To DMs - Don't Obsess About The Rules

I'm breaking from my usual format of talking about technology-intensive video games to discuss something a little more low-tech: table-top roleplaying games. The kinds of games that run off of paper, pens, dice, your imagination, and Mountain Dew. Iconic examples include Dungeons & Dragons, Warhammer, Pathfinder, and GURPS, among others.

Not responsible for violent youths. Definitely responsible for kobold genocide.

For those who might be unfamiliar, let me explain briefly how table-top RPGs work. People gather around with papers and writing utensils (or using online tools, like Roll20,) to tell a story together. Most of the people are players, and one is the Dungeon Master (DM for short.) The players create a fantasy character to play as. The DM then creates a fantasy world and populates it with monsters, people who need help, gold, riches, traps, treachery, and all the other good stuff that makes adventuring fun. The players then run their characters through this world and, collaboratively, they and the DM end up telling a story.

"But how is this a game?" You might ask. "If you're just telling a story then where are the mechanics? How do you win at a story?"

And that's where randomization comes in.

Oh mighty d20, please be merciful.

All those weird-shaped dice you see that you'd never find in a box with Monopoly or Yahtzee are the driving forces of drama and tension in the table-top universe. See, what the books for D&D, Warhammer, Pathfinder, and all the rest really do is set up a series of rules and frameworks. Do you want your character to climb a tree? There's a defined protocol to see if s/he is successful or not. Do you want your character to sneak undetected through a bustling city-street, into the back-alley of the potion shop, pick the lock to the backdoor, and get in to filch some goodies? There are defined rolls and protocols for that as well. Typically, the more complex the action is, the harder the roll is and the greater the chance of failure. Almost anything you can imagine your character doing is possible through the rules set down by each gaming system.

So now imagine a game where the only limit is your imagination. A game with complete freedom. A game that has carefully predicted all of the things you may want to attempt in your imaginary universe and has given you all the guidelines to do so with the appropriate chances of failure.

And all you have to do is follow some rules. Sounds like the perfect game, right?

Well...

The key to a good table-top gaming session is collaboration and flow. If everyone is getting along, laughing, and having a good time, then the results of the game itself are of little consequence. I've had just as much fun having my entire party die through a series of hilarious mishaps as I've had successfully slaying a dragon and plundering his hoard. So long as everyone is interested and adding something fun to the scene, then the session will almost always go well.

This is why I'm issuing a warning to would-be DMs - try not to be too big a stickler on the rules.

The rules are there for a good reason: they introduce randomness to an otherwise perfect story, forcing players to adapt, and thus creating a sense of drama. The rules also give a good sense for how to operate in the confines of this imaginary world. Want to use magic? Read up on the differences between Arcane and Divine magic, and decide which suits your character best. Want to pull off some slick combat stunts? Brush up on your Feats. The rules are an important base that every player and DM should be familiar with.

But the sad truth is that sometimes the rules get in the way of having a good time.

Let me give you an example from my own experience. I was in a party with 3 other adventurers. I was playing a bard - a traveling musician. As it happens, I was injured and couldn't contribute much to combat. I won't go into too many details, but let's just say I'd committed a social faux pas with a local tavern wench and she had some "pointed" opinions about it. In any case, I was limping along in the back of the group as we made our way through a graveyard.

Without warning, the ground before us split open, and a giant skeleton unearthed itself and towered over us. The thing was at least 30 feet tall. Each footstep shook the ground beneath our feet. It fixed its green, glowing eye sockets at us, opened its mouth of rotted, festering teeth, and lunged.

I ducked behind a particularly large tombstone and shouted encouragements to my team. That's me; Mr. Morale.

Scarily accurate depiction of my bard in that moment.

The wizard sprinted out of reach of the calcium juggernaut and tried to get to safe distance in order to start blasting. Our fighter notched an arrow and fired it into the thing's face, only to have the arrow be shrugged off without even being noticed. Our cleric started muttering some holy mumbo-jumbo to try and get the skeleton to run away.

And that might have worked if the skeleton didn't wallop him so hard that he flew twenty feet and fell unconscious.

At this point, our fighter had had enough. So what'd the crazy b**tard do?

He climbed the skeleton.

He climbed the f***ing skeleton.

As he made his way vertically along the creature, it tried to shake him off but failed. The wizard, afraid to loose his arcane payload and risk hitting the fighter, started calling the musclehead every foul name in the book. He even invented some new ones. Me? I pulled out my lute and started playing an inspiring song. If you're going to die from blinding idiocy, you might as well go out with a dramatic score.

Only the fighter didn't die; he scaled the skeleton, drew his longsword with one hand, and drove it deep into the giant's skull. The eerie green light in its eyes exploded and went out. The bones tumbled apart, no longer held together by magic. After all the dust settled, the fighter was laying on a pile of bones with a grin on his face. "You know what they say - 'The bigger they are...'"

