.
But the important part is that we choose, consciously, what that
purpose is, and we know intimately what we wish to attain with our
work.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>In
Conclusion</u></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> To watch Bob Ross is to immerse one's
self in the basics of craft, and as such, serves to refresh our
willingness to practice our craft, our want to improve in our craft,
and our passion for our craft. He sends us to rest with dignity, and
respect for ourselves and our work. </span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">From all of us here at <i>Critical
Switch </i>in Olympia, WA, all one of us, Play is Labor, I'm Austin
C. Howe. God bless.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-92209493598814668012015-11-23T02:03:00.000-08:002015-11-23T02:03:07.688-08:00Survivor Series 2015 and "Theses on Roman Reigns in The Main Event"<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> To get
business out of the way: Almost every single match on the card ranged
from good to very good, though I wouldn't call any of them instant
classics like I did with Reigns' cell match last month. The booking
behind the matches made many of the results predictable (that the
bracket managed to kill a singles push for Kalisto is especially
worthy of reprimand, Cesaro slightly less so given his recent
injury,) but the quality of the matches worked ended up making that
more or less irrelevant, especially since most of the matches had
“the right” endings from a booking perspective. Originally I'd've
booked Owens to beat Ambrose so Reigns could feud with Owens, which
continues their history from the #1 Contendor's Tournament from
before Rollins' knee injury, but given the swerve cash-in ending,
Ambrose and Reigns fighting a clean face vs. face match for the title
was the smart move.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> </span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> Highlights
for me included: Del Rio showing up to work and putting on a really
physical match with Reigns that far exceeded my expectations for the
US Champion who's run so far has been marked with spotty, slow
matches. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> As well,
Charlotte worked her best match as Women's Champion thus far, with
the progression of the match naturally creating the needed pace
without needing the forced drama of kayfabe injuries that make
finishing with the Figure-Eight nonsensical. Paige also showed off
some very natural and well-studied heel work in the ring, taunting
her opponent, the audience, and brutalizing Charlotte with submission
maneuvers and hard hits. Charlotte's own offense was aggressive in
nature, including an attempted pin with her knee on Paige's throat,
but I think logic would make that excusable given the lengths Paige
went to to question Charlotte's ability and credibility. This feud is
probably ending here after the faux pas on <i>RAW</i>
about Charlotte's family, but this match may have actually been the
highlight match for those focused mostly on technical ring work.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> As well,
WWE successfully bit the bullet and resisted the temptation to make
either of their top babyfaces turn heel in the main event, which
would've been career-threatening for both men, incredibly obvious,
and incredibly short-sighted.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> The one
match that didn't have the right ending was The Brothers of
Destruction vs. Bray Wyatt and Luke Harper. I'm not sure what Braun
Strowman did to piss people off backstage, but he got buried <i>hard</i>
tonight, and Bray Wyatt's credibility as a heel took a huge hit yet
again in a match that he and Strowman both <i>really</i>
needed to win and also that Undertaker <i>really </i>needed
to lose (and I mean he needed to eat the pin) to make stakes for what
will likely be his final <i>Wrestlemania</i>
match. Last month Wyatt could disregard match outcomes as he
reorganized his Family, but this match made the entire family look
weak. All of this only amplifies what I talked about last month:
Undertaker won't be on <i>RAW</i>
tomorrow and he won't work a match at TLC, the Royal Rumble, or
Fastlane, the roster is hurting for credible heels, and older
wrestlers on WWE's roster have done a horrible, horrible job putting
over new stars who need wins a lot more than they do.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">With all of
that out of the way, I present to you: </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u><b>Theses
on Roman Reigns in The Main Event. </b></u></span>
</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"><b>I:
How Human Voices Work</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> I'm doing a lot of generalization here,
but stick with me. Grown women and children have naturally higher
voices than grown men do. Children occupy an alto-soprano range
voice, with girls capable of reaching the treble range and boys
capable of reaching the soprano range, and while women's voices lower
as they age, their voices remain naturally high, also tending to
occupy an alto-soprano range (typically the Soprano I range, with a
rare few being capable of retaining Soprano II range as they age.)
Men, however, reach down into the countertenor, baritone, and bass
ranges. For any number of reasons, these tones, and thus, these lower
voices, more easily project across a wider range, which, combined
with the tendency for mean to speak louder, means that grown men are
more easily heard.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> Thus, it must be noted than when you
hear Roman Reigns get booed (or John Cena), he is never being booed
nearly as universally as one might think. This was on display during
Reigns' barn-burner <i>HIAC</i> match against Bray Wyatt last month,
wherein we heard the noted “Cena split”, where the higher voices
of the audience, the women and children, chanted “Let's go Roman!”
while the deeper and louder voices of the audience chanted “Roman
Sucks!”</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> In short: if you think WWE going with
Reigns as a main-eventer is stupid because he's getting booed, I
refer you to the above. The WWE does a lot of stupid things. They
don't put belts on people who don't draw or make merch money.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> This is to say nothing of the fact that
in the internet age, when there is more backstage reporting than ever
before, babyfaces being booed is pretty much inevitable, because the
booing itself is a political act mostly meant to perform the supposed
hardcore-ness of the wrestling fans who do it. The booing doesn't say
“this guy's a jerk, he should lose” or even “this guy isn't
good” (though it does say that) but mostly “I'm not getting what
I specifically want right now,” and aside from possibly the return
of Daniel Bryan (whose push towards <i>Wrestlemania XXX</i> played on
these internet politics) and thrusting him back into the main event,
pretty much nothing would ever silence those boos, and WWE does well
to ignore them while listening to the kids who will continue to be
their most dedicated fans.</span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"><b>II
: On The Possibility of Ambrose or Reigns Turning Heel</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> I'll talk about Ambrose later down but
we need to focus on Roman first, because there are a number of
levels, almost too many to write about, on which the concept of the
Roman Reigns heel turn simply <i>does not work</i>.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> First:
it's what the Rock did. And as I've discussed before, the “Samoan
Heritage” angle is not going to get Roman over, partially because
of vile racism, and mostly because for the brief moment that WWE did
highlight his Samoan heritage and pointed out his relationship to The
Rock, people believed that he was only getting pushed because of his
relationship to The Rock, something that can only get you heat. As
well: Rock 2.0 (which is ultimately how people would view Heel
Reigns, regardless of the character he performed, because of the
expectation that he will follow a similar character arc to The Rock,
because Nostalgia) is not a sellable character beyond nostalgia, and
is not something that WWE can rely on for someone they want to make
into their next long-term babyface while John Cena slides back down
to the midcard. For Reigns to be The Man he has to be his own man,
and turning him heel would undo most of the work done to establish
him as a separate identity from his relatives.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> As
well, Roman's key weakness (which he has been steadily improving) is
his mic work. For any number of reasons, a babyface can afford to
have less-than-stellar mic work, but a heel needs to be able to talk
for days. They need to be able to talk shit. They need to be able to
rile up a crowd. The only heat Roman has is with smarks who hate him
for whatever god-forsaken reason, and he gets booed during his promos
precisely because for the longest time his promos were very weak.
(That they have notably improved has had little effect on those who
boo him at live events, which is as unsurprising as it is
disappointing.)</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> On top
of that, Roman's moveset, while hard-hitting and slam-oriented, is
ill-suited towards heel work. This is not to say that he couldn't
learn the submission moves and limb-specific work that would be
required of him as a heel, but suffice to say that his in-ring work
<i>as it exists</i> is not
already well-suited towards him being a heel.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> In
short, Roman would be ineffective as a heel in a way that he has not
proven ineffective as a babyface. This brings up an uncomfortable
truth for the IWC to confront: what they see as being desperately
necessary out of Roman because they believe that Roman gets booed
because people hate him is actually incredibly risky. If Reigns
doesn't work as a heel (and he won't) he has to do a lot of work to
turn back face, and that quite simply may not work with the fans he
has, particularly children, who may find it difficult to forgive him.
He may only be a few years old in the main roster, but for good or
ill, Roman Reigns is already John Cena, and if WWE wants him to <i>be</i>
John Cena, in terms of being their hero for children, they cannot
make him a heel.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> Ambrose,
on the other hand, is frankly just an incredibly obvious heel, who
might actually excel in that role. However, a turn for him now serves
to sever one of the few dramatic bits of humanity on WWE TV that has
proven resonant with fans of Ambrose and Reigns: the friendship
shared by the both of them. (That breaking up that friendship also
delays the reuniting of the SHIELD should not go unnoticed of
course.) Moreover, Dean Ambrose may be able to effectively work and
talk as a heel, but it is very likely that his heel persona would be
dealing in some incredibly offensive stereotypes about mentally ill
people, given that his already uncomfortable “Lunatic Fringe”
merchandise (that he rarely ever wears) already plays off of it. On
top of everything else, he is already a well liked babyface, and
while he is really in need of a hot feud to put him back in the
spotlight, I personally think it makes more sense for him to be
wrestling for the IC or US belt while he waits to be put back into
the main event (where he definitely belongs after Reigns' next title
reign comes to an end.) </span>
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"><b>III:
The Match Itself</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> In
the moment the match felt obviously rushed because what could've been
a 20 or 30-minute main event was forced down to 10 to fit in Sheamus'
cash-in, but this was a well-constructed 10-minute match that
featured my favorite developing feature of Roman Reigns: his tendency
to use his high-impact moves sparsely and intelligently while working
around his opponents offense (as well as simply absorb it, Reigns can
eat a <i>lot</i>
of finishers on PPV.) At<b>
</b><i>Hell in A Cell</i>,
this resulted in a matchup that had more one-sided paces, with Reigns
dominating early, Wyatt getting the advantage only with weapons, and
then Reigns managing to counter a number of Wyatt's in-ring moves to
close out the match. Here, it resulted in a more even matchup with
counters abounding on both sides as Ambrose's speed occasionally
overwhelmed Roman's defense, as well as his unusual reversals of
momentum on the ropes and apron. As well, being top guys, both
managed to absorb at least one finisher from each other, with Ambrose
kicking out of a Spear earlier in the going. Ultimately, as
deeply-underrated commentator Michael Cole said, it came down to the
last man with the ball. Ambrose went off the turnbuckle and winded up
for a big move, and Reigns hit him suddenly with the spear for the
pin. For a moment, Roman Reigns was your World Heavyweight Champion.
It was not to last.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"><b>IV:
On Consistent Storytelling and Metatext</b></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> Roman
Reigns' loss to Sheamus tonight was heartbreaking, and genuinely
tragic in structure. Allowing himself a brief moment to vent his
frustrations with how opportunity has been stolen from beneath him
despite effort upon effort, Reigns rejected to have his hand raised
by Triple-H and Speared the COO, at which point he was immediately
Brogue Kicked by the Irishman, who immediately cashed in the Money in
the Bank Contract. Reigns kicked out of the first finisher, but he
ate a second almost immediately and that put him down. Sheamus is
your World Heavyweight Champion, and he doesn't deserve to be there.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> This
is where we hit the consistent drama and the metatext: Roman Reigns
spearing Triple-H is not representative necessarily of beef with
Triple-H, but of Reigns' frustrations with WWE as a structure. How
the inherent unfairness of the Money in the Bank briefcase lead to
him being screwed at <i>Wrestlemania
XXXI</i>
and how shoddy officiating led to his failure to achieve retribution
by using that briefcase himself, and then Triple-H had the gall to
offer him a place in the Authority despite having never shown him any
love before, not to mention causing the betrayal of his once-friend
Seth Rollins. It's also about how WWE has mismanaged Roman Reigns.
How they screwed up his push towards <i>WMXXXI</i>
and his characterization basically since the breakup of the SHIELD.
How they've managed to make something as simple as making Roman
Reigns a main event superstar and screw it up, just like they've
screwed it up with so many guaranteed winners before. For fans of
Reigns, seeing him Spear Triple-H is satisfying on a number of levels
because of all of these factors both inside and outside of kayfabe.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> That
Spear also represents a minor betrayal of the sort of values that
Reigns is intended to embody as a babyface, as deserved as it is. It
was a display of hubris, and it also betrayed the sort of calm Reigns
has portrayed. It's the kind of short-term and short-sighted
satisfaction that one is not supposed to strive for as a babyface.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> And
as punishment, Reigns was cashed-in on, again, and lost to Sheamus,
the man who he lost the MiTB contract to after deserving to win it so
obviously. (Note: this would be a great setup for a feud if Sheamus
was even remotely threatening as a heel, or entertaining as a
wrestler.) Yet again, Roman worked so hard to get where he got to,
and lost it all because as tough as he is, and as talented as he is,
he's only human. And this time it even happened again, during a title
match, with a Money In The Bank cash-in. And he lost it to Sheamus, a
total jobber who's been an absolute afterthought for most of the
year, and who totally deserves it because he's a lazy in-ring worker
and an at-best uninspired talker who's W-L record can never back up
the bark. (Something that I can't help now but think was planned as a
way to make his cash-in win as much of a swerve as possible.) The
consistency of that is pretty admirable. </span>
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"> It's
also smart: Roman has been slowly regaining popularity throughout the
year because he's continued to work hard and yet continually lose on
a number of occasions, and nothing else builds fan sympathy easier.
I'd have to run the numbers again, but since <i>Mania</i>,
Roman has barely more than a 50/50 win-rate on PPV, and that's only
after two consecutive PPV wins these past two months. And while his
sudden push to win the title here felt a little rushed, it now makes
a lot of sense since we're learning that satisfaction is likely going
to be delayed until at least <i>TLC</i>,
though I think for pure excitement WWE shouldn't pull the trigger on
that until the <i>Royal
Rumble</i>
in January. Last year's event, though the Rumble itself was obviously
a huge disappointment, had an air of real excitement in the
triple-threat between Cena, Rollins, and Lesnar, as we were left
predicting who might win the Royal Rumble, as well as wondering who
might be the Champion, leaving the <i>Mania</i>
card itself totally empty. With smarter and less predictable booking
(I know, I'm asking a lot) WWE could really capitalize on a similar
setup again in January. </span>
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;"> All
in all, I really enjoyed <i>Survivor
Series</i>,
and, while I think Sheamus' reign should not be long, I do think that
WWE showed a lot of restraint here by not making Reigns champion and
by avoiding the obvious heel turns they could've created for
short-lived drama. That makes it unbearably “safe” for some, but
to me, sometimes “safe” just means smart.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif; font-size: large;">-
From Olympia, WA, Play is Labor, I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-74777018275934100672015-11-15T20:17:00.000-08:002015-11-15T20:17:01.991-08:00Critical Switch: Zolani's Departure and The Beginner's Guide<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>A
Special Announcement and <i>The Beginner's Guide</i></u></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
episode of <i>Critical Switch</i>
marks an important transition. Sadly, it is my responsibility to
announce that, during his time away from the show while focusing on
his personal life and other game criticism projects, Zolani Stewart
has decided to leave <i>Critical Switch</i>.
</span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br />As
of yet, I don't know how Zolani's departure may impact the format of
the show. What I can say with absolute certainty is that <i>Critical
Switch</i> will continue, and will
not be going anywhere anytime soon. I really don't know yet, but
suffice to say that, aside from my intention to continue bringing you
short form radio-report-style audio criticism once a week, the format
may be mildly unstable for a time.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Zolani
Stewart is, and I really mean this, one of my best friends in the
entire world. Since I got to know him last year, we collaborated on
IndiE3, and built up it's sequel The Alternative Digital Arts
Festival from practically nothing. We slept across from each other in
a bare, undecorated, brand-new apartment, with no internet, and a
week to actually put on ADAF after half a year of fumbling under
unsupportive leadership and with a near-total lack of funding, and
within a week, thanks in no small part to Iris Bull and Solon S.
Scott III, we launched, on time, successfully. It was one of the most
draining things either of us have ever done in our entire lives and
it stands as perhaps our greatest collaborative achievement.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">I'm
incredibly honored that he worked with me on the basic concept of
this show, and it will remain a highlight of my career and my life
that we worked together on the same critical project even once. Aside
from his fantastic episodes, it will remain likely his greatest
contribution to keep the show limited to audio, rather than quickly
expanding into video, as was my initial plan. The impact of that
decision is something I may write a whole episode on at some point.
