Zero Provocation

I have weird feelings about gaming journalism. On one hand we greatly enjoy the services, both journalistic and recreational, of folks like Jim Sterling, Laura Dale, and Yahtzee Croshaw. Jim Sterling in particular is an eloquent and earnest consumer advocate whom I greatly admire. On the other hand, a great deal of time and money has been dedicated to creating a powerful, public-facing back-feed loop in the area of games media. The sheer shameless, entitled corruption in mainstream gaming journalism has been so pervasive and so resented for so many years that it periodically gets tied to some asscheese's personal beef with someone in the industry by gossamer threads and we all go on a merry hatebinge for a week or so.

The good works and great joy contributed by the bad-ass PCs mentioned previously give me something very much like hope. It could just be an erection, but I'm pretty sure hope is involved. It's hard not be jaded about it though. I've been gaming since my fingers were big enough to push the buttons, and for most of that time gamers have been losing some really important battles to corporate profits. We've seen a couple big wins over the years; the slow, steady grinds towards greater inclusion and acceptance, towards better transparency in the industry and towards gaming as a positive force in the world.

Unfortunately, we've also suffered some pretty heavy consumer defeats. The hype-machine of mainstream games journalism has contributed to the success of anti-consumer standards for years, they've been selling out and selling us out since the console wars.

So really, I guess I don't have weird feelings about games journalism. I have a deep love and appreciation for games journalists and the work they do on our behalf, and an articulated, slow-fucking hateboner for the corporate schills who've consistently collaborated with those who would do harm. So pretty much like regular journalism.

For We are Many

I've been thinking about what it means to be a geek lately. Unfortunately, there's a hint of truth to the idea that geek culture is one built on compulsive consumption. Games, movies, TV, comics: all the things that identify geek culture are shamelessly and actively exploited by groups that either never cared about the artistry of these media, or have been driven to forget what love they had. This is pretty fucking clear when you look at how many comic book movies have been scheduled and how they've been handled. All of that shit is a big part of our social presence, but I feel like its too easy to assume these things are what make us geeks. They fucking aren't.

Geek culture isn't about Captain America or Batman or Warcraft; its about loving something so much you involve yourself with it. That's a weird thing to say, but bare with me. Geeks aren't just known for playing games and watching movies, we're known for dressing up as those people, writing our own fiction in those worlds, and relentlessly deconstructing and examining seemingly random aspects of those stories. That last one is important because it really is the bit that unifies us. The tricky part is that isn't some random expression of appreciation for a specific genre or medium, that's a personality trait. Geeks can and do geek out over anything they're into. It's not about what you obsess over, its about the passion. Foodies are geeks, ask them about their favorite food and tell me it doesn't feel exactly like talking to a LARPer about their character. The same is true about people who're really into politics, folks who get weird about sports, and pretty much anybody who enjoys their job after ten years.

The reason I'm all fuckered about this is that I've been dragged (largely through my own shitty, comment-reading habits) into some of the more aggressive discussions about how we're all evil, or stupid, or bigoted. I really hope I don't have to point out how fucking absurd that is. The problem is that we are really, really easily led. Once the mode of exploitation is determined (comics, games, and movies for many of us) the immediately popular aspects of that mode are flogged well past the point of meaninglessness. It happened with Batman, it happened with Final Fantasy, and it happened with politics. The trouble arises from the fact that when huge portions of your obsession have been highjacked and refined to the least common denominator for easy marketing; you get defensive about weird things, you stop thinking about what you really believe.

I don't know how we're going to get away from that, its a little too easy to capitalize and monopolize on people's obsessions. But I do know that we can't really afford to be complicit in our own exploitation anymore. So I don't know, boycott EA games, or MCU movies, or whatever evil you feel like you can do without. Better yet, try to create something of your own for other geeks to cling to. Foodies, sports nuts, Gamers; we aren't really different groups, we are one people with many passions.

Shit-Swilling Subhuman Sonsabitches

This is going to be a short post so I don't devolve in to a crazy-eyed chainsaw-wielding redneck. So swatting is a thing apparently. It's been a thing for a while and it has always been fucked up beyond anything like acceptability. If you hit that link up there you might note that when the police discussed the penalty of the Nov. 6 2014 swatting as a fine and, possibly, a year in prison.

