"Ethics disappear inside the magic circle."

I saw this TED Talk the other day about the "Game layer on top of the world." For those of you who aren't going to click on the link and watch the ten minute video, the basic idea is that the past decade was the decade of becoming aware of the social layer of the world. The Twitter, the Facebook, the Web 2.0-y stuff was all part of us connecting to each other in a global way. The speaker believes that the next decade will be about the game layer of the world - where we realize and start to use game mechanics to motivate and control the world around us. It's an interesting talk.

It reminded me of a blog post I read a few weeks ago. Some game designer or other's blog (unfortunately, I can't remember who...) listed 100 things that he's learned while designing games. One of the items was something like "Ethics disappear inside the magic circle."

For those of you who are unfamiliar, the magic circle is a term used to describe a game space. It is the frame of mind where decisions are made not by the rules of the world, but by the rules of the game. It is what allows us to make cutthroat decisions to send our soldiers to their deaths in Starcraft or to charge exorbitant rent in Monopoly. We don't think about the moral implications of these actions because they are part of the game. In order to win, we must play by these rules.

But what happens when all of life is a magic circle? Will people be motivated solely by their performance in the Game? Who defines the rules?

I suppose it's not all that different from the way life is now, is it? Already, we play by certain rules. The rules are more complex than Monopoly or Football or The Sims, but we still make decisions that we believe will give us a successful life - however we define success.

Hm. This whole post ended up a lot less deep than I thought it would be. Look for more to come on ethics in games.

The Story of Mirror's Edge.

Finally, here's Part 3 of the little series I did on Mirror's Edge. You can find Part 1 - Flow, Part 2 - Combat, and Part 2 - Addendum... in those links.

Today, we talk about the Story of Mirror's Edge. I finally finished the game a day or two ago and have had a little bit of time to think about its story. This may end up a little stream-of-consciousness, but here goes. Also, SPOILERS MAY LIE IN WAIT LIKE CREEPY LITTLE EELS OF KNOWLEDGE-YOU-DON'T-WANT-TO-HAVE.

I think I heard somewhere (maybe it was at GDC?) that the writer of Mirror's Edge was brought on quite late in the process. This isn't altogether uncommon in the game industry. Quite frequently, writers will be brought onto a project that has six months until launch. They are given a bunch of levels and are asked to come up with a story to suit it. So you can easily see why some games are incredibly lacking in the story department.

Rhianna Pratchett, daughter of renowned author Terry Pratchett, was selected to be the writer for Mirror's Edge and, I think, the one responsible for the world design and overall story of the game. I really hand it to her. If someone handed me a bunch of levels for a first person parkour game, I wouldn't know where to start. But she took that and asked the question, "Why would someone be doing this? In what society would this need to happen?" She created this whole dystopian society out of those questions. Runners are needed to make sure information is not seen by anyone but the intended recipient. It's a simple, elegant solution that did not require the designers to create a whole bunch of new assets to fit the story. In fact, it even helps explain why the landscape is so devoid of color. The story helps put the game mechanics into a semblance of logic (which is what game stories should be doing!).

In fact, it was partly because of Pratchett's solution to the problem of being brought on late that I was excited about the story of Mirror's Edge. I thought, "Surely an author who can come up with such elegant solutions to the gameplay/narrative problem would tell a great story."

Well, I've been wrong before.

Before I go on, I want to say that very little of this is probably Pratchett's fault. I can guarantee that the same forces that thought it wise to bring on a writer six months before release prevented Pratchett from doing anything really revolutionary. However...

The first question on my mind when I heard the concept was, "What are they carrying?" What can't the government see? And, since I believe in surprising storytelling, I thought, "What, besides rebellion, would Runners be carrying?" What if there was a government conspiracy even outside the government conspiracy? Etc., etc., etc... So when they decide to go the "someone framed my sister for murder route," I was unpleasantly surprised.

If it were me, I would have put the focus on the Running. What are they carrying? For whom? What does it mean if cops show up and start shooting? I would have propelled the story on the mystery of the packages, not on the interpersonal relationships of the characters. This would accomplish many, many things at once.

First, it would give the players an entire game to understand the world and understand the stakes of being a Runner. If this was only the first of a trilogy, then it makes sense to spend most of the first game in what will be perceived as Act 1.