And who knows, maybe the man himself will be back for a guest episode
or two in the future.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">For
now, I want to send him off in the only way that feels right. Since I
met him, Zolani has been a huge fan of “walking simulators,”
first-person narrative games, whatever you wanna call them. He is
second-to-none in his understanding of the genre, and his advocacy of
it, with the exception of, perhaps, the great Amy Dentata, who he and
I both cite as a major influence. In his very first episode of
<i>Critical Switch</i>, which
was the very first episode of the show, he talked about the walking
simulator <i>Bernband</i> and
how it inverts some of the genre norms of walking sims, particularly
their oppressive and overwhelming sense of drama, dread, and
loneliness.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Having
played many of the walking sims he's discussed at his recommendation,
I'd report that no walking sim has ever captured those genre
characteristics more strongly than Davey Wreden's new game <i>The
Beginner's Guide</i>.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Unsurprisingly
for a game made by the developer of <i>The Stanley Parable</i>
and <i>The Stanley Parable HD Remix</i>
(which are meaningfully separate titles in my opinion, but more on
that in a different episode), <i>The Beginner's Guide</i>
has already been a lightning rod for critical discussion, given that,
like it's predecessor, it is not only a videogame about videogames,
but it is also a videogame that presents itself more or less as a
piece of interactive videogame criticism: Davey Wreden is showing us
some small videogames made by a friend of his, Coda, who stopped
making videogames 4 years ago, and he hopes that by encouraging
interest in his work, Coda will feel encouraged to make games again.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
is, for the record, entirely kayfabe. Coda is not a person who
exists, and surely if he did, Davey Wreden himself would be mired in
controversy right now based on things that he says about his
relationship with Coda and based on things he quotes Coda as having
said. (Though, I have read, coincidentally, that there is a popular
developer of <i>Counter-Strike: Global Operations </i>maps
who's name is Coda.)</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The
story told by <i>The Beginner's Guide</i> is intimate in scope,
simple, and, unsurprisingly for the creator of <i>The Stanley
Parable</i>, deals with characters who feel coldness between one
another and distance between themselves, and I found myself
unjustifiably shocked when the game's ending revealed that these
characters had nowhere near the level of comfort or intimacy with
each other as I'd been lead to believe. As a narrative, it runs on
one of the simplest structures that recurs throughout all
storytelling media: the twist that makes the point. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>What</i>
point has been a subject of fierce debate amongst game critics since
the game came out, with some critics feeling personally implicated by
the game's seeming distrust of Davey Wreden (the character's)
tendency towards close analysis. I would suggest something simpler:
that Davey's crime is less his willingness to read depth into Coda's
games, but rather that he takes his interpretations of Coda's games
as an opportunity to read into Coda's authorial intent.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Though
Wreden is revealed over the course of <i>The Guide</i>
to be both invasive and unintentionally abusive of Coda, portions of
his analyses of Coda's games have legitimate merit: his games do
project reclusiveness, depression, social anxiety, and can often be
cold and unforgiving. But in attempting to assign all of those things
onto Coda himself, Wreden poisons the well, because the art and the
artist are no longer separate, and Wreden's evaluations of the games
eventually become judgements of Coda himself. As the game goes on, it
becomes much clearer that Wreden resents Coda for not letting him in
more, while Coda himself tries to make his games that much more
unwelcoming to Wreden until he is suddenly forced to reveal his
intent at the top of <i>The Tower</i>,
wherein he explicitly states to Davey how his attempts to engage with
his work have poisoned what made making games enjoyable or expressive
for him, as the games are no longer for him but for Davey.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">As
is the failing of many an overenthusiastic critic, Wreden fails to
maintain critical distance from his subject, and becomes too
personally invested in Coda as an artist to allow Coda any space to
breathe, which ironically takes out the uniquely “Coda” things
about Coda's games that drew Davey to them in the first place.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Quite
frankly, the most we can pull away from it as critics is Wreden's
reliance on his attempts to read intent rather than to read simply
what is communicated. Given the particulars of the story, as Coda is
a developer with an audience of one, the story does not seem to be
immediately applicable as anything else than a warning about the
dangers of reading authorial intent, one who's stakes are driven
higher by Coda's singular audience. Perhaps there are other
metaphorical or allegorical readings that would add more metaphorical
depth to it, but they do not occur to me now as I write this.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Any
interpretation of the narrative is put into question as well not just
by the reveal at the top of <i>The Tower</i>,
but as well the epilogue of the game, which, as Heather Alexandra
pointed out in her excellent video on the game, raises a lot of
“water cooler” questions. Who developed the epilogue? Was it
Coda's final masterpiece he never allowed Davey to see? Was it Davey,
making something he thought might give him the answers he was looking
for in Coda's games? What do the particular recurring symbols we see
in the ending tell us about the rest of the game?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As
a narrative text, <i>The Beginner's Guide</i>
suddenly jumps from relative simplicity to incredible complexity, and
creates that incredible complexity by way of devices that make the
ultimate meaning of the game unknowable unless anyone in it's
audience is absolutely certain of what they know the ending to
represent. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">For
that reason, I wish to be non-perscriptive, step back from the
narrative, and just sort of interpret the spaces the game puts us
through from a purely emotional perspective. Maybe, after all, that's
what the game wants us to do, to simply see the games we're being
shown through our own eyes. The various games we're made to play in
<i>The Beginner's Guide</i> are emotionally imposing experiences. As
is the hallmark of any good walking sim, just moving through these
spaces is by itself an emotional experience. That sort of experience
isn't what I as a critic feel very experienced in, so I'm simply
going to stop here and recommend playing the game yourself. You can
also find interesting reactions to the game by Heather Alexandra,
Matt Lees, and others, I'm actually very late to the party.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Suffice
to say, I think <i>The Beginner's Guide</i> is exceptionally
beautiful. And I want to wish Zolani best of luck in his continuing
efforts as a freelancer and running <i>The Arcade Review</i>. You can
show Zolani your appreciation for his time at Critical Switch by
tweeting at him, I know I've thanked him enough.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">From
Olympia, WA, Play is Labor, I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-17886785908778659682015-10-27T06:11:00.002-07:002015-10-27T06:20:49.645-07:00Monday Night RAW, 9/27/16: Why Isn't Cesaro Getting Pushed? (The Answer Is Pretty Easy.)<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Part 1: Prestige of the Intercontinental Title, and the Position of the IC Belt and It's Owner</u></b><br /><br />The Intercontinental Title has a big problem in how it is sold. It's represented as both a belt meant for WWE's most talented <i>wrestlers</i> as well as the competitors most likely to make a shot towards the world title. One potential problem with this: the belt is therefore seen as a stepping stone and something meant to be acquired and then discarded quickly, leading to a quick turnover of champions as WWE searches for their next Big Thing.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The other problem with that being that the IC belt has not recently proved a great way to actually find their next WHC. Here are the IC belt holders since the beginning of 2015: Wade Barrett (who is currently displaying how little it means to be King of The Ring anymore), Daniel Bryan, Ryback (it's the only championship The Big Guy has ever won), and currently NXT newcomer Kevin Owens.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Rebuilding the stature of the belt is a multi-step process, and step one of that process is attaching it to a talented in-ring performer like Kevin Owens (or Cesaro) and having them hold it for a significant period of time with a significant amount of defenses ending in clean victories for the current Intercontinental Champion, and though the match itself needed more time to feel more significant, WWE made a smart decision in booking Owens to go over Ryback clean at <i>Hell in A Cell </i>to start that process. (As much as I'd like to support more time for the women on the roster, they got more time than the IC belt contenders for a feud that's way less over than Owens himself.) <i>That </i>belt has to be the prize, not what it means in relation to a WHC shot, and you can make that belt more of a prize by keeping it attached to a prize-winning fighter.</span></div>
</div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">When the opportunities the belt presents mean more than the belt itself, the belt itself is devalued, and that's exactly what WWE did by embroiling Kevin Owens in the tournament for this shot at the WHC. Instead, in a separate segment, he should've come out and told the crowd what he did to Ryback at <i>Hell in a Cell</i> (beat him cleanly in a quick, concise, pretty match) and say that he is ready to accept challengers, and then out walks Cesaro, Neville, or whoever. (Hint: it also makes a lot of sense to attach Europeans to the belt that Vince doesn't want as WHC so that they can have a position of comfort and guaranteed importance on the card!)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Instead, WWE chose to push Owens himself as a competitor, towards his inevitable loss in that night's main event in a defeat in the fatal four-way match for the #1 contender's spot. Nevermind that, instead of beating Cesaro, Owens could've beaten, I don't know, Bo Dallas or The Big Show or some shit in a squash match. The real purpose of that tournament wasn't to make Owens look good, it was to make Reigns look good. It did, (it <i>really</i> did) but WWE wasted a lot of talent to make it that way.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">As a result, yet again, down goes Cesaro, who is one of the most popular wrestlers on the roster, puts on great matches every time he goes out, and continues to make the best of his spot in the company despite barely having one to speak of.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u>Part 2: Cesaro Is Becoming Continuously Victimized By The Booking He's Given</u></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><b><u><br /></u></b></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This one is pretty simple and really, really hurts to write.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Cesaro cannot get a shot at the WHC because he cannot win the IC belt and he cannot win the US belt and he cannot beat the Big Show. It <i>does not</i> make any sense to put him anywhere near the big belt unless he's proven in a kayfabe sense he can compete on that level, which, in a kayfabe sense, he simply has not. </span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">In kayfabe, he could lose to R-Truth tomorrow and it would be totally believable.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This is entirely WWE's fault and it's something WWE can fix easily.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Start slow. Have him beat Mark Henry, or Bo Dallas, or take revenge on the Big Show for all I care. Give him a mic, let him tell his rabid fans "I've been letting you all down, but starting tonight, I will start working to become the great wrestler you know I can be." (And yes, those are the guys he has to beat because right now, Cesaro's status as a competitor is that of someone on the absolute bottom of the card.) Put him in a small face stable of guys he works with well. (Hey! they already did that! and they already scored victories on lowcard heels at <i>Hell in A Cell</i>!) </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">After maybe a month of that low-level rebuilding, it'll make perfect sense to shoot him straight to the moon, and the fans will eat it up big time because they'll have seen their guy work his way up from the absolute bottom. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">From that point, all that needs to be decided is whether KO gets to keep holding the IC belt, or whether Cesaro will be it's new face who gets to have the historic privilege of rebuilding it just like he rebuilt himself.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Hey, that's a pretty good idea for an angle I'd figure . . .</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">From Olympia, WA, Play is Labor, I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-27980459870414631922015-10-26T07:47:00.002-07:002015-10-27T03:33:42.694-07:00Hell in A Cell Review (?)<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><u style="font-weight: bold;">Pre-Show Match:</u> Cesaro, Neville, and Dolph Ziggler teamed to fight Rusev, Sheamus, and Cesaro continues to refuse to let repeated burials stop him. Ziggler didn't get much in this showing, but Cesaro's teamwork with Neville resulted in some fun spots. A very fun match that shows off why all six of the guys in this match deserve much better booking than they're getting, especially Rusev and Ziggler.</span><br />
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">John Cena vs. . . Alberto Del Rio?! w/ Zeb Colter At Ringside?!</span></u></b></div>
<div>
<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Huge</i> swerve in this match, as last we'd heard from Rio in the WWE he'd been <i>fired</i> from WWE for slapping someone who supposedly made a racist joke about him. Not exactly a controversy that's easy to bury the hatchet on. As well, at ringside with him was Zeb Colter, a guy who's mostly known for being a tea party dude. The possible racially-based tensions between the two spells for an angle that would be questionable, but his return is definitely welcome for fans. The match itself was a bit slow in spots, but these two having worked with each other before and being comfortable with each other's styles showed. A great wrestler for Cena to drop the US title to on his way to vacation. As well, Del Rio currently holds one of the belts in the AAA promotion in Mexico, so we'll have to wait and see how that plays out (possibly as a cross-promotion? It would be out of character for Vince, but it has happened before.)<br /><br />John Cena winning the US title at <i>Wrestlemania XXXI </i>over Rusev buried Rusev in a big, big way, and he's been stuck with easily the worst storyline currently running in the WWE. That said, Cena's US Open Challenge has been an amazing multi-tool combination for the long-running, talented, and deeply divisive competitor: <br /><br />1) It put great matches on TV without giving away any major money feuds for free.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">2) It's allowed Cena to put on great matches with talent deserving of better booking, like Cesaro, and Neville while maintaining his position as champion, (a position that WWE misguidedly finds very, very necessary,) . . .<br />3) . . . <i>without</i> putting time into long-running storylines that ultimately work to diminish the importance of the people he's competing against as in years previous. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">4) As well, it allowed WWE to put Cena, easily still one of their top draws, consistently in arenas and on TV without having his matches and feuds dominate the card in the way that <i>some</i> aged fucks tend to do (we'll get to them later.)</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">All in all, the effectiveness of booking people in matches they're meant to lose as a means of pushing the people who lose is still questionable, but it makes sense given the dominance, both historical and continuing, of John Cena himself. That Cena has used his dominance and prestige to subvert the horrendous booking given to younger superstars, allowing them to come out and perform their routine with WWE's top guy, is commendable. <br /><br />That aforementioned dominance has been divisive, but also very necessary given that he has been one of the only consistent, reliable figures in WWE since the early 2000's and among the very few wrestlers who debuted near the mid-2000's who's established himself as a legitimate, Hall-of-Fame-in-his-first-eligible-year #Legend. But given that, for the first time in over a decade, Cena has actually elected, by his own choice, to take some time off, we'll see whether he may finally be choosing to fade into a more background-oriented role.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">What I'm saying is I really like John Cena and fuck you, ok?</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Reigns vs. Wyatt, Hell in A Cell</span></u></b></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Match of the night, easily. (What, you <i>liked</i> Lesnar and Taker in the cell? Fuck you, we'll get to you later.) Both competitors looked beastly in Reigns' debut inside the cell, and there was an exactly appropriate combination of wrestling in the ring, wrestling on the outside, and weapons use, (shouts to Roman pulling out <i>double fucking kendo sticks hell to the god damn yes, please, and thank you</i>,) and the crowd audibly loved it, and audibly loved (and hated) Roman. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The feud itself was . . . glacially-paced, at best, but it did a lot of work to rebuild Roman's popularity as he retrieved some of his cool, distant confidence of his time in the SHIELD while also adding just a dash of violence and danger to his persona and ring by letting Bray Wyatt drag him into the darkness, <i>juuuuust</i> a bit. Reigns still could use work on the mic, but he is also someone who genuinely benefits from <i>not talking</i> because his face and demeanor are so expressive, like Goldberg with less overacting. (It's also worth noting that plenty of wrestling's great faces were never great talkers, a fact that the centering of the Attitude Era in WWE as wrestling's golden age, as well as the plethora of explosive mic men in the 80's like Savage, Flair, and The Ultimate Warrior, has obscured. Bret Hart and Goldberg come to mind as two huge draws that were never known for great mic work. (Some might respond by saying "yeah but Bret Hart was one of the great technical wrestlers of all time," which, sure, Reigns isn't, but he's also a significantly better wrestler, brawler, and "stuntman" than Goldberg, who was significantly more popular.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The rivalry also put over Strowman in a big way, who's still undefeated and still a fearsome, no-sell monster heel. A lot of people are unhappy to see Wyatt himself pick up so many losses, but what he's lost in matches he's more than made up for in a stronger-than-ever Wyatt family.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">All in all, I'd now easily describe Reigns as a legitimate title threat once again, he's over with every section of the wrestling fandom that matters (which is to say, not the IWC, thank god) <i>and all WWE had to do was let it happen naturally, whoulda fucking thunk it</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Highlight spots: <i>Pretty much the whole match.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Reigns missing a drive-by and still catching Wyatt with a right hand to plop him on the apron, then successfully hitting the drive-by. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Wyatt sitting in the chair while going for kendo stick shots. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The use of the kendo sticks and chairs wedged into the cell as traps to be thrown into (which I'm fairly certain is a brand new HIAC spot). </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><i>Double fucking Kendo Stick Offense.</i> </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Side slam through a table by Wyatt. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Roman reversing a superplex by falling below Wyatt and putting him in a powerbomb through another table. