Learning to play nice, completely by accident: The Soccer/Pokemon Principle 2.0…

Yesterday the New York Philharmonic played in North Korea . This is monumental because this is the first cultural exchange in years between the two companies that didn’t involve the words “nuclear” or “failed”.

It’s being touted as an act of normalization of relations between the two countries, and I don’t doubt this. It was a very good thing. The United States uses military games as a way to simulate combat, and also as recruiting tools. There is no doubt, and no question, that video games involve egregious conflict. In countries where the world plays a game, we remain competitive. But they also provide some potential for normalizing relations far beyond the norm.

Anyone who says the culture of Japanese video games and cultures doesn’t pervade beyond a convention of teenagers hasn’t understood how swiftly and soundly our animation studios have been won over, how commanding the Japanese car brands have been, how well Sony is marketed. We couldn’t dream of hostile relations with Japan , and it was done over commerce and art. More than just a fad, this endurance shows a real, globalized and mutual cultural exchange. It didn’t change the game, it made the game bigger. Both countries are still competitive, many of our companies lost. That doesn’t mean Japan won, necessarily, as their recession last decade was violent, and the loss of the last great war reminds them.

It’s a lot harder to kill someone who played music for you. It’s a lot harder to beat up somebody you play Halo with. There’s a humanizing factor when you interact with someone. It goes beyond gaming, which can be competitive, but as Europe has shown… countries that fiercely play soccer with each other have a much harder time killing each other. When a country’s soccer team stops playing, you know what’s going to happen next. But the fact of the matter is, for those that care about soccer, you know where Manchester United are from. You know where the stadium is from Belgium . The world fills in slightly based on YOUR interests, not in spite of them. Largely, maps lack the entertainment value of Tetris or a physical sport. This is telling. In a gaming world, people of different nations and beliefs will be united under the belief that teenage boys on Halo are the greatest evil on the earth.

This is not a solution for world peace, but it is a blueprint for how our generation could be more competitive and more peaceful than the ones before. The protest folk singer/songwriter Pete Seeger said recently that unlike Vonnegut and other thinkers of the last age, he is very optimistic because the free flow of information has a truly revolutionary potential. This is not an opinion to take lightly.

And I agree. World of Warcraft is a great many things, but if you know you play with a fellow from New Zealand , you are more inclined to know the spot on the map. Know the spot, know the person, and your brain kicks slightly, you may look at the map. Knowing the various capitols of the world is important. Learning that you got a thumbs up from a fellow 7 year old for your fire lizard-possum creature from a small city outside of Moscow ? You’ve learned 4 things with the latter: Where Moscow is, where the ping came from, where you are in relation, and that a human noticed you. No classroom can teach that last part, the part that personalizes the memory, makes it more permanent. But games? They’re doing it right now.

It should come as no surprise that Americans lag with geography. And we can’t teach geography in the Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego method. But with information and the internet (which my sister has navigated, if memory fails, since the womb) we have the potential for her to see where her friends are. You can’t make it about pen pals, because those are lame and would never work. You can’t make it into a map-based video game. You can make it about friends, and points, and colorful cartoon characters, and teach geography as some random accident. That’s the goal, in my opinion, the random accident of learning where your friend is, and having that spot in your mind. It is more effective and permanent memory encoding than a training program, and it doesn’t have that explicit warning sign kids see that learning is happening.. It doesn’t destroy a competitive nature, in fact games encourage it. When I look at sites like Neopets, you see the potential, the pervasive nature of the internet, and learn that we have the potential for a cultural exchange that wouldn’t make things like the New York Philharmonic any less important. It would make them a lot more expected

And that, my friends, may be quite impressive.

When you wish upon a star

http://imagineerebirth.blogspot.com/2007/04/one-of-our-dinosaurs-is-missing.html

The link above is one of the most intelligent and disheartening posts I’ve ever seen.

I make no qualms about it that I think the Best Animated Picture is a complete farce. It was created by the MPAA because Beauty and the Beast came damn close to winning the Academy Award Best Picture. No lie. Look it up. A decent, artistic movie came along. It’s not my favorite Disney, but it is intensely beautiful and a hell of a fairy tale and any daughter or son of mine will grow up in a world where something like that magic exists on a bookshelf they can reach. But it’s not film. Not really, and this attitude will hold it back in this hemisphere long after South Park, The Simpsons, and Pixar thrash around this generation, challenging our assertions about what a cartoon is and does. Anime does this too, but as I’ve noted before they view animation on an entirely different level than we do. Attitudes change, and they will change slowly, but the ultimate prize of acclaim is officially off limits. Can’t happen. It’s not that an animated movie couldn’t be the best of the year, it’s just that officially it can never be.

