Tuesday, March 13, 2012
Bite me Word Cloud
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Tuesday, March 6, 2012
Moving on to what?
I regularly get emails from MoveOn.org, a site that sends around typically left-leaning, socially progressive petitions. So earlier today I was all set to sign a petition to cancel Rush Limbaugh's radio show for his comments to Sandra Fluke. To recap, Fluke was set to speak about the need for women to have birth control subsidized by employers, but she (and all women, in fact) were barred from what became an all-male panel regarding women's health. Fluke spoke out about it and drew the ire of conservative media personalities.
So there I was, all set to add my name to the pool of normal, rational people who want what can only be described (in Al Frankin's words) as ten pounds of shit in a five pond bag off the ear, when I decided not to sign. Limbaugh isn't actually an enemy to liberals - he is one of our closest friends.
Social issues simply don't have the power to galvanize conservatives any more, particularly now that labor unions and health care (things conservatives enjoy as much as everyone else) are under fire. That being the case, Limbaugh's brand of bigoted commentary is not drawing in a significant number of new people to the Republican fold, and is most likely driving more people away. In an objective sense, Limbaugh is helping the Democrats win in 2012. Thanks, Rush!
In a more subjective sense, what one can infer from the backlash against Fluke (from personalities like Bill O'Riley as well) is that this is how conservatives deal with and relate to women. The only way to handle women, to them, is through fear and intimidation, relying on outdated misogyny like slut-shaming, where you warn a woman that if she has multiple sex partners or is perceived as having multiple sex partners, she will become a social pariah for not having "good moral character." When a woman doesn't do what you tell her to, it's permissible to insult and goad her into submission (the irony of the comments is that Limbaugh is saying that prostitutes are the only ones smart enough to practice safe sex. He should know, right?)
And I'll bet you cash money that Limbaugh et al wouldn't have a problem if their health carriers were made by the government to pay for Viagra. So it becomes the old hypocritical argument of, "I don't want to pay for someone else to have sex, but everyone can pay for me to have sex."
The latest polling show that women are leading the charge against the right, and Limbaugh and those who follow him in trying to scare women out of politics, scare women away from their own rights, are only ensuring their own defeat later this year. So Rush, I won't throw my name in to cancel your show just yet - just keep up the damn fine work.
So there I was, all set to add my name to the pool of normal, rational people who want what can only be described (in Al Frankin's words) as ten pounds of shit in a five pond bag off the ear, when I decided not to sign. Limbaugh isn't actually an enemy to liberals - he is one of our closest friends.
Social issues simply don't have the power to galvanize conservatives any more, particularly now that labor unions and health care (things conservatives enjoy as much as everyone else) are under fire. That being the case, Limbaugh's brand of bigoted commentary is not drawing in a significant number of new people to the Republican fold, and is most likely driving more people away. In an objective sense, Limbaugh is helping the Democrats win in 2012. Thanks, Rush!
In a more subjective sense, what one can infer from the backlash against Fluke (from personalities like Bill O'Riley as well) is that this is how conservatives deal with and relate to women. The only way to handle women, to them, is through fear and intimidation, relying on outdated misogyny like slut-shaming, where you warn a woman that if she has multiple sex partners or is perceived as having multiple sex partners, she will become a social pariah for not having "good moral character." When a woman doesn't do what you tell her to, it's permissible to insult and goad her into submission (the irony of the comments is that Limbaugh is saying that prostitutes are the only ones smart enough to practice safe sex. He should know, right?)
And I'll bet you cash money that Limbaugh et al wouldn't have a problem if their health carriers were made by the government to pay for Viagra. So it becomes the old hypocritical argument of, "I don't want to pay for someone else to have sex, but everyone can pay for me to have sex."
The latest polling show that women are leading the charge against the right, and Limbaugh and those who follow him in trying to scare women out of politics, scare women away from their own rights, are only ensuring their own defeat later this year. So Rush, I won't throw my name in to cancel your show just yet - just keep up the damn fine work.
Tuesday, February 28, 2012
UHF vs. Wayne's World, among other things
I've had the chance to re-watch one of my all-time favorite movies: 1989s UHF. It was Weird Al's attempt at putting his Dr. Demento-inspired humor on the screen and breaking out of being a parody musician.
My friends who like this movie often compare it to 1992s Wayne's World. The plots are almost identical: down-on-his-luck hero and goofy sidekick take to the airwaves and make it big. Here's a rundown of both movies to see where the differences lie.
Casting/Characters
Ironically the low-budget UHF has a much better cast than Wayne's World. Weird Al stars alongside Kevin McCarthy, Fran Drescher, Micheal Richards (in fact, it was his first starring role before Sienfeld), and Sopranos David Proval. Each character, while not realistic or made to be believable, has a detailed personality and the actors really show a good range.
Wayne's World is headed by Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey, both Saturday Night Live alumni, and is backed up by love interest Tia Carerre, who would go on to do a god-awful prime-time Indiana Jones ripoff and be "that kind of hot Asian chick" in a lot of movies. Despite having major studio money behind it, Wayne's World has a pretty small cast and the SNL-style comedy of Meyers and Carvey is sort of expected.
Setting
While shot entirely in California, UHF has a very clear Anytown, USA feel. The setting isn't a place that exists anywhere in the universe, but is a collection of run down buildings, crappy apartments and suburban wasteland that could potentially be your back yard.
Wayne's World takes place in LA, and that is literally all you need to know. It is a direct parody of LA culture and values in the early 90s. While most people remember 1992 as the year Bill Clinton became president and the time just before the economic prosperity of the dot com bubble, it was a pretty bad time for musicians (which Wayne and Garth are in the movie). The entire aesthetic, from Wayne's basement to Cassandra's spartan loft apartment, coupled with the constant references to 90s heavy metal, create a very bleak, bland, and downtrodden feel.
Both movies use the ambiguity (or lack thereof) of the setting to help with the...