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Wyatt setting up a Sister Abigail, Reigns falling to the floor to counter and rolling up Wyatt. Wyatt popping out and as he charges, Reigns charging up the Superman Punch, lands it, Wyatt selling it beautifully, then kicking out of the subsequent pin with a pop that sends Roman flying into the referee. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Reigns Spearing Wyatt off the apron into a table.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Finally, after a few false finishes, Wyatt sets up the two kendo sticks in the ring posts such that they're pointing out towards the center of the ring. He looks as if he's going to throw Reigns head right through both of them, Reigns tosses him forward, grabs one of the sticks and smacks Wyatt with it a few times, throws him into the other one such that his forehead went directly into it, then Speared him for the finish.</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The New Day (w/o Xavier Woods) vs The Dudley Boyz for the Tag Team Championships</span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Sometimes you don't need a great feud to get over, just great performers. That's what's happening right now in the WWE tag team division right now. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In one corner, you have The Dudley Boyz, Bubba Ray and Devon who've been over practically since day 1 and never haven't been. ECW originals who co-starred in the beloved original Tables, Ladders, and Chairs matches with The Hardy Boyz and Edge and Christian, who are also legitimately great tag team wrestlers even without the assistance of weapons (they still have the most refined arsenal of tag maneuvers in the business next to like, The Young Bucks), the only tag team in the TNA Hall of Fame, and are <i>easily</i> the most decorated tag team in the history of professional wrestling, having won the tag team belts in every promotion they've worked in <i>at least</i> once, who hold the record for the WWE tag team championships having held it nine times with a tenth seemingly in the cards.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">In the other you have The New Day: two-time tag team champions who're easily the most beloved team since The SHIELD, and whose comedic antics have made them breaths of fresh air in what often feels like overwritten episodes of <i>RAW</i>. Kofi gives you the fast guy offense, Big E gives you the big guy moves, they combine for a hot tag maneuver where Big E throws Kofi in a missile dropkick position into a ringposted opponent, and the whole time, Xavier Woods plays a trombone and screams about tricep meat. They're technically heels but no one really likes to boo for them, and a full-fledged face turn is imminent. They are hot, they are money, they are <i>fantastic</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">By any objective measure, these teams are equally matched, but to preserve the semblance of a face/heel dynamic (which is usually meaningless in a tag team feud where four different wrestlers or more are trying to get over), New Day have often resorted to classic heel tactics to retain their titles, typically by getting themselves disqualified and losing the match, which, under championship belt rules, means the championship belts themselves means they cannot change hands. This has become a somewhat tiring holding pattern as Bubba and Devon destroy the New Day with their genuine wrestling acumen and veteran teamwork, only to have the match end abruptly, and WWE showed bad form in allowing New Day to use the exact same finish on both <i>Night of Champions</i> and their recent house show from Madison Square Garden they showed on the WWE Network.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The match itself was probably the best worked match between these two yet, with the Dudleyz pulling out all of their great tag combos (including the rare "3D II" variation, which Kofi kicked out of), and, Xavier being gone from ringside gave more room for Kingston and Big E's genuine in-ring talent to shine, but the match was blemished notably by easily the worst botch of the night when Bubba tried to set up one of those great tag combos and "miscommunicated" with D-Von, as JBL pointed out. It was, indeed, so bad that JBL felt the need to point it out. So did the crowd. That's pretty rare for a WWE show.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Many thought tonight would spell defeat for the New Day, especially with Woods out on a (kayfabe) injury from eating a table shot by the Dudleyz on <i>RAW</i>, but Kingston and Big E found a new trick: pretending to be Eddie Guerrero. At the end of the match, Kingston grabbed Xavier Woods' trombone and tossed it at Bubba Ray Dudley, and then took a dive and began to sell as though the Dudley Boy had hit him. The ref didn't buy it, but while he was distracted, Big E managed to grab the trombone and smack Bubba. D-Von hits Big E with a Cactus Clothesline, they both go out, Bubba gets back in and isn't ready for Kingston to hit the Trouble in Paradise, Kofi gets the pin on Bubba to retain.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Xavier pinned D-Von clean on <i>RAW</i>, but this is the first time The New Day have beaten the Dudley Boyz, clean or unclean, on a PPV, and that shows a significant jump in strength for them that they can contend with legends like the Dudleyz. How this feud will develop into Survivor Series and how the blowoff will work at TLC is a topic of huge and vital interest.</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Charlotte Vs. Nikki Bella for the Diva's Championship</span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">God, I really just don't know what to say. Charlotte winning was the correct call here, but her ring work has just been outright <i>sloppy</i> since her debut on the main roster. In fact, many on wrestling twitter noted, correctly, shockingly, that Nikki was actually the much better in-ring performer here. The highlight spot in what was otherwise an abysmal match was Bella's half Boston Crab on Charlotte, whose flexibility meant that Nikki could pull that leg to angles previously thought unthinkable in my mind, that same flexibility giving Charlotte exactly the way to push forward and reach the ropes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The botches? Numerous and embarrassing, including falls from the top rope, (bless Michael Cole's heart, trying to sell that as "an incredible counter by Charlotte!") flubbed submission holds, Nikki grabbing the ropes to break Charlotte's Figure-Four (yes, it was a Figure-Four, she did the Figure-Eight to finish) after already reversing the hold and flipping Charlotte upside-down, and of course, the ever-persistent "Charlotte has no other finisher so she's going to do the figure-eight, kayfabe injuries to legs and back be damned." I tend to accept this as a presentation of toughness by Charlotte, but other fans ain't buying it and you can't really blame them.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Charlotte is a great wrestler, but this was by far her weakest performance since her main roster debut, and that is actually saying a lot. This feud also hasn't worked for Charlotte or Nikki, and hopefully this rematch-clause catastrophe here at Hell in A Cell means we can move on from this.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Before we move on, I'd like to be as positive as possible about women's wrestling in WWE, so how about this: instead of watching this match, go watch the triple threat between Jazz, Trish Stratus, and Victoria at <i>Wrestlemania XIX</i>. That match was <i>awesome</i>.</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Seth Rollins Vs. "Demon" Kane for the World Heavyweight Championship</span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">I liked this match a lot better than others, but the Spanish announce table refusing to break after what was already a heavily botched setup speaks for itself. Kane is too old to be working on a main event level, but that's the point, and this angle is clearly setting up his retirement. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Speaking of the angle: It was a short and sweet way for Kane to transition back into the Demon character full time before he rides off into the sunset, and that's exactly what Kane should be. Corporate Kane had it's ups and downs, but Kane deserves to go out in hellfire, and in a mask. People are wondering what this does to push Seth Rollins since he's working with yet another old guy.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This angle actually served to strengthen Rollins and the rest of the Roster. In case you hadn't noticed: this was by far not the most important match on this card. No matter what happened, Taker and Lesnar was going to matter more to live show ticket buyers, and the return of Alberto Del Rio and beating Cena clean was going to overshadow a lot of things. On top of that, Rollins and Kane weren't wrestling inside the cell (and shouldn't have) when fellow top stars Bray Wyatt and Roman Reigns did.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Seth, because of Kane's sheer offense, was forced to use more of his high-flying moves that were a staple as a face, and the crowd reacted in turn. He eventually got the win after a sloppy Pedigree. This is the second time he has won clean over a legend, and I think it's slowly simmering towards a face turn to set up the inevitable SHIELD reunion. On top of taking a severe beating from John Cena at <i>Night of Champions</i>, this is one of the traditional building blocks towards a face turn.<br /><br />Seth came out looking stronger than he has since <i>Wrestlemania XXXI</i> and WWE's wisdom in booking a throwaway feud for their champion on a night when the big money match was between two legends and they're working to build Owens and Reigns is commendable.<br /><br />The only sad weak link in the chain really was a slightly lackluster match, which was also what happened at <i>Night of Champions</i> when Sting got injured early in the match, the result being that the reports make Rollins look stronger than the match does. The next move is to book Rollins with someone closer to his age who can actually compete with him.</span></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Kevin Owens Vs. Ryback for the Intercontinental Championship</span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This match was very short and both men ended up looking good in it, which is a huge improvement over the pseudo-squash-ending-in-an-eye-rake-and-a-rollup we got at <i>Night of Champions</i>. In the WWE of my dreams, Kevin Owens and his complete and utter lack of microphone talent (did you <i>see</i> that pre-show promo in front of the Magic Johnson statue? God, such garbage, I mean we can debate the merits of self-help books but we can't debate the merits of a heel's shit talk including grievous factual errors when they're supposed to be "smart") would've never won the belt, Ryback would already be a two-time World Champion looking to secure a place of midcard dominance, and Kevin Owens would just be meat on the table to him.</span></div>
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<i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></i></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">High spots: do you like a particular move either of these wrestlers does that isn't Ryback's shellshock? They were all in this match, pick one. Overall I'm glad Ryback protects his finisher and praying someday he gets the booking he deserves. <i>FEED. ME. MORE.</i></span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /><b><u>Overall: I Liked It A Lot!</u></b></span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">To me, this was an extremely well-booked PPV that was only a few execution mistakes away from being a classic. I think it might be the best PPV of the year so far and I feel like this is exactly the way it should've gone down.</span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Wait, wait a minute . . . I'm receiving word that I forgot to analyze a match. It's . . . it's! . . . Oh fuck, it's Taker Vs. Lesnar in the Cell.</span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">. . . </span></span></span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><span style="font-weight: bold;"><span style="font-weight: normal;">God fucking dammit.</span></span></span><br />
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Taker Vs. Lesnar</span></u></b></div>
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<b><u><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></u></b></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">And you thought the Charlotte's match sucked. </span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">So let's not fuck around here.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This match sucked. This match <i>suuuuucked</i>. This match sucked so bad it almost soured my taste on the entire PPV, which had great action from (almost) every corner of the roster that can actually still wrestle. I hate this match. I hate everything it represents about how WWE books and sell PPVs, I hate what it represents for the roster, I hate what it represents for the psychology and storytelling of wrestling, I hated it on a technical level, I hated Brock Lesnar going into the match, I ended up hating the Undertaker by the end of the match, I hated it on conceivably every god damn level it could be hated.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">First and foremost: Maybe booking two of their all time legends helped WWE sell this PPV to an older crowd, but for regular ass marks like me who actually watch <i>RAW, NXT, </i>and <i>Smackdown!</i> every week, I'm looking at two old fuckers get in the way of my favorite wrestlers getting the time and prominence they deserve. Seth Rollins had to wrestle <i>Kane</i>. Ryback vs. Kevin Owens got I think 13 minutes.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Undertaker <i>cannot</i> wrestle at a main event level anymore and has not been able to do so since 2013 at the very latest. He and Triple H both should've retired completely after their classic Hell in a Cell match at <i>Wrestlemania XXVIII</i>, and every shitty match Taker works since then only continues to spoil the legacy of that amazing confrontation. His <i>WMXXIX</i> match with CM Punk was a barnburner, but it mainly marked yet another step in a longcon burial for the straight-edge superstar. And let's not even talk about his feud with Bray Wyatt because god <i>damn</i> Bray worked his ass off to get that feud over, and there's no one who would've made more sense to lose to at his final <i>Mania</i>. But nope, comes out, does a few signature spots, and the man who was once WWE's most fearsome heel goes on a losing streak. And by the way, Cole, I really love you in a way most WWE fans simply don't, but the sooner you stop using the phrase "pure striker" to describe the Undertaker, the better. He is a striker. He goes on strike after every <i>Wrestlemania </i>apparently!</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Brock Lesnar refuses to wrestle at the level he can actually wrestle at. People criticize John Cena for having the "five moves of doom," (which is essentially an extended finisher that rounds out what is actually a fairly extensive movelist,) and yet Lesnar does 15 German Supplexes in a match and the internet and old fans eat him the fuck up like we're watching Bret Hart counter a sharpshooter or some shit. That plus the F5 is the entire moveset of a guy who was once an amateur wrestling champion in the NCAA and former UFC World Heavyweight Champion, literally a person formerly recognized as being <i>the best fighter on the planet</i>. I'm really not that attached to the idea of technical mat wrestling. I like strikes, I like power moves. I like Roman Reigns and Ryback, and quite frankly, I even like Kevin Nash when his quads are having a good day, but you'd think a man of Lesnar's repute as a fighter could get a <i>little</i> more fucking creative with his spots, let alone wrestle <i>on the level</i> of Big Daddy Cool Diezel. "Suplex City Bitch!" Yeah, I think for it to be a city it needs to have a population higher than one fucking supplex you asshole.</span></div>
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<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">On top of that, Brock Lesnar a bigoted homophobic bully who recently referred to his legendary manager Paul Heyman, one of the greatest figures in the history of the business, as "the Jew." Which ain't PC anyway, but isn't exactly helped by him insistently using a <i>German</i> supplex almost exclusively and the man himself looking an Aryan fucking <i>bratwurst.</i></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">People, and by "people" I mean smarks, and by smarks I mostly mean adult men, because they're the ones making the most noise during his matches, like Brock Lesnar for exactly two reasons. One, his manager is the aforementioned Paul Heyman, whose simple physical presence next to a human being would be capable of putting them over. He was the owner of ECW, for which he will always be beloved, and he is also one of the greatest managers and talkers in the history of the business, absolutely excellent at building up his clientele's opponent, then <i>destroying</i> them as he describes the strength of his client, Brock Lesnar. Without Paul Heyman, Brock Lesnar would be nothing, another musclebound asshole with a mercenary attitude towards professional wrestling who would have went as fast as he came like Goldberg before him. The other reason internet smarks love him is because he beat John Cena in one of the cleanest squashes in recent memory, and smarks <i>hate</i> John Cena. This, despite the fact that, in 2015, John Cena has had probably the feud of the year with Seth Rollins, and during the rest of his US Open Title has put on <i>multiple</i> match of the year candidates, as well as being historically a strong performer who's always been more harshly criticized than he deserves. I love John Cena, and I</span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> fucking </span><i style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">hate</i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> Brock Lesnar. I hate Brock Lesnar almost as much as I hate </span><i style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: x-large;">Dark Souls</i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> and the Republican party combined.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">But you know what I really hated? His egregiously overdone blade job after his head getting knocked into a <i>blunt fucking object</i>. I can hear the smarks now. "Yeah, you shove that right in Vince's face, Brock! Fuck the PG era!" Yeah fuck you buddy. You know what's nice? Watching a wrestling match and not worrying that the guy who literally said he would beat people in the street if it was legal isn't going to accidentally fucking murder the 50-year-old man he's wrestling with. I fucking <i>cheered</i> those doctors when they came to clean him up, I hope one of them said right to his fucking face "you're a fucking idiot and that cut makes no sense based on any of the hits you've taken." Except wait, they can't say that because he hadn't <i>taken</i> any major hits yet because he cut his shit up like that <i>literally five minutes into the fucking match</i>. Y'know what, I just checked, it wasn't even five minutes. It was actually two minutes. <i>Two minutes y'all</i>.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">By three minutes into the match, Brock is already using a steel chair that was seemingly summoned from god damn nowhere by the power of . . . fuck it, I don't know, Paul Bearer's Urn or some shit. Undertaker looking like an old man putting up his hands to block it. Michael Cole, that beautiful bastard, calls it "you can put your hands up all you want, Brock Lesnar's got a steel chair." Thank you Cole, thank you for pointing out how Taker apparently doesn't know how to sell a god damn chair shot anymore.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">We cut back to the action live where Lesnar is now removing his combat gloves to punch the Undertaker with his hand directly, something much more likely to damage his hand than the Undertaker's skull. Undertaker drives Lesnar's throat into the edge of the steel chair as he throws it down to the mat which . . . ok that was pretty good, but we're still using a steel chair 3 minutes into what could've very likely been <i>The Undertaker's Retirement Match</i>, well, that was until the announced earlier in the PPV that Survivor Series would be the "25 Years of The Undertaker" show, hey by the way, stop spoiling shit like that.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">9 minutes into a PPV ending, theoretically half-hour long match and Brock Lesnar hits his first F5 (after only 3 German Supplexes! What a twist!) A doctor comes to check on the Undertaker, then Brock throws that doctor aside. Y'know there are heel moves . . . actually what am I saying, in this feud both of these guys are heels, because #AttitudeEra amirite? But I mean, there are heel moves, and then there's like "fuck sports safety, I'm a <i>badass</i>" and it's like, no motherfucker, you're a dumbass, and you're making a bad example to the inevitably many, many young children who are watching this and thinking of becoming some kind of athlete. That sorta move might work if the announcers highlighted the importance of safety a little more, or if Lesnar was clearly the heel in this feud, but neither of those things were true. It was a throwaway spot that probably reflects the real life attitudes of a terrible person. He goes for a second F5, Taker kicks out.