Great is the enemy of Good

Or really anything at all. I don’t know that I thought this blog as anything that was ever “great” or even “good” but I sure do know that part of my slump lately is that I look at my peers blogs (Belghast, Tamrielo) I see a bar set so high that I feel incapable of even failing to achieve it gracefully.

I am terrified of failure. I am ever more terrified of failing in such an embarrassing way. This is something I need to work to overcome, because if I’m ever going to grow as a person, the path is probably going to be through constant failure, not constant success.

Dragon Age and Racism

Boy this is a topic I’ve wanted to write about but I gotta preface it with this: I am scared. Racism is a big topic that I feel like no one wants to talk about and generally gets angry with me when I do. When it comes to privileged classes I am near the top: White, male, cisgendered, heterosexual, college educated, born into an upper middle class family, employed at a job that offers a salary and benefits, married. Social justice is something I care about a great deal, because I am offended by any statement that “the world isn’t fair” that isn’t followed up with “but we should strive to make it so.” I am acutely aware that trying to talk about any of these topics from a position of authority is foolish, so I’m not going to.

I’m going to talk about what how Dragon Age offers me a brief glimpse into the life of someone less privileged. I have played as two characters in Dragon Age: Origins: A city elf rogue and a elf mage. I quit my rogue around Lothering because I was frustrated with the gameplay. I’m currently in Orzammar on my mage. Both of these characters show you the story of two characters trapped by circumstances beyond their control. It’s been too long since I played a city elf, so I’m going to mostly talk about my mage.

As a mage, I open the game being told that my lot in life is as an effective prisoner of a religious order of Templars. I was likely taken from my family at a young age as soon as it was revealed I was a mage. I start the game going through a semi-mandatory rite of passage that would have ended with me being executed had I failed. I got a chance to strike up a conversation with my would be executioner, who expressed happiness that he didn’t have to kill me. Everything you do in the intro reminds you that you exist at pleasure of the Templars, and they will end your life if they feel it necessary. The sense of oppression permeates the scene, and I couldn’t help but gleefully take my leave when the Grey Warden offered it.

It’s funny, my first playthrough I remember hating Duncan, but that’s because the circumstances as a city elf are a bit less cheerful.

It is funny, as the game started I felt the oppressive weight of anti-mage sentiment. As the game continued I realized that while the Templar were generally awful, at least they didn’t seem quite as prejudiced against elves as nearly everyone else is.

Elves are the outcasts, servants, beggars and slaves of this world. City guards call us Knife-ears, a slur that actually hurt me when I first heard it. My authority as a world leader is consistently questioned because of my heritage. As a human, guards will treat you with immediate deference. As an elf I constantly hear “I don’t really know how I’m supposed to treat you. I mean, you are an elf.”

Even my close companions are not immune. Leliana approached me one night to talk about my childhood, and she ended the conversation attempting to explain how elves in Orlais are so much better off as slaves than as free elves. Morrigan, who was my one time lover, would sneeringly refer to Zevram simply as “elf” when she wanted to dismiss him.

My own rage against the world is a product of my personal upbringing. I was never required to live the life of someone with less privilege. My reaction to the game is that I wish I could just let the whole world burn for it’s crimes against my people. And I also realize that if this wasn’t a fantasy game, a game where I am expected to win, the people would revolt against that. The power structures I am unifying would unify against me, and I realize the trap that this is. I feel hopeless, and I don’t know what to do.

I hope this ramble makes some sense. I’m going to avoid any further line drawing to real life and just say that Dragon Age: Origins, a game I hated, has made me reconsider my own upbringing and that of my fellow humans.

I can’t wait to play an elf in DA: 2.

What’s that? Humans only?

/sigh

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Speaking up

(this post contains spoilers for Halo: Combat Evolved, Destiny and Bioshock.  You should play or have played at least Bioshock before continuing)

I’ve spent the majority of September in silence, partially because Blaugust burned me out something fierce, partially because every time I had something to talk about I saw it discussed better elsewhere, and partially because I have been trying to come up with something to discuss the #gamergate brouhaha.  I keep trying to write about it but I get depressed and quit halfway through.  So in the spirit of getting back to writing I’m gonna just talk about games, starting with Destiny which I’ve been playing quite a bit through the month of september, and I’ll do so without retreading any of the gamergate drama.  So let’s get started.