Second, it skips the cut and paste characterization. The characters would mostly be defined by actions, not by cutscenes and mission requirements. Faith goes to Kate because she gets in over her head with some private security firm that keeps hiring her to carry something that gets her shot. Now we know their relationship before anything terrible happens to either character. We are not told to go rescue our sister on the basis that she's our sister. (I mean, that satisfies the audience's need to understand why the character does it, but we don't see the connection. It's another case of needing to be shown, not told.)

Third, it opens up new gameplay possibilities. In a world where there are these Runners that take important documents around the eyes of the law, wouldn't there be a whole lot more teamwork? More false bags? I would have built the story around a partnership between Celeste and Faith - swapping bags, acting as decoys, and, ultimately, betrayal by the person you trust most. When the betrayal came in this story (both by Celeste and the other Runner guy...), there was no kick. I couldn't care less about these characters. But if I had spent the game working with Celeste, watching her risk her life for me as I do the same for her, I would have felt much differently when she sold out to Project Icarus.

At its core, Mirror's Edge is a kind of vengeance story in the vein of Taken or Shooter. Both of those stories feature very active protagonists who have a particular assortment of skills that make them good at taking revenge. Faith is a RUNNER! She runs away! The act of running - even running toward something - is not the skillset needed to take vengeance. I keep coming back to the idea of Flow in this game. A vengeance story necessitates combat. This game is not about combat (In fact, it does it terribly!). Therefore, it should not have been a vengeance story. Period.

That being said, in the grand scheme of the trilogy, a second game could be about vengeance. Maybe at the end of the first story, she upsets a corporation by revealing their secrets and they frame Faith's sister to show her who's boss. The second game can be about rescuing her, proving her innocence, and rising above petty, personal vengeance into a more aware, society-wide sense of justice. That's what future dystopias are for, right?


Like I said in the beginning, I don't think Pratchett had direct control over a lot of this. I think her premise is powerful, the dialog carried voice and subtext where necessary, and the voice acting was pretty good. However, the choice to have a character driven vengeance story in a first person game with Flash animation cut scenes? Not that great.

The Combat of Mirror's Edge - Addendum.

Just a quick addendum to the post on Mirror's Edge's Combat.

I already talked about how it seemed silly to put such an emphasis on combat (especially late game). My argument was that this game is about the Flow. To stop the Flow is to stop the core gameplay mechanic.

As another argument, I'll go ahead and invoke the ludonarrative dissonance of asking the player to fight.

(Side note: I was going to link to a definition of ludonarrative dissonance and found the internet lacking in quick answers. Essentially, it means that the meaning conveyed by the system of the game - the mechanics, reward structures, and verbs of gameplay - is different - and sometimes counter to - the meaning conveyed by the story. As near as I can tell, it originated with Clint Hocking here.)

Why is combat necessary in Mirror's Edge when Faith is a Runner? Her very title defines what she typically does. Either run away or run toward, but always running. Not kicking butt.

As a hopefully-some-day-designer of console games, I want to put players in the shoes of the characters. If I were Faith, the last thing I would be doing is killing guards. I know I'm a small woman. I know that I'm not super well trained in combat arts. In fact, given the options of 1) Fight, 2) Run, 3) Sneak Past, or 4) Wait for it to cool off, I would always choose options 2, 3, or 4.

My problem is that the game designers did not allow Faith to choose her most rational choice (even emotionally rational, if you want to argue that...).

Numerous times, I tried these strategies. In my previous post, I mentioned the door that took a while to open and the four guards. At first, I tried waiting. I waited a few minutes, just in case the guards would think I've moved on and vacate the garage. Nope. Next, I tried to sneak. I ducked behind cars, around corners, and monitored the guards' movements carefully. But the buggers had supernaturally acute vision and hearing. I was caught every time and riddled with holes faster than I could find a hiding spot. At the last, I tried over and over again to run through the guards in some kind of clever way, thinking, "There's no way the designers want me to fight! This is a game about subtlety and creativity, not just killing guards..." Guess who was wrong.