This was one of my favorite moments I've ever had in a gaming session to date. Just imagining our brawny warrior scaling his tremendous foe, clinging to the creaking bones as the behemoth tried to get him off, and then felling the monster, single-handed, still gives me a thrill. It's the stuff you'd write songs about.

And it's in no way possible if you strictly follow the rules.

Reality is a harsh mistress.

According to the rules, the fighter would likely have had to make a grapple check against the creature. Then, he'd have to make a climb check with such a high roll (seeing as he was scaling something without good hand-holds that was freaking alive,) just to see if he made it 5 feet up the beast. He'd have to continue these climb checks each round to see if he even made it to the beast's shoulders. From there, drawing his sword would risk throwing him off the creature - another roll. Swinging without a good grip and steady footing would make his attack roll suffer. And even if he'd made it through all of that, odds are that a 30-foot skeleton, weighing many hundreds of pounds, would have an absurd amount of hit points. A single swing would not be enough to even put a dent into him.

But which is more entertaining: a triumphant victory with a plan that should not have worked, or the immediate death of all party members against a foe that is simply too powerful for them?

The answer to that is a matter of opinion. If our session was focused on realism, then every member of the party should have tried to outrun the colossus and flee to safety. But, since our session was more focused on fun and heroics, the absurd risk-taking made more sense. In the end, I treasure the memory of this absurd stunt more than I would have treasured limping away in the opposite direction.

One more story to illustrate my point from the other extreme.

In a different game, with different players, I was a bard (what can I say? I'm a creature of habit) and my party was fighting against some outlaws. One bandit was dying about 10 feet away from me, and 10 feet beyond him was another one locked into mortal combat with one of my teammates. So I tried to rush over and aid my ally.

What ensued was a 10 minute discussion over whether or not I could hop over the prone bandit without suffering a movement penalty. My party and my DM bickered back and forth, scouring the rulebooks for examples, to try and determine just how far I would be able to move, what kind of save I should roll to protect against tripping, whether a dying creature would offer any resistance or not, etc.

In the same time it took to decide one round of movement, my other party had toppled a rampaging mountain of bones.

I'm not saying that the rules should be ignored entirely. Far from it. That same fighter who climbed Mt. Bonemore eventually had his head caved in when he tried to fist-fight a troll while drunk. Ultimately, the decision lies with the group. Is strict adherence to the technical aspects of the rulebooks more important to the session, or is telling an entertaining story? In my experience, a little flexibility with the rules is all it takes to create some truly memorable experiences. And that's what pen-and-paper RPGs are all about - making creative memories with a group of friends.

Frozen: Why The Protagonist-Antagonist Setup Is Important

*Sigh*

It was only a matter of time before I wrote about Frozen. Might as well get it out of the way now in saying that I don't really care for this movie.

Hear that sound? That's the sound of Frozen fans ("Froz-ans?") navigating away from this post. I promise, while I am going to criticize it, I will not do so out of spite. The film does have great things going for it, but I'm using this post to explore some technical issues in the plot.

Even I can admit that the music is catchy, the animation is fantastic, and the story definitely goes for the heart. And the fact that it works against the common princess tropes is cool: one princess goes the whole film without finding a Prince Charming, the two sisters save each other through their kinship instead of needing help from others, and the obstacles the girls overcome are largely psychological instead of physical - Elza has to grapple with the anxiety of having powers, and Anna has to grow up and learn what real love is. In short, this a story about two young women who are coming into their own.

And that's fantastic, right? That has to be beyond criticism.

Alas,

Every story has a protagonist, a character we identify with and through whom we experience the story. In Frozen's case, I'd argue there are two protagonists - Elsa and Anna. We feel bad for Elsa after seeing how a childhood accident has forced her to suffer so much guilt and fear. We hope that, by the end of the film, she makes peace with what happened and gets to live a richer, fuller life. We also feel bad for Anna because she simply desires to be around people and have fun but this is stymied for reasons she doesn't understand. For Anna, we want a fairy-tale romance and a reunion with her older sister.

Most stories also have an antagonist, the character (or force) that makes things harder for the protagonist. Typically we're not supposed to like the antagonist and it is the conflict between the two that creates the drama and excitement of the story. Lord Voldemort is the antagonist to Harry Potter. Lex Luthor is an antagonist for Superman.

But who is the antagonist for Elsa and Anna?

Think carefully...

At first I had to wonder if Elsa was both the protagonist and antagonist. I mean, she does almost create an ice age, threatening the lives of everyone in Arendelle. She also started the film by freezing her sister's head, thus inadvertently driving a wedge between the two of them and forcing Anna to suffer from isolation. And the latter half of the movie is spent trying to warm Anna's heart, which was also Elsa's fault.