Parody
UHF shines in its insane representation of television shows, from Stanley Spidowski's Clubhouse (where lucky children get to drink from a fire hose) to a Nature-type show which replaces a handsome, bearded woodsman with a Mexican animal hoarder who throws poodles out of windows.
Wayne's World is less a parody of the content of television than it is on the industry itself. It's far more subtle, more relevant, but much easier to miss. It also throws in some nice parodies of the film industry as well, such as this "Gratuitous Sex Scene."
Overall
Ultimately the question as to which is better comes up, but I say screw that, see them both. Each film remembers a time, not so long ago, when any schlub with a few bucks could get a cable access show and broadcast almost whatever he or she wanted to the neighborhood. Before Clinton (you heard me; look it up) gave the FCC and Clear Channel almost unlimited power to buy and regulate the price of access to radio, and before cable TV was carved up between Comcast, Verizon and a bunch of shitty satellite companies, the airwaves literally belonged to the people, and the people could use them. Nowadays, we still own the airwaves, but we better already have a couple million in the bank and an army of advertisers behind us if we want to use them for anything. Good news is that this has largely been replaced with the Internet, podcasts and You Tube, and it's easier than ever to throw together a blog, video or record yourself talking for an hour. But the Internet's great flaw is it's advancement - the instant gratification of watching anything you want at a few mouse clicks, and being able to switch content at a moment's notice or just on a whim means that any content with actual substance, length or quality (like this) is usually overshadowed by leave Brittany alone guy.
It also bears mention that Wayne's World director Penelope Spheeris also directed two utterly fantastic indie films (back when indie films were indie films, not the steaming, over-budgeted piles of cat sick like Eagle vs. Shark) called The Decline of Western Civilization and Suburbia. The former is a music-themed look at American in the 80s. The latter is a story of kids living in abandoned homes in a mid-western housing development, and while it does have the unholy taint of Roger Corman, it is thoughtful, heartbreaking, and has an ending that makes you yell, "Holy shit what the fuck just happened!?" in the best possible way.
Addendum
While many people like the humor of Wayne's World and the punk feel of Decline..., Suburbia went largely under the radar. If you read this and decide to see it, fair warning: there are some seriously gratuitous, violent and deeply disturbing scenes, one of them in the first five minutes. It is not for the faint of heart.
My friends who like this movie often compare it to 1992s Wayne's World. The plots are almost identical: down-on-his-luck hero and goofy sidekick take to the airwaves and make it big. Here's a rundown of both movies to see where the differences lie.
Casting/Characters
Ironically the low-budget UHF has a much better cast than Wayne's World. Weird Al stars alongside Kevin McCarthy, Fran Drescher, Micheal Richards (in fact, it was his first starring role before Sienfeld), and Sopranos David Proval. Each character, while not realistic or made to be believable, has a detailed personality and the actors really show a good range.
Wayne's World is headed by Mike Meyers and Dana Carvey, both Saturday Night Live alumni, and is backed up by love interest Tia Carerre, who would go on to do a god-awful prime-time Indiana Jones ripoff and be "that kind of hot Asian chick" in a lot of movies. Despite having major studio money behind it, Wayne's World has a pretty small cast and the SNL-style comedy of Meyers and Carvey is sort of expected.
Setting
While shot entirely in California, UHF has a very clear Anytown, USA feel. The setting isn't a place that exists anywhere in the universe, but is a collection of run down buildings, crappy apartments and suburban wasteland that could potentially be your back yard.
Wayne's World takes place in LA, and that is literally all you need to know. It is a direct parody of LA culture and values in the early 90s. While most people remember 1992 as the year Bill Clinton became president and the time just before the economic prosperity of the dot com bubble, it was a pretty bad time for musicians (which Wayne and Garth are in the movie). The entire aesthetic, from Wayne's basement to Cassandra's spartan loft apartment, coupled with the constant references to 90s heavy metal, create a very bleak, bland, and downtrodden feel.
Both movies use the ambiguity (or lack thereof) of the setting to help with the...
Parody
UHF shines in its insane representation of television shows, from Stanley Spidowski's Clubhouse (where lucky children get to drink from a fire hose) to a Nature-type show which replaces a handsome, bearded woodsman with a Mexican animal hoarder who throws poodles out of windows.
Ultimately the question as to which is better comes up, but I say screw that, see them both. Each film remembers a time, not so long ago, when any schlub with a few bucks could get a cable access show and broadcast almost whatever he or she wanted to the neighborhood. Before Clinton (you heard me; look it up) gave the FCC and Clear Channel almost unlimited power to buy and regulate the price of access to radio, and before cable TV was carved up between Comcast, Verizon and a bunch of shitty satellite companies, the airwaves literally belonged to the people, and the people could use them. Nowadays, we still own the airwaves, but we better already have a couple million in the bank and an army of advertisers behind us if we want to use them for anything. Good news is that this has largely been replaced with the Internet, podcasts and You Tube, and it's easier than ever to throw together a blog, video or record yourself talking for an hour. But the Internet's great flaw is it's advancement - the instant gratification of watching anything you want at a few mouse clicks, and being able to switch content at a moment's notice or just on a whim means that any content with actual substance, length or quality (like this) is usually overshadowed by leave Brittany alone guy.
It also bears mention that Wayne's World director Penelope Spheeris also directed two utterly fantastic indie films (back when indie films were indie films, not the steaming, over-budgeted piles of cat sick like Eagle vs. Shark) called The Decline of Western Civilization and Suburbia. The former is a music-themed look at American in the 80s. The latter is a story of kids living in abandoned homes in a mid-western housing development, and while it does have the unholy taint of Roger Corman, it is thoughtful, heartbreaking, and has an ending that makes you yell, "Holy shit what the fuck just happened!?" in the best possible way.
Addendum
While many people like the humor of Wayne's World and the punk feel of Decline..., Suburbia went largely under the radar. If you read this and decide to see it, fair warning: there are some seriously gratuitous, violent and deeply disturbing scenes, one of them in the first five minutes. It is not for the faint of heart.