When Ratatouille wins Best Picture, know that it simply is not being allowed to compete with No Country for Old Men or Juno or There Will Be Blood because it’s animated. Not because it’s less of a movie, but because of how it was created.

In video gaming, thus far, we have not reached this point, and that is reason enough to hope. So far, we don’t have to have that fear. This generation of gamers have embraced Guitar Hero so fervently, and Rock Band so feverishly, that games have changed. Where once something like Pa Rappa the Rappa seemed cute, the idea of a music game with a controller seems like slumming it.

What can gamers do? You can support change and reward quality, not name brands. Rewarding Sega for the latest stool they’ve squatted out with a Sonic brand, not good.

I’m thinking about this today because Metacritic just angered a shitbrick out of the chairman of EA, and it made the real world news of the Associated Press. Not because EA had a bad profiting year. It had an amazingly profitable year. It’s because games scores are down for the company.

And I like this man. He realizes something you don’t get in movies, that you don’t even get in music. He gets that before you begin to lose money, you begin to lose quality. That’s what goes first, then your marketshare drops out And it angered the shit out of him. Understanding the consumer, as well as the critics, is going to be an obsession for the game world, simply because they have to control quality AND volume.

And friends, that is, quite literally, where we come in.

The Sky's the limit

It occurs to me lately, speaking of Sega and other acts of failure, how wondrous games are when they are happy accidents. If you look towards the best works of a particular studio, it is the result of happy accidents. Final Fantasy was named as such because of how doomed Square felt at the time. Mario’s body the result of the limitations of the Donkey Kong consoles. Masterchief was created to demo an overhead game. Somewhere, somebody thought the notion of a dance pad in front of notes moving up a screen would be a very keen idea.

Games thrive on creativity, and they also thrive on accidents. This article is about something that may, at one point, been an accident, but now I’m fairly convinced is a company policy.

Being sick will do odd things. The first thing is that I spent half the day sleeping, the other half reading books and playing video games. It would be relaxing if it wasn’t for the nausea, sidesplitting pain, and the inadequate bodily temperature control.

Today I played several games I am very fond of, and enjoy greatly. They are

-Super Smash Bros Melee

-Mario Galaxy

-Halo

And I was beating Super Mario Galaxy again, when the ending struck. The ending of the game feature’s an infant’s cry. What a unique choice for a video game, I thought. It strikes an optimistic tone, a vulnerable one, not something you see very often.

And then I thought some more, and I realized that Nintendo consistently has an open skies policy. If this is a happy accident, it speaks to their ideas.

Open skies refers to the ability to have large expanses of … well, sky. You can pepper the background a bit, but you get a near three-dimensional feeling. It makes things feel brighter, and it lends scope. The larger the scope, the greater the immersion. It’s this emphasis on scale that makes early Final Fantasy games with their overhead map so much more daunting than the most impressive CG render.

But if you look at Nintendo games, they almost always feature open areas. Sometimes there’s stuff, many times there is not.

This is not exclusive to Nintendo games, of course, but I believe they spend a greater deal thinking about how to expand the world with what amounts to very little.

When I play non-Nintendo games like Banjo-Kazooie or Sonic, or racing games like Gran Turismo, there is often sky and plenty of it. But there’s a sense that everything is cluttered and overly busy. Buildings on the left, cut off from the world and forced into a decidedly smaller area, there is a much more “on the rails” approach. Nintendo avoids this.

I think I first realized Nintendo cared about how to make a world seem larger when Ocarina of Time came out. How many games reward you with different noises, hues, and emotions as the sun sets over a lake? In a game where it has nothing to do with the main goal, the presence of such a beautiful mechanic only makes it seem more real.

When you look at Mario Kart, the worlds are open and free. Other racers, including other titles, their view doesn’t take into account scope. Everything is cluttered.

I realized this must be a policy because it’s so damn consistent. In games where scope is tightened considerably, such as in Metroid Prime 2, the world doesn’t feel as immersive, and it’s much more unpleasant. That half the game features unattractive color palates in both the Light and Dark world doesn’t help, but the point remains. There isn’t the sense of grandeur that was evident in the original Prime. With sky cities, and tunnels with useless amounts of room, Prime 3 pulled back. The sky appeared.