But I'm going to dismiss this idea. None of those events really seem to be Elsa's fault. The first instance of freezing Anna was when they were both too young to understand the consequences of their actions. The near-apocalyptic ice storm was the result of releasing a lot of pent-up anxiety for once (something to which we, as humans with feelings, can relate.) And freezing Anna's heart was also an accident, stemming from her latent fear of getting close to people only to hurt them. In fact, I'll let this last one go just for the irony.

You're in the clear, Elsa.

I'll assume Anna isn't the antagonist because nothing but bad stuff seems to happen to her for the entire film, despite how sweet and upbeat she is. It's hard to earn the audience's ire when you're constantly being beaten up by the story. Also, she's voiced by Kristen Bell. That earns a free pass in my book.


So we're still looking for an antagonist. Another obvious choice could be Prince Hans of the Southern Isles. After all, he was trying to seize the kingdom by marrying into Arendelle royalty. Then, towards the end of the movie, he decides to let Anna freeze to death in order to usurp the throne even faster. He certainly looks like a good antagonist.

But remember this scene?

Hans meets Anna in a very adorable way, ends up in the ocean, watches her run away, and smiles fondly. Do this look like a cold-hearted antagonist to you? I mean, he stops Elsa from being shot by a crossbow in her ice castle for crying out loud! Film critics call this a "narrative cheat" - something that throws the audience off track, on purpose, to suit the plot later. Cheats often serve the purpose of making the "twist" at the end of the film more shocking. But while Hans' sudden transformation into a cold-hearted b**tard was shocking, and it did help Anna learn a lesson, Hans wasn't a major source of suffering in the film. He had 20 minutes or so of infamy and that's all. He was a nuisance at best, but not the driver of conflict for the whole story.

So Hans is off the hook. Who does that leave us with? The Duke of Weselton who was trying to steal Arendelle's secrets? He only brought a couple of goons and some comic relief. Again, more a nuisance than a bonafide antagonist.

What about the rock trolls? They steal children and can take the fun out of them (remember, the troll in the beginning of the film said, "I recommend we remove all magic... But don't worry. I'll leave the fun" - this could imply some kind of fun-sucking magical potential.)

I'm kidding, of course. They make for great adoptive parents, have their hearts set on playing matchmaker, and they're the ones that teach us about the power of true love. They're adorable, not antagonists.

"I think I'll keep you!"

So who does that leave?

What if I told you that the real antagonists of this film were Elsa and Anna's parents, the late King and Queen of Arendelle?

Dun-dun-DUNNNN! Now that's a twist!

What's the main conflict that our protagonists, Anna and Elsa, are suffering from? Separation. By being apart, Elsa is forced to try to contain her magical powers on her own, causing stress, anxiety, fear, and the occasional frosty outburst. This same separation also causes Anna to feel lonely and forces her to seek attention from anyone, including throne-stealing pretty-boys from the Southern Isles. Only by recovering their sisterhood is Anna's heart thawed, Elsa's powers controlled, and balance restored back to the narrative.

And what precipitated this divide between the sisters? After the King and Queen visited the rock trolls, the parents decided to limit all contact between Anna and Elsa. Understandable, maybe, since they were worried that any more contact with magic could kill their youngest daughter. But Pabbie the troll (I had to look his name up) never said that Anna shouldn't experience magic again. That was just the King and Queen's assumption. Later events in the film prove that Anna can watch Elsa work magic and not have any adverse reactions. So, The King and Queen, by separating their two daughters, end up creating the main conflict of the film, the separation of the sisters, that Elsa and Anna must overcome. As such, the parents are the primary antagonists.

Dick move, mom and dad. Dick move. I hope you tried to do better with Tarzan.

Back to the point.

The tertiary villains, like Hans and the Duke of Weselton, distract from the psychological drama going on between the sisters. And these challenges are compelling in their own right. What girl (or anyone, for that matter,) doesn't feel like they're going to burst at the seams if they have to maintain their composure 24/7? And how many of us can relate to desperately yearning for simple human contact when we're hurting? This primary conflict is inspired and has the potential to resonate with all viewers, old and young, male and female. It's a universal tale of the human connection.

Instead of trying to paint someone as the classically evil villain, or the quintessential antagonist, just let the parents be in the wrong. After all, that's what growing up is about: taking in all of the lessons you've learned from your parents, keeping the good, and fixing the bad. And as a coming-of-age tale, parents would make for perfectly fine antagonists.



Have something you want to add? Or do you disagree with me? Feel free to let me know in the comments below. Also, feel free to share this on whatever social media site you'd like. I'd love to have lots of angry Froz-ans blowing up my inbox.

MOBAs Make Me Mad, But Is Madness Mandatory?

Multiplayer Online Battle Arena (MOBA) games are a relatively new genre to the gaming scene. Among those in the limelight are Valve's Defense of the Ancients 2 (DotA), Riot's League of Legends (LoL), and S2 Games' Heroes of Newerth (HoN). Blizzard is also planning to add its own game, Heroes of the Storm, to the mix soon.