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Politirant - Abortion Edition
10 states down in the primaries and already I'm sick of it, but what's surprising is that the sinking feeling that it's essentially the three same candidates and one crazy old guy fighting it out hasn't hit the rest of the populace yet.
When you think about it, what difference is there between Romney, Gingrich and Santorum? All millionaires, althought the other two are not quite as millionairey as Romney. All bending to the will of extreme minority of Americans who want war with Iran and further tax breaks for people other than themselves in the same of American exceptionalism. All take the same hard-line conservative view of social issues (again, at the behest of the 30% or so of people who still identify as conservatives and believe capitalism is the best system of government available).
News flash: 30% might win a primary, but it's not winning any elections. If the turnout in the primary states so far is an indication, I would be worried.
But there is another on which I wish to harp. A few weeks ago, Santorum appeared on Piers Morgan and the two discussed abortion. Well, it was less of a discussion and more a stunned British interviewer watching the embattled candidate double and triple down on his position with an internal fire that would make 17th century Spanish inquisitors jealous.
At some point, Morgan says (paraphrase), "If your daughter was raped, and became pregnant as a result, you would have her carry her rapist's baby to term?" Predictably Santorum says yes, but it's not for the reason you may think.
Sure, the guy is a religious fanatic, but the fervor by which he comes to this conclusion about his daughter's theoretical violent childbearing is fueled as much by economics as it is sheer mental retardation. Let's say that this exact thing does happen - his daughter is raped, becomes pregnant and carries the baby to term.
Does she have to worry about medical expenses? No.
How about the cost of raising a child? Daddy makes my yearly salary in one speaking event, so no problem there.
What about schools? Well they can send this kid to whatever school it wants.
Emotional issues? Already got the best psychotherapy and home care money can buy.
Is this going to be another child of violence, beginning life with a severe disadvantage and being thrown into an overcrowded inner city school with no psychological, emotional or financial outreach? Of course not.
My point in saying all this is that an unwanted or unexpected child of any kind is the ultimate nightmare for most of us, but not for Rick Santorum and family. Everything is paid for already. The family won't have to weigh the decision of selling their house to buy daipers or pay medical expenses, nor will the parents have to take extra jobs to pay for the daycare they need because they work an extra job, just to save a few pennies on the side. They aren't going to have to sell their furniture to make a car payment because all of their money goes toward the new, adorable, smooshy-faced financial black hole in the back room.
The situation I've described is one that is all too real, and one I've seen happen many times to people who, frankly, don't deserve it. Kids are great an all but they fuck you up and they fuck up your check book even worse. Especially if you were raped and now have a pudgy little reminder of basically the most intense mental trauma one can endure crawling around your ankles and demanding food. But as I said, if it ever becomes an issue, Daddy Santorum can pay for that too.
Always remember that one's economic situation often trumps any beliefs they may have. Not always - but mostly. And saving people from personal financial ruin is specifically why we have contraception, morning-after pills and yes, abortions. While the Santorums can give any kid of any origin every advantage in the world, too many kids sit down to a dollar menu dinner with a heaping side of post-partum depression as it is. Adding more people with super shitty lives to the pool of people who already have super shitty lives is not the goddamn answer, and it isn't just Jesus saying so.
The hypocrisy comes full-circle when you find out Santorum's stance on social outreach, which is basically standing on top of its bloody corpse with a great spear lodged in its still-twitching spinal column. The life of the unborn is sacred, but once they're born, fuck 'em. It's a subtle way of saying, "It's your fault for not being rich or at least well-off enough to take care of an unexpected child." Or in a more direct way, we'll call it the "Fuck the Poor" policy.
Of course, very little of this is actually surprising, but the lesson is that I don't think it matters who gets the 2012 nomination because they're three versions of the same asshole. Ron Paul ever remains the exception but, yeah.
Come on.
Saturday, January 28, 2012
Retroactively Correct
For the passed week I've been trying to write a piece about the (abysmal) state of the Republican primaries, but I feel like there isn't really anything I can say that isn't being said in the media already. As someone who follows politics, it's sort of refreshing to see that MSNBC actually makes a point I can agree with instead of spouting their usual meaningless "news" or gushing over whichever candidate promises to lower capital gains the most. But it makes writing about it that much harder because it tends to make the forum feel like an echo chamber. So let's talk about video games again!
I decided to see what all the goddamn fuss was about and downloaded a demo of Battlefield 3. I tried it at a friend's house last month but the Electronic Arts hub program (let's admit it - they ripped off of Steam and somehow made it worse) kept crashing every five minutes. Maybe EA should hire less lazy programmers and stop coding everything into web browsers. There was one amusing moment where the game crashed entirely and booted my friend to his desktop, but a large flashing icon read, "You are Playing Battlefield 3!" remained.
It brings to mind a terrifying vision of the future where we all just stare at blinking computer screens that tell us, "You are having fun, human unit 76,332,4-B! Isn't this fun!? Look at all the goddamn fun you're having, human slave, spend money!" And then I remembered that Farmville exists.
Here's why modern army games creep me out, and why the irony surrounding them is both delicious because of their relentless popularity, and terrifying when taken in context.
In any good narrative, particularly one where the hero must face death to complete his quest, the part that makes it good is that moment when we, the audience, think it's all over for them. And then, against all odds, the hero pulls the win out of his ass, trounces the enemy in the most spectacular fashion, and goes home triumphant. The most accessible example of this is, of course, the end of the first Star Wars movie when Darth Vader is about to shoot Luke's ship down. Just as our hero is about to meet his maker, Han Solo rescues him and the entire battle is decided in its final seconds. It's a very basic mechanic of storytelling that builds tension and keeps the audience rooting for the good guy, and if you pay attention, almost everything does it. And why? 'Cause it fucking works.