And then I get to Halo, which is a game series I like. Once again, there is a sense of scale in the large, open air world. When the game pulls in to a series of corridors, it feels more intense after having so much room before. I can honestly say I have no interest in Doom as a series. Too many damn corridors.

MMORPG’s can show this too. The wide open world of World of Warcraft is commendable in how well it handles the near and the far. The detail, the scale, it’s a world of decided beauty that feels rather realistic.

Obviously core gameplay, shrewd marketing, and overall quality help, but I can’t help but notice how many hit games feature scale so handily, and how many games that come close in quality (but never quite hit it) feel so stunted and restricted. Skies bring scale, and in an age of tremendous 3D capabilities, it’s amazing how few designers have succeeded at it, and how consistent certain companies are at showing it.

Achievement Unlocked. Now what?

Achieved!

Perhaps the greatest moment in the history of videogames last year was on South Park. After Stan and Kyle reach a million points… they get.

Congratulations… you are both FAGS.

I know how to rock, and there is no achievement for it. I have destroyed and pissed off unholy good Halo players, I infuriate gamers who take my “button mashing” lightly.

Angsty told me part of it is as an epenis (more on that later) but the second part… because then other onliners will take you more seriously… well that’s a bit odd to me right there.

The idea that you want other games to treat you seriously is…vexing. My personal opinion is that you want them to bring their A game all the time. When I play someone, I want to face them and win, to hell with the rules. To hell with their score. This is the playing field, this is now. Why let anything else matter?

The other part with achievement scores is that they are indicative of nothing. A higher achievement score may be earned in first person shooters. Another example- does my elementary school spelling champ trophy have anything to do with my stats as a baseball pitcher? Both are in a forum of competition with my peers. The thing with XBLA is that they are equal… but are they? It’s not an indicator of what you do aside from play video games. Now individual medals and stats within a game, I fully understand. It’s the cumulative score, and the quest for the cumulative, that baffles me. The only thing it tells people, is that you play a lot of video games and want more achievements.

In terms of gaming… I don’t get it.

Then there is the domain of the e-penis. Penis contests in general, I have no desire to partake in. I have a big, awesome television, but I don’t rub that in. Do gamers need status?

That’s a difficult question. The old breed of gamers spent a good deal of their lives feeling the spurn of many peers. The hardcore gamers, of note in the MMORPG world, are not relented upon by their peers. While geek is indeed chic, the life of a gamer has often been one of the closet dork, a habit pursued whilst women were off somewhere being screwed. And liking it.

Status via e-penis, is just more flexing in a community that doesn’t need flexing. It needs and craves expansion, and e-penis hierarchy, for oneself or to show others, does little to assuage this notion that gamers are any different than the high school so many of them lament. Status was the death of them, why inflict it on an entire subset of games. Armor contests are the same. Have we gamers eschewed the Ambercrombie and Fitch label, the Air Jordans, for our own brand of status symbols?

It stifles me.

Now I get the point of points, of achieving the higher score, of acknowledging statistics within a game, but those specific stats, in their raw form or in a broader form (via a genre) perhaps. And a score is quantifiable and limited to a certain game. In King of Kong, we know who are the best Donkey Kong challengers, and we see their struggle within that one game. That one player is an absolute pro at DDR have anything to do with the story? Would it?

Status and games are destined to look silly. In the Wizard, poor Fred Savage, who loves video games and wants to achieve the very best (proto-Ash?) is intimidated by his competitor Lucas, who shows off his Power Glove. “It’s so bad.”

And some 19 years later, that clip is lampooned at every turn. Why?

Because it’s a fucking video game. And none of it matters. Attempts to look badass look ridiculous. Gamers don’t take you more seriously based on achievement points, individual statistics do. More, and perhaps most importantly, beating them makes them take you seriously.

Microsoft is on to something with the points system, but the effect some 2 years into the 360 is a bit too many miss than hit. If rankings came more into play, statistics in game, you could host tournaments to see who’s the best at Halo or Call of Duty 4, or who can have the best kill score in the first level of Devil May Cry. These stats are already there, but they are not pursued in any sort of quantifiable way that could lead to more challenges, to wanting to win.

I’d be fine if they had achievements that you earned over multiple games, given off by tags in the system that are already there to unlock what are currently known as achievements. A sniper badge earned over Call of Duty 4, two Halos, and Turok is more impressive than garnering points out of a rental of Katamari Damacy. The first way tells me to take your prowess with the game’s rifle seriously, the other one tells me you take yourself seriously. Which one is going to make the match better?