The premise is simple: you and nine other players are sorted into two teams of five. Each player chooses their own character to play from a pool. To win the game, your team must destroy a specific structure in the other team's base before they do the same to you. Gameplay gets complicated when you consider how to effectively combine the unique skills of each character, how to match those heroes against the enemies' choices, how to deny the other team resources while maximizing your own, how to counter the enemies' strategies, and so on. Matches take on average 30-45 minutes, and each match starts from zero - a fresh map, new teammates, and new enemies.

Having sunk 1000+ hours into DotA2 (no shame) and several thousand more into its predecessor, the DotA Allstars custom map for Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne, (okay, a little shame,) I have had plenty of experience with the MOBA scene. I've had flawless games that made me feel like the king of the online world and I've had awful games that made me uninstall and re-think my identity as a gamer. But, through thick and thin, I remained with DotA2 because games, like people, are not perfect. Even though DotA2 can be enraging at times, there is a lot of good things going for it.

Alas,

 

There's no excuse for poor game design that leads to unnecessary complications and dreadful playing experiences. Little to nothing can be done about the obnoxious community - this much I will forgive. As much as I hate being harassed by monosyllabic kunckle-draggers who are too obsessed with the current meta to give anything else a second look, I recognize that this is something that game developers can't control. Sure, you can implement mute options, reporting systems, punitive measures, and everything else, but you simply can't make people stop being a**holes online.

This is why engineers need to work on sending punches through the Internet...

"No! YOU buy wards f**kface!"

But there are plenty of things that Riot, Valve, and S2 could be doing to deal with other very pervasive problems with these games.

I'll start with one of DotA2's most notorious mistakes: No forfeit option.

Seriously?

As I said above, a typical match of DotA takes about 40 minutes. Usually by the 20 minute mark, if the teams have been working hard, there's a definitive lead for one or the other. Now, it is possible to turn a game around when your team is behind. It is incredibly important to not lose faith just because you're down 10 kills and 3 towers. I played a game once where our team had lost all of our rax, our T4 towers were under attack, and we still managed to pull out a win. I don't mean to say it's common - it isn't. But it is possible to have an upset victory.

Now let's leave the land of hypothetical and come back to reality.

Some games don't have an "edge" after 20 minutes. Some games are all but over by that time. It's possible to come back from being 10 kills and 3 towers behind, but what about 20+ kills and 5 towers? And, while it would be great for the other team to march into your base and end it, they don't have to; they can sit outside in the jungle and wait it out. Now the game, which is essentially over due to the massive gold imbalance, is dragging on because the other team is in no rush to win. 

And I can't blame them. Winning feels satisfying, and wanting to savor that feeling is natural. But while they're grinding neutrals and Roshan for half an hour in order to complete their next expensive item, 5 players are sitting around base with their thumbs up their butts, waiting for the match to end. This time could be spent playing a different match where they have a chance of winning and having fun. Oh, and should you try to leave early and spare yourself the pain of watching the match drag on? Enjoy the punitive measures - several matches in Low Priority Queue, filled with sub-par, rage-aholic players.

The hero I miss most from Allstars (aside from Techies)

And the worst part? The DotA Allstars custom map HAD a forfeit feature back when I played it in high school. LoL and HoN also have forfeit features. Valve seems to be the only developer who doesn't feel it necessary to give its players the mercy of conceding matches.

However, that's just a DotA problem. There's one issue that is uniform across all MOBAs. A problem so pervasive and infuriating that it has been the cause of thrown headsets, smashed keyboards, and punched monitors.

I'm speaking, of course, about foreign language barriers.

I've lost count of the number of times I've entered a game of DotA, after queueing only for US East and US West servers, to be hailed by players in Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. For the record, I've played with plenty of non-English speakers who were stellar players and kind to boot. The problem I have with these players in general isn't that they're from outside the USA, it's that they don't speak English.

 

Same difference? No. Let me explain.

I queue for US East and US West not because I believe in Freedom, Justice, The American Way, and other 'Murican tenants, but because I only speak one language - English. And since I'm supposed to be playing cooperatively with 4 other players, I figure I should queue for servers where the primary language of the server location is English. After all, how can we coordinate attacks, talk strategy, or even set up our team if we can't communicate?

I'm not naive. I recognize that not everyone in the United States speaks English. And I'd be tolerant if this language barrier only popped up once in a blue moon. But for every other game to have me hitting my head against my desk because I can't communicate with my team is not a sign of diversity in America; It's a sign of a serious design flaw on the part of the developer.

Nothing like trying to go for rune and having 3 different people on my team typing things like "cyka," "nob," and "jejeje" at me.