Modern military games, namely Battlefield 3 and the greater of two evils, Modern Warfare, kind of throw this aside. Or in their terms, shove bits of broken glass in it's mouth and then hit it with a golf club (yes, there is a YouTube link but it's 13 minutes of bullshit and I will spare you - look up at your own risk). My point is that, as the player, you never really feel sorry for the alleged hero, and there is not a sense that his life is in any real danger at any time. I mean, when you put a rag-tag group of guys in robes and tennis shoes against the biggest military in the world, squaring off against dudes with every weapon, ammunition, armor and resource imaginable available at the press of a button, feeling empathy for the latter is a little hard to swallow. With this in mind, the few minutes of the demo I played were just downright boring. I didn't care - there was some time establishing who the narrative wanted me to think the heroes were, and I didn't buy it for a second. This raises two points.
Another reason why having a symptomatic hero resonates so roundly is that it creates a connection between the fictional hero and the real live audience. We want to see someone struggle to overcome a challenge because we struggle to overcome challenges in our lives too. Sure, they aren't as dramatic as blowing up the Death Star, but the point is that it creates empathy and makes us feel that the narrative is speaking to us, on a personal level, even if it's not.
There's no reason to feel any sympathy for the player-controlled avatars of Battlefield, and the only way any kind of emphatic response can be generated is if you, the player, genuinely feel like you'd want to be in a position of that much power. So, instead of going the route that most narratives go, and playing to our sense of compassion, Battlefield kicks compassion in the taco and appeals to our inner mass-murderer.
Now before you say it, I'm going to explain why this is different than Grand Theft Auto.
In GTA, you can win in the game without getting into a single gunfight with the police, and you are generally encouraged to do so. What good is being a master criminal if you're always getting caught and can't walk anywhere without making scene? The things that got all of the attention in the news were almost exclusively the result of the "Hot Coffee" easter egg (where the player simulates having sex with a prostitute - but it was a joke [albeit bad and extremely sexist] added by the developers and not part of the actual game), and players using cheats to get an unlimited supply of tanks to fight the cops. These aren't parts of the core game and in order to play it within context, the player can't use them. If they do, the game stops being a game and becomes a toy - but that is another argument entirely.
Around the height of GTAs popularity, many people in the media were calling it a "murder simulator"; a term which goes back to the days of Doom. It was wrong in both cases and is generally wrong in the case of all video games. If GTA simulates anything, it is a very Goodfellas-inspired, Hollywood-stylized mob life. Whatever your personal objection to the violence (and believe me, I have a big fucking problem with it), it isn't the reason the game exists.
Battlefield, however, is about as close to the murder simulator as you're going to get. The most disturbing part of the game is a bit where you take the role of a gunner on a support aircraft. A battle rages in the sand of Generic-Muslim-Desert-Country-Stan (cough-Iran-cough) below, and you have to blow up enemy armor before it reaches the scene. At no time are you in any danger, and if the enemy tanks break through your covering fire, the game ends and you have to start over, so there is no dynamic environment - only victory or victory that takes slightly longer. You are so high up the entire battle is fought through a gunner's scope, and as little grey blips scatter from exploding troop carriers, your co-gunner giggles about the ones that are running for their lives, totally at the the mercy of you and an infinite number of machine gun rounds and bombs.
I guess my point is that I don't really understand who this game is for. I see the obvious appeal to 13-year-old boys and Ed Gein, but beyond that, there's no situation there except some kind of power trip with a big splash of ripped-from-the-headlines grit. There's no challenge in it, or context with how it relates to the narrative or anything else - just the simple joy of blowing some motherfuckers to pieces. And unlike Luke blowing up the Death Star, there's no way to even feel like the hero is justified in doing so. What threat do a bunch of dudes in pickups with 30-year-old rifles and limited supplies pose to a fleet of tanks, helicopters, artillery and heavily armored infantry?
I really hate to say this because, because I genuinely feel that gaming is a legitimate form of expression, but those idiots who complained about Doom and GTA have finally been proved a bit right. Which brings me to my last point: where the fuck is all the outrage? Where are the bobble heads and deranged parents going back and forth about how Battlefield and Modern Warfare turned their precious snowflake into a 5th grade Rambo?
Oh right, these games kill brown people in deserts, not zombies or monsters or fictional gangsters.
So we're cool.
I decided to see what all the goddamn fuss was about and downloaded a demo of Battlefield 3. I tried it at a friend's house last month but the Electronic Arts hub program (let's admit it - they ripped off of Steam and somehow made it worse) kept crashing every five minutes. Maybe EA should hire less lazy programmers and stop coding everything into web browsers. There was one amusing moment where the game crashed entirely and booted my friend to his desktop, but a large flashing icon read, "You are Playing Battlefield 3!" remained.
It brings to mind a terrifying vision of the future where we all just stare at blinking computer screens that tell us, "You are having fun, human unit 76,332,4-B! Isn't this fun!? Look at all the goddamn fun you're having, human slave, spend money!" And then I remembered that Farmville exists.
Here's why modern army games creep me out, and why the irony surrounding them is both delicious because of their relentless popularity, and terrifying when taken in context.
In any good narrative, particularly one where the hero must face death to complete his quest, the part that makes it good is that moment when we, the audience, think it's all over for them. And then, against all odds, the hero pulls the win out of his ass, trounces the enemy in the most spectacular fashion, and goes home triumphant. The most accessible example of this is, of course, the end of the first Star Wars movie when Darth Vader is about to shoot Luke's ship down. Just as our hero is about to meet his maker, Han Solo rescues him and the entire battle is decided in its final seconds. It's a very basic mechanic of storytelling that builds tension and keeps the audience rooting for the good guy, and if you pay attention, almost everything does it. And why? 'Cause it fucking works.