Destiny is a first person shooter game that subversively promotes xenophobia.

…Damn, that didn’t last for very long.

Destiny and Context

Destiny is a game about shooting things, which is fine, lots of games are about shooting things.  Where Destiny fails is it doesn’t impress upon you why you are shooting these things.  You wake up by a floating robot, who guides you to a gun and instructs you to start killing these aliens.  The first moment you meet these aliens, you have a gun trained on them.  This isn’t an optional thing either, the game forces you to get a gun, and forces you to have it aimed.  It makes perfect sense that they would attack you.  The game then instructs you to kill them, and keep killing them.  I regularly come out of a mission with over 100 kills to me name.  I just checked my Legend and it says I have over 4000 kills of sapient creatures on my hands.  That is a lot of blood that I killed, and I honestly didn’t even think about it.  This game is very good at just telling you to go shoot these dudes because they look like dudes you should shoot.  They look different from you, they sound different from you, so you should kill them.  I don’t have any visibility to what they’ve done to me, or to my faction.  There is a singular neutral city, and I don’t see them besieging it on all sides.  What I do see is us, the “good guys” going out into these remote locations and killing as many of them as we possibly can.  And then we get a score for that.

Remembering Halo

In many ways Destiny reminds me of Halo: Combat Evolved.  In that game, you know that you are at war with Covenant, but your enemies motives are completely unknown.  As a result, you kill your way through hundreds of these aliens without really knowing why, and eventually you awaken the Flood, unleashing an ancient horror across the galaxy.  In the later games you find out that what you just did is exactly what the Covenant were trying to avoid, and maybe if you could have communicated without shooting each other this whole bloody mess could’ve been avoided.  Halo still has a lot of contextless killing in it, but it couches that with the mid game turn that you are responsible for awakening this cosmic horror.

Would you kindly

The whole thing reminds me of Bioshock, which is as much a game about video games (and FPSes specifically) as it is about objectivism.  At the end of the game it reveals that the character you are playing has been mind-controlled to follow the instructions of anyone who asks them ‘would you kindly’ do something.  This is enforced by the game requiring you to perform those actions before progressing, but that’s not a specific thing about Bioshock, that’s true about all first person games, and when you don’t understand the in-game context for why you are doing this, I can’t help but feel like I’m being controlled by the game.  This is especially true of Destiny, and a regularly imagine the Ghost asking me if I would kindly go kill those aliens.

What’s the point?

The point is that games are about something, even when they aren’t supposed to be.  I really have concerns when a game asks me to turn my brain off and just accept what’s happening, for the same reason I’m not thrilled when shows ask me to turn my brain off and then show me advertisements.  When you aren’t actively thinking about something you are more suggestible, and especially when you are a younger you aren’t equipped to critically think about things.  This is why I take big offense to the current trend of demanding games not be about anything.  Games are always about SOMETHING whether or not you want them to be or not, and I would much rather play a game that the developers consciously knows what they are trying to say.

This has been a pretty political blogpost, and I wouldn’t expect most of them to be like this going forward.  I’ll probably still post occasionally about the issue on twitter, but in the future I’ll try to be less specific.

 

Speaking up

(this post contains spoilers for Halo: Combat Evolved, Destiny and Bioshock. You should play or have played at least Bioshock before continuing)

I’ve spent the majority of September in silence, partially because Blaugust burned me out something fierce, partially because every time I had something to talk about I saw it discussed better elsewhere, and partially because I have been trying to come up with something to discuss the #gamergate brouhaha. I keep trying to write about it but I get depressed and quit halfway through. So in the spirit of getting back to writing I’m gonna just talk about games, starting with Destiny which I’ve been playing quite a bit through the month of september, and I’ll do so without retreading any of the gamergate drama. So let’s get started.

Destiny is a first person shooter game that subversively promotes xenophobia.

…Damn, that didn’t last for very long.

