Tamrielo

It’s a pretty great day today, if you’re into human rights and equality. If you’re not, I think it’s a very good opportunity to evaluate for yourself why that is. There may be any number of reasons, but it’s worth understanding them for yourself and being consistent in your behavior. Rather than hiding behind a wall of rhetoric, it’s worth considering why today’s events make you happy, angry, or whatever else.

I used to find it frustrating when people didn’t like media that I loved. It’s easy to associate your emotions regarding a particular thing with your sense of self, and then view any criticism of that thing as a criticism of yourself. I love Thief– I think it’s a brilliant game that changes the dynamic of so many video games and focuses on movement and exploration instead of violence– outright punishing use of force in a way that other games don’t. It’s important, though, that I don’t take the extra step and say that because Thief is a nonviolent game, that it’s somehow better in some absolute (moral/philosophical/whatever) way than other games that aren’t nonviolent. It’s easy to take that step into pushing that view onto others– trying to portray something as objectively good rather that subjectively good imposes that viewpoint on the people hearing you, which I think is problematic.

We seek to validate our opinions, and one of the things that’s come from the Information Age is a shift from validating our opinions through the acceptance of those around us to achieving validation from “facts”. We’ve become masters of rhetoric and debate in the last decade, with an endless wealth of information and education at our fingertips. We can justify any opinion with some piece of information that cements our validity. Sometimes this is worthwhile– certain particularly complicated things are worth researching and developing opinions on based on fact. However, note the timing there– the opinion is based on fact, not supported by them. When we then take these opinions and push them on others, we’re forcing our knee-jerk reactions on people and trying to mask that in some way.

A lot of times, we get some kind of input and have an immediate reaction to it, deep in our hindbrain, before it reaches our consciousness and becomes subject to rational thought. When we’ve already had our reaction, it’s easy to use our (powerful, effective) rational thought processes to justify, rather than evaluate. Frankly, we’re wired to do so– doing differently is difficult for us. The complexity and nuance of our world has grown faster than our brains’ ability to process it as effectively as it could. I think that we can often gain insights into ourselves and a better appreciation for our own opinions when we try to break that cycle and honestly evaluate why we hold the opinions we hold, rather than justifying them. Our opinions may or may not change, but we’ll understand them better and (I think) be more secure in them.

I like Thief. Externally, I like that it represents a nonviolent approach to games through a lens that’s normally violent, and I applaud the creativity there, but that’s not why I like it. I like Thief because I have spent much of my life not believing myself physically competent enough to handle a conflict, should one arise. My mind has always been my refuge, and any advantages I gain and any problems I solve are done with my mind rather than my body. Thief lets me express that– it’s a game about being smarter and more observant than your foes, who are all stronger and hardier than you are. It’s a space in which it’s okay to be smaller than those around you (I am) and rewards planning and observation (which I’m good at) rather than necessarily requiring quick-thinking and twitchy reflexes (which I lack). It’s a game that makes me feel okay about being the kind of person I am, rather than creating a person wholly unlike me that I can use as an escape for a while before inevitably returning to the real world, in which I lack the qualities of the protagonist I just finished experiencing.

I dislike The Witcher. It’s a game that makes me uncomfortable with its setting and characters, and while I recognize its quality, I don’t have much of a desire to spend time in that world doing the things that exist in that space. There are a lot of things I could say about the Witcher– how it treats women, how it exacerbates certain societal issues, but the reality is that those are justifications– I don’t like the game because, regardless of its quality, it makes me uncomfortable to play.

I don’t need to justify my opinions on Thief or The Witcher with some kind of moral or statistical high ground– I’m not trying to tell people they should or shouldn’t like either game. I often recommend against people playing Thief, because it’s a game that doesn’t appeal to a lot of people, and in a similar vein, I’ve suggested The Witcher to people despite personally disliking it.

Sitting down and evaluating why I like or dislike something often makes me realize things about myself, helps me better decide what new things I want to try, or simply makes me feel secure in my opinions. On occasion, I will run across something that is genuinely important, something bigger than my opinions, and that needs evaluation with data and facts… or that barely affects me in any way, and requires that I just step back and let the people who have a genuine stake in the issue weigh in.

I love Thief, but it would be unreasonable for me to demand that everyone love it. I dislike the Witcher, but my opinions on it shouldn’t impact the enjoyment of people who love that game for entirely legitimate reasons. I am largely unaffected by gay marriage at a personal level, and my opinions on it are best summed up as “it’s a good thing, because it makes people happy and more free in a way that doesn’t significantly affect others”. I’m in favor of increased happiness and freedom, and I’m in favor of people playing the games they like.

Today is a good day for issues that are bigger than just opinion, and it’s a good day to play a game you love.