Modern military games, namely Battlefield 3 and the greater of two evils, Modern Warfare, kind of throw this aside. Or in their terms, shove bits of broken glass in it's mouth and then hit it with a golf club (yes, there is a YouTube link but it's 13 minutes of bullshit and I will spare you - look up at your own risk). My point is that, as the player, you never really feel sorry for the alleged hero, and there is not a sense that his life is in any real danger at any time. I mean, when you put a rag-tag group of guys in robes and tennis shoes against the biggest military in the world, squaring off against dudes with every weapon, ammunition, armor and resource imaginable available at the press of a button, feeling empathy for the latter is a little hard to swallow. With this in mind, the few minutes of the demo I played were just downright boring. I didn't care - there was some time establishing who the narrative wanted me to think the heroes were, and I didn't buy it for a second. This raises two points.
Another reason why having a symptomatic hero resonates so roundly is that it creates a connection between the fictional hero and the real live audience. We want to see someone struggle to overcome a challenge because we struggle to overcome challenges in our lives too. Sure, they aren't as dramatic as blowing up the Death Star, but the point is that it creates empathy and makes us feel that the narrative is speaking to us, on a personal level, even if it's not.
There's no reason to feel any sympathy for the player-controlled avatars of Battlefield, and the only way any kind of emphatic response can be generated is if you, the player, genuinely feel like you'd want to be in a position of that much power. So, instead of going the route that most narratives go, and playing to our sense of compassion, Battlefield kicks compassion in the taco and appeals to our inner mass-murderer.
Now before you say it, I'm going to explain why this is different than Grand Theft Auto.
In GTA, you can win in the game without getting into a single gunfight with the police, and you are generally encouraged to do so. What good is being a master criminal if you're always getting caught and can't walk anywhere without making scene? The things that got all of the attention in the news were almost exclusively the result of the "Hot Coffee" easter egg (where the player simulates having sex with a prostitute - but it was a joke [albeit bad and extremely sexist] added by the developers and not part of the actual game), and players using cheats to get an unlimited supply of tanks to fight the cops. These aren't parts of the core game and in order to play it within context, the player can't use them. If they do, the game stops being a game and becomes a toy - but that is another argument entirely.
Around the height of GTAs popularity, many people in the media were calling it a "murder simulator"; a term which goes back to the days of Doom. It was wrong in both cases and is generally wrong in the case of all video games. If GTA simulates anything, it is a very Goodfellas-inspired, Hollywood-stylized mob life. Whatever your personal objection to the violence (and believe me, I have a big fucking problem with it), it isn't the reason the game exists.
Battlefield, however, is about as close to the murder simulator as you're going to get. The most disturbing part of the game is a bit where you take the role of a gunner on a support aircraft. A battle rages in the sand of Generic-Muslim-Desert-Country-Stan (cough-Iran-cough) below, and you have to blow up enemy armor before it reaches the scene. At no time are you in any danger, and if the enemy tanks break through your covering fire, the game ends and you have to start over, so there is no dynamic environment - only victory or victory that takes slightly longer. You are so high up the entire battle is fought through a gunner's scope, and as little grey blips scatter from exploding troop carriers, your co-gunner giggles about the ones that are running for their lives, totally at the the mercy of you and an infinite number of machine gun rounds and bombs.
I guess my point is that I don't really understand who this game is for. I see the obvious appeal to 13-year-old boys and Ed Gein, but beyond that, there's no situation there except some kind of power trip with a big splash of ripped-from-the-headlines grit. There's no challenge in it, or context with how it relates to the narrative or anything else - just the simple joy of blowing some motherfuckers to pieces. And unlike Luke blowing up the Death Star, there's no way to even feel like the hero is justified in doing so. What threat do a bunch of dudes in pickups with 30-year-old rifles and limited supplies pose to a fleet of tanks, helicopters, artillery and heavily armored infantry?
I really hate to say this because, because I genuinely feel that gaming is a legitimate form of expression, but those idiots who complained about Doom and GTA have finally been proved a bit right. Which brings me to my last point: where the fuck is all the outrage? Where are the bobble heads and deranged parents going back and forth about how Battlefield and Modern Warfare turned their precious snowflake into a 5th grade Rambo?
Oh right, these games kill brown people in deserts, not zombies or monsters or fictional gangsters.
So we're cool.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
Oh no!! The truck have started to move!!
There are only two situations in which I buy a present for myself when I am in absolutely no condition to afford it: Christmas and by birthday, which happen to be only a few weeks apart, so my wallet suffers greatly at my own stupid self-indulgence when I use a pagan holiday and the fact that I'm still alive to lavish myself in gifts.
So for my birthday I picked the Metal Gear HD Collection, and aside from being a sweet deal of three games for just over ten bucks each, they're also three very well done enjoyable ones (helps).
Hideo Kojima must be my nemesis. On the one hand, the aging Japanese game developer is a pompous asshole who hogs the media spotlight, and one of the worst writers in the history of writing. But he does make a damn fun stealth game. The fact is that stealth games, along with old-school point-and-click adventure games, are probably my favorites, which puts me in the extreme minority these days. And at least the Metal Gear series approaches a strong military theme with some thoughtfulness, as opposed to the 'roid-raging boyish bravado of Battlefield or Call of Duty.
Granted those thoughts are almost universally stupid, but the effort is there.
The thing that makes Metal Gear worth it is that the stealth does a number of things right, and follows a strict "do-and-don't" model which makes for a successful stealth game.
1: Constant awareness of visibility
The player in Metal Gear is always aware of how visible he or she is. The crowning game of the MG series (I think), Snake Eater, has a pretty intuitive system of swapping camo uniforms to blend in to surroundings. Granted it gets annoying needing to pause the game every two minutes and get changed because the particular brand of brown wall meshes somewhat better with Chocolate Chip as opposed to Tree Bark, but it's a small price to pay for such a functional system. There are audio cues as well, though it's somewhat unrealistic for trained soldiers to proclaim, "WHO'S THAT!? ... I KNOW I SAW SOMEONE!" every time an errant fern jiggles.
Any game with a stealth element needs to have some way of letting the player know when they're well hidden, exposed, or about to sniffed out.