Destiny and Context

Destiny is a game about shooting things, which is fine, lots of games are about shooting things. Where Destiny fails is it doesn’t impress upon you why you are shooting these things. You wake up by a floating robot, who guides you to a gun and instructs you to start killing these aliens. The first moment you meet these aliens, you have a gun trained on them. This isn’t an optional thing either, the game forces you to get a gun, and forces you to have it aimed. It makes perfect sense that they would attack you. The game then instructs you to kill them, and keep killing them. I regularly come out of a mission with over 100 kills to me name. I just checked my Legend and it says I have over 4000 kills of sapient creatures on my hands. That is a lot of blood that I killed, and I honestly didn’t even think about it. This game is very good at just telling you to go shoot these dudes because they look like dudes you should shoot. They look different from you, they sound different from you, so you should kill them. I don’t have any visibility to what they’ve done to me, or to my faction. There is a singular neutral city, and I don’t see them besieging it on all sides. What I do see is us, the “good guys” going out into these remote locations and killing as many of them as we possibly can. And then we get a score for that.

Remembering Halo

In many ways Destiny reminds me of Halo: Combat Evolved. In that game, you know that you are at war with Covenant, but your enemies motives are completely unknown. As a result, you kill your way through hundreds of these aliens without really knowing why, and eventually you awaken the Flood, unleashing an ancient horror across the galaxy. In the later games you find out that what you just did is exactly what the Covenant were trying to avoid, and maybe if you could have communicated without shooting each other this whole bloody mess could’ve been avoided. Halo still has a lot of contextless killing in it, but it couches that with the mid game turn that you are responsible for awakening this cosmic horror.

Would you kindly

The whole thing reminds me of Bioshock, which is as much a game about video games (and FPSes specifically) as it is about objectivism. At the end of the game it reveals that the character you are playing has been mind-controlled to follow the instructions of anyone who asks them ‘would you kindly’ do something. This is enforced by the game requiring you to perform those actions before progressing, but that’s not a specific thing about Bioshock, that’s true about all first person games, and when you don’t understand the in-game context for why you are doing this, I can’t help but feel like I’m being controlled by the game. This is especially true of Destiny, and a regularly imagine the Ghost asking me if I would kindly go kill those aliens.

What’s the point?

The point is that games are about something, even when they aren’t supposed to be. I really have concerns when a game asks me to turn my brain off and just accept what’s happening, for the same reason I’m not thrilled when shows ask me to turn my brain off and then show me advertisements. When you aren’t actively thinking about something you are more suggestible, and especially when you are a younger you aren’t equipped to critically think about things. This is why I take big offense to the current trend of demanding games not be about anything. Games are always about SOMETHING whether or not you want them to be or not, and I would much rather play a game that the developers consciously knows what they are trying to say.

This has been a pretty political blogpost, and I wouldn’t expect most of them to be like this going forward. I’ll probably still post occasionally about the issue on twitter, but in the future I’ll try to be less specific.

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This is the end, my only friend

Today we celebrate the end of Blaugust.  At first I figured I would try it because it was a great way to challenge myself to blog some more, but over the course of it the thing I feel most appreciative for is the amount I learned about writing.  I tend to overwork whatever I’m writing and never get anything done.  This month made me get something out there, even if it was raw and emotional and maybe not what I wanted to write.

But often it was what I needed to write.

Thanks for all the fish

First, thanks to Belghast, for organizing this whole crazy thing.  We’d never have gotten started if it weren’t for him.

Second, thanks to Ashgar, who kept riffing with me on a number of posts.

Big thanks to both Cannot Be Tamed and Alternative Chat for their questionnaires which gave me some structure to post my thoughts into.  It was a huge help and I had a blast with both of those questions.

Finally thanks to everyone who commented on posts, retweeted me, and all my new friends on Twitter.  The new social circle is the prize that is most valuable to me out of this whole exercise.

Moving Forward

I’m probably going to start blogging on a twice a week basis, with probably more cogent blog posts.  I will be trying to keep up writing in general, but I have enough things I need to sit down and work on that I am not short of projects.

I’m sure there will be something going up for the end of Blaugust, so should definitely check out the Nook.