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">The crowd is chanting "this is awesome!" Some of them booed Roman Reigns. Others booed John Cena. I hate them. I hate them so damn much.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Lesnar goes for a shot with the stairs and just stands and waits for Taker to politely tap him with his feet to escape the stairs, and it sends Lesnar inexplicably flying. "This is stupid!" *clap, clap, clap-clap-clap*. They both sit for like a full minute before Taker puts Lesnar in the worst Hell's Gate of all time, Lesnar counters by doing the same arm shots Ralphie did to that bully in <i>A Christmas Story</i>. </span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Look I'm not doing the rest of this. Tearing up the ring and exposing the wood planks? Awesome spot. The way they used it? Lame and ineffectual. A tombstone onto <i>hardwood</i> and Lesnar kicks out (stupid), hits Taker with a low blow (FUCK. THIS. MATCH.) and F5's him for the win.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-size: large;"><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">I really don't care if neither of them made a huge, glaring execution error during the match, being able to do a total of five actual wrestling moves correctly between the two of them means nothing when the story between these two was stupid, the booking of this feud was stupid (WWE should've known something was wrong when Lesnar, a guy who admittedly has no love for this business, agreed to end the Streak), only one of the two previous matches between these two was any good, and the story told in this match with the genuinely </span><i style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;">incredible</i><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> psychological acumen between these two performers</span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif;"> did nothing to compensate for any of the above. (By which I mean: Taker, you fucked up, big time.)</span></span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">This was easily the worst worked match of the year, the worst match of this rivalry, and the ending to what should go down in the books as one of the all-time worst feuds in the history of the WWE, and I can only hope someone at WWE is learning from this hot, nonsense garbage. </span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">Compare that to the match between Wyatt and Reigns. </span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Have we seen these two wrestle before? Yes, but not in this type of match. (Unlike Taker/Lesnar, who have fought in the cell before, and Lesnar also won.) </span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">Was their feud barely about them and more about giving something for Roman to do while not chasing a belt and also pushing Braun Strowman? Yes. Ultimately, however, <i>none of that really matters</i> because Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt are two excellent, incredibly talented wrestlers with well-developed movesets and really strong understandings of how to put together a match that manages to tell a story <i>on it's own, regardless of the booking</i>. That's why they've both been getting over with TV crowds</span><span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"> despite being booked with absolutely nothing to go on except their own skills.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, 'Times New Roman', serif; font-size: large;">And the best part is? WWE has a roster stacked to the fucking teeth with people as talented or arguably even <i>better</i> than Roman Reigns and Bray Wyatt. I've talked with a few people who've been watching wrestling a lot longer than I have, and a number of them, even deeply cynical smarks, believe that in 2015 WWE has by far the strongest roster of talent they've <i>ever </i>had. Seth Rollins, Dean Ambrose, Luke Harper, Braun Strowman, Dolph Ziggler, Cesaro, Neville, "King" Wade "Bad News" Barrett, Rusev, Stardust, The Ascencion, The Lucha Dragons, The New Day, Sasha Banks, Naomi, Tamina, Natalya, Charlotte, Paige, Becky Lynch, and a wealth of talent coming up through <i>NXT</i> that want to do nothing more than get a crowd into a match. And none of them cost <i>nearly</i> as much money as Brock Lesnar or the Undertaker.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">WWE, you have young talent. Use them. They did amazing work on this PPV, and they each put in fantastic matches every week on <i>RAW</i> and <i>Smackdown</i>. Let your overpriced oldies go home and shoot documentary footage.</span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, Times New Roman, serif; font-size: large;">From Olympia, WA, Play is Labor, and I still really enjoyed this PPV. I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-55399815948260604202015-10-24T02:41:00.003-07:002015-10-24T02:41:33.105-07:00Smackdown Main Event 10/22/15 "review"Contained herein is an analysis of booking logic surrounding <i>Smackdown</i>'s main event this past week, which a writer on <i>WhatCulture</i> criticized as, essentially, weakening the New Day heading into <i>Hell in A Cell</i>. Sorry I haven't been keeping up with my wrestling writing.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnq4EC2qMhA/VitSEcDOwVI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/MZV-eOVRvms/s1600/NewDay.PNG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="558" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fnq4EC2qMhA/VitSEcDOwVI/AAAAAAAAAGQ/MZV-eOVRvms/s640/NewDay.PNG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
- Austin C. Howe, Olympia, WA, 2015</div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-58479578402745968402015-10-23T10:48:00.002-07:002015-10-23T10:48:48.881-07:00Storify: Solon and I at QGCon 2015<a href="https://storify.com/AustinCHowe/solon-and-i-qgcon-2015">https://storify.com/AustinCHowe/solon-and-i-qgcon-2015</a>Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-90772806874522222332015-10-02T22:54:00.003-07:002015-10-02T22:58:57.216-07:00Critical Switch: On Self-Respect<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Critical
Switch</i> is supported by listeners
like you at <a href="http://patreon.com/CriticalSwitch">Patreon.com/CriticalSwitch</a><br /><br />I was talking to
Omar Elassar on Twitter before I sat down to write this and he was
pointing out that sometimes we use irony to distance ourselves from
things that embarrass us, but that at the end of the day, he still
eats Dorritos and drinks Mountain Dew while playing <i>Call of Duty</i>
because, well, it's something he likes to do.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">He tweets
this out and I realize I'm sitting in a tanktop and pajama pants,
there are three empty cans of soda on my coffee table, two of which
are Mountain Dew, and the only thing I'd eaten in the past few hours
was chips and dip. I own at least 50 videogames, but I brought less
maybe 6 books with me to Washington when I moved, with my movie
collection represented by a copy of <i>The Room </i>and
an intermittent subscription to Netflix. So I'm a gamer loser
I guess.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">And
honestly, the more I think about that, I'm ok with that. I'm poor, so
this is the food I eat. I'm jobless [or, at least I was when I wrote
this, heh], and more importantly, I'm a videogame critic, so I sit
and play videogames a lot, and, yeah, I play games more than I read,
more than I watch movies, and most of the time when I'm listening to
music I'm playing fighting games anyway</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Answer me
this question and answer this seriously: what's wrong with that
picture? Better question: <i>is </i>their
anything wrong with that?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Subject to
yourself at an experiment at my whim. Compare two images in your
mind, a shelf full of books and a shelf full of games. Gut reaction,
which one implies the person who is the person who is more
politically invested and culturally educated? It's the book shelf,
right?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">As a
community, videogame critics have done pretty well at moving past the
discussion over whether games are an art form, but we still seem to
have the same preconceptions of games as a trashy, craftless pulp
medium that we had before those discussions really got kickstarted
almost a decade ago. We reflexively see videogames as inferior either
because game developers have yet to author the masterpiece that will
truly distinguish the unique qualities of videogames as an art form,
or because games consistently reinforce racism, misogyny, homophobia,
transphobia, and other social ills, or because gamers themselves are
such terrible people.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Yet, as
we've seen consistently, gamer culture is really just a byproduct or
an offshoot of the culture that gave it birth. The worlds of film and
literature protect sexual predators and excuse the worst of whiteness
and masculinity and defend that as art, and yet we see this as a
distinctive quality of games and games culture that makes games
inferior to other forms.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Moreover,
when critical thought is applied, videogames <i>have </i>produced
that medium-legitimizing masterpiece every year since 1996, in my
estimation, but I also get the feeling that if I listed out which
games I thought were those kinds of masterpieces that no wide group
of people would agree with any one of them because it seems as though
no matter how good videogames often are, they're never good enough
for us as critics to feel like they aren't irredeemable trash. [Not
in the episode: We need only look to Phil Owen's recent Polygon
article, outdated and useless as it is, still wrestling with problems
long resolved by other critics, to see this in progress.]</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Or,
at the very least, there's a very serious conception among game
critics that games still aren't “good enough,” and I don't ever
see us getting to the point where we don't think that's true without
a change in attitude, and I don't think that that change in attitude
will come as the result of some game or some cultural event, I think
it has to be a change in mindset.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">The
only reason I can imagine that we can look at this body of work, and
say “this isn't good enough” is self-flagellance. In comparison
to say, music or film critics, games critics, both as individuals and
as a community, seem to have an incredible capacity to for
self-loathing, and loathing either performed, ironic, or genuine for
videogames themselves. This phenomena of critics who either appear or
claim hate the thing they dedicate most of their public voice to
isn't unique to games, as nothing is, (hell even professional
wrestling has that kind of critic in Jim Cornette,) but in no other
medium is that kind of self-hatred so widespread or so accepted as
indicative of critical distance from the medium.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br />
</span></div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
should hope that the very existence of this show should be a direct
contradiction to that instinctive lack of respect so many have for
this medium and that we as critics have for ourselves.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">From Olympia WA, I'm Austin C. Howe</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-4172568215361918702015-09-26T09:38:00.002-07:002015-09-26T09:38:46.201-07:00Critical Switch: Dissonance<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Critical
Switch</i> is the premiere video
games criticism, theory, and history internet radio show and it is
supported exclusively by listeners like you at
<a href="http://patreon.com/CriticalSwitch">Patreon.com/CriticalSwitch</a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">For now I'm
going to end this series on game design and drama with a look at the
most hated idea in games criticism.<br /><br />I have a confession to
make to those are mostly unfamiliar with my twitter. I do not hate
the term Ludonarrative Dissonance. I know, shocking. Criminal, even.
But if having useful terminology is wrong, then I don't wanna be
right.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">The term
has been falling out of favor in game critic circles since . . . well
honestly I'm not sure anyone has openly embraced it since maybe 2009,
and the term was invented in 2007, so I'm not sure any majority of
critics has <i>ever</i> liked it. As well, now that some <i>brilliant</i>
writer has decided to tell us that <i>Mad Mad: Fury Road, </i>one
of the most expertly crafted action films of the past 25 years
suffers from “filmic dissonance” instead of displaying that he
knows Fucking Anything about movies or cinematic language, my uphill
battle to save the term from the jaws of death just became a climb up
a smooth cement wall while cynics shit in my gorgeous hair.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Nevertheless,
I am resolute. As I have said more or less since I started writing
criticism two years ago, ludonarrative dissonance is a useful term
that helps describe something that absolutely, definitely, without
question exists.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">However it
should also be noted that, like any other technique, which is what it
definitely is, ludonarrative dissonance is not inherently a <i>problem</i>.
Games like <i>Metal Gear Solid</i>,
<i>Spec Ops: The Line</i> and
even to some degree <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>
have been gladly invoking the dissonance between their narrative
themes and what their systems encourage. The problem isn't
ludonarrative dissonance, it's that the games that have been invoking
it are using it poorly.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">It's
also a problem because, as critics keep trying to move away from the
term, LND keeps happening in games in a problematic way. See for
example the recently released <i>Only If</i>,
which the critic Chris Franklin describes thusly:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>The
game is very much about a college student in his early-20's getting
abducted by an older man for a vague, yet menacing purpose, then
critiquing both of them. But it's also about this absurdism
experiment. And the two never really reconcile.</i></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">To be
clear, the story described in the first half of the sentence takes
place entirely as radio communication between the two men, whereas
the absurdism is entirely a result of the game's interfacial aspects:
it's mechanic set and level design. And as Franklin goes on to
describe, the game is presenting absurd mechanics in the context of a
still very non-absurd universe. There is a clear conflict between
what the developer of <i>Only If</i>
wanted to be as a set of interactions and as a story. That it is
suffering from misapplied Ludonarrative Dissonance could not be any
more clear.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Powerful
things have been done with ludonarrative dissonance in games, and in
general dissonance as a tool in media. For game developers to be able
to consciously grab hold of it and use it to it's full potential, we
need to be able to study dissonance and practice it, and for that to
happen, we must continually acknowledge that it is there.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">A good step
forward into the study of dissonance then would be to acknowledge the
other kinds of dissonance that exist in media. In fact, the biggest
problem with “ludonarrative dissonance” as a term is mostly that
people have overused the term by applying it to games that do not
exhibit ludonarrative dissonance, a good example being the dissonance
that legitimately exists between Nathan Drake's presented likability
in the <i>Uncharted </i>games and
the fact that he murders hundreds if not thousands of people, often
while spitting ruthless aggression that dehumanizes them. This is not
LND, that is, this is not a contradiction between what interfacing
with the game subtextually encourages and what the game's narrative
subtextually is about, in fact, though I've no experience with
<i>Uncharted 2</i>, I've
heard people explain interpretations of the game in casual settings
that show a fair amount of thematic consistency.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Others have
used this to demonstrate the supposed uselessness of the term, here I
will formally retort that it only demonstrates the <i>specificity</i>
of Ludonarrative Dissonance as a term, which only shows us that more
terms like LND should exist, not less, given the utter lack of terms
we as game critics commonly wield to describe narrative topics in
games . . . outside of LND.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As
a category containing Ludonarrative Dissonance, I would suggest the
adoption of simply “dissonance” to describe, well, dissonance in
games and media between their various elements, as a general term to
be used when LND isn't exactly correct, and then also propose the
freeform creation of multiple other terms with what we could call the
“[prefix]-dissonance” form as their commonality becomes
codifiable. I'd suggest that, like I've been doing with the “ludo”
prefix, that the use of the “[prefix]-dissonance” form can be
done with more improvisational spirit than has been done in the past.
Our terminology is not sacred. </span>
</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Perhaps
a game does not use or missaply ludonarrative dissonance, but it can
have, for example, audio-interactive dissonance, a dissonance between
what kind of sound a game uses to set an atmosphere and what kind of
sounds a game makes in response to player input, and what the player
avatar is actually doing in the gamespace, like a dating sim with a
<i>Silent Hill</i> soundtrack. Or maybe it has visual-thematic
dissonance, a disconnect between the art style employed and the
narrative and political implications thereof, and the weight or lack
thereof within the game's considered concepts, such as exists <i>and
is strategically employed</i> in games like <i>Final Fantasy IX</i>.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
would also suggest the existence of “tonal dissonance,” one of
these kinds of dissonances which exists in all media and is
especially prevalent in commercial videogames, that is yet without
codified terminology.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">While
I'm loathe to give an utterly specific definition, I think a workable
one would be just that: a contradiction between how media presents
something and what is quote-unquote “true” about it. Or, if you
prefer, a disconnect between the positive or negative light something
is shone in, and the positive and negative qualities of what it
actually has. Wrestling fans should be especially familiar with how
this kind of thing works. John Cena does an AA on Seth Rollins at
Night of Champions, not during a match, outside of the ring, right
before Rollins has to wrestle again, indulging his own ego. In the
feud, he is presented as the good guy.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
is, to me, exactly what is happening in <i>Uncharted </i>2.
The contradiction is specifically in how the game presents Nathan
Drake as a person, showing him as a jokey archaeologist in cutscenes
and as a coldhearted murdered during shooting segments. It feels
particularly dissonant as well because at no point does the game make
a genuine effort to reconcile the two people that Nathan Drake is
presented as.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Improperly
applied tonal dissonance was also a huge issue in <i>Bioshock:
Infinite</i>, a game that was
alternatively a quiet, very silly ramble on how maybe <i>everyone</i>
is racist and then a game about how fun it is to murder people, with
nary a connecting line drawn between the two. The superfluous nature
of combat in <i>Infinite</i>
meant that the combat also is unobligated to link itself to the
game's narrative tone, such that we get yet another strong example of
the harsh divide between ludus and narrative that Hocking first
codified when discussing the original <i>Bioshock</i>,
a game that, ironically enough, has almost zero tonal dissonance at
all. However, I would argue that, as a game whose narrative is
ostensibly about asserting Booker DeWitt's place as a white
patriarch, that combat wherein he asserts his masculinity and
dominance, particularly over people of color is not at all dissonant
with that core thematic concept. There is tonal disconnect all over
the game, but there is not any <i>ludonarrative</i>
dissonance specifically.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">Tonal
dissonance is of course, not new, nor is it distinct to videogames.