Rather than building a crappy combat system, I think I would have rather the designers built a decent sneaking system. Truly let combat be emergency only. Faith would not initiate combat without a good reason for it. She's not out to destroy the government. She's not out to draw attention to herself. She just wants her sister. Instead, the actions forced by the designers ended in the death of a few characters and more trouble than what a Runner could conceivably get into.

The Combat of Mirror's Edge.

This is Part 2 of a little 3 part ditty on the game Mirror's Edge. Check out Part 1 - The Flow of Mirror's Edge.


I really like Mirror's Edge. I think that it is kind of like an updated version of the platformer. Everything is about precision jumping and the proper execution of simple button commands. I'm more stressed playing this game than just about any other game I've played in the past few years. So it does lots of things right.

Combat, however, is wrong.

Like I mentioned in my previous post, Mirror's Edge is about the flow - that feeling of a continual hurdling over obstacles. The feeling that nothing can slow you down and you adapt to your surroundings to make sure that's true. Merc, the in-your-ear, tell-you-what-to-do guy, even tells you to run away from any "Blues" (cops) you run into.

So that's what I did. I knew this wasn't a game about fighting baddies. The game designers knew this wasn't a game about fighting baddies. And yet, I came to a room in the seventh chapter where the only exit was a door that takes about five seconds to open guarded by four soldiers with machine guns (and uncanny accuracy...). I think I tried thirty times to do it without killing anyone - just be confusion and misleading - but every time, I got shot dead at the door (if I made it...).

Combat is a real problem in this game. In some ways, it suffers the same problem as certain parts of the parkour system do: a zero margin of error. When I run and jump-kick a guard, I had better have lined up that kick just right and he better not be swinging his arm to hit me. If that's true, I'll sometimes land a hit. Forgive me for having this opinion, but I think first person melee combat should have at least a little bit of a margin for error.

The combat verbs are remarkably limited, too. My "attack" button triggers a right punch, a left, and then some kind of shove. It's very difficult to interrupt any of these commands should your opponent have moved or fallen quickly.

The Disarm action is especially infuriating. If you can hit the button at the exact moment the weapon flashes red, Faith will do some cool flippy moves to both knock out and disarm the opponent. If you miss, she flails forward with her arms both getting hit by the opponent and taking forever. If you're particularly slow learning (like I tend to be in games like this), you often end up hitting the button in the same moment of the opponent's attack cycle, thus opening yourself up for attack again. (Side note: Can someone explain to me why I can get hit by three bullets before dying, but I can only take two hits from a rifle butt? What sense does that make?) It's all very frustrating.

How it could be better: I think a little leniency could go a long way in how frustrating it is to damage the enemies in this game, but what Mirror's Edge really needs is some kind of target lock system. If we are supposed to take out enemies one at a time, then a single-enemy target lock system, combined with more contextualized actions, would be very effective in reducing player frustration with combat.

The real problem with the combat, though, is its very existence! This game is not about an awesome secret agent infiltrating the government and taking out an army of soldiers. It's about the Flow! Why on earth did DICE ask the players to stop the Flow to experience crappy combat?

I really can't think of a reason why the designers seemed to put so much emphasis on it in later levels. In fact, at the end of one of the final levels, there's what amounts to a boss fight against a ninja assassin! This brings me to my Game Design Maxim of the Day: Focus on your core gameplay experience. Anything else is tangential and should not detract from that core experience. Clearly, the combat detracted from the parkour. But boy. That Flow.... It's a good time.

"Kate should hold the gun."

One of my goals for the summer is to keep a journal of sorts of things I watch and play. There is much to be learned from things that have already been made, right? Naturally, spoilers abound below.

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In Episode 3 of Lost, the audience and a few of the characters are aware that Kate has some kind of criminal background. Her escorting officer keeps telling Jack over and over again that she's dangerous and can't be trusted. But at that moment, she is in the mountains searching for signal.

Sawyer has a gun. Sayid has the clip. No one is happy. Tension is high. Eventually, someone says, "Kate should hold the gun."

An interesting thing was going on at this point in the scene. To the characters in the scene, the conflict was over. There was some tension in actually giving it to her, but, overall, it was a good solution. She seemed, to them, to be the most level-headed and unlikely to use it against the wishes of the group. Scene over, right?