People die in SWAT raids. I've covered it before, but SWAT actions terrorize civilians, ruin lives and, occasionally, melt babies. So calling in a bomb threat or hostage situation on someone to fucking troll them makes you not a fucking person anymore. The idea that these fuckers get anything less than dropped in a fucking hole is disgusting to me. Many swatters are apparently kids. That doesn't change my opinion at all. If your shitty fucking kid is willing to fuck up someone's life this badly they don't get to try again, and you probably shouldn't either.

And the Whole of the Law Shall be: Don't be a Cuntwaffle

We here at Kinda Whatevs have been known to discuss gaming and gaming culture from time to time. Today I plan on tapping a relatively controversial (though less than say, systemic sexism) topic. Yes, today we're going to discuss exploitation, and not in the conventional sense you'd be likely to see here. I'm not going to talk about how we as gamers are being reamed by certain profit models, or how games exacerbate underlying stereotypes and body image issues. No, today its personal. Today we're talking about cheating.

I am a card carrying Video Game Cheater. I cut my teeth on Game Genie back in the day, spent some time voiding warranties with a Game Shark, and have spent more hours than I care to admit to getting various "Mods" to play nicely together in order to tailor my gaming experience to my design. And that's all it has ever been; me trying to get the most out of my games. There are endless, vile arguments in forums all over the webs about the evils of cheating in video games, and some of the points raised are quite valid. If you cheat in an online game against people who are not cheated, you are a cuntwaffle and you deserve the ban that is probably coming to you. If you cheat in a way that actually destroys your game, well fuck, guess you shouldn't have fucking done that. Be more careful next time. My issue comes from the fact that, honestly most games are kind of insufferable to me without at least a little bit of modification. A little bit of god mode goes a long way towards making that psycho with a chainsaw feel like the vindication I crave. I will freely admit that some of the time my desire to cheat is a blatant power fantasy, but that's what escapism is fucking for. I don't, as my previous comments might imply, cheat on games where there are other people who aren't or might not be cheating. The idea of playing out the aforementioned power fantasy on other actual people is spectacularly shitty, that's how social conservatives happen. But there is nary a single player game out there that I haven't run through the paces of Cheat Engine or modded beyond recognition.

I do it for fun. Many of my friends and I have cheated the hell out of games we loved and grown to love them even more with the cheats. Most cheats are harmless as long as you aren't a dick. Now, I realize this is a Rant Fantastique at this point but I do have a reason for it. Recently, Bioware removed an apparently stable and very, very fucking useful exploit from Dragon Age: Inquisition. The exploit in question was item duplication, under specified, reasonable conditions. It allowed players to acquire good gear and made the economy in the game somewhat more reasonable. It had also been available in every DA game in almost exactly the same form. It was removed. That means that it had been intentionally implemented, as evidenced by the fact that they continued to fucking include it, and then patched out.

This bugs the hell out of me, and I realize that it's a little thing but cheating at games is a great joy to me and many other players. I'm being long winded here but I feel like this is on some level an issue of other people dictating how I'm allowed to enjoy myself and that is supremely fuckered.

See, Gamers Don't HAVE to be Jerks

We have talked about fans on this blog before. I once mentioned that the worst thing about some franchises is the fans that surround them. I was being hyperbolic when I talked about that. Not all fans are bad. Yesterday is a great example of this. Yesterday a bunch of people in the Pokemon community got together and did something nice for new players. In the latest generation of games there is a tool known as "wonder trade" where you can upload a pokemon and trade it for a random pokemon. On Christmas this year a bunch of people started uploading starter pokemon and other rare/nifty pokemon to give the newbies something cool as a Christmas gift when they start their adventures in Honnen. This is a bunch of players going out of their way to be nice to people just starting out.