It's also a technique that is easy to misuse moreso than it is a
“problem” of any sort. It's one of the fundamental techniques of
black comedy, and a common tool used by David Lynch, particularly in
mashing the awkward and uncomfortable against the heartbreaking and
tragic. A lot of videogames have used tonal dissonance in a carefully
applied sense to point out the messed up values inherent in how games
present violence, a notable exampled being Suda51's <i>No More
Heroes</i> where dead enemies spurt
blood and coins in seemingly equal measure. Kojima's <i>Metal
Gear Solid</i> titles have
consistently used sudden interruptions of surreal humor partially as
a method of asserting the artificiality of their gamespaces.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
the pleas to end “ludonarrative dissonance” as a term used in
games criticism, it seems as though what's being implied is that it
does not exist. I, of course, go about as far in the opposite
direction as conceivably possible, and assert that, in videogames, as
across media, there exists a vast, wide variety of dissonances. As
with Ludonarrative Dissonance then, the course of action is to know
when a game or a piece of media is exploiting that dissonance in a
purposeful way, or whether the contradictions cause the artifice to
collapse.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span></div>
<span style="color: #660000;"><br /></span>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="color: #660000; font-family: Georgia, serif;">From
Olympia, WA: Play Is Labor. I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-85514878537294060392015-09-25T09:19:00.000-07:002015-09-25T09:25:55.537-07:00WWE Week-End Review<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">In case you haven't noticed, I got <i>really</i> into wrestling at the beginning of the year, and frankly, I spend way too much time watching the stuff now not to make some work out of it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><i>RAW </i>9-21-15</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i>
1) They're actually trying to make Big Show look good before his match with Lesnar. If those two have a great match, fine, but I doubt it will be great beyond Brock Lesnar somehow being able to do one of his two moves on Big Show 25 times, who will score absolutely nothing by losing to him. Meanwhile, to build him, they had him beat Cesaro (FUCK. YOU. WWE.) which put Cesaro's loss streak at "zero of the past three" and "hasn't won on PPV in actual years." I can't say it was a huge mistake since they refuse to make Cesaro look good despite spontaneous crowd love for him and his incredible talent, but it really was just fuel on the fire.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">2) This Kane thing has me skeptical since we now know they're actually calling it a split personality thing. Could end up being very offensive. Wait, wait a minute, we're just getting word that . . . yup, on <i>SmackDown</i> Jerry "The King of Not Knowing When The Fuck Shut Up" Lawler (he was never a good commentator and you know it, he just got to sit next to JR and scream all the time) just claimed he doesn't think Kane as split-personality and he's just doing it to get under people's skin.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">If it results in Kane going full-demon and getting away from the Authority so he can either tag or feud with Taker before Taker's retirement at <i>Wrestlemania XXXII</i> then this will be fine in the long run.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">3) John Cena and Seth Rollins could wrestle the main event of every pay-per-view for the rest of time and I will watch. What could've been a total throwaway show of ego by Rollins by trying to get the US title off of Cena turned into 4 matches of pure and absolute gold.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">4) Rollins sure has lost quite a bit in the past few days hasn't he? I wonder how much they're going to weaken him as champion considering they just had him beat Sting clean. His title run has been a lot of fun, and now doesn't seem like the time to bring it to an end, especially since the only other name in the picture right now is Kane.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">I love Kane. Anyone in their right mind loves at least some of what Kane has done. Kane is not your next WHC.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">4) I'm sad that they killed Rollins' chances for being double-champion again so quickly, but to me that says they're either looking to continue the US open challenge (good thing) or they're looking to use it to push someone else in a Cena feud.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><i>NXT </i>9-23-15</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><i><br /></i>
1) Apollo Crews didn't wrestle, but they did book a match for <i>NXT: Respect</i> between him and Tyler Breeze. If you're asking, yes, Apollo Crews not wrestling docks you points.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">2) Kana was signed and they're calling her Asuka, that plus the coming debut of Nia Jax means good things for the women's division in Florida, which was looking bleak with Bayley being the only</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">3) Every chant during any Eva Marie match can be boiled down to "I watch Botchamania and I know everything, and I will never forgive you for how much you <i>used</i> to suck." She's had good matches the past two weeks, and her botch at the finish of last week has a lot more to do with WWE's obnoxious trope of trying to get wrestlers to kick out at 2.999999 seconds rather than just letting them kick out at 2, or even 1. As a side note, Marie, like many other women wrestlers, may be partially selling herself based on her beauty, but can we give her credit in a world filled with Bellas that Eva Marie is trying to look like a sexy <i>adult</i> rather than overgrown cheerleader? There's always been a bad habit of infantilizing the women wrestlers and that doesn't really apply to Marie.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">4) I still have no idea what the point of the Dusty Rhodes classic is. I know he meant a lot to everyone down in Florida, but I'm not sure if he has any significant connection to tag wrestling, and now that NXT Tag champions Vaudevillains are out, it's very confusing what they're trying to achieve.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><i>Smackdown! </i>9-24-15</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">1) Tag match with Rusev/Owens vs. Ryback/Ziggler was really good. Highlight spot: Ziggler manges to suplex Owens <i>and</i> Rusev and then overselling the shit out of the back pain it caused while making his way to tag Ryback. Crowd popped big time for it. Not exactly a scholar on Dolph Ziggler history but it's kind of astounding this guy isn't one of the company's top faces. Actually, lemme do a bit of research . . . this guy apparently won the WHC twice (before the unification) . . . and one of them was because the title was stripped from Edge by Vickie Guererro because he used the Spear. Say what you will about WWE in 2015, it sure isn't WWE in 2013.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">The match exists seemingly to remind you that that awful Rusev vs. Ziggler feud is still happening, despite the fact that Lana is injured. But hey, if they didn't take Ziggler's injury as an indication to kill this thing dead, nothing will stop it until Lana and Rusev are back together . . . who were only broken up seemingly just so this feud could happen. Storytelling, everyone.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">2) The main event (Rollins vs. Ambrose) was solid, though (spoilers) it represents Rollins' third loss in 4 days, so with that plus NoC I wonder how much weaker they're going to let him get, the main event title picture is a mess right now given that there's no way Kane actually goes over without going full demon, which would mean Kane would break from The Authority, which would mean going face and aaaaaaaaaggggghhhh modern face/heel logic.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">3) The New Day fought Neville and the Lucha Dragons. New Day. Neville. Lucha Dragons. It was good. Neville and Lucha Dragons work well together since Neville is just a British high-flyer anyway, but if they wanna commit to this combo (they also fought the dark match at <i>Night of Champions</i> vs. Stardust and The Ascension, who I also wanna see a lot more of) then holy hell one of those motherfuckers is gonna need to get on the mic at some point, I don't think I've seen Neville on the mic once since he jumped to the main roster from <i>NXT</i>, and that's a shame because they all have incredible potential.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">On a separate note: why are the Lucha Dragons basically jobbers now? (I have the same question for The Ascension. I do not have the same question for Los Matadores.) These guys tore it the fuck up in <i>NXT</i>. It doesn't help that they have no characters other than "we're the only cruiserweights left on the roster", especially since the only other story they have is "well we had to do <i>something</i> with <a href="http://botchamania.com/sincaramania/">SinCara</a>." My friend Ian suggested that maybe they're eventually going to fire SinCara because the name is so tainted at this point and push Kalisto on his own, which is a fine idea, but something makes me doubt that's where they're going with it.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">4) Booking a tag titles match for the MSG show makes me think the Dudleys will <i>have</i> to go over (Joey Styles is even going to be there. <i>PLEASE PUT HIM ON COMMENTARY. FOR THE LOVE OF GOD</i>.) That makes me sad, but ultimately it is totally fine as long as The New Day stay in the picture, especially now that it looks like they're trying to put the Prime-Time Players back in it as well. If WWE knows what they're doing, this will eventually result in the match of the year at <i>TLC</i>. Just <i>imagine</i> Titus O'Neil flying off of a ladder and sending Big E through a table. Thinking about that makes me <i>emotional</i> man.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<u><span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">Overall Notes</span></u><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">1) The main event title picture needs someone who isn't Kane, but I doubt this feud is going to last very long. The real question is, who will go up against Rollins? Storyline-wise, no one has really challenged him, but if I had to pick someone I want to see with the belt, it's Ambrose. Safe pick, I realize, but that guys is electric. The only way that won't work is if Daniel Bryan shows back up and smarks DEMAND he become champion.</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">2) In theory it's really lame that they're playing up Charlotte's relationship with her father instead of letting her be her own person (the Diva's Revolution: we'll get this angle over as long as we remind them that some of these women have familial relations to men!), but also, Ric Flair is someone who could drop dead tomorrow, so it makes sense they're letting him have his moment. If you listen to his podcast at all (which you should, it is frequently hilarious)</span><br />
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;"><br /></span>
<span style="color: #660000; font-size: large;">3) <i>NXT: Respect</i> is probably going to be crazy good.</span>Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-26687887077241218072015-09-21T01:32:00.005-07:002015-09-21T01:32:48.945-07:00Critical Switch: Feedback Loops<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Critical Switch </i>is supported by folks like you at <a href="http://patreon.com/CriticalSwitch">Patreon.com/CriticalSwitch</a><br /><br />Last we
heard from each other, I was talking about how videogames can use the
difficulty curve, or as I prefer to call it, the resistance curve, to
indicate narrative pace as well as express an idea of how gamers are
meant to engage with that game, and how manipulation of the pacing
curve can allow a game's nature to change gradually.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This week,
I'm going to be talking about how a game can use a well constructed
feedback loop to create narrative pace within its set of
interactions, particularly in the context of combat scenarios, as
well as noting how certain types of feedback loops can imply certain
narrative concepts when applying creative interpretation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Last week I
played semanticist by renaming the difficulty curve the “resistance
curve”, here I think there's not as clear a good alternative for
what we call the “feedback loop” so I think I'll stick to
defining it for those not familiar. In essence, a positive feedback
loop in game design is when a certain decision in interactive systems
is encouraged by rewarding the player for making certain decisions
often in such a way as they are put in a position to make that same
decision again. That was . . . particularly wordy, so I'll also note
that Ernest Adams in an article for </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Gamasutra</i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">
from 2000-diggity-2 says that: “</span><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">positive
feedback can be defined as occurring whenever one useful achievement
makes subsequent achievements easier.”</span></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;">
</span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Levels
and Experience Points in Role-Playing Games are among the most
notable examples. By participating in combat, rather than fleeing,
character avatars are slowly strengthened in said combat scenarios
through gradual increases in certain attributes, which thus makes
them more capable combatants, creating a loop wherein participation
in combat is encouraged and rewarded. As the genre of role-playing
games progressed, especially in the Japanese games, leveling systems
took on increasing significance as well as metaphorical indications
of a character's growth as a person on an emotional level by matching
it to their prowess in combat. Vivi starts </span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>FFIX</i></span><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">
as an unsure little mage who only knows the basic fire spell, but
after wrestling with the inevitability of death and coming out on top
resolute in his intention to live with purpose, he ends the game
capable of summoning a meteor onto the battlefield and crushing all
who oppose him.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Metal
Gear Rising</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">
has extremely solid core combat mechanics such that the basics of
parrying and choosing between light and heavy attacks would create a
compelling game on their own, but the game gets a lot more life out
of those mechanics by adding Blade Mode, and subsequently, Ripper
Mode. Blade mode slowly consumes a percentage of a meter below
Raiden's health bar, and is the primary method for executing enemies
in </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">MGR</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">,
as low level guards will usually die to a single slice in blade mode,
allowing Raiden to clear out the small fry in fights quite easily and
then focus on more dangerous foes, who require a little more work
before hand and then are also killed by a single slice in blade mode.
What makes this a feedback loop is that when executing enemies Raiden
takes their spines and crushes them in his hands to restore the
entirety of both his health and blade mode bars. This is already an
especially smart design decision as it increases the accessibility of
the game to those unfamiliar with character action games, but what it
also does is serve to vary the pace of individual combat encounters.
</span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">MGR</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">
can be a very chaotic game, whose freeform combat mechanics allow for
very loose decision making and input choices, but the addition of
blade mode slows the game world down and reduces the game to a matter
of few and extremely </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">precise</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">
inputs. On top of that, in the middle of the game, and subsequently
in New Game Plus, Raiden has access to Ripper Mode. While in Ripper
Mode, the Blade Mode meter drains continuously, and damage is
increased dramatically, so dramatically that one risks outright
destroying enemies while forgetting to grab their spines. This is
important because in high level play, Ripper Mode becomes incredibly
important for destroying stronger enemies, but when executed poorly,
leaves Raiden at the end of a fight with no blade mode meter going
into the next one, thus leaving him effectively toothless until he
can build it back up again. So </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">MGR</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">
creates falling and rising tension in combat by giving Raiden access
to different modes of attack, each of which feed into each other and
rely on similar resources. While this is a smooth system design, it
also feeds into </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">MGR</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">'s
continuous narrative tension between “Raiden”, the idealist who
fights as a mean to and end, and “Jack the Ripper”, a ruthlessly
violent person who fights simply for it's own sake. Thus, each combat
scenario in </span><i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">MGR</span></i><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">,
especially on high difficulty and in high level play, creates
contrasting tensions between these various states of identity for
Raiden, and also feed into each other.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">On
a simple pacing level, <i>Kingdom Hearts II</i>'s
biggest problem was fixing the relatively static combat of the
original game. While not a particularly long game, it also wasn't
particularly varied in how to approach combat, leading to lots of
mashing the X button for regular attacks, especially since MP could
be so hard earned, leading players to save it as a healing resource.
Two things were implemented to make this no longer be the case. One,
MP would now slowly restore after Sora used the complete bar, and the
curative spells now simply cost “the rest” of the MP bar, such
that Sora now had access to good offensive and defensive magic, and
would so as long as they had any MP to speak of, and then if they
didn't get back MP, they'd have some soon anyway. They also
implemented Drive Forms, which allowed Sora to briefly transform into
a stronger version of himself who could wield two keyblades and
magically float around. Drive bar itself is about as hard-earned as
MP in the original, but then the designers had the brilliant idea to
intertwine the two mechanics: When MP is empty, the Drive Form bar
builds gradually, and when Sora enters a Drive form, his MP bar
refills instantly. Thus, the stodgy resource conservatism in <i>Kingdom
Hearts</i> was transformed into a
system that was constantly encouraging gamers to be using every able
resource. Thus, there creates a good visual pace to combat that
distinguishes between a Sora using colorfully-animated magic spells,
high-flying acrobatic melee combat, and . . . foofy anime nonsense
that's really fun to look at. The narrative element of that is a
little weaker to me than in <i>Rising</i>,
but the pacing element is a bit stronger since we get to spend a
little more time with each different type of Sora, and the most
powerful variant feels earned.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
also creates a nice intertextual element in comparison to the
original <i>Kingdom Hearts</i>,
where Sora's control of his weapons and magic was much more awkward,
whereas in <i>Kingdom Hearts II</i>
he's a much more experienced combatant, and we get to see that growth
from game to game.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
both the <i>Rising </i>and
<i>Kingdom Hearts</i> <i>II</i>
example, we can see how the pacing that their feedback loops create
is not only a visual distinction between different sets of
interactions that rely on (for lack of better terms,) different
rulesets, but also alter pacing by adjusting the resistance curve on
a moment-to-moment basis.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">While
I think that these games largely have system designs thought of
independently of their narrative content, since they were each made
within a mostly ludocentric context, I think they're already powerful
tools within their extant contexts that, if and when they are used by
designers with different, shall we say “alternative” ways of
thinking about games, we'll see games whose design fundamentals and
artistic ideas interact in ever more striking and meaningful ways.<br /><br />I could still use your help <a href="https://www.gofundme.com/vt3k6hdc">making rent for October</a> if you can afford to help.<br /><br />From Olympia, WA, I'm Austin C. Howe</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-63091990322006974602015-09-21T01:31:00.001-07:002015-09-21T01:31:19.933-07:00Critical Switch: The Resistance Curve<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><u>The
Resistance Curve</u></span><br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Critical
Switch</i> is the premiere
videogames criticism, history, and theory, internet radio show and
my colleague, Zolani Stewart, and it I s supported by listeners like
you at Patreon.com/CriticalSwitch</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__0_1177654509"></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br />The
first thing that any good guitar player will tell a young student of
the instrument who wants to learn how to play well is that “technique
isn't everything, it just gets you where you want to go.” It's not
that you want to play fast, though yes, playing fast is very fun,
it's that you want the emotional content that playing quickly will
allow you to access from your audience. Moving from slow playing to
fast playing is a way to indicate an increased intensity in the
emotions of your music, but of course, to increase that tension, you
actually need to be able to play fast. Again, technique isn't
everything, it just gets you to where you want to go.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
videogames, at least, single-player videogames, I feel like what we
call “game design” is more or less what musicians call technique.
The problem with the ludocentric approach then is that the games it
produces can tend to be a little more Michael Angelo Batio than
Yngwie Malmsteen.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As a guitar
player, I've zero patience for technique for technique's own sake
and, increasingly in videogames, I've little admiration for design
for design's sake, and what I also find is that in games where I
admire the design craft put into it, I'm struck by what that design
does to, for lack of better terminology (and I apologize for
perpetuating this awful word) “immerse” the player in a game's
context.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__17_302383790"></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
talk a fair bit about how well, or how poorly, certain games are
designed, or certain parts of certain games are designed. I'm mostly
interested in it because when a game is well designed, it usually
means that the game's ludic structures aren't getting in the way of
me <i>seeing past those structures</i> and absorbing myself in the
moment-to-moment emotions that that game wants to provoke. So today
I'm going to formulate the beginnings of an argument for certain
ideas we can take from established design thought, and see how they
can be applied in a way that does not assume, or catalyze
ludocentrism.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I'm going
to begin that argument, which I hope to revisit, by displaying
examples of “pacing” in design and design terminology.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">One of the
basic principles I derive from this is “resistance.” The typical
games terminology for this is “difficulty,” but I think the
critic and developer John Thyer coins it a little more eloquently as
“resistance.” How “hard” a game is and how hard it <i>resists</i>
the gamer engaging with it are subtle, but different topics, and I'd
like to revisit it at a different time, but suffice to say that
resistance as a larger topic <i>includes</i>
difficulty and that today we'll be focusing on difficulty. For
a game to build a coherent fiction, than the amount of resistance we
experience needs to be logical for the game's fiction, and the
quote-unquote “logical amount of resistance” can often be
expressed through design principles such as the “difficulty curve.”