This is one of the moments where the writers are using the knowledge the audience has to make a moment more tense than it is to the characters. For the characters, the tension arises from the interpersonal conflict and clash over what to do with the gun. But in the minds of the audience, we have a much higher conflict: we have now given a gun to a person with a criminal past who is probably very dangerous. Whereas the characters' tension is resolved, ours is just beginning.

Luckily, the scene still ends there. If it had gone on, I doubt the tension would last. Instead, it pushes another wedge of distrust into our minds and another variable that could change at any second in the character of Kate.

Again, this storytelling device may not work as well when it comes to game stories.

Most games are told from a single perspective: the player-character's. Sometimes they are a true character, sometimes only an avatar, but it is rare for the player's perspective to shift between multiple points of view in the same story-line. This means that usually, the player has the same information (sometimes less!) as the character.

Maybe that should change. Maybe let the player - at any point - shift between characters. I dunno. Just an idea.

The Flow of Mirror's Edge.

I've been playing a lot of Mirror's Edge since getting back on vacation. I'm a pretty big fan, but there are some troubling problems.

For a game that's about "the flow" (as the lead character, Faith, says in the intro), there could be more... flow. The designers do their best. I mean, it's a first person game about parkour. I'm amazed they could pull off a first person game that requires so much awareness of body, distance, and momentum. They use a very bright red to indicate an object that can be used for one of the parkour moves that they introduce. For the most part, this red stands in stark contrast to the rest of the set and is very helpful. In large, open, outdoor levels, it's great. The white of the buildings highlight the boards and bricks that give Faith the ability to do crazy things. The problem is in the indoor levels.

The indoor levels are almost the opposite of the outdoor levels. The outdoor levels usually have a plethora of paths that Faith can take to get from point A to point B. Very few of them are interesting or optimal, but if something goes horribly awry, you can always try something else. Indoors, there is exactly one path to take. Not a problem. Usually, it is obvious which way to go and what to do. There are plenty of unopenable doors and dead ends that are fairly clear before you head towards them. On occasion, though, the one path comes to a large room (or two. or three.). This is where the headaches begin.

The designers forsaw that players would have trouble knowing where to go. The B button fixes Faith's gaze on the next goal or door. But some frustrating times, they turn this off. I don't know if they think it's obvious enough that they don't need it or they are trying to get a player to explore, but it doesn't work. Usually because people are shooting at you. With machine guns.

Last night, I spent about 45 minutes trying to explore a mall filled with cops to find the exit. I would run in, get their attention, delay getting shot by a few minutes, sometimes steal a gun and shoot them back, not find an exit, and die. Over and over and over and over again. My B button direction was turned off and I almost threw the controller in frustration. I cursed the designers over and over again before finally consulting a walk through. (Turns out there was a bar [colored slightly red] that blended in with a low hanging wall that I was supposed to swing to...)

Here's a game design maxim that all this has taught me: Difficulty should not come from not knowing what to do. It should be the task itself that is difficult.

This frustration comes back to the desired experience of "flow." Letting the player guess their route means that they won't stay there very long. The players do not know the rooftops of the city like Faith does. I found myself many times thinking, "Wow. I want to play this level again until I know the route well enough to really run through here." That would be a fun experience. To know where you are going and to use the parkour moves to get there.

Maybe the designers meant for me to think that. Maybe that's the "replay value" in this game. (I put quotes because I won't actually do it...) I think a better solution would be to put some kind of red path in Faith's vision. At least on the rooftops that she is familiar with. That way, we as players, are privy to her knowledge and are more able to sync up with the experience that we paid money to have. Flow is a lot easier when you know which way to go.

Even despite my frustrations about the Flow of Mirror's Edge, I'm still enjoying it. The rare moments when I can confidently wall run, jump, dive, and slide are well worth the money I paid to play this game. I just wish the designers had made it easier to feel that more often.

John 11:45-53.

So I'm sitting here reading my Bible and this popped out at me:

⁴⁵Therefore many of the Jews who had come to visit Mary, and had seen what Jesus did, put their faith in him. ⁴⁶But some of them went to the Pharisees and told them what Jesus had done. ⁴⁷Then the chief priests and the Pharisees called a meeting of the Sanhedrin.

"What are we accomplishing?" they asked. "Here is this man performing many miraculous signs. ⁴⁸If we let him go on like this, everyone will believe in him, and then the Romans will come and take away both our place^" and our nation."