I have been playing Pokemon since it came out in 1996. I was the perfect age for the target market back then, 10. It was not my first RPG type game, I played a lot of Final Fantasy VI and Final Fantasy Adventure (which was actually a Dragon Quest game) when I was a kid, but it was my first experience with a game that gave me a ton of control over my party. I got to choose from an impressive list of characters for my party, I could name them, and was forced to think about how to set up a party that would cover all of my bases so I wouldn't get caught unawares. I know what some of you are thinking, "you had to do all of that in Final Fantasy VI too" but FFVI's had a lot less customizability and the story was a little over my head as a stupid ten year old (such as genocide being a thing. Also an implied tentacle rape from one of tho bosses in the opera house scene) I bought Pokemon Red because there was a dragon on the games case and I have always thought dragons were cool (NEEEEEEEEEERRRRRD) and fell instantly in love.They are solid games, despite the dubious premise, and its great to see the community coming together to do something not shitty.

Fans helping new people fall in love with a good game is a great cause. Being nice is something that a disturbingly large amount gamers have a lot of trouble with, so its good to see a bunch of people get together and help kids feel good about a game. Especially in the face of general crappy behavior yesterday too.

Dragons are Great and All, But Dungeons?

I've talked a bit about pen and paper gaming in previous posts, how ridiculously awesome it is, how disappointed I tend to be with newer systems. I think its about time to actually discuss how I run a game.

I've been told I'm a strange creature as far as GM's go; I'll let my players do damn near anything that doesn't kill immersion or outright violate the laws of common sense, I tend to build my worlds from whole cloth instead of utilizing existing settings, and I don't give my players a storyline. That last one seems to be the most unusual from what I've heard. I run my games open world, there are things happening, monsters to slay, maidens to rescue, machinations of the foulest sorts guiding forces of various descriptions, but I leave it largely to my players to explore the world I've created. Its not that I don't want to tell a story, its that there is more to a world, and therefore a game, than any one series of loosely connected quest lines. I run my games open because that's how the world is, your growth is determined by your conviction, your path is shaped by your interests. Sure, another story about a sinister lich/cleric/warlord/ruler trying to conquer/destroy/enslave the world can be a lot of fun, but there's more going on than that. What happens if you misjudge where your party is at mentally? What happens if the story you set up doesn't have the punch you thought it would?

By setting up a world, with individual characters, with factions interacting and forces influencing events on various scales, some of which directly effect the party, some of which will have effects later, some who'll never directly influence the party at all, I can create a world where something will always be happening. I can run a game that isn't done until we want to be done. And by letting players flex their creative muscles and bend rules that don't make sense or justify actions that fall beyond the normal scope of the game, they can shape the world in new and interesting ways, creating their own story lines and dealing with unforeseen consequences.

I love to run a living world because it forces me to be creative and active on a much higher level and it lets my players decide not only what stories they want to tell, but how far they want to pursue them. It's hard, admittedly; you either have to be able to work with a shit-ton of world level events simultaneously or improvise at blinding speed, but its incredibly rewarding if you can pull it off.

Gygax is My Spirit Animal

I'm late, I know. I'm bad at things and my heart is made of smelly cheese. Rather than self-flagellate over my established failings in punctuality I'm going to ramble about gaming some more.

I've written about my possibly unhealthy obsession with pen and paper gaming before, and none of that has changed. I fucking love tabletop gaming, rolling dice might as well be an aphrodisiac. That said some aspects do run afoul of my pickier sensibilities from time to time. As I've mentioned before, I game for the high degree of customization and adaptability available in a pen and paper situation. I dig the complexity of options and versatility of interactions; which makes it troublesome to me how many systems are trying so hard to become video games. When a system goes from versatile feats based on the development of skills and abilities to a series of powers or maneuvers dependent on level I see a problem. I will admit that its largely an issue of nuance but its a little difference that matters. One option encourages the growth and development of an interesting and at least relatively unique character and the other rewards you for your numbers going up by making your numbers go up.