Which one is truly going to expand the gameplay, motivate, and challenge your skills? It would take more work and more money, but it would be the return of the arcade score post, to letting gamers puruse and track each other meaningfully, not with blind arbitrary number schemes that don't speak a wit about how this next match will go.
And that would be so bad.

Censorship and You.

The important thing to remember about censorship is that for families, that boilerplate group that contains 2.5 kids, is that both parties want to court them. Whatever inroads the ESRB has made, or whatever a political wonk tells you, the simple fact remains that no mainstream candidate has any desire to court the gamer vote. However this may change in the future.

There are those who say that the candidacy of Hillary Clinton and the Democrats in general is hostile to violent games. This is, in fact, true. It is also true that the past 8 years of a Republican presidency has led to more censorship in mainstream mediums such as song broadcasts. The conservative mouthpiece Fox News is trying like heck to issue an apology to EA, for facetious comments made about Mass Effect.

Politics are not good for video games. They are not, and have not, been good for movies or music, either.

The fascinating thing about American censorship is how cyclical it is. Unlike Germany , Britain , or Japan , who have very strict laws, the interpretation of ours are always in flux.

This is a good thing for gamers. Bill Clinton was also good to gamers. It was during his administration that the ESRB was founded. Games like Mortal Kombat pushed the genre into bloodsport, Doom was the FPS de rigeur, and Grand Theft Auto 3 was being programmed.

If you look at tv’s, movies and at music, right now they are enduring a greater push for censorship now than in the past 3 years. It is compulsory that something similar happen with gaming. The best news for TV viewers is that Michael Powell, former chairman of the FCC, and chief inquisitor behind Janet Jackson’s wardrobe malfunction, was effectively run out of Washington for his myopic views. The new chairman is much more concerned with hammering out the digital signal transition and cable’s various scheming.

What should further buoy gamers is that the strict sort of treatment towards gaming has been met with reliable support from the judicial system. Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich famously tired to make a law prohibiting the sales of games to minors, which was struck down soundly.

My point, however, is that the government is reliably hostile towards gaming, and that is something we should be used to. True sea change will not occur at that level with this current generation of politicians.

And I wouldn’t worry too much, really. Movies survive, tastes are what change. A writer on Mel Brooks’ Blazing Saddles lamented that you couldn’t make that movie today. That is due more to cautious executives.

Now radio is being hammered, but not with any new legislation. The rules have a Reagan or pre-Reagan date, it’s only now that they are being enforced. The fines are higher, but that’s what the current dominating generation supports. We, as gamers, are not it. Yet.

And our tastes, in video games, often lean towards. As long as you can make the case that people will buy it, people will make it. Manhunt 2 may in fact have sold better because of its added attention, not in spite of it.

So don’t vote or think about voting based on video game legislation. Because no one is non your side.

My Evil Monkey Brain

People tend to think of video games as a waste of time. I think that, for many lifelong gamers, there is a distinct difference between gamers and people who don’t game in the way they view the world. It has little to do with violence, or time management. It is a much simpler, much more sublime process. There is a lot to do with dexterity and concentration and aim, which are good points of fine motor skill which are, in general, the result of minutiae and the incorporation of training exercises into a form of enjoyable play.

My evil monkey brain sees a coconut. The coconut contains delicious coconutty goodness. So I try to break it with my thumbs. No good. I try a wall. No good. I try a big rock… and make a mess. I try a sharply angled rock, and the monkey eats.

Humans can problem solve, and this is a skill that many video games teach.

At Best Buy, a gentleman can come up to me and say his TV is not working. I’ll ask him if he tried plugging in the wires, and tried a different set of wires, was on the right input. All simple questions that most people cannot answer. Now a gamer, from the old console gypsie who moved the systems all around the house to the young kids whose TV’s are far easier, there is a consistency. We try everything to get the TV (or other problem) to work.

Video games are not the sole provider of good problem solving skills, but good games are. Games that are not… well, they’re becoming more common. My biggest problem with Guitar Hero is not that one isn’t spending those hours learning to play a guitar, it’s that you are learning a set routine. In games such as Sonic the Hedgehog, you are rewarded for your routine.

I am a reactive gamer, and my evil monkey brain dislikes learning repetition in a video game. This is easily seen in Guilty Gear matches with Angsty Gaijin.