The fix could be simple: the game server could issue a ping for each player, see where the player's country of origin is, and re-queue them for an appropriate server. Since players can already check their ping with the server, I know the capability is there. The programming wouldn't be too difficult. Hell, DotA Allstars had a third-party program, Banlist, that allowed for independent hosts to check countries of origin and latency of the connecting players. If some independent developer can work up the protocol in his spare time, certainly Valve could devote some man hours to getting players into their local servers. This would lead to better chances at communicating with our teams, and therefore, better chances of actually enjoying the playing experience.

It'd also stop me from feeling so horribly, horribly racist.

Got any gripes about MOBAs that you'd like to share? Leave them in the comments. Maybe I'll pick them up in a later blog.

Looper, or "Why Time Travel Breaks Stories"

<Spoiler alert>

<Duh>

Don't look directly at his forehead.

Looper is a movie set in the future, where a hired killer named Joe, played by Joseph Gordon-Levitt, works for an organized crime syndicate responsible for taking out people from the future. See, in the future, it's very hard to dispose of a body. So future crime syndicates use time travel to send people back to the past to be executed. The people who perform the executions, like Joe, are called "loopers."

This all goes to hell when Joe is ordered to kill his future self, played by Bruce Willis.

Why didn't Willis get prosthetics to look like Gordon-Levitt?

(For the remainder of this review, I will refer to Joe from the future at "Old Joe" and Joe from the present as "Joe." Like I said, time travel makes things difficult.)

Old Joe avoids death and goes on a manhunt for a person called "The Rainmaker." Old Joe says that this man runs all organized crime single-handed and is the source of the future's suffering. According to Old Joe, only a few things are known about The Rainmaker:

1) He saw his mom get shot.
2) He has had reconstructive surgery.
3) He's an unholy terror, capable of killing entire complexes full of baddies by himself.

Who IS that mysterious man?

While Old Joe is on his hunt, Joe finds a farm with a single mother on it named Sarah. Sarah's son, Cid, is an extremely powerful telekinetic with anger issues. Sarah believes that if she can teach Sid to love then he won't grow up to hurt people. Old Joe finds the farm and it is revealed that, in the future, Sid becomes The Rainmaker.

All four of them are drawn into a final, deadly showdown and Joe watches the scene unfold. Joe realizes that if Old Joe shoots at Cid, Sarah will jump in the way, killing her, and leaving the bullet only to graze Cid's cheek as he gets away. This is the event that will create The Rainmaker, and all the pain he will bring. The only way to stop that process is to stop his future self once and for all. Joe turns his shotgun on himself, fires, and dies. Old Joe vanishes from existence. Sarah and Cid are left alive and with a lot of cash, signifying, hopefully, that The Rainmaker will never come to be.

That might seem all well and good, but...

There's a theme in this movie about missing a mother figure. Joe misses his mother and turns to a life of crime. Another looper, Seth, missing his mother, is duped into not killing his future self and ends up getting tortured for that mistake. This theme illustrates how much influence a mother has on the development of a child - in particular her son. It is my theory (well-supported, but a theory nonetheless,) that this theme intended to include Cid as well, suggesting that, without Sarah's presence, he'd become evil. With her presence, however, he might be good. This is also supported by Sarah's own dialogue in the film.

Here's the sticky part: Old Joe was tormented in the future by The Rainmaker, so he comes back into the past to kill Cid. It is this attempt on Sid's life that robs Cid of Sarah, and turns Cid into The Rainmaker. Then The Rainmaker torments Old Joe in the future, and so on, and so forth.

So these two support each other's existence across the timelines. Their lives make a sort of loop. Hence the movie's title.

Here's why that's bullshit: who came first - Cid or Old Joe?

Think about it: The Rainmaker needs to exist for Old Joe to have a reason to go back into the past. But without Old Joe existing in the first place, The Rainmaker (presumably) would never come into being. This is a Chicken-Or-The-Egg kind of question, and the answer could completely dismantle the premise of the story.

There are two logical explanations I can come up with that would explain the first instance of the Rainmaker and the subsequent loop without having to bring in any theoretical science, fuzzy mechanisms, or string theory.

1) Both The Rainmaker and Joe were created at the same time by some intervention of fate.

If this is the case, however, then it takes away from the agency either character has for controlling their destiny or altering time. If both The Rainmaker and Old Joe can be thrown into existence by some cosmic coincidence, how can we be sure that Joe's heroic act at the end of the movie really did anything? If fate could make it not so, then his suicide is pointless.

2) The Rainmaker came into being a different way the first time.

"We are Legion, for we are many!"

It is possible that Cid became The Rainmaker by some means other than Old Joe's assassination attempt. Perhaps a vagrant wandered onto Sarah's farm, killed her, orphaned Cid, and he grew up to be The Rainmaker that way. This is entirely plausible. Then The Rainmaker would go on to create Old Joe's timeline, and Old Joe would then be the cause of Sid's transformation in the remaining timelines. However, if this was the case, we end up with the same problem as before; if Cid can become The Rainmaker without Old Joe, then Joe's sacrifice is pointless. Sure, he gets Old Joe out of the equation, but if that vagrant could still show up and kill Sarah, then nothing is really resolved at the end of the film. The whole cycle could happen again.