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Games that
provide little resistance can be problematic because it stops being
believable that my player characters are achieving something against
great adversity, like a poorly-written action movie where we never
believe that our hero is ever in danger. Few games like this exist
that I can think of off of the top of my head, perhaps,
unsurprisingly, a few movie adaptations from the mid-2000's that were
mostly selling themselves on how they dressed up their assets. One
could also argue games that have adjustable difficulty with “Very
Easy” modes that take out some of the game's more compelling
engagements. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I <i>can</i>
however think of examples of games that <i>morph into this</i>,
usually because they can no longer assume the gamer's interest in the
narrative, because said narrative is either already familiar to the
gamer, or because it is wrapping up. Thus, they are, and forgive this
word, <i>intentionally</i>
readjusting how much the game resists the player as a means to other
ends. Two examples of this type of game come to mind.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">One:
Character action games with grading systems meant to encourage
replays. Usually these games also have fairly extensive and
meaningful character upgrades, such as <i>Devil May Cry 3</i>
where the Dante we begin the game controlling, equipped merely with a
sword and handguns, becomes divine in all but nomenclature in New
Game Plus modes where he wields a wide variety of melee weapons and
projectile weapons with ease, not to mention commands magical forces
of nature with his mere whims. The idea is that this makes getting
those perfects ranks on fights not just easier, but also more
visually entertaining. In fact, late last decade the “Truestyle”
competition even found that there was an Olympic level of competition
to be created by pitting players against each other to record the
best-looking fights, as though they were ice skaters performing a
routine. Even without the context of <i>DMC3</i>'s
story as we skip through cutscenes to beat more baddies, we derive
it's own kind of artistic pleasure from watching ourselves create a
sort of musical performance by rehearsing and sharpening strategies
for perfecting combat encounters. Systems are not just conduits to
narrative entertainment, as I often focus on, but also visual and
musical engagement in the abstract, though I'm not sure “abstract”
is necessarily the best term for that.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Two:
Japanese Role-Playing Games. Because JRPGs often lack new game +
features, usually, the moment when JRPG characters transform into
<i>DMC3</i> Dante-like deities . . . Danteities? . . . is planned as
a part of the game's narrative arc. Players have access to powerful
tactics throughout <i>Final Fantasy VIII</i>
for example, such that the game is one of it's series easiest when
it's sytems are well-understood, however truly <i>broken</i>
tactics like the “Holy War” item which renders characters
invincible (often used as part of the strategy for the game's
superbosses) are not accessible until the game's final hours and most
difficult conflicts. This is paced alongside the game's narrative
such that the characters have more or less “finished” their
narrative arcs: Rinoa has gained control of her sorceress powers,
Squall has learned how to open himself to affection, their romance is
realized, etc. In other words, the game becomes <i>easier</i>
because the characters are now operating with clearer thought and a
more explicit sense of purpose.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<a href="https://www.blogger.com/null" name="__DdeLink__19_302383790"></a><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">On
the other hand, games with far too much resistance leave me wondering
how, if I can't guide my player character to victory in this
particular circumstance, how are they even achieving anything in this
context? Sure I can try and try again, but usually in games that
offer that much resistance, the end result is the feeling that I and
my player character ended up lucky, not so much that we were meant to
succeed. The example remains obvious to me but I will restate it for
historical record: in <i>Dark Souls</i>,
at no single moment does it become believable that the nameless
motherfucker I control when interfacing with the game is capable of
all this world-conquering badassery. On the other hand, intentional
examples do exist, the most prominent example I can think of being
<i>Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter</i>,
where seemingly every boss encounter is meant to leave you surviving
by the skin of your teeth, and wherein the final boss is a puzzle
whose solution is to give into one of the game's failstates. <i>Dragon
Quarter</i> plays off the
unlikelihood, showing weary, quiet characters in a state of constant
oppression. The very point of the game is questioning how these
unlikely heroes can best the world's myriad tyrannies. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Thus, the
“Resistance Curve” is a tool we can use to indicate narrative
states, not just a means to a varied ludointerfacial or “play”
experience.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">When you
hear from me next, we'll be going over another tool of game design as
a means of creating narrative pace: the feedback loop.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">From Olympia, WA, I'm Austin C. Howe</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-47789728263975762102015-07-11T02:02:00.002-07:002015-07-11T02:02:26.231-07:00A Brief Disclaimer to Be Read Alongside "Intro to Game Design and Drama"<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
I
specify on newer “art games” that offer too little resistance to
effectively convey drama, but suffice to say, this is absolutely also
a problem in commercial games, including the older, experimental
commercial games that I adore. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
It is just as problematic that at no
point in <i>Dark Souls</i>
fiction am I sufficiently convinced that the player character would
ever be able to overcome these challenges as it is that the late game
of <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>
can have it's drama utterly nullified by a powerful combination of
overpowered spells that I can repeat over and over again to end
dramatically important battles in single turns. </div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br /></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
As well, there are at
least a few “art games” whose interfaces are bizarrely resistant,
resulting in less meaningful interaction with their fiction or
aesthetics, which is something Zolani will tell us about with his
upcoming episode on <i>Naissance</i>.</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div align="RIGHT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
-
Austin C. Howe, Olympia, WA, 2015</div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-77461957747049202452015-06-29T09:25:00.000-07:002015-06-29T09:25:03.470-07:00Critical Switch: Intro to Game Design and Drama<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Zolani told
us last week, and him and I have both been hammering on for the past
year or so, the interactivity-focused nature of ludology, that is,
the formalized study of games and play in both digital and analogue
spheres, is almost completely useless for studying games as works of
art, especially given that we're finding, more and more, that
interactivity is actually a massive element of all artwork, and that
the interactivity we have with videogames in particular (as opposed
to analogue games) don't really allow us the freedom of choice and
action that is, supposedly, the definitive characteristic of the
form.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Actually,
now that I'm thinking about this, I realize that I should probably
reiterate some stuff that we talked about around this time last year.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I return of
course the devastating, razor sharp clarity of the words of Masayuki
Hambalek, a Japanese game critic, who said about a year ago:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
“<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>When
you can’t do something in a digital game, it simply doesn’t
exist, so it doesn’t lower the degree of freedom.” </i></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Digital
spaces are different from real life. Whereas a fence that prevents us
from getting too close to a particular place is an intentional
restriction on our freedom, in a videogame, an invisible wall is more
or less a rule of nature, an element like gravity or inertia that
makes sure the whole universe functions properly.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As I stated
in response to that thought on my own blog not long after:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>We
as critics and players more often than not highlight the fantastical
things that games allow us to do over the mundane things that they do
not. In reality, the amount of things you can't do
in a videogame far outnumbers the things that you can, but the appeal
of most digital games are those specific possibilities they do offer.
</i></span>
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Or, as Zolani put it last week:
“Interactivity is crap!”</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As a result, interaction alone, we find,
is likely not the element that makes for interesting and meaningful
gaming experiences. I believe personally that what makes particular
interactions interesting is their basis in contexts that we find
compelling, be it a fictional universe or even just an aesthetic.
It's not necessarily the what you do, because ultimately that “what”
can be boiled down to polygons and numbers, but the who, when where,
why, and how you're doing it. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I guess you could say that means I like
videogames with good writing, and you wouldn't be lying, but I also
enjoy plenty of silly bullshit games like <i>Resident Evil 4</i> that
build satisfying interactions through the most loosely-constructed
contexts. In fact, poorly-written AAA action games give us a pretty
strong argument for this kind of “context-based” understanding of
engagement, because what most of them do is construct a context for
the interactions that is <i>just convincing enough</i> to make for
satisfying experiences. But that's a different episode.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As we move away from an
interactivity-focused view of what makes games great or important, I
think it's equally important that we not assume that interactions
themselves are unimportant, if nothing else because the interface
itself is what gamers most directly engage with. So basically, a game
needs to have some kind of playability to it!</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><br />I feel like that's fairly
self-explanatory so think of it this way: “gameplay” as it's
thought of is not the notes and chords of the music, as I think
someone like Keith Burgun would assert. It's more like the mixing of
recorded music. When I listen to music, the mixing is the thing
between me and the music, it's the thing that delivers the music to
me, or the thing I have to work through to hear the music. Depending
on the artistic aspirations of the piece, that mixing can be
hyper-focused towards an aesthetic goal: this is your slick,
mirror-shine pop record, or your raw, demo-quality black metal album.
But still, in most cases, you're going to want a mix that healthily
balances professionalism and cleanliness with excited performance and
untamed energy. For videogames then, the gameplay, the interface, is
not “what the game is” but rather the thing between me and the
game, the thing that delivers the game to me, or the thing that I
have to work through to get to the game.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The most obvious lesson this can show us
with commercial videogames is that the design of these games should
be relatively open to an audience who wants to pick up and play, and
not be egregiously difficult or needlessly obfuscant. But my primary
concern today is actually with games that, in an effort to streamline
the relationship between the gamer and “who, where, why, and how”
kinda skip out on the “what” because it's viewed as largely
superfluous. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Among the early classics of what are
broadly called “art games” a term that will hopefully die with
scholarly study, and among what are often called “walking
simulators” or “first-person narrative games”, the common
design trend has been to build games that have almost no semblance of
challenge or what the critic John Thyer calls “resistance,”
whatsoever. And that works, for me, when the game you're making is
meant to be a more exploratory experience. <i>The Stanley Parable</i>
would be actively harmed by an attempt to add bizarre resistance to
it, and I think <i>Limbo</i> was always harmed by it's attempts to
mash up it's aesthetic and loose, heavy sense of embodiment with it's
puzzles.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">But I'm already also seeing a small trend
of games wherein a sense of resistance is completely lost where I
think it would strongly benefit the piece. <i>Temporality</i> by
James Earl Cox III, for example, has a really bare interface.
<i>Temporality</i> is a 2D game wherein you view multiple men's lives
in a non-linear fashion as they move through phases: from childhood
onto military service. These characters simply move forward through
space and time until they is inevitably shot dead in an early-20<sup>th</sup>
century war while somber piano music plays. You can walk backwards
and view events backwards but the events themselves aren't changed,
only the way in which gamers view them. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The game is largely sentimental and I
think what it wants to do through it's simple control scheme is
convey a sense of inevitability to these characters' deaths. But the
game also has you use the same control scheme to show lives that are
full of vibrance and value and human experience. So when we
inevitably get to the war torn field where these characters meet
their ends, it feels bizarre to me that they inevitably die without
me having some way to try and save them. I'm not saying that I should
be able to save their lives, but rather that it would feel more
appropriate if I, while their deaths were inevitable, was able to
participate in some romantic struggle to take them as far as I can.
As it stands, the quote-unquote “lack of challenge” inherent in
<i>Temporality</i>'s structure and controls feels nihilistic whereas
the narrative information it's conveying is romantic, sentimental,
humanist.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Huh, if only there were an ultra-specific
term for naming a kinda conflict between how people interface with a
game and the narrative content that game is trying to convey. Hmm . .
. </span>
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Anyway.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">So in essence there are, again, in my
view, about two types of dysfunctional video games: those whose form
of resistance against the gamer is so vicious and poorly-constructed
that it makes me play designer and remove myself from the fictional
or aesthetic context to try and understand the game as a series of
hitboxes and numbers, whereas games that offer too little resistance
fail to convey the weight and seriousness of their dramatic context.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The question then emerges is “what kind
of interface would we add to this? What kind of resistance?” Now,
the answers to that are endless, but I think <i>how</i> we go about
doing that can easily be derived from a study of what we understand
as “game design.”</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">If we were to add those kinds of
interfaces to <i>Temporality</i>, we would attempt to do things like
find cover, move between lines of fire, all of which can be built
from understandings of deadly projectiles that we find have existed
in commercially released games for decades.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">There are tons and tons and tons of
examples of this, and I want to go over a few of them in my next few
episodes, so rejoin me in mid-July as we dive deeper into the study
of Game Design and Drama.</span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Next week, Zolani Stewart will be back
with an analysis of <i>Naisance.</i></span></div>
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div align="LEFT" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">From Seattle, Washington, I'm Austin C.
Howe.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-35004438455010082442015-06-24T06:54:00.001-07:002015-06-24T06:54:27.718-07:00Critical Switch: FFVII and Jazz Standards<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">On Jazz
Standards</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Joe Pass
was a Sicillian-American Jazz guitarist who lived from 1929 to 1994,
he is one of the greatest Jazz guitarists of all time, often cited
along with Charlie Christian, Wes Montgomery, and George Benson. He
was particularly a master of solo performance, capable of deftly
moving between melody and supporting harmony, all with a massive
improvisational flair. He could move between chords whose names I can
barely say and in the next bar be blazing across a lick with deftly
incorporated passing tones. This was on top of being an incredibly
capable band leader, and an extraordinarily skilled accompanist.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Joe played
jazz standards. Rock can have problems with cover tunes, at least
from the 70's-80's and onward. For whatever reason, songs are usually
seen as inseparable from the people who first wrote and performed
them, from the contexts in which they were first created. Jazz
doesn't do that. Jazz performers, generally speaking, tend to take a
song and put their spin on it, and sometimes even put multiple
different spins on it, like Joe Pass did with the song “Summertime,”
first written by George Gershwin for the musical <i>Porgy and Bess</i>.
Three different versions of “Summertime” that Joe Pass recorded
are playing under this episode.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">There's
been a lot of argument over whether <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>
should even be remade. If the original is as great as we say it is,
shouldn't it stay the way it is? I'm bothered by this line of
thinking for a number of reasons, some sentimental, others outright
selfish, but one point became burningly clear as I realized it:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">If
<i>Final Fantasy VII</i> had
already been remade, we wouldn't even be having this conversation.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Now
that's a fairly tautological statement, but the evidence backs it up.
I can think of no such dedicated originalists concerning, for
example, <i>Final Fantasy IV</i>,
which has been remade countless different times. Now, you could
easily play the original version on the SNES and that's still a great
game, but you also now have the choice of playing the PSP remake and
the DS remake, the former a more traditional iteration with updated
sprite graphics and more or less similar mechanics, (itself a port of
a GBA remake) the latter a fairly major overhaul made in low poly 3D,
adding voice acting, and redefining character combat functionality.
Both of them are really great takes on the game. Both of them are
really fun, both of them have the same great music and adventurous
story. In my mind there is absolutely no reason not to play one of
those versions over the original SNES version. And come to think of
it, if you wanted to play the original game, would you play the US
version with the butchered translation and altered mechanics, or
would you play a fan translation patch of the Japanese version? That
US version may be an inexcusably bad port by modern standards, but it
was also the version that some people grew up playing, and probably
the version some still play today.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Tales of
Phantasia</i>: now granted, nearly
none of these versions are available legally in the US, but indulge
me. The original version of the game on the SNES is by no means a bad
game, but the Playstation version builds on it in every conceivable
way, iterating on the combat system to more resemble the game's
recent sequel on the Playstation, and adding the series legendary
“skits” to the equation, adding lots of fun interactions between
the game's lovable cast of characters. You could also consider <i>Tales
of Phantasia X</i> for the PSP,
which has all of the PS1 version additions and a fully voice acted
cast.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Dragon
Quest</i> is a particularly blatant
example: no one who likes people would recommend playing the original
NES version of <i>Dragon Quest</i>
when the Super Nintendo version exists that cut the grind in half,
simplifies the environment interactions, and puts a fresh coat of
paint on the graphics.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Chrono
Trigger</i>: the DS version adds
stylus controls for the menu if that's your thing, a minimap, all the
anime cutscenes from the PS1 version without any of the load times,
and redoes the original translation. It is almost without question
the definitive version of the game.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The
primary difference, the only difference really, between any of those
games and <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>
is that those games were iterated upon consistently from their
original release till present day. And while we can have reasonable
discussions over which versions are we like better for what
particular reasons, there's no real question as to whether the
various iterations are legitimate interpretations. <i>Final
Fantasy IV, Tales of Phantasia</i>,
most of the <i>Dragon Quest </i>games
are all jazz standards. Each version has it's own flavor, and
thankfully, all those flavors are pretty solid!</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Lemme
let you in on a little secret, cuz a lot of people have forgotten
this: <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>, <i>VIII</i>, and <i>IX</i> were all
scheduled to be remade . . . for the PS2. <i>Gamespot</i> reported
this in 2001. Quote:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="CENTER" style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i><span style="color: #262626;">Square
has announced that it will release the remakes of Final Fantasy VII,
VIII, and IX for the PlayStation 2 in individual packages. Each will
be in DVD-ROM format, with graphical and audio enhancements.
Additionally, special features will be included in the remake discs.