⁴⁹Then one of them, named Caiaphas, who was high priest that year, spoke up, "You know nothing at all! ⁵⁰You do not realize that it is better for you that one man die for the people than that the whole nation perish."

⁵¹He did not say this on his own, but as high priest that year he prophesied that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation, ⁵²and not only for that nation but also for the scattered children of God, to bring them together and make them one. ⁵³So from that day on they plotted to take his life.

⁵⁴Therefore Jesus no longer moved about publicly among the Jews. Instead he withdrew to a region near the desert, to a village called Ephraim, where he stayed with his disciples.

⁵⁵When it was almost time for the Jewish Passover, many went up from the country to Jerusalem for their ceremonial cleansing before the Passover. ⁵⁶They kept looking for Jesus, and as they stood in the temple area they asked one another, "What do you think? Isn't he coming to the Feast at all?" ⁵⁷But the chief priests and Pharisees had given orders that if anyone found out where Jesus was, he should report it so that they might arrest him.

I think this is the only time (that I can think of, at least) in the New Testament when the villains are actually sympathetic.

Matthew mentions Caiaphas in 26:3-5: "Then the chief priests and the elders of the people assembled in the palace of the high priest, whose name was Caiaphas, and they plotted to arrest Jesus in some sly way and kill him. ^'But not during the Feast,' they said, 'or there may be a riot among the people.'" This Caiaphas is the leader of a scheming group of pharisees.

Luke's only real account of Caiaphas is in Acts, where he presides over the questioning of Peter and John after the healing of the cripple. Again, he is the leader of a bunch of schemers unable to reckon their own weakness.

But John's Caiaphas is more detailed. John's Caiahpas has seen a vision. This Caiaphas was told that Jesus would die for the Jewish nation. His own ignorance and closed-mindedness prevented him from understanding what that meant. Instead, he took Jesus to be a God-given political sacrifice: crucified so that the Jews may be saved from Rome.

This one detail changes the complexity of Caiahpas' part of the Passion, wouldn't you say? It gives nuance to his character and motives. It is not just about keeping himself in power or putting down a man with revolutionary thoughts and power.


This really echoes the things I am reading about opponents in The Anatomy of Story. Too often, writers make their opponents into mustache twirling villains, one-dimensional and without any logical reason for action other than "I'm the bad guy." Instead, villains should have their own logic, their own values-driven reason for acting counter to the hero.

If you had been given a vision about Jesus' death rescuing the Jewish nation, would you have done differently?

This question, in my mind, makes John's telling of the Passion story much more interesting. I'm surprised that none of the passion stories I've seen capitalize on this complexity in Caiaphas.

The Lost Pilot.

One of my goals for the summer is to keep a journal of sorts of things I watch and play. There is much to be learned from things that have already been made, right? Naturally, spoilers abound below.

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About six years too late, I finally watched the Pilot episode(s) of Lost. It was pretty fantastic. A couple of things I noticed:

• The characters were introduced gently. Usually in pairs. This allowed the audience to cling to remember Jack and Kate or Annoying Brat Girl and Brother. It was a lot easier to form associations among all these characters when they were interdependent.
• There were very few introductions. All of a sudden, characters were referring to each other by name. The most memorable of these was Hurley. All of a sudden, everyone is referring to the Big Guy as Hurley. No time was wasted with worthless "Hi, my name is...".
• Each character is hiding something. The audience may not know what it is yet, but we get the sense that everyone has a secret. Kate hides that she's a convict. The Black Dad is hiding his unfamiliarity with his son. Charlie is hiding his drug addiction. One of my big questions is about Creepy Bald Guy playing backgammon with the kid. He's certainly hiding something...
• The writers are controlling very tightly the flow of information. One of my favorite scenes was the discovery of the pilot in the cockpit. Finally, after 16 hours, there is a character who may actually know something. As a viewer, I was watching and waiting for him to start spewing secrets - to help me and the characters understand what happened to them. The whole scene, I was thinking, "Please don't kill the pilot," knowing full well that he was doomed.
  