Source: Digital Initiative
Live and Let Live

One of these days, Kodra is going to tell me to shut the hell up about comparative media and culture. He’s probably not going to be wrong about it. Lately I’ve been fascinated at the kinds of things we don’t realize we’ve internalized. Sometimes we can see things, or the shape of them, but it takes a lot of effort and a lot of really focused thought on things that we take for granted.

I’ve answered this question differently many, many times in the past, but right now I think that if I could have a superpower, it would be perfect fluency in every language. I’d love to delve into stories as told by other cultures, and see where they differ from what I’m used to. I’d love to see how the unceasing spread of globalization has caused some cultural concepts to bleed through to other places and which are the ‘core’ of a given society and resist that sort of change. I’d love to really understand what makes right and wrong in a culture entirely unlike mine.

I think it would probably make me insane. Trying to find space to process that many differing viewpoints on some very core philosophies would be next to impossible. We compartmentalize and create our own fences around whatever we consider our defining philosophies. I have a feeling this kind of behavior isn’t universally representative to the human condition, but I’m too close to the issue to be able to tell.

For something a little less abstract, in a conversation recently Kodra pointed out to me that he’s never seen an anime wherein the characters interact with the legal system– you don’t see people going to court and there’s no interaction: people are sent to the system and (it is assumed) are handled appropriately. To me, it’s a stark contrast to the American view of things, where there’s an inherent distrust in the system and a need to see justice served, sometimes (often) bypassing the legal system entirely and creating justifications after the fact. That inherent distrust of the system runs really deep– I can’t think of very many people I know who look at the system and say “yeah, it works”, and the few people I know who do are often ridiculed for being overly naive. I can’t help but wonder what the feeling is like elsewhere– what cultures implicitly trust their systems and which don’t?

I used to guiltily feel like I didn’t care much about other cultures, because I never found myself interested in cultural festivals or shows or music. I’ve been finding that that’s not true, that I’m fascinated by other places and people, but that I want to know about the philosophy and how it influences day-to-day lives. I occasionally like to say that I’m interested in finding out about other cultures by seeing what they do for fun, because how people have fun is such a good window into how they view and interact with the world. It’s a big part of why I like games– as a cultural medium, they have so much to say and I really enjoy seeing the kinds of systems people create to interact with for fun.

I’ve been making an effort lately to try to be more aware of the things that influence my opinions and reactions to things, and try to figure out both why I like the things I like and why I dislike the things I don’t like. There’s a whole subset of TV shows that I’m going to flippantly call “professionals being unprofessional” that rub me the wrong way– a lot of dramas and comedies revolving around a particular career tend to frustrate me because it bothers me to see the unprofessional, under-disciplined characters come out on top. It’s possible it’s gotten better, but a lot of early shows in that vein fit the bill of “brilliant X who knows better ignores the rules and turns out to have been right all along”. I have a hard time enjoying that sort of thing.

On the other hand, I recognize the need for conflict and difficulty in a professional drama– I’ve had Law and Order recommended to me a number of times as a seminal work that doesn’t portray trained professionals being unprofessional, and I suppose I’ll have to give it a go at some point.

My thought process right now is all over the place; I’m making connections and analyzing the kinds of things I like. I just caught myself thinking about why I like cooking shows that pit chefs against one another in a fair competition but deeply dislike the ones that add on uneven variables– I adore the original Iron Chef but don’t really like what I’ve seen of Chopped. I feel like there’s a thread there, some link between why I have those opinions about cooking shows and why “professionals being unprofessional” shows bother me, but right now it’s eluding me.

Source: Digital Initiative
Deeply Hidden Threads

I’m watching some really weird anime lately. It’s absolutely hilarious and cannot possibly be summarized in a way that makes any sense to most of the people I know.

I had a conversation with a friend of mine who lives in Hong Kong a few months back. He’s staying in the States for a while and wanted to know if I could recommend any TV shows– whatever’s highly rated lately. I don’t really watch a lot of TV, so I passed on recommendations to him from what I know other people watch. True Detective, Daredevil, Game of Thrones, Orange Is The New Black, Breaking Bad, House of Cards, Parks and Recreation, Battlestar Galactica, The Walking Dead– the kind of stuff I hear about even as someone who doesn’t watch pretty much any TV. I’ve probably forgotten someone’s favorite, but it’s a pretty wide smattering of things that are all highly recommended by a lot of people, and on a variety of topics.

I spoke to him yesterday. He’d watched at least three episodes of everything I recommended, and his take on them was fascinating to me. He found all of them extremely violent, far, far more violent than anything he was used to seeing. At the same time, he thought it was interesting that the romances were (as he put it) so underdeveloped, even in the ones he watched all the way through. He had a number of other comments, and I found his perspective really eye-opening