2: Make stealth a core part of game play, not a "section"
Most shitty games these days try to pull the "something for everyone" maneuver, and include chunks of different game play styles all glued together piecemeal. It's pretty common for most action games to try and break the monotony by including a stealth section, where you need to sneak passed vastly superior foes instead of just shooting them like everything else. It's like the romantic subplot in Transformers: it doesn't make the movie better and more deep and interesting - it just serves to make an already crappy film more schizophrenic and an even bigger piece of shit.
Here's a hint, by the way. If you are developing an action game and life-or-death gunfights get so boring and repetitive you need to spice them up with not gun fighting, you're doing it wrong.
Anyway, Metal Gear lets the sneaking take the foreground makes it relate to everything in game play. Stealth, disguise, or just shooting the place up are always options to deal with situations and the player is never locked in to just following the game's lead from point A to point B. Another game with a good stealth element is Fallout, which is not a stealth game, but always makes sneaking an option as opposed to combat, and has no mandatory stealth levels.
3: Don't punish the player (too much) for mistakes
Most games with stealth levels will fail the player for being seen, and chances are that if your game has a mandatory stealth level, the stealth doesn't function so well and players are going to get seen a lot. Metal Gear does have an optional mode to end the game in defeat if the player is seen (paradoxically called "European Hard" on the menu, which makes my juvenile brain think British porn [this doesn't reflect well on me as a person, does it? {anyway}]) but it's not mandatory. The worst you'll face in Metal Gear is running away from some heavily armored chaps until you find a house to crawl under and wait until they lose interest, also proving that the Soviet Union collapsed due to the Russian military not being able to pay attention to something for more than five minutes. The player can stay and fight if he or she wants but there isn't much of a point and it mostly ends as a big waste of ammo.
4: Complete missions without killing anyone
The point of stealth is not to be seen, correct? So in theory, the best stealth operative would be able to complete the mission and leave the opponents unaware that anything has even happened. The absolute best example of this is an old game from the late 90s called Thief, and the title pretty much sums up the entire game. The player can sneak into and out of a rich douchebag's mansion, bag all the swag, explore the entire place and leave without a single conflict, and the game actively encourages this. Metal Gear provides the player with a silent dart gun that can stun enemies as opposed to killing them. In Snake Eater, there is a wonderfully done and very Heart of Darkness-esque boss battle where the hero must face off against the ghosts of everyone he has killed during the mission. The solution? Don't kill anyone.
Games with designated sneak levels usually just have the player kill enemies in a different way than normal, and never address the fact that the trail of dead bodies might raise some serious questions about beefing up security. Games like Thief and Snake Eater actively discourage the player from fighting or hurting anyone (beyond a dart in the neck).
Of course the real failing of Metal Gear games, that keeps them tumbling down the jagged peaks of perfection time and time again, is the writing. I am currently working through Peace Walker, where the player assumes the role of an ex-CIA agent turned rogue Colombian insurgent. The heroism is layered so thick on this dude that it is difficult to keep in mind that, in the larger narrative, you are actually playing the bad guy. It could be that the writing is so intricate and that it uses point of view so effectively that it masks any sense of wrongdoing and creates true empathy for the character. Or it could be that it's yet another of Hideo Kojima's over-written bowls of rat pee and is so much of a literary eyesore that the player simply has no idea what the fuck is going on.
I'm gonna go with door number two.
So for my birthday I picked the Metal Gear HD Collection, and aside from being a sweet deal of three games for just over ten bucks each, they're also three very well done enjoyable ones (helps).
Hideo Kojima must be my nemesis. On the one hand, the aging Japanese game developer is a pompous asshole who hogs the media spotlight, and one of the worst writers in the history of writing. But he does make a damn fun stealth game. The fact is that stealth games, along with old-school point-and-click adventure games, are probably my favorites, which puts me in the extreme minority these days. And at least the Metal Gear series approaches a strong military theme with some thoughtfulness, as opposed to the 'roid-raging boyish bravado of Battlefield or Call of Duty.
Granted those thoughts are almost universally stupid, but the effort is there.
The thing that makes Metal Gear worth it is that the stealth does a number of things right, and follows a strict "do-and-don't" model which makes for a successful stealth game.
1: Constant awareness of visibility
The player in Metal Gear is always aware of how visible he or she is. The crowning game of the MG series (I think), Snake Eater, has a pretty intuitive system of swapping camo uniforms to blend in to surroundings. Granted it gets annoying needing to pause the game every two minutes and get changed because the particular brand of brown wall meshes somewhat better with Chocolate Chip as opposed to Tree Bark, but it's a small price to pay for such a functional system. There are audio cues as well, though it's somewhat unrealistic for trained soldiers to proclaim, "WHO'S THAT!? ... I KNOW I SAW SOMEONE!" every time an errant fern jiggles.
Any game with a stealth element needs to have some way of letting the player know when they're well hidden, exposed, or about to sniffed out.
2: Make stealth a core part of game play, not a "section"
Most shitty games these days try to pull the "something for everyone" maneuver, and include chunks of different game play styles all glued together piecemeal. It's pretty common for most action games to try and break the monotony by including a stealth section, where you need to sneak passed vastly superior foes instead of just shooting them like everything else. It's like the romantic subplot in Transformers: it doesn't make the movie better and more deep and interesting - it just serves to make an already crappy film more schizophrenic and an even bigger piece of shit.
Here's a hint, by the way. If you are developing an action game and life-or-death gunfights get so boring and repetitive you need to spice them up with not gun fighting, you're doing it wrong.
Anyway, Metal Gear lets the sneaking take the foreground makes it relate to everything in game play. Stealth, disguise, or just shooting the place up are always options to deal with situations and the player is never locked in to just following the game's lead from point A to point B. Another game with a good stealth element is Fallout, which is not a stealth game, but always makes sneaking an option as opposed to combat, and has no mandatory stealth levels.