Now, as a writer, I perfectly understand what's going on here. Give the characters hope. They expect to find a transceiver. They get a transceiver and a living pilot. But what do the writers do? They not only take away the pilot, but they put the characters into an even worse position - a giant who-knows-what is upon them. As a viewer, I was fully engaged emotionally into this scene, hoping against my instinct that the pilot would live to be a recurring character. Writers are allowed this god-like power. To give and to take away. This is what gives stories emotional pull.

Let's take this home into game writing/design, though. As game designers, we have the power to give and to take away. As a DM, I have the power to put a huge treasure horde at the end of a dungeon. And, to give them more, maybe this horde contains the Staff of Overpowered Players. But, to keep a good story according to traditional rules, I want to take away what I've just given them. So I send in a Giant Who-Knows-What, it paralyzes the players and takes the Staff.

Is this good storytelling? Is this good game design? From the mechanical brief that I just used as an example, certainly not. It's terrible game design. What if the players resist the paralysis? Story ruined. What if they teleport out of the dungeon just in time? Story ruined. Heck, what if they just use the staff? Story ruined, game design unbalanced.

So how do game designers and writers use this push and pull of desire, expectation, and consequence effectively?

In a pen and paper setting, this is a little easier. Maybe the staff turns out to be a fake. Maybe the Giant Who-Knows-What focuses all its attacks on the staff and shatters it. Pen and paper GMs can react to these situations much more nimbly and creatively than a video game.

Situations like these are why cutscenes happen. We don't want to give the player the chance to screw up the plot point, so we take control away. Or - and I've done this in D&D - we make the obstacles too great for the player to have a chance. The Giant Who-Knows-What is actually the final boss and there's no way the players can resist its paralysis... It monologues for a while about why it wants the staff even though it's not a player... Then it knocks them out and they wake up in the Old Man's Hut...

Anyway. Neither of these are that great of options. As of this moment, I don't have any great ideas on how to fix it, either. Can you think of any games where this was done especially well?

Verbs.

Sometimes, I like coming up with new ways of coming up with ideas. Check it out:

Games are ultimately built on verbs, right? In shooters, you shoot. In platformers, you jump. In Braid, you turn back time. I think interesting games often have interesting verbs.

So... maybe to come up with ideas, all you need to do is combine unlikely verbs. Next time you need a game idea, come up with 50 different verbs, then start mixing and matching and see what comes out.

Megaman: the Fan-Made Movie.

I was reading Kotaku the other day and found a link to a fan-made Mega Man movie. I was, naturally, dubious. Fan-made things, while filled with passion, are not well funded. (Grayson, a fan-made Batman movie trailer (yeah, just a trailer) is probably the highest quality fan-made product I've seen.) But still. Mega Man is a property ripe for the picking when it comes to film adaptations and I wanted to see how well the filmmakers did with its potential.

There were some things that this film did right. Some good cinematography, for example. Some darned decent CG stuff for a film with (probably) a shoe-string budget. And really, the production design was pretty impressive (again, with the caveat of the shoe-string budget). All of these things were good enough.

What wasn't good enough was the script.

Many things could have fixed this script.

1. The story needed to start in media res. As I recall, the original Mega Man story begins after Wily has already done damage to the city. Mega Man runs through levels that are populated with Wily's robots, eventually ending up at the work-sites of the robot masters. I think these writers confused the idea of a first act with exposition. The action - and, therefore, the story - doesn't begin until 30 minutes into the film. So for 30 minutes, the audience is treated to every boring detail and meaningless conversation that makes up character motives. Starting in media res would have been a much more conflict-driven way to see those motives played out, not have them explained in a monologue.

2. Dr. Light should have died at the end of Act 1. Or, at the very least, taken away from the Hero. This would propel his actions, leave him without a mentor, and would give a lot more credence to Wily's insanity and threat. As it was, Light stayed on and didn't do much besides equipping Mega Man to fight the Act 3 battles.

3. Wily, while goofy in the original games, should not have been so ridiculous... His faux accent, poorly dyed hair, and constantly sweating face did not leave any sense of threat or depth to his character. Now, a goofy looking guy actually being threatening - actually being cruel - that I can get behind. For example, his lines after kidnapping Roll are a small sample of how crazy, cruel, and evil he should have been. Mocking. Sneering. A little immature, but also willing and able to do evil, evil things. I think Kefka from Final Fantasy VI would have been a good model for this kind of villain.