No release information has been disclosed on the three Final Fantasy
remakes at this time.</span> </i></span></span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Then,
a little movie called <i>The Spirits Within </i>happened,<i>
</i>Squaresoft had a major corporate restructuring, they merged with
Enix to become Square-Enix and the project never materialized.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">A
tech demo was even made that rendered <i>Final Fantasy VIII</i>'s
dance sequence in real time. With <i>FFVIII </i>being
my personal favorite, I go back and watch that every once in a while
and just go “Man, I wish I could play <i>this</i>
version.” I mean yeah even it looks dated now, especially
considering it's a real-time tech demo vs. the original games
lovingly crafted FMVs, the character models are especially pale, but
y'know what also looks dated? Every part of <i>Final Fantasy
VIII</i> that isn't an FMV.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
guess the real question is, if all these games get remade and people
are cool with it because those versions are awesome, why all the
skepticism now about this game? Is it because this game is better? I
mean sure, I like it better than pretty much any of the games I
listed above and I'm also doing edits to my <i>book </i>about
it, but <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>
is also by no means perfect. The original translation has two ableist
slurs and has Barrett talking like a Mr. T parody, and even the
Japanese version has <i>FFVII</i>'s
infamously loosely structured endgame bit with the Huge Materia that
we collect for . . . some reason or the other? Hell, <i>FFVII</i>
is great, I'd still call it one of <i>The Greatest</i>
but the game's Magic Defense stat doesn't even function properly,
partially lending to the absurd cost:damage ratio for using magic all
across the game. A remake would be a great chance to fix some of that
stuff and maybe tweak the balance of high-level play as well.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">And
that's if Square takes the traditionalist route and remakes it as a
traditional JRPG. I'd be perfectly fine with that, ecstatic even, but
the more I think about it, the more I came to agree with my friend
James Hearn that, like listening to Joe Pass' very different versions
of “Summertime”, I'd love to play a version of <i>Final
Fantasy VII</i> that, at least on an
interfacial level, changed absolutely everything. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As
noted by my friend Devon Carter in an episode a few weeks ago,
Hiroyuki Ito, who designed the battle system for <i>Final
Fantasy VII</i>, even said that when
he first designed the Auto-Time Battle system for <i>Final
Fantasy IV, </i>which <i>Final
Fantasy VII </i>iterates upon, he
saw it more as a means of abstractly presenting the fights in a way
that was achievable with the technology at the time, and also said he
thought that, as the series got older and tech got more advanced, how
the battle work would change, and it has. The old 3-to-a-line battles
had their own style and their own elegance, but Square shouldn't
necessarily feel chained to them.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
understand preserving <i>FFVII</i>
in it's original format, and I understand why for historical reasons
that that is important, and I would never argue that the original
game isn't worth remembering or caring about even with the remake on
the way. What I will argue is that some of the stalwart dedication to
preserving the original game <i>instead of</i>
an effort to preserve <i>Final Fantasy VII</i>
that also lets it evolve like a jazz standard comes from a dedication
to the original game that is frankly silly given that the original
game likely can, and arguably should be altered.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">And
if worst comes to worstand <i>FFVII</i>
turns into some F2P MMO with all the music replaced by Sunn 0))),
what a shame it would be, given that I can still play the original
version or PC version, both of which now have excellent fan
translations that address the major concern of preserving FFVII in
the west.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I've
rambled about but my primary point is this: <i>FFVII</i>
should be remade. It should've already happened once, and ten or
twenty years from now, it should happen again. Not necessarily
because each version will always be better than the last, but,
hopefully, because each of them will be <i>interesting</i>,
and serve to give us multiple ways of looking at and thinking about
one of gaming's grandest artistic achievement.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
will be returning next week, as promised, with an episode (or two
given how these scripts are looking) about game design as a conduit
to drama. From Seattle, Washington, I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-75659257885436805752015-05-20T17:39:00.002-07:002015-05-20T17:39:38.128-07:00Critical Switch: Shovel Knight and Interrogation<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">So hey, new
microphone! I've had episodes with good sound before thanks to my
friends like James and Solon, letting me borrow their mics, but I now
officially have my own Snowball mic! So audio quality should be
lovely and consistent from now on. Thank y'all for helping make this
happen.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Critical
Switch is of course supported by patient listeners like you at
<a href="http://patreon.com/CriticalSwitch">http://Patreon.com/CriticalSwitch</a></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Nostalgia
means more than – hey, hey, sit down. I'm going somewhere with
this. Nostalgia means more than people tend to think it means. In
common usage it tends to mean a fondness for the past, but it can
also mean “a fondness for a past that did not exist.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
the recent wave of retro genre revivals, we see some of this concept
in practice, in many particular ways. <i>Pillars of Eternity</i>
and <i>Divinity: Original Sin </i>look
and sound lot better than the isometric <i>Baldur's
Gate/Planescape: Torment</i> CPRGs
they are formatted on. Likewise for 2D platformer revivals like
<i>Castlevania: The Adventure Rebirth</i>,
which preserves the pure 2-directional whipping of it's
side-scrolling predecessors but tampers down on the need to commit to
one's jumps, as well as having the aforementioned technical upgrades.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">A
trend becomes noticeable wherein designers are choosing to buff out
what were generally considered “flaws” in their original designs
when updating them for the age of Kickstarter and reminiscence. And
why shouldn't they? The history of commercial game design is mostly
of slow-moving iteration wherein certain things that are disliked
about a particular design are either removed or replaced, and in
theory these games are merely picking up on where their predecessors
left off.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">But
there's also something to be said for established traditions as well.
I've run up and down the halls screaming at my listeners and
followers about how if JRPGs so desperately needed change then why do
none of the late-90's classics of the genres really play in any
fundamentally different ways? And in many ways, the same sense of
need for iteration is what arguably drove us away from these beloved
genres in the first place, especially as we became focused on the
progress of technology.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Now
what I'm saying here is mostly some “the answer is in the middle”,
“the mediator between the head and hands must be the heart” type
shit. That's not useful. What is useful, is a work like <i>Shovel
Knight</i>.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Shovel
Knight</i> is an immensely
intelligent videogame released last year by Yacht Club Games whose
ever design and narrative trope is, on a moment-to-moment basis,
interrogating that space between nostalgia, progress, and the true
past.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Aesthetically,
<i>Shovel Knight</i> rides
that particular “false past” idea of nostalgia quite hard. The
game's color palette sticks almost religiously to the NES' own color
palette, but they've admitted that in a few spots they had to use
shades and hues not accessible on the NES. The music is neither
puritanical NES chiptune or modern arrangement, but instead features
music that was only capable of being played on a Japanese Famicom and
certain games that made use of an expanded set of channels, most
famously <i>Castlevania III</i>.
Only a few games used that expanded set of channels, and none of them
were ever released that way in the west. <i>CVIII</i>'s
western release uses only the regular 3 channels+noise for it's
music. And of course, <i>Shovel Knight</i>
is simply too large to have ever fit on a NES cartridge, being loaded
with enough musical assets alone to fill an entire cartridge.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">As
well, <i>Shovel Knight</i>'s
particular design choices, while rooted in a genuine appreciation of
2D classicism, (multiple critics besides me have already analyzed the
game's meticulous level design) also has a number of modern design
choices, namely it's use of a <i>Dark Souls</i>-esque
drop of money when the player dies. It chooses this system for
punishment of death, which is barely punishment at all if the player
can retrieve their money, rather than allowing the player only a
limited number of attempts per level, thus opening up paths to
repetitive mastery that, in older games, are mostly found through the
abuse of savestates on an emulator.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">So
in some sense, <i>Shovel Knight</i>
is already throwing on rose colored lenses about what the NES and
what the games on it were like. In case it sounds like I'm stating
this as critique on it's own, I'm really not. Each of these choices
makes <i>Shovel Knight</i>
more accessible than it's forebears, and choices made in favor of
accessibility are nearly always justified.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Even
then, in an intelligent and controlled way, <i>Shovel Knight</i>
begins to subvert that modern accessibility. Specter Knight's stage's
gimmick, for example, is that it will bathe the screen in darkness,
but that the player can detect Shovel Knight and his movement
objectives if they observe the blackness against the colored
background. As well, sometimes lightning strikes and illuminates the
path forward briefly. However, later in the stage there are a few
sections that require seeming leaps of faith because Shovel Knight
and his platform are bathed in darkness, and enemies are on his tail.
One can only trust the designers here to have placed platforms in the
way at exactly the right space to make these spaces practically
navigable without putting Shovel Knight at risk. That trust is
rewarded.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Slowly,
as we move through the game, we see more and more design decisions in
this vein. Instant death becomes more common, and the player is
forced into awkward forms of movement and control like adjusting to
the wind propellers in the Propeller Knight stage or the ice physics
. . . the <i>fucking ice physics </i>in
Polar Knight's stage. Some might see this as sloppy design as the
game gets closer to the finish line, I'm more generous because in
these decisions I see the boldest defiance of NES design this game
has to offer: narrative and metaphor.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">What
is <i>Shovel Knight</i>
about? It's about a Knight attempting to reclaim his former glory and
save his girlfriend and his kingdom from the clutches of the evil
Temptress. It's seemingly boilerplate videogames, but there's already
a subtle and critical difference: Shovel Knight's quest is based on a
loss in his fairly distant past, before his self-imposed exile. As he
moves through and gets closer and closer to the enchantress, the
Black Knight warns him that he is walking into great peril, and the
various members of the Order of No Quarter, the Enchantress'
servants, especially Treasure Knight, who tells us: “Even now,
others are paying the price for your avarice.”</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Still,
Shovel Knight journeys on. After each level, Shovel Knight rests at a
campfire, and sometimes he dreams of Shield Knight, desperately
trying to catch her as she falls from the sky as he fends of hoards
of fiends. It's a provocative pairing that I think almost suggests
the unreality of the situation, not in an “everything that's
happening is a dream” level, but more on the acknowledgment of the
fantastical quality of games themselves, as well as living out this
fantasy version of a NES game. We ultimately find that the
Enchantress is in fact Shield Knight, under the control of evil
magic. In defiance of the odds, Shield Knight is freed, and she joins
Shield Knight and rests with him at a fireside. She limps to her
place beside Shovel Knight, it is unclear whether she will awake from
her rest.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
is, I think, a pretty strong metaphor for what it means to develop a
2D platformer in 2015. It is the struggle of searching for the past
while accepting the present. And it's the constant question of
whether the magic can survive in modern times. Overall I think the
tone of the game, and of course the fact that the game exists, and is
a beloved commercial success gives us a hopeful bend on that, and
what were NES games if not optimistic, but what I appreciate most is
that it's a topic that Yacht Club chose to struggle with not just in
developing, but inside of the game itself. And after all, what is
searching for answers, if not`` digging?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
this episode you've heard “Strike the Earth,” “The Requiem of
Shield Knight” from the <i>Shovel Knight</i> original soundtrack by
Jake Kauffman. Zolani Stewart will be back with our next episode.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<br />
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">From
Seattle, Washington, I'm Austin C. Howe</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-53059459388700871932015-05-16T07:00:00.002-07:002015-05-16T07:14:05.072-07:00Ronnie James Dio: 5 Years Later<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Today marks 5 years since the shocking passing of Ronnie James Dio, and wallowing in melancholy I find myself writing an ode to him. The greatness of Ronnie James Dio is nearly impossible to describe in hyperbole, as much of his importance simply comes down to facts. The facts are these:</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-f79e13b3-5d12-f507-1578-2e2e7671acaa" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Born in 1942, Ronnie James Paladona (stories differ on how the name “Dio” came about, suffice to say it means “God” and the name is appropriate) was first a trumpet player before being a singer. In a 1997 interview he claimed that he never once took a formal vocal lesson, employing merely the correct breathing techniques he’d learned playing the instrument. (Speaking as a friend of a number of formally trained singers, I doubt the story is facetious.) He fronted a number of unremarkable rock bands throughout his early career. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Often noted for his age after fame, Dio’s singles with early rock bands were met with only regional success, and he spent his 20’s in obscurity. He wasn’t even featured on a commercially released LP until Elf’s debut in 1972, when he was already 30. (According to wikipedia, his earlier band had made an album for Atlantic records, I can find no proof it actually exists.) Suffice to say, Dio peaked late, regardless of when one thinks Dio peaked.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That brings out the next astounding fact about Dio: not only did he record his most celebrated material at an age when some singers have already severely injured their voice, but in the process became one of the most celebrated frontmen in the history of metal. </span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow, we first see Dio’s fascination with fantasy imagery. Some bands had toyed with these motifs before, but Dio made them his own. In adopting such a style he also thoughtlessly adopted some of the casual racism of 20th-century fantasy, such as on “Voodoo” from </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mob Rules</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or a song from his </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Holy Diver</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> album titled after the well-known slur for the Romani people. These are some of his weaker lyrics, such that their titles end up being more offensive than the content contained within, but the archaic and outdated must be noted along with the innovation.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">That fantasy imagery (when used responsibly) combined with an early musical experiment in what would later be noted as speed metal, </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=83qBRmM00R4" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Kill The King”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> represents arguably the first example of what would become power metal in the late-80’s and 90’s. The song has become something of a metal staple, being covered by the thrash band Heathen, and power metal bands Primal Fear, and Stratovarius.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The vocal styles employed by power metal bands can be credited almost singularly to Ronnie James Dio. Surely noted singers like Rob Halford, Ian Gillian, or even Robert Plant sang high, but there timbre was still obviously deep within the realm of rock’s down-south blues influences. Dio’s style was based in a classicism and melo-dramatism that he pioneered and mastered within metal. Power metal masters like Hansi Kursch, in their adoption of dramatic affectation, borrow much more greatly from Dio than from any other great metal vocalist aside from maybe Iron Maiden’s Bruce Dickinson, who it should be noted wasn’t even recorded until 1980, and didn’t rise to prominence until almost a full decade after Dio. (As well, though Priest’s early material is now held in high regard, Halford wasn’t nearly the level of household name until around the same time.)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Presumably believing that fronting one of the most important metal bands of all time was simply insufficient, Dio left Rainbow when Ritchie Blackmore announced his intention to commercialize the band’s direction, and happened to run into Black Sabbath’s Tony Iommi on the sunset strip in 1979 after the latter band had recently split with Ozzy Osbourne. The chemistry between the group and their new singer was so instantaneous that they released </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Heaven and Hell</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> within the next year, reinventing their sound in the process. It and it’s follow-up, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mob Rules</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are such immensely strong albums that it is to this day a serious question whether Sabbath fans prefer the Osbourne or Dio albums. (For most of my teenage years, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Mob Rules</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was actually my favorite Sabbath album.) Dio first left Sabbath in 1982, after a rather silly argument over the mixing of their </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Live Evil </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">album. Dio, a notorious egotist, had supposedly been tampering with the mix to make his voice louder, though despite his reputation that accusation is dubious at best.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Though Sabbath’s early days laid down the foundations of heavy metal and the downtrodden pace of what would become doom metal, I would say that tracks like </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoyaTGHweAo" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Heaven and Hell”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Mob Rules</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">’ </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhZ2q4BcmWA" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Sign of the Southern Cross”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> are probably the foundational basis for what would become classic doom metal in the late-80’s and early-90’s. Listen to Candlemass’ </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Epicus Doomicus Metallicus</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or Solitude Aeternus’ </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Beyond the Crimson Horizon</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and notice the combination of mid or low tempo riffs, but also notice the insistent melodicisim and the vocal approach of Johann Lanquist (or his successor, Messiah Marcolin) or Robert Lowe. I’d argue the approach bears a much stronger resemblance to Sabbath’s early-80’s material than their early-70’s, and those singers owe much more a debt to Dio than to Osbourne.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Presumably fed up with being a hired gun for established performers, Dio decided to make the show his and form a band under his own name following his departure from Sabbath. While not as musically important as either of his previous acts, Dio found his greatest commercial success with legendary singles like </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkysjcs5vFU" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Holy Diver”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and “</span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9p_Bw3baDUM" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">We Rock,”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and gave some of his great all-time performances as a singer. </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OgpDDDIo_XE" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Rainbow in The Dark”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> in particular remains a favorite of mine, an immense display of Dio’s often-derided talents as a lyricist.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I cry out for magic</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I feel it dancing in the light</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">It was cold,</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Lost my hold</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: center;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">To the shadows of the night</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Dio’s best lyrics are filled with evocative images like these, and though sometimes the intent of his metaphors are lost in confusing jumbles, the power of his stronger lyrics certainly makes one forgive his many attempts to capture a similar magic. It was on songs like this where the power of Dio’s voice was uplifting by pure strength alone, a source of genuine inspiration for my younger self, mired in suicidal depression. Connecting with his voice and his words showed me a side of metal that could </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">empowering</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, not just defeatist. And while I identify with the pessimism of metal, it is songs, voices, and stories like Dio’s that help me carry on in spite of doubt. I may be left on my own like a rainbow in the dark, but that makes me the rainbow, doesn’t it?</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Even when his words weren’t powerful, his voice always was. Even as he aged, Dio was still giving shocking, thunderous vocal performances, as we can hear on 2000’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Magica</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> or my personal favorite, on Heaven and Hell’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The Devil You Know</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, which turned out to be his final album. Listen to his control of volume and his ability to choose when to unleash the grit and growl of his voice on </span><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fNltsEop2dQ" style="text-decoration: none;"><span style="background-color: transparent; color: #1155cc; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">“Bible Black.”</span></a><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> Dio was </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">sixty-six</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> when he recorded this!</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">The modern age begets cynicism and skepticism in needless quantities, and I’ve seen more than a few wonder if Dio’s performance on this album was the result of studio magic. I had the privilege of seeing Dio on his last US tour to support the album. It is still the most impressive vocal performance I’ve ever seen, and he hit every single note of his youth. Perhaps not with ease, but surely with command.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-indent: 36pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Fame came late and death came early for Ronnie James Dio, who died from metastasized stomach cancer on May 16, 2010 at the much too young age of 68, who earlier in the year was still looking forward to playing summer tour dates with the reunited Heaven and Hell lineup, who didn’t even cancel their dates until it became apparent how serious his illness was. Dio was still determined to live, and to sing. It has been five years since and I still cannot describe the shock at learning that even gods can die.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Austin C. Howe, Seattle, WA, 2015</span></div>
<br /></div>
</div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-10564992686189096832015-05-14T22:19:00.001-07:002015-05-14T22:19:35.536-07:00Critical Switch: Republican Dad Mechanics<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
was gonna go on this long tirade about <i>Dark Souls</i> and abuse
and nihilism but honestly, I think I want to focus on something in
particular, it's a design trend that <i>Dark Souls</i> has largely
fathered and I'm concerned about where I see it going.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Dark
Souls</i> and the semi-franchise it
emerges from and has helped popularize has brought on the rise of
mechanics whose design intention is to get gamers to be more careful,
and build skill, but also have least the potential to cause brash,
irrational decision making.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">These
types of system designs I will designate: “Republican Dad
Mechanics.” You could also probably call them “school bully
mechanics” but, an election year is coming up and dammit, this
country is on the line! You know how it is. </span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
theory, the Republican dad is someone like this: they want to teach
their child how to hit a baseball, but they find that the child is
swinging limply, missing, or losing grip of the bat.<br /><br />Now what
a sensible human being would do is give expert advice: plant your
feet firmly, grip the bottom of the bat strongly in the palms of your
ha- nah fuck that, what the <i>Republican Dad</i>
does is throw the ball so hard that they might actually hurt the kid,
the logic being “you're gonna swing the bat or walk away with a
bloody nose.”<br /><br />That is the basic root of much of a lot of
<i>Dark Souls</i> core
design, but it's probably best indicated by the Blood Stain mechanic.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">A
primer for the unfamiliar: in <i>Dark Souls</i>,
when you die, you leave behind a stain of your blood, and on that
stain is the Souls that you picked up before you die. Souls are
<i>extremely</i> valuable, as
they are both the currency you use to buy things from merchants and
blacksmiths, but also the experience points you use to level up. Even
to gamers hell bent on the ultimate challenge of beating the game at
Level 1 will use souls to upgrade their weaponry.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
creates this extremely common situation: I just died to a horde of
ene mies while h olding a not-insignificant amount of Souls. Given
that I am likely to die if I try and combat those enemies again,
based on previous results, I would like to rush in, grab my souls,
and escape the room as soon as possible. Thus, I begin my bum rush
back behind enemy lines and within a moment I've died to the same
horde. Thus, by the rules of <i>Dark Souls</i>
I've lost my opportunity to ever get those Souls back. This logic
applies to any other type of enemy, obviously, since enemies you've
died to once are almost by definition enemies you are likely to lose
to again.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Thus,
the game has given me something that should encourage me playing
better, that is, the loss of my souls, but it's also made those
things the carrot on a stick that forces me into nonsensical loops of
actions. I have played at least 200 hours of these games, I cannot
shake the feeling that regardless of how good I get at them, the
fundamental psychology of that mechanic will not change.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Bloodborne</i>,
From Software's new game in much the same style, has actually doubled
down on this parental conservatism with it's new Regain mechanic. In
Bloodborne, a certain percentage of damage taken within a certain
time frame can now be regained if the player quickly strikes back at
their opponent. The psychological punishment is actually even more
severe here. As . . . I can't believe I'm citing this man, but the
quote actually is pretty good, Tim Rogers writes:</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div align="CENTER">
<span style="color: black;"> <span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>If
an enemy hits you, doing damage, you can get your health back if you
hit them soon enough after they hit you. This is idiotic. This is
insulting! This is a huge, dumb punch in the face of a perfect combat
system. It's filthy and it's gross. Wow, it's so great; I love it a
lot.</i></span></span></span></div>
<div align="CENTER" style="border: none; line-height: 0.19in; margin-bottom: 0in; orphans: 1; padding: 0in;">
<span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i>With
the Regain System, </i></span></span></span><em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Bloodborne</span></span></em><span style="color: black;"><span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><span style="font-size: small;"><i> begs
you to take tiny risks. I say the risks are "tiny" because
that's how it feels: just one more button press. That button press is
highly likely to get you killed, because for the length of that
button press — the first few dozen time s, anyway — you're not
thinking about position, timing, or stamina. You're thinking, "Hey,
I can get that health back, so let's see if I can get that health
back." Ten seconds later, the enemy is dead, and you have half
the health you had during your initial engagement with the enemy. You
feel like the biggest sucker in the world. You've seen the Wizard of
Oz behind the curtain. The Wizard of Oz was flipping you off.</i></span></span></span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The
weird part is, in case you missed it, Tim Rogers <i>likes</i>
this part of <i>Bloodborne</i>
which you can list off as reason number 9001 about why I don't get
that guy. Or maybe he's being ironic, I don't know y'all, New Games
Journalism was weird.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">So
again, the game is shoving this obvious carrot in your face, but the
only real answer is to just let it go, man. That could be a lot of
things, but for a game as ludically focused as the FromSoft games
tend to be, I'm just gonna call it misguided design.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Now
of course other designers are preaching the Miyazaki gospel. <i>Lords
of the Fallen</i>, one of the first
major-studio <i>Souls</i>-likes
adds an experience multiplier so that the longer you avoid resting at
a checkpoint and spending your experience the more experience you
build . . . which is bizarrely reflective of modern financial
economics: “You've invested in some good stocks and made some smart
decisions! Now make the decision whether you want to retire early and
die rich or GO FOR MORE” even though there's no real reason to do
that except maybe to buy that <i>second </i>Bugatti<i>.</i>
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The
idea of course is simple enough: let's put in mechanics that
encourages gamers to more consciously engage with the interactions at
hand. But in these cases, we have system upon system built to
encourage wild and often unrewarding risk-taking. So how do you avoid
being a Republican Dad designer? <br /><br />This is the easy part: the
solutions have always existed! But in particular I want to point out
the tremendously smart decisions made by Platinum games, in
particular how the parries work in <i>Metal Gear Rising</i>.