3: Don't punish the player (too much) for mistakes
Most games with stealth levels will fail the player for being seen, and chances are that if your game has a mandatory stealth level, the stealth doesn't function so well and players are going to get seen a lot. Metal Gear does have an optional mode to end the game in defeat if the player is seen (paradoxically called "European Hard" on the menu, which makes my juvenile brain think British porn [this doesn't reflect well on me as a person, does it? {anyway}]) but it's not mandatory. The worst you'll face in Metal Gear is running away from some heavily armored chaps until you find a house to crawl under and wait until they lose interest, also proving that the Soviet Union collapsed due to the Russian military not being able to pay attention to something for more than five minutes. The player can stay and fight if he or she wants but there isn't much of a point and it mostly ends as a big waste of ammo.
4: Complete missions without killing anyone
The point of stealth is not to be seen, correct? So in theory, the best stealth operative would be able to complete the mission and leave the opponents unaware that anything has even happened. The absolute best example of this is an old game from the late 90s called Thief, and the title pretty much sums up the entire game. The player can sneak into and out of a rich douchebag's mansion, bag all the swag, explore the entire place and leave without a single conflict, and the game actively encourages this. Metal Gear provides the player with a silent dart gun that can stun enemies as opposed to killing them. In Snake Eater, there is a wonderfully done and very Heart of Darkness-esque boss battle where the hero must face off against the ghosts of everyone he has killed during the mission. The solution? Don't kill anyone.
Games with designated sneak levels usually just have the player kill enemies in a different way than normal, and never address the fact that the trail of dead bodies might raise some serious questions about beefing up security. Games like Thief and Snake Eater actively discourage the player from fighting or hurting anyone (beyond a dart in the neck).
Of course the real failing of Metal Gear games, that keeps them tumbling down the jagged peaks of perfection time and time again, is the writing. I am currently working through Peace Walker, where the player assumes the role of an ex-CIA agent turned rogue Colombian insurgent. The heroism is layered so thick on this dude that it is difficult to keep in mind that, in the larger narrative, you are actually playing the bad guy. It could be that the writing is so intricate and that it uses point of view so effectively that it masks any sense of wrongdoing and creates true empathy for the character. Or it could be that it's yet another of Hideo Kojima's over-written bowls of rat pee and is so much of a literary eyesore that the player simply has no idea what the fuck is going on.
I'm gonna go with door number two.
Sunday, January 15, 2012
Church and Poop
Ho boy, gotten behind on the bloggings. But before we get into my fun ass day, let's play a round of the hit new game show Well That's Presumptive of You, Starbucks!
For Christmas, X got me a Starbucks sampler thing with a couple coffees and teas and a package of hot chocolate mix. When I took the hot chocolate mix out, the box had this to tell me:
How the hell do you know what I loved as a child? Like most kids in the 80s, I drank Ovaltine. And I didn't have the inclination to pour salt in it because that sounds disgusting. A typical holiday drink at Starbucks already has more calories than a fucking Big Mac, and apparently they don't skimp on the salt content either. And just so readers are aware, the taste is something I'd imagine you could recreate by melting a gourmet sea salt chocolate bar in a crock pot and thinning with two cups camel ball sack sweat. Point is, Starbucks, don't assume to know what I like or assume that any normal healthy human being mixes salt into their sweet drinks. Well that's presumptive of you, Starbucks!
On to my day. Today I went to church. That doesn't sound so weird, so let me elaborate. Today I want to MEGACHURCH. There is a local mega-church that my friend D told be about - the kind that sends out amusing broadcasts containing some incredibly sexist rhetoric. Here's an example:
"Men are beer mugs, and women are wine flutes. It's a man's job to teach a woman to love her weakness, so she doesn't become a firefighter, because a woman can't rescue people from burning buildings."
Don't know what kind of chicks these people hang around, but some of my female friends could rescue Andre the fucking giant from a school of starvation-crazed hammerhead sharks. But that's besides the point. We didn't the good stuff today - the nutbag preacher didn't do the sermon. Instead we got this twenty-something black kid, and I only say black because I mean black in the way that Halle Berry is black, as in dark-skinned-but-not-African-looking-because-those-folks-scare-off-Whitey.
The "sermon," if you could call it that, started with the church band playing some Christian rock with the lyrics projected onto matching screens in a cheap purple-backed Power Point macro (no photos, sorry. Use your goddamn imagination). The entire hall was more like a community college theater than a church, and the facade of the building looked like a downtown Washington DC mattress outlet store. The only thing identifying the church as a church was a business style overhang with some hipster scribble of a Jesus fish that looked like someone's two-year old nephew got ahold of some markers and the owner just said, "Meh."
Anyway the band played some songs, then the young preacher got up and started preaching. I'd quote from the sermon but there really isn't any point - it was a wonderful display of perfectly circular logic. The point was essentially that, God doesn't care about your good works, only that you accept Jesus as your savior and get your sins forgiven at regular intervals. I felt kind of insulted with this little bastard in his Imma-Hit-The-Clubs outfit telling me not to aspire to everything because I'm shit, you're shit, he's shit and we're all just shit. There was some anti-science logic in there but it was so safe and under the guise of faithfulness that it didn't really turn into comedic gold (saying that we don't need to move passed the cross as opposed to launching into totally batshit loco theories about how evolution is wrong). The only time it got juicy is when this kid talked about how he traveled to the Middle East and totally told some Jews and some Muslims that he was like, better than them, which as D explained, is kind of the church's shtick. Overall it was pretty interesting seeing a bunch of forty and fifty year olds raise their hands in praise while they're getting yelled at by the most passive-aggressive community college sophomore in known universe.
Part of what freaks me out so much is the insistence that Jesus or God or whatever is talking to you and speaking to you through signs. Here's an example: I spent the last week vomiting my major organs out thanks to a nasty stomach virus. Interesting thing about my stomach virus diet of Gatoraid, rice, and Pepto Bismol is that it is not conducive to taking dumps, so after the virus I was a bit backed up. Today that ended, coincidentally, after going to the church sermon. Had I been a real believer, I'd think that basking in the greasy cornrows of the preacher man healed by bowels. But when you think about it for two seconds, it probably had more to do with the fact that afterward, I ate pancakes, Taylor ham and three fucking cups of coffee.