The first time I watched Looper, I felt like something was off. I liked the story (even if the middle felt slow,) loved the premise, and, other than Joseph Gordon-Levitt's make-up, I thought the film was put together really well. But the more I dwelled on it and mulled over the sequence of events, the more I realized that this Old Joe - Rainmaker feedback loop was flawed. It was only after really digging into it that I realized it wasn't just flawed. It was total bullshit.

(If you can think of something I'm missing, please feel free to leave a comment and tell me.)

Call of Duty and Innovative Gameplay

Call of Duty is an insanely popular first-person shooter (FPS) video game, available across several gaming platforms. It has always had a large following, but ever since Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, the franchise has become one of (if not the) highest grossing video game IPs on the FPS market. Each game since CoD4 has done little to change the original's formula, sticking with similar gameplay, match variants, and weapon load-outs. Sure, the story changes dramatically from one game to another, but any CoD player will tell you that you don't buy the game for its story - you buy it for the multiplayer.

Not me, but I'm familiar with his game-face!

I, like so many other gamers, really do enjoy the visceral, pulse-pounding thrill of matching my reflexes and skills against nameless, faceless opponents in online multiplayer. The current Call of Duty series does a great job of scratching that itch for its players, and its (relatively) simple control scheme makes it easy for new players to visit their friends and pick it up themselves. This generates an ever-expanding pool of potential CoD customers, and this money-generating formula  has put Activision and Infinity Ward on the map.

Now:

Imitation in the video game market is not a new thing. I'm sure even Pong had imitators. But there seems to be a startling shift in the gaming industry to shy away from more artistic endeavors in order to go for games that are sure to make money.

Take a second and breathe. I know this is shocking news that an industry is focused on making money. I didn't mean to spring that on you so suddenly.

But the problem is bigger than that. Older generations of games you'd find in the arcade, like Frogger or Mortal Kombat, tended to cost less than $10 million to produce. That still seems like a lot, but compare it to the games that have come out in the past 5 years, like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2, which have budgets of $200 million or more. The sad truth is that modern video game companies have to put more skin in the game in order to produce a title. That means that the business end needs to be fulfilled.

"Sure, Mr. Molyneux, we can produce your innovative new hit... But can you be sure we'll get our money back?" And the answer, sadly, isn't looking as sure as it used to.

"I would gladly pay you Tuesday for a video game today."

So how do these companies ensure they'll get their money back? Well, they look at trends. "Which games made money before, and which elements can we borrow from them to hopefully pad our own numbers?" Taking a look at Call of Duty: Modern Warfare, it sold 10 million units within its first year on the shelves. At $60 a pop, that's $600 million in revenue - at least 3 times what it cost to produce. Since it hit the market, many new FPS games have borrowed elements of the CoD formula. As video game reviewer extraordinaire Ben 'Yahtzee' Crowshaw has put it, they've all become "same-y, brown, realistic shooters."

"But isn't this what innovation means?" You might ask. "Taking what works and then adding your own spin to it?"

Well, on one level you'd be right. Yes, it is the nature of all human achievements to capitalize on the ground-breaking ingenuity of our fellow man by adding a little bit of our expertise to it. But the ugly trend is that we're not seeing that last step. Instead, developers are recycling the same tired game mechanics, over and over again, without any innovation in design. In short, they're being copycats.

Don't believe me that copy-catting is rampant? Do you remember Flappy Bird, the maddening mobile game that required you to try and navigate a small bird through a series of pipes? Did you know the game made the creator, Dong Nguyen, $50,000 a day at its peak? And did you know that now, after Dong Nguyen deleted the app and later restored it, more than a dozen Flappy Bird clones hit the mobile market every day?

Flap onwards to fortune, little bird.

And these creators are only looking for a single buck of your hard-earned money. Imagine the pressure when you have a $200 million budget you're trying not to blow.

The problem with recycling the same tried-and-true mechanics over and over again is the same problem as marrying your brother/sister and having babies: it's gross and makes Jesus cry. But, more seriously, you don't end up with a healthy gene pool. If the same mechanics keep being recycled, games could become indistinguishable. Was the "jumping from the helicopter while gunning down armed terrorists" scene from Call of Duty, or was it from Battlefield? Or was it from Counter-Strike? Without distinctive innovations in game play, the dividing lines between these games all start to blur. Even if it is against the interest of obtaining the all-mighty dollar, I (and hopefully many other gamers,) encourage game developers to try something new for a change.