I am accused of button mashing. It is true I don’t know what the buttons don’t’ do in some elaborate chain, but I do know what buttons hurt, what buttons block, and my goal is to hit somebody. I do damage, because my mind is not encumbered by patterns, it is only that I have a simple arsenal that no one expects because video game fanatics who learn games like Guilty Gear learn how to do moves. I simply learn how to hit somebody, and that makes me a threat because I am not picky about how it’s done. I know some combos, but I don’t care. I want to hit, and I hit.

There are reactive gamers, and there are system gamers. Angsty is a systems gamer. Do ____ without ____ and master ____ and you’ll probably win. This is the basis for games such as Guitar Hero, DDR, and any game where perfection is rewarded. It is satisfactory in the fact that you can master a very complicated string of issues with success.

To a reactive gamer, this is positively droll. Now games are systems. X then Y then Z and maybe a bit of A again to get to the final goal or score. Games that reward reactions… well, I tend to frustrate people.

Smash Brothers, Mario Kart, and Halo. I have a very limited amount of skill for memorization, but these are games with what we can call random events. A mallet from the sky, for instance, or the randomness of weapons combat in Mario Kart or weapon placement in an open may in the wider stages of Halo. In these environments, I am a juggernaut of pwnage. A reactionary gamer learns what they need to win, and how to use the environment to their advantage.

Systems gamers will play those games (particularly Halo and Smash) and learn the exact timing cues for many of the characters, grenade throws, etc.). I will admit this gives them a better chance to beat me, but not every time. Never every time.

System gamers weaknesses is that they are obsessed with the pattern and the execution. Always. If Angsty is a certain distance from the screen, I can almost be certain he’ll dash towards or execute a distance attack. I can beat him, and beat him into the ground, because I don’t care about what it takes to get the job done. It’s not a system of moves, it’s about the openings, and nothing, nothing else.

This is on my mind because tonight was the Super Bowl, and arguably one of the greatest football teams on the planet was beaten by a team with a considerably more reactive effort.

As watching the Super Bowl is not a matter of an event but rather one of avid interest, I shall put forth a few facts.

The New England Patriots are a better football team. They won 18 games. They drill and drill and drill and drill and can execute most plays better than any team I have ever seen.

So why did they lose tonight?

In the leadup to the game, there has been a lot written on sports pages about how each team plays the game.

Bill Bellichick is the coach of the Patriots, and he’s one of the first coaches to practice the art of metrics. Measure everything you and everyone else does. Find the perfect play. Memorize the moves. Learn the weaknesses, and execute.

His quarterback is a laser, setting and beating records. He has thrown more touchdown in a season than any big name, won more games in one season than Brett Favre, John Elway, Joe Montana, Dan Marino, or anyone else a casual passerby of this sport might recognize.

The Giants studied how to contain the perfection. Throw the other team off balance. Their quarterback is Eli Manning, who is good but often erratic.

Indeed, Tom Brady wasn’t on his best game, his throws were off the mark, but he’s still a laser, and coming into the last 5 minutes of the game, they were leading.

Eli Manning made the play of his life. He broke a tackle of about 3 defenders, composed himself, and fired a rocket downfield about 30 yards. That set up a touchdown that won the game. They beat perfection.

My point is that you DO have to learn the moves, but you have to learn how to adapt quickly in an open field. The other player will learn you, and that is fine, you have to learn how they’ve learned you. And then you find out what you want, you find the small leak, you compose yourself, and you throw. And perfection and the record books are soundly denied.

And that’s why I win at Guilty Gear sometimes, because it’s not about the system, it’s about finding that opening. There is no time for style, for the playbook. It is only a time for letting instinct and dexterity and to heaven or hell with the pattern. I like the moves I have. I don’t care for combos, or ultra super moves.

Tournaments have become the refuge of systems gamers because these are games and they do have high scores or a set speed, the master of which results in high wins. I can’t play Halo on Saturday nights because there are people who ALWAYS play Halo on Saturday nights, instead of having regular interests like girls, alcohol, and not being in your living room. Perfection is not for a video game. Discovery, inventiveness and cleverness, those are my gaming values, and it’s something that very good video games reward.

There is something to be said for rote memorization, and Guitar Hero sells millions. But in games of perfection, of excellence, being scrappy and direct is a bastard, and always will be. That’s enough for me.

Incidentally, I read this article and I think it is another good take on the game and talks about the differences in style. There is no right way to win. There is only your way.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/04/sports/football/04rhoden.html?hp