The religious mindset would dictate that Jesus felt sorry for my neglected anus and put the poor guy back to work, and even though to most religious people that probably sounds insane, that is the fundamentalist belief. That you take no credit for anything and that the mythic daddy in the sky does it all for you. No risk. No responsibility. No consequence.
Mega-churches scare me, as they should anyone, as should fundamentalism in any sense scare anyone. But when churches arrange gigs like this with unenthusiastic life music and debate team dropout inspirational speakers blaring hipster slang at a bunch of fucking soccer parents, you can't but giggle (I almost lost it during a song where the bridge had a vocal "oh-oh" and the projector kept showing the lyrics, "oh-oh"). It reminds me of North Korea. There is no way one can deny the kind of horror and human misery that exists in that nation, nor the fact that their militaristic presence in that part of the world destabilizes the entire Eastern sea board.
But when they make it a state sponsored truism that the new dear leader learned to drive at 75 miles per hour down winding mountain roads with perfect accuracy at age eight, they are So. Fucking. Funny.
For Christmas, X got me a Starbucks sampler thing with a couple coffees and teas and a package of hot chocolate mix. When I took the hot chocolate mix out, the box had this to tell me:
"Salted Caramel: The drink you loved as a child - now all grown up."
How the hell do you know what I loved as a child? Like most kids in the 80s, I drank Ovaltine. And I didn't have the inclination to pour salt in it because that sounds disgusting. A typical holiday drink at Starbucks already has more calories than a fucking Big Mac, and apparently they don't skimp on the salt content either. And just so readers are aware, the taste is something I'd imagine you could recreate by melting a gourmet sea salt chocolate bar in a crock pot and thinning with two cups camel ball sack sweat. Point is, Starbucks, don't assume to know what I like or assume that any normal healthy human being mixes salt into their sweet drinks. Well that's presumptive of you, Starbucks!
On to my day. Today I went to church. That doesn't sound so weird, so let me elaborate. Today I want to MEGACHURCH. There is a local mega-church that my friend D told be about - the kind that sends out amusing broadcasts containing some incredibly sexist rhetoric. Here's an example:
"Men are beer mugs, and women are wine flutes. It's a man's job to teach a woman to love her weakness, so she doesn't become a firefighter, because a woman can't rescue people from burning buildings."
Don't know what kind of chicks these people hang around, but some of my female friends could rescue Andre the fucking giant from a school of starvation-crazed hammerhead sharks. But that's besides the point. We didn't the good stuff today - the nutbag preacher didn't do the sermon. Instead we got this twenty-something black kid, and I only say black because I mean black in the way that Halle Berry is black, as in dark-skinned-but-not-African-looking-because-those-folks-scare-off-Whitey.
The "sermon," if you could call it that, started with the church band playing some Christian rock with the lyrics projected onto matching screens in a cheap purple-backed Power Point macro (no photos, sorry. Use your goddamn imagination). The entire hall was more like a community college theater than a church, and the facade of the building looked like a downtown Washington DC mattress outlet store. The only thing identifying the church as a church was a business style overhang with some hipster scribble of a Jesus fish that looked like someone's two-year old nephew got ahold of some markers and the owner just said, "Meh."
Anyway the band played some songs, then the young preacher got up and started preaching. I'd quote from the sermon but there really isn't any point - it was a wonderful display of perfectly circular logic. The point was essentially that, God doesn't care about your good works, only that you accept Jesus as your savior and get your sins forgiven at regular intervals. I felt kind of insulted with this little bastard in his Imma-Hit-The-Clubs outfit telling me not to aspire to everything because I'm shit, you're shit, he's shit and we're all just shit. There was some anti-science logic in there but it was so safe and under the guise of faithfulness that it didn't really turn into comedic gold (saying that we don't need to move passed the cross as opposed to launching into totally batshit loco theories about how evolution is wrong). The only time it got juicy is when this kid talked about how he traveled to the Middle East and totally told some Jews and some Muslims that he was like, better than them, which as D explained, is kind of the church's shtick. Overall it was pretty interesting seeing a bunch of forty and fifty year olds raise their hands in praise while they're getting yelled at by the most passive-aggressive community college sophomore in known universe.
Part of what freaks me out so much is the insistence that Jesus or God or whatever is talking to you and speaking to you through signs. Here's an example: I spent the last week vomiting my major organs out thanks to a nasty stomach virus. Interesting thing about my stomach virus diet of Gatoraid, rice, and Pepto Bismol is that it is not conducive to taking dumps, so after the virus I was a bit backed up. Today that ended, coincidentally, after going to the church sermon. Had I been a real believer, I'd think that basking in the greasy cornrows of the preacher man healed by bowels. But when you think about it for two seconds, it probably had more to do with the fact that afterward, I ate pancakes, Taylor ham and three fucking cups of coffee.
The religious mindset would dictate that Jesus felt sorry for my neglected anus and put the poor guy back to work, and even though to most religious people that probably sounds insane, that is the fundamentalist belief. That you take no credit for anything and that the mythic daddy in the sky does it all for you. No risk. No responsibility. No consequence.
Mega-churches scare me, as they should anyone, as should fundamentalism in any sense scare anyone. But when churches arrange gigs like this with unenthusiastic life music and debate team dropout inspirational speakers blaring hipster slang at a bunch of fucking soccer parents, you can't but giggle (I almost lost it during a song where the bridge had a vocal "oh-oh" and the projector kept showing the lyrics, "oh-oh"). It reminds me of North Korea. There is no way one can deny the kind of horror and human misery that exists in that nation, nor the fact that their militaristic presence in that part of the world destabilizes the entire Eastern sea board.
But when they make it a state sponsored truism that the new dear leader learned to drive at 75 miles per hour down winding mountain roads with perfect accuracy at age eight, they are So. Fucking. Funny.
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