Let's take a look at the innovations of the past: FPS gaming made massive strides between the iconic Doom of 1993 and GoldenEye of 1997.

Similarly large strides can be seen between Halo of 2001 and Battlefield 2 of 2005.

But what about Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare in 2007 and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 of 2011?

I don't mean to imply that graphics make a game. Look at the innovations in gameplay between these years: Goldeneye gave us a fully-interactive 3D shooting environment, something that Doom could only pretend to do. From Halo to Battlefield 2, we saw a lack of emphasis on running-and-gunning, and more of an emphasis on taking cover. But CoD4 and MW3 are very much the same game: not much cover to work with, health regenerates if you stay out of combat long enough, the weapon payloads are almost the same, and it's all staged in an urban setting. There was the same period of time between the games and yet not much innovation. Even the Halo series made innovative tweaks to its UI and game play between Halo and Halo 2, emphasizing bone-shattering melee attacks at close range and getting rid of the health-bar system.

I don't blame Call of Duty, Activision, or Infinity Ward for this startling decline in innovation. I do blame the growing presence that the business side of the gaming industry is having over the artistic side. While it's nice for games to be taken as a serious medium, deserving of hundreds of millions of dollars of funding, I'd hate to see game development going from art to assembly line.

Without Danger, There Is No Drama

This is Obi-Wan Kenobi.

You may recognize him from the Star Wars prequels (even if you'd rather pretend they don't exist.) What makes Obi-Wan Kenobi such a bad***? Well, what doesn't? Watch in the following scene how he and Yoda expertly dismantle about 8 bad guys with all the effort of spreading butter on toast. (Please forgive the quality.)

Awww man, wasn't that cool?! I mean, did you see how Yoda was all flipping around and stuff? And did you see how slick Obi-Wan was at the end? Like this wasn't even a challenge or anything! That's how you know he's so bad***! Because he never seems to be in any danger.

Actually, no.

 

It's natural to think otherwise, but for us to be really engaged with characters, be it in film, books, or video game, we need to sense they are in danger. Don't believe me? Look at Game of Thrones - an HBO adaptation of the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin. Game of Thrones is infamous for killing off every character that the audience knows and loves. Seemingly no one is safe. SPOILER ALERT (highlight the rest of this sentence to see it on-screen): In the first season of Game of Thrones, Sean Bean, the highest paid actor on the show and seemingly the main protagonist, had his head cut off by episode nine. It is this unpredictability that infuriates and yet keeps fans interested. When you see your favorite character getting circled by wolves, or hounded by enemy knights, you suddenly have to wonder - is s/he about to die? And as nervous or anxious as you might be, you just can't bring yourself to look away. This is what real drama is like; it engages you and forces you to pay attention.

This holds true for books and video games also. Have you ever played a video game with the cheat codes on or the difficulty turned down low? Sure, you breezed through the game and got to see some of the content, but did you really feel excited about doing it? Can you imagine the thrill you would have had if, at every turn, you were scrambling to stay alive and barely beating the odds? 

Don't pretend you don't know what this is.

And in books, even if the protagonist is at no risk of dying, there's still the risk of something terrible happening to them. Take Harry Potter for example: there are seven books in the series, so I was sure he wasn't die to the basilisk in book two. But what if Harry was expelled from Hogwarts and separated from his friends? What if he was stripped of some precious magical protection, like in book four? Or, even worse, what if he started giving in to evil, like Voldemort? Even if the protagonist doesn't die, there are still plenty of reasons to be worried for him/her. And if you're not worried about the protagonist, there are others to worry about - like their friends and family.

Please don't get be started on Hedwig or Sirius Black. I might cry all over again.

Let's go back to Star Wars and see what not to do.

Giving your protagonist a window into the immediate future, superhuman reflexes and strength, a laser sword that reflects attacks and cuts through anything, and also the ability to throw objects and people around with his/her motherf***ing mind isn't a recipe for drama. It's a recipe for a power fantasy. When Obi-Wan stumbles into 12 droids, I'm not thinking, "Oh s**t! He's in trouble!" I'm thinking, "Let the robo-dicing commence!" And while watching him remove extraneous limbs from clone troopers or carving aliens into smoldering bits might be entertaining to watch, it simply isn't dramatic. With the lightsaber in his hand and the Force on his side, Obi-Wan is practically a walking deity. Yeah, sure, he might lose a limb flipping that laser sword about, but that's little more than an inconvenience in the Star Wars universe. Influenza takes a normal person out of work for a week, but a cybernetic arm will get you back into action within a day.

It'll also make you a beast at arm-wrestling.

To better illustrate my point, let's compare young Obi-Wan to Luke Skywalker. Obi-Wan, it seems, has grown up with the Jedi influence all of his life. He knows the teachings, is powerful with the Force, and certainly knows his way around a lightsaber. He's a deadly and skilled warrior. Watching him expertly cut through enemies is similar to watching Superman fly around - it loses excitement because it's exactly what you'd expect him to do. If your local UPS delivery truck driver were to suddenly take flight, however, you'd likely piss yourself. That's the difference - it isn't an amazing feat if it's something you're expecting.