I'm probably being a bit of a fuddy-duddy about this but I don't really care. I understand that there are perceived market factors in play, the new generations of gamers like a simplified system or whatever. I understand the desire to streamline what can be kind of ridiculously convoluted systems. Seriously, just the licensed books for D&D 3.5 numbers in the high sixties. But the effort to streamline also seems to act as a restrictive measure on the flexibility of the system. While I understand that nobody, especially me, wants to pay a thousand bucks to get a nice, relatively complete set of books; the methods used to clarify the system also demand a higher degree of specificity in the use of power. Classes that once stood as starting points in the development of a character and bases for roleplay options have started shifting into the MMO vernacular. You don't talk about the paladin in terms of her dedication and righteousness, you talk about her capacity as a tank and the control value of her powers. We don't talk about the sorcerer in terms of what his innate connection to magic does to his mind or what his draconic heritage means for his future, we talk about his DPS. I'm not saying the trend in the new systems makes this kind of roleplay impossible, but it is so much easier to ignore the story-potential of a character when more and more the only thing we're given rules for is how that character is equipped to kill shit. I know I'm picking on D&D pretty hard, and they are by no means the only perpetrators, but I feel like they lead the way, I mean D&D has been The Big Name in tabletop for a lot of years.

I feel like an old man yelling at these damn kids for their newfangled power cards and skilltrees, why back in my day you had to pass a tumble check just to get your armor on or whatever. I'm not saying that there aren't any good things to be had from the new breed (13th age has some interesting showings in the mechanics department) but I'm always left wanting more, and not in a good way. Give me some real skills, give me a chance to love my character for more than their ability to one shot a group of mooks, for fucks sake give me more control over my character than I'm liable to find in a Bioware game and we can talk. Until then I can't see myself spending money on, much less running, the new wave. I can't imagine I represent much of a loss in their profits but that's fine, I'm plenty capable of enjoying myself with some 3rd ed D&D or homebrew oWoD. Maybe I'm not alone. Hopefully, I'm not alone. If so, good luck out there. I hope to see you all at the table someday.

No Damnation Via Misrepresentation

I'm a gamer. I'm not a particularly proud gamer, but that's because I've never seen the purpose in taking pride in an identity. There has been a pretty significant brouhaha concerning that identity lately that I would like to address.

Concerning any misogynistic/racist/bigoted bullshit anyone in the "community" has said; the people saying these things are assholes. The propagation of the whole Gamergate fucking thing was primarily the concern of assholes. There are legitimate concerns over professional misconduct in regards to both the gaming industry and its associated submarkets, most gamers have known and complained about this for years. Most of us didn't need to abuse a nearly unknown developer to discuss industry glad-handing, and by and large gamers hate those fucking dicks, they make us all look bad, as gamergate effectively demonstrated. If anyone decides to be an abusive fucknugget, that person is a dick, and ought to be dealt with accordingly. The fact that the anonymity afforded the overall gaming community draws more than its fair share of this trash shouldn't damn the whole community, babies and bathwater and whatnot.

I will make no attempt to rationalize or apologize for people who bear a vague and general similarity to me. I admit that we as a community need to establish better standards for behavior, we need to apply pressure to the various industries that cater to us to be more inclusive and forward thinking. We, like so many other groups, need to either educate or excise the factions who share our identity. This isn't a matter of to each their own, the assholes in our community aren't just making us look bad, they're hurting people. It's up to us, not just to deny the people who would see our community die due to the actions of the idiot fringe, but to denounce that fringe. They don't really represent us, so we need to do more to stop them representing us.

YKWFA 2: Player Characters

Alright, I need to go full on squeeing geek for a minute here. This post has been building for a while and I've had a strong need to write about something that doesn't inspire me to try and hate the world to death, so bear with me. Our topic today is my absolute favorite sort of meta-reference: the PCing of a world. Let me explain.

PCing is a narrative device derived from meta-reference wherein the presence of a player character in the world irrevocably changes the structure of the world, typically by fucking over someone in the game who ought to be important. Sometimes this takes the form of ill explained gaps in a game's mechanics that end up illuminating possibly unintentional subplots. Sometimes its the result of active interplay in the story environment. We'll work through some examples and then discuss the value PCing has as a narrative device. (HUGE SPOILER WARNING OF DEATH)

One of the most explored instances of PCing in a game is the roles of "Ash" and "Gary" in the first generation Pokemon games. By all rights the rival character Gary should be a nearly uncontested champion. He's related to the greatest Pokemon researcher in the world, so he's had, or at least had access to, extensive exposure not only to Pokemon in general but to unique qualitative and quantitative information in the field. He's driven and highly talented. Gary as a character has skill, talent, motivation and resources in spades. In fact he accomplishes nearly everything the player does before the player even has the option. He's also over shadowed in every possible way by the PC.