4. The dialogue was painful. I didn't know people could even try to play some of these cliched lines as seriously as these actors did. Do I remember specific examples right now? No. But just imagine. Every "I'll get you next time!" and "Thank God you're alright. I didn't think you'd make it" played out over and over again in different contexts. The only way to fix this is to take a harder look at each character, their flaws, and to actually speak the lines before the actors getting in front of the camera...


Don't get me wrong. I am really impressed by the director, Eddie Lebron. He clearly has some chops in pulling together a technical team to pull a 96 minute fan adaptation of a popular video game franchise. They really did accomplish a lot. It just pains me to see the script in such shambles. Without a solid story, all of the resources go to waste.

My question is this: how do I find these filmmakers? I honestly think that Mr. Lebron's resources could have been much better used had he a better story and screenplay. I also honestly believe that I could have helped make that story and screenplay better. How can I get to these directors early enough to help them tell the story they want to tell?

Moral of the story: let Kemp read your screenplays! Please? I like doing it. I think it'll be better afterward....

The Death of Post-Modernism.

(This post is a long time coming.  Since the National Religious Broadcaster's convention, my brain has buzzed with thoughts of modernism and post-modernism, cyncism and localism, and many other great -isms.  Here are my armchair philosopher thoughts.  They might be scattered or difficult to understand.  A friendly comment saying so would be helpful as I refine both my writing style and my thoughts...)

Let's start with a definition of post-modernism.  The term itself is shrouded in mystery and misunderstanding (it's sort of ironic, really).  The Oxford English Dictionary calls it, "a style and concept in the arts characterized by distrust of theories and ideologies and by the drawing of attention to conventions."  One of Merriam-Webster's defintions is "of, relating to, or being a theory that involves a radical reappraisal of modern assumptions about culutre, identity, history, or language."  The definition that I have been working from since hearing it in my undergraduate philosophy class is attributed to a French philosopher called Jean-Francois Lyotard: "incredulity toward metanarratives."

I mean, think about it.  The 20th century wasn't that great in many ways.  We had recently(ish) come off the enlightenment, a time when all promise lay before man.  Indeed, I think most of the 20th century was spent pursuing the promises of the Enlightenment and Modernism.  Radio took off, closely followed by telephones, television, cable, computers, and, by the end, the internet.  People trusted the power structures of the world to deliver them out of their problems.  Technology will make me lose weight, keep the peace, do the chores, feed me, entertain me, connect me to others, anything.  Our lives would get easier and easier.  Or, at least, that was what the metanarrative of modernism offered.

But what did it deliver?  More war (perhaps) than ever before in history.  A fundamental rift between people and government as leaders fell to corruption and greed.  The disintegration of family life as central to human experience as divorce rates skyrocketted.  Corporations rising and falling, crushing the wallets and souls of people who no longer had the self-discipline to spend less than they earned.  Is it any wonder people began to be skeptical about grand visions of universal truth-claims?

I think at its heart, post-modernism is this fundamental distrust of anything.  You can't trust the government's claims that through big/small government, you will be helped/free to do whatever you want.  You can't trust the advertiser's claims that this product actually works.  You can't trust your parents to know what is good for you.  Twentieth century psychoanlytic theory even undermined the trust in self that people could fall back on.  When you are a teeming cauldron of subconscious, evolutionary urges conditioned by a lifetime of experiences, how can you know that you truly believe what you believe?

This has produced a very tolerant culture.  What works for me is great.  What works for you is great.  If those are completely opposite, that's fine.  Ultimately, I'm forced to trust myself and my experience.  And I expect the same of you.  So that's fine.  We can get along with our completely opposite worldviews because both of us accept that we can't tell anyone else that what I've experienced is more true that what you've experienced.

Deconstruction, the first tool the post-modern reaches for, can only go so far by itself.  We have taken apart everything from science to government to religion to social structures, but what has it left us with?  Nothing but a pile of broken pieces.  We finally figured out that modernism was a lie, but we never found the truth to replace it.