</span>
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Parrying
is <i>exceptionally</i>
important to scoring high in <i>Revengeance</i>,
or even just surviving on the high difficulty levels.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Parrying
is attached to the same keys as both movement and attack, and that
makes it inherently risky, because if you screw up the parry you're
swinging at an enemy or running when you need to block.<br /><br />Now
granted, this can still happen, but unlike <i>Dark Souls</i>,
<i>Revengeance</i> has got
your back. What <i>Revengeance</i>
does to mitigate possibly misguided player risk-taking is implements
two types of parries. <br /><br />The better kind, the kind you <i>want</i>,
are often referred to as “Perfect Parries”. When a parry is
executed within frames of an attack landing, Raiden will riposte, for
enough damage to outright kill a low level enemy, and often to do 20%
or more of a bosses health.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">It
would've been easy for them to look at player inputting those parries
too early and say “git gud scrub” and walk away, but Platinum
actually wants people to enjoy their videogames so they don't do
that. Instead, they offer a version of the parry that can be
activated much earlier, but also doesn't offer the riposte reward,
often not resulting in any player reward other than not being hit.
This is on top of having an invincible dodge move as well, for moves
that cannot be parried, and that you can also use instead of a parry
when you <i>really</i> need
to get out of Dodge.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Bayonetta</i>
does something similar where when an invincible dodge is activated
within the right time frame of an enemy attack, Bayo enters Witch
Mode and gets to shell out massive damage, but you can still execute
the regular dodge at a lower level of risk.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">How
would you implement those kinds of risk-mitigation mechanics in <i>Dark
Souls</i>? Well . . . you don't.
Because the fanbase would never shut the fuck up about it. Because
remember, the most important thing you can derive from a hard
videogame is being self-important about being able to beat it.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
week you'll've heard the Majula theme from the <i>Dark Souls 2</i>
original soundtrack and the Firelink Shrine theme from the <i>Dark
Souls</i> original soundtrack
composed by (I am definitely going to screw this up) Motoi Sakaruba,
and “Stains of Time” from the <i>Metal Gear Rising</i>
OST, music and lyrics by Jaimie Christopherson.</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Zolani
Stewart will rejoin you next week.<br /><br />From Seattle, Washington,
I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-54532121874629211812015-04-23T11:25:00.002-07:002015-04-23T11:25:41.598-07:00On Commercial Altgames<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> A quick disclaimer: I want to defuse the idea, immediately, that this is any kind of angered “response” piece to Soha Kareem’s <a href="http://motherboard.vice.com/en_ca/read/the-games-that-are-too-underground-to-be-indie">excellent, brief discussion</a> of #AltGames and her creation of the Support AltGames Twitter bot. I want this to be viewed purely as supplemental article, one that covers a particular angle of the #AltGames idea that is particularly important to me, and that I feel I have some expertise in.</span></div>
<b id="docs-internal-guid-fb6af7db-e786-afb0-36b4-c31d3fd38266" style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Kareem’s article focuses largely on the work of independent developers and critics whose work is definitive of modern #AltGames, an idea that is described as being largely new, as a response to and critique of establishment and status quo. While this is true, it should be noted (as Kareem does in her description of the interactions present in </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">She Who Fights Monsters</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">) that ideas and games that inspire #AltGames developers and critics have long existed in the niche corners of the commercial games industry. Thus a historical picture of #AltGames is, I think, obliged to note the work of developers whose work is, as Kareem describes, “experimental, autobiographical, or political” that has also been released for consoles and through large publishers.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Thus, some notable games developers who are often called “AAA” whose work easily fits the bill for #AltGames, in my humble opinion.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Yoko Taro</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">His works have been published by Square-Enix, but rarely sell well. He writes games that often deal with taboo narrative subject matter (including the ultimate taboo of videogame narratives: tragedy), as well as tease the player’s prior knowledge of videogame genres through experiments in ludic structure. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drakengard</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> pulsed with tense, dissonant music and brutal, primitive combat, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">NIER</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was a graveyard of long-irrelevant genres, as well as predated deconstructed 2013’s “Dadification” of videogames, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Drakengard 3</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> openly concerned the sexual interests of various women, a sexually submissive man, and multiple queer characters. He has been hired recently to make a new game, but a name or any details have not been announced. I await news with baited breath.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Amy Hennig</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Hennig’s unapologetically talky </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Legacy of Kain</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> games were some of the first games of such extreme narrative focus in the west to be developed not as systems-intensive CRPGs, but action-adventures for consoles. Her stories starred immortal, unhuman creatures and considered ideas as extreme as theicide, and lend themselves well to interpretative allegorical readings. As well, her team at Crystal Dynamics regularly prioritized space, architecture, and aesthetics instead of overthought combat or puzzle design.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: underline; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Masato Kato</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">As far as I’m concerned, Squaresoft in the late-90’s developed games I would exclusively call “alternative.” Each of them fits at least one of those criteria Kareem notes in her article: “experimental, autobiographical, or political,” and not in ways that are shallow or easily written off. </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Final Fantasy VII</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> was deeply anti-capitalist, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Final Fantasy VIII</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> an empathetic investigation of masculinity and masculine suffering, and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Final Fantasy IX</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> concerned itself obsessively with death and existential purpose. (Even moreso than </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">VII</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">VIII</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> which were themselves obsessively existential.) They don’t tend to get remembered that way.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">But no creative person at the company was as dedicated to tearing away at convention, experimenting with structure, and telling outright </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">weird</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> stories as writer Masato Kato. He got his start at the company writing the notably dark Zeal sequence in 1995’s </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrono Trigger</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> and writing a few scenes for </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Final Fantasy VII</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. (I’ve never been able to find out which ones they were, but based on his style I’d hazard a guess that at least one of them was the Cloud’s Subconscious sequence.)</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Then, he and the equally experimental duo Tetsuya Takahashi and Soraya Saga (birth name: Kaori Tanaka) launched into prominence with </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Xenogears</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">, a (tragically unfinished) tale of reincarnation, history, Nietzsche, and evocative, charged imagery. The game is as intoxicating as it is confusing and frustrating, and it’s something everyone should play at least once.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">After that, Kato was given complete control to write and direct </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrono Cross</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. Do not listen to anyone say otherwise, </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrono Cross</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> is a messy masterpiece of sun-baked island scenery and deep self-doubt that deals in short vignettes, with no easy endings that leaves the player always marinating in a sense of defeat even as they push ever onward. And, to the misfortune of it’s legacy, it’s also a vicious deconstruction of </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrono Trigger</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">. That works fine for me because frankly, I can’t stand </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Chrono Trigger</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Many of these figures are well-recognized, even financially successful on a massive scale, but I also find it incredibly important to celebrate their contributions to gaming outside of the nakedly commercial, and note that their games can be seen as alternative. I hope I’ve shed some light and opened some eyes, and in general I will continue to take note of historical examples of altgames released commercially.</span></div>
<b style="font-weight: normal;"><br /></b>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">In particular, I’m within a month and a half of finishing the drafting for my long-delayed book about </span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: italic; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Final Fantasy VII</span><span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> that does not yet have a title. Unlike most writing on the game that exists, I see this as a reading of the game from an alternative perspective.</span></div>
<div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div>
<br />
<ul style="margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;">
<li dir="ltr" style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; list-style-type: disc; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline;"><div dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt; text-align: right;">
<span style="background-color: transparent; color: black; font-family: Georgia; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; text-decoration: none; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">Austin C. Howe, Seattle, Washington, 2014</span></div>
</li>
</ul>
</div>
Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1581558812876356968.post-86929018971763147802015-04-12T23:27:00.001-07:002015-04-12T23:27:28.811-07:00Critical Switch: BBSD, Ludocentrism, and Abstraction<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Kept you
waiting, huh?</span></div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<br />
</div>
<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Yeah, the
beginning of my April was pretty rough, not to go into too much
detail now, but suffice to say that one of the results of my stress
was having zero inspiration to write a new episode of <i>Critical
Switch</i>, Which Is Supported By
Listeners Like You At Patreon.com/CriticalSwitch!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
any case, that phase has passed. Two weeks from now I'm going to be
talking about the Souls games (yeah, that'll be fun) and this week
I'm talking about Lulu Blue's new game, <i>Bunny Bunny
Smackdown</i>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Full
disclosure of course, Lulu is a good friend of mine, I live like a
mile up the road from her . . . but none of that actually matters to
you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Anyway,
<i>Bunny Bunny Smackdown</i>
is a game about bunnies having group sex. You have a Pounce button, a
Kiss button, and a Smack button.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">The
game has a fun multiplayer mode where each of those mechanics shine
brightly somewhat in abstract, but I think the single-player modes
express the ideas a lot clearer.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">You
start off and everyone's more or less cool with everything, but as
you progress through, you need to keep check of which bunnies have
what rules. Some bunnies don't like to be pounced, others don't like
to be paddled. So while you're jumping around and keeping track of
this high paced action, it also keeps you in check by making you
consider what people enjoy and what peoples boundaries are. This, of
course, already makes it a far more mature systemization of sex than
most that exist in videogames.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">But
something that makes it equally genius is that these mechanics are
all borrowed wholesale from our existing understanding of action
mechanics. The “Smack” button lets you swat the bunnies with a
paddle that looks . . . familiar, in the context of a 2D action game,
the “Kisses” are projectiles that just look different from most
game projectiles.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">What
this means is that Blue understands how to use aesthetics and
narrative context, even in a minimal sense, to recontextualize sets
of interactions and make them mean different thing. Interpreting this
as such falls to us as an audience of course.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Some
have already said that they're disappointed to see that the game is
“just swordfighting” because of the admittedly familiar look of
the Smacking implement, but we can only call it “just
swordfighting” if we acknowledge that textually what we see on
screen is not a sword fight, but simply borrows hitboxes and frame
data from games that actually have swords according to their own
contexts. </span>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">That
actually goes beyond ludocentrism into something even more insidious
(and sadly typical) : it is not just that the narrative context of a
game object becomes irrelevant, it's that people will tend to revert
to the original contexts of these sorts of in-game objects and
in-game verbiage. There are people who seemingly refuse to actually
let the narrative context of certain hitboxes and lines of code be
changed, and I think that's ultimately because they don't want them
to.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Alternatively,
it means they think new narrative contexts always demands new
mechanics, which is obviously horseshit. If Square in the late-90's
proved anything, it's that even the most minor alterations to the
ludic structure of the Japanese Role-Playing Game provides fertile
ground for games about anti-capitalism, spirituality, quiet moments
of being in your bedroom alone, and even gorey monster schlock
horror.</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Now,
granted, there's something else to think about: perhaps for a game
about sex the interactions could feel more like sex? Well, for one,
it's about bunnies, so it's not exactly a 1/1 relationship from human
sex to this (not even for furries), but also I'd argue that what we
might call the “abstraction” does more important things here. For
one, it creates distance between our minds and something that tends
to make our minds work . . . let's say “differently.” In this
case, abstracting the sex away from a narrative context that would
put the audience “in the mood” allows them to be more reflective
on the thing the game values most, that being respect for partners
boundaries during sex, and the idea that what you do is in service to
the mutual pleasure of the both of you.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">This
is a small game, so I guess I should've foreseen this being a short
episode.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">I
guess if I had to be critical, and I really feel like I'm nitpicking
here, I think if the idea were developed more I'd like to see the
ideas about consent, boundaries, kinks and such, being put back into
the multiplayer. Those elements really shine in single-player, but
multiplayer is as of now mostly a freeform romp which, though
<i>extremely</i> fun, would probably benefit from both the mechanical
and thematic depth we see in the single-player.</span></div>
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<div style="margin-bottom: 0in;">
<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">Other
than extremely trite gripes like that, I still feel like <i>Bunny
Bunny Smackdown</i> is an
exceptionally coherent, clever, and insightful game, especially given
the speed with which it was developed. Blue is a very talented game
developer, and given this I'm especially excited to see what she does
with her upcoming 3D revamp of <i>Fantastic
Witch Collective, </i>which
was itself already excellent.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
this episode we've heard, twice, a song that has no title that plays
in the background of most of <i>Bunny
Bunny Smackdown</i> composed
by the also-very-talented Christa Depken.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;"><i>Bunny
Bunny Smackdown</i> can be
purcahsed at the Alpha Six website at a6productions.itch.io, and I'm
told that Blue's older games are likely to appear there soon as well.
The links will be posted in the description.<br /><br /><i>Critical
Switch</i> is supported by
<i>patient</i>
listeners like you at Patreon.com/CriticalSwitch, and any amount that
you donate really helps. We're at a point with donations right now
where I can afford to feed myself with what we're doing here, maybe I
can eventually pay utilities this way!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Georgia, serif;">In
any case, Zolani Stewart will be with you next weekend.<br /><br />From
Seattle, Washington, I'm Austin C. Howe.</span></div>
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Haptic Feedbackhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01908251907883130241noreply@blogger.com0