In the beginning of the game Gary's beloved grandfather Prof. Oak doesn't even remember his name (a good example of a mechanical weakness leading to accidental story depth) and he's largely disregarded in favor of his "childhood friend" that no one seems to know anything about. Over the course of the rest of the game Gary develops an almost compulsive need to beat the PC that results in progressively greater failures at the player's hands despite being relatively successful in all other areas. The PC is even the direct cause of the only possible instances of a Pokemon dieing in a battle (though that is debated weirdly fiercely). When Gary does finally become League Champion the PC comes along, beats his ass yet again, and shames him once again before his grandfather. The PC spends the entire game robbing Gary of his every accomplishment and depriving him of the love of his only relative. My favorite part about this is that its not because the PC is an asshole, its because they can't help it. The presence of a PC in the world ensures that the world bends in their favor. Let's see if I can't clarify with a couple more examples.

Fallout 3 starts out in a Vault, which are constantly demonstrated to be long term social experiments, and follows the development of the player in the Vault environment. Butch is one of the children the player grows up with and his story is what we're interested in for this idea; because Butch is the hero of Vault 101. Or at least he would be if it weren't for the PC.

Your first shown encounter with Butch is at the PC's 9th birthday party, where it quickly becomes clear that Butch is a dickhead. In contrast, everyone else at the party, with the exception of the Overseer, thinks very highly of the player. We learn at this point that Butch's mother is a non-functioning alcoholic, providing one explanation for his aggression. At one point during the player's escape from the Vault one of the Overseer's journal entries becomes available in which he is learned to have been utilizing Butch as a means of social control within the Vault. Given the closed system of the Vault and the low population the Overseer is almost certainly grooming the boy for a position of authority not to mention almost certainly vetting him as the likely husband to his daughter Amata, the only female child in the Vault. So lets build the story, it might be a little weird if you haven't played the game, but I have. Lots. So take my word for it.

Butch, seeking support outside his worthless mother, tries to find solace from the other adults in the Vault, who are all preoccupied with the Outsider child (player). Finding no comfort in any of the adults he develops a hefty resentment for the PC as he projects his inability to earn affection onto the player, he instead establishes a "gang" out of the other male children in the Vault. His gang has trouble understanding his aggression toward the PC, but his clear pain on the subject and threats of violence erode their empathy for the player, after all they must have done something for Butch to hate them so much. Being the clear Alpha male of the Vault's children he reaches out to Amata, once again the only female kid, whose father is the only person to value him over the PC. Amata doesn't share that perspective, making Butch feel even further alienated and cementing his rage.

Now here's the thing. The Vaults are all experiments, and Vault 101's purpose is never actively expressed. We know that the culture of 101 is geared to establish the Overseer as a sort of demigod, carrying on the practices that stave off the certain death of the Wasteland. Its not hard to imagine that Butch was meant to take on a leadership role in the Vault. He's charismatic (though his charisma becomes tainted by his aggression), he's strong, and he is highly capable of establishing and maintaining connections with the Vaultdwellers. The mere presence of the PC denies him even the opportunity to explore anything other than his own resentment.

Perhaps the most prominent example of PCing occurs in the Fallout: New Vegas DLC Lonesome Road. In it the player is contacted by a fellow Courier called Ulysses who bears a hell of a grudge. Over the course of the story Ulysses describes both his and the player's actions as Couriers before the events of the game and why Ulysses holds such hate for the player. It turns out that before the events of the game the player essentially tore the country in half. Basically on a whim. Ulysses became obsessed with this act, with what it means to be a Courier. What he finds, what he describes, is a PC. An active, self-actualized being in a world where they are surrounded by people completely at their mercy. The events he describes are the results of PCs in a world without PCs. What Ulysses describes, in both his previous actions and the actions of the player, are what it looks like to the outside world when a PC is active. This is, to me the best description of what a PC is in a game world.