I think we're starting to figure something else out, too.  We're all into sustainablity, right?  (Those nasty moderns in their imperialistic, dogmatic, self-centered, earth-destorying ways made us a little bit... not those things.)  Post-modernism - this incredulity toward metanarrative - is unsustainable.  We can't do it much longer.  It's killing our spirits and we know it.  So we're reaching out.

At first, it's small.  It's our friends.  In my generation, there was a turn towards peer tribes among adolescents.  Instead of caring for and listening to our families, we allied ourselves with our friends - the people closest to our daily experience.  We trust our tribes.  We love our tribes.  To sin against the tribe (through breaking whatever internal rules it has) is worse than Judas' betrayal of Jesus or Brutus' betrayal of Caesar.  The millenials are growing up now and taking their tribes with them.  Most of them are going online.  Social networking, I think, is a direct result of our desire to connect with the only people in the world who we can trust.  We can't trust advertisers to tell us what products work (despite the inundation of custom-made advertisements... thanks Google...).  We can trust our friends.  If they say a product works, then we flock to it and buy it en masse (You're welcome, Steve Jobs.).

So where is all this going?  What am I rambling towards?

I think everything is going to keep going local.  There are apps that tell you who is tweeting near you.  Farmer's markets are rising in popularity and use.  There is a general distaste for all things mass-produced in the mouths (literal and metaphorical) of millenials.

With each step outside of the self, with each snarky comment held in, with each belief firmly and lovingly stated as true, we build trust.  And with that trust, I think comes hope.  I have little hope in the super-structures of society that have been so poisoned with greed and self-interest, but I do have hope that local communities will rise again and people will love their neighbors a little better than they used to.  Now that everything has been deconstructed, we can start constructing again.

Some cool links.

I hate it when I have these thoughts.  And I'm really passionate about them.  And I rant and rave in a draft blog post.  But I never go back to make it an actual post with, you know, good english and persuasive arguments.  And then I find articles online that express exactly my thoughts in a better way.  Here are some:

Gamasutra - Truth in Game Design

Good stuff.  So good, in fact, that I overcame my fear of commenting on strangers' websites to submit an additional thought.  My concern is that for some idealistic and truth-loving designers out there, there exists the temptation to make designs transparent, to make the truths easily graspable (It's the preacher in me...).  However, I suppose I once again come back to the idea of virtue in difficulty (wherever I read that).


Identification, Please

This is, quite simply put, why I don't like FPS games.  There is no character through whom I can care about the world.  I, as Kemp Lyons, do not care about that mess of pixels and binary in the games I play.  But if I have a character to play as, I can care through him or her.  Sean Sands says it in a little more scholarly, less personal way than I would have and I'm grateful for that. 

There may be more.  I'm not sure.  But these two articles really stuck out to me today.

Statement of Purpose.

Apparently when you apply for graduate schools, they want to hear your purposes for yourself. This is something I wrote when I didn't know what else to write. So it got a little silly... Enjoy.

When I was in third grade, I covered the backs of my notepads with drawings of Mario levels. I was fascinated by the world of Mario thanks, in no small part, to the machinations of Squaresoft’s Super Mario RPG. I have viewed all of my life as a journey toward the illustrious goal of creating and writing for video games.

I’m qualified because nobody else is qualified. Name one game that exists that I could not have made on my own with a team of monkeys. You can’t. Not a one. Because everyone in the game industry are talentless hacks. That’s right. I said it. You can only remake the shooter so many times, American games industry. (And the same goes for you, Japan. RPGs are cool, but let’s grow up, shall we?)

After a grad school education, I plan on rocking the world of games. I will design so many creative titles that you’ll think Shigeru Miyamoto himself was only a toddler doodling on his parents’ walls with permanent marker. Will Wright will look like the nerd that he is and David Jaffe will shut his big fat trap. Instead, I will be lauded as the man who saved video games.

I can make better art games. I can make better simulations. I can make better story-centric-forever-long-JRPGs. I can make better open world games. I can make genres that you haven’t even heard about because I am a creative.

Unlike the rest of this stupid industry dominated by morons who would rather stare at a computer screen than gaze into the beauty of the nature around them. Jason Rohrer’s got it right. We all need to live in little huts on the edge of the country, making games about how much we wish we could play with our daughters. Or more like Jonathon Blow. Make something that can provoke thought out of this Neanderthal pea-sized brain in my head.