Now look at Luke Skywalker - a poor farmer's nephew, interested only in getting some power converters and joining the Imperial Academy. Suddenly, he's thrust into an adventure involving a kidnapped princess, a galactic rebellion, and a force so sinister that it threatens to destroy or enslave everyone. He's outmatched, but he struggles valiantly despite the odds. When Luke gets into a fight, we know for a fact that he has no experience, and this uncertainty makes us worry for his safety. "Oh s**t! He's pinned down by rifle fire in a narrow corridor without anything to defend himself with! I hope he gets out!" This, in turn, creates satisfying drama.

His past says "scruffy nerfherder." His future says "Jedi Knight."

"But we already know from A New Hope that Obi-Wan survives." You might argue. "It isn't fair to expect the writer to threaten him for the sake of drama, since we know he'll live." And you'd have a point. Yes, I know that Obi-Wan has to survive the prequels because he's present in the REAL Star Wars movies. But, similar to my comments about Harry Potter, Obi-Wan can be brought into danger without necessarily threatening his life. Consider this: we first meet Old Ben Kenobi as a hermit, hiding from the world in the remote desert wastes of Tatooine. What made him distance himself so much from other people? Is there a dark secret in his past? Was he forced to do something he regretted? Did he lose someone precious to him? We do find out that, technically, all three of those are the case, but their significance is played down and practically lost in the prequels.

Think about it: all the time in the prequels that could have been spent showing the relationship between Anakin and Obi-Wan was instead used to give details about boring political intrigue and mindless lightsaber fights. We're told that Anakin and Obi-Wan are great friends who have shared the field of battle and seem to have a rapport, but we never see them grow to respect each other through the trials on-screen. Usually Obi-Wan spent screen time chiding Anakin, and then Anakin skulked off to complain about Obi-Wan. By the end of Episode III, we weren't heart-broken that Obi-Wan had to dismember his pupil and "friend" - we were ecstatic that the child-killing, angst-y bast**d finally got the thrashing he so rightfully deserved.

A-HAHAHAHA!! Serves you right, you dick!

All joking aside, what I'm trying to say is that human drama - the deep stuff that really touches our hearts and makes us pull for characters - is not easy to produce. It takes time. We have to know our hero's weaknesses, vulnerabilities, desires, and personality. We need the hero to show us these elements of him/herself through interactions with other characters on screen. What we don't need is a bunch of flashy swordfighting which serves more as a distraction than as a tool for building tension. Obi-Wan is so disgustingly overpowered in the prequels that we can't expect a handful of droids to challenge him. So, if the outcome of the fight is already decided before it starts, then why bother showing the fight at all? It's just filler. The action becomes pointless, and offers only a cheap thrill instead of a satisfying plot point. There's no drama to be had and no character development. Just a cheat-code empowered demi-god breezing through any potential challenges without so much as breaking a sweat.

And I don't know about you but I can't relate to that.

If you're interested in more in-depth, critical analysis of the Star Wars prequels and why they suck so badly, please watch the Red Letter Media series about them. Below is the first video in the series. 

 

Introductions Are Bulls**t

I grew up with video games and movies the way a lot of "normal" people would grow up with friends. I spent many nights chasing down Bowser or watching an animated Batman beat up the bad guys. I cried when Goku died (each time, really,) and I itched with anticipation for each new release of Halo. Loving these games, movies, and shows, I found myself ardently defending them whenever their quality was called into question. Simply put, I was a fan; I refused to let anyone attack these nostalgic figures of my childhood.

Having said all of that:

Video games, movies, television shows, cartoons, or any vehicle used to tell stories are not exempt from criticism just because they're popular. My preferences are not necessarily the preferences of the majority. That's fine. But it's important to recognize the difference between preference and criticism. Someone might not 'like' the Star Wars prequels because they thought Luke Skywalker was a better protagonist. That's a preference. But if someone says that the Star Wars prequels failed to elicit drama in action sequences because the characters never seemed to be in any real danger, then that's a criticism. The difference between the two is that one cannot be substantiated and the other can. One has no evidence to support its claims and the other does.

Well I've got some bones to pick and I've got plenty of evidence to go with 'em.

In this blog, I will address commonly held beliefs about games, movies, and cartoons, and give them a thorough second look. I will provide social commentary about these popular forms of entertainment, discuss interesting or disturbing trends, and possibly use a bit of adult language. In other words, on a semi-weekly basis, I will be taking a poke at a lot of the entertainment I, and so many others, hold dearly and I do not intend to be kind about it.

You can like it or not - that's your preference. "Let Me Tell You Why That's Bulls**t" is my criticism.