In most games the player is largely lead about by the story, but from a narrative perspective they are all but gods. Their actions fundamentally alter the structure of the world. They are free to act in ways that other actors in the world are not, and the consequences of their actions reverberate through everything. That is why this device is so beautiful to me. By its nature it half-steps the player out of the game and gives context to their actions. It takes relatively simple choices and gives us a chance to consider their consequences, adding depth and engaging us in ways the game otherwise couldn't.

Achievement (Not) Unlocked

Something that has been a big inclusion in modern gaming is achievements. As with most things this hides some deeper issue with the industry as a whole. Achievements are basically just used for bragging rights and serve no real purpose, unless you really really want that 1-3% rebate from Microsoft's live market. Companies like Microsoft have attached a "gamerscore" to the idea, adding up points received with achievements and rewarding Xbox live gold members with minor prizes worth about $.25, which is kinda shitty considering to get to that point you would need to play and completely beat 20 games minimum. An added requirement for these "rewards" is that you have to pay Microsoft for the pleasure of getting that 1-3% rebate, as only people with Gold Live memberships can get them. By the way a gold membership costs $9.99 a month or $59.99 for a full year, so you would end up needing to buy 10 $60 games in a month (or just 5 if you have the year long subscription) to make up for the loss from the membership cost. Alternatively, if you don't want to buy shit tons of games, you could just not pay and have more money to spend on a steam sale or something. You can also get points to spend on games in the live market, but once again these rewards are kind of negligible considering you need to pay to get them.

So anyway, back on topic: there are people who let the concern with their gamerscore choose what games they play. That article I linked is about a person addicted to getting achievements, and it displays the main problem I have with them rather well. Achievements control how gamers play games and that removes from the overall experience. Achievements feel as though the game company decided that it needed to wave a carrot in front of our faces to guide us along the best way of playing through a game. The best games act as a medium for storytelling, i.e. most RPGs, or as a great distraction for the player, i.e. one of any number of FPSs. Movies have the same basic goals in a lot of ways. Movies try to tell a good story, make a point, or just be a cathartic distraction from reality, but there are no achievements for having seen The Godfather trilogy because that would be stupid. The subjective experience is the important bit. You don't see directors and writers sitting in an audience telling them the way they should watch and interpret a movie. It is their job to nudge you in the direction they want you to go in a non-forceful, engaging way. I would argue that good game design does this as well.

Achievements seem to add extra goals for you to achieve as well as "rewarding" you for completing certain stages of the game. I kinda get the extra goals thing, most games want players to play the game for as long as possible so adding more goals on top of the main game is an easy way to do that, but this was something that happened before achievements were a thing. Did you ever play Super Mario 64? There was a non-essential quest in the game to get all 120 stars hidden in the game. If you did this you got an extra scene at the end of the game, 100 lives, and no fall damage from falling from your triple jump. So by giving the player a goal outside the bounds of the main storyline it accomplished the same goal as an achievement, but differs in a major way because it added to the game. Sure it was kind of a crappy reward considering you had already played the shit out of the game at that point, but it was something. In the Saints Row games (at least from 2 and forward) there was an in-game list of challenges that rewarded you with in game guns, vehicles, and power ups that could only be obtained if you had the genuine skill to complete the challenges. Though these got linked with achievements later, the key aspect of them was still essentially to provide benefit to the player by expanding game play. Achievements don't add shit, they just get tacked on as a way of showing off.

Because of achievements games are becoming more goal oriented and the focus of the gamer shifts from caring about the story, just looking for a distraction, or trying to have fun; to trying to show off how many achievements they can get. I am being hyperbolic here, but only slightly. We live in a world where individuality is incredibly important and largely determined by a person's role in a group. People self identify with a group and then try to show that they are the person most representative of the positive aspects of that group. They scream "Look at my gamerscore! I am the BEST GAMER EVER!". I find this sad for a couple of reasons, the amount of time "wasted" playing games not among them. First of all it denigrates the people working on the game. Why write a good story if gamers are only going to run through it just to get their gamerscore higher? The even sadder part is, by adding the socializing aspect to the game you are exacerbating the perceived need for superiority within the group. This is the way that you show you are a gamer now. It's telling people that if they don't play the game in the way that the people who determine achievements want, then they are not just not a gamer, but that they aren't having fun in the right way. And fuck them for telling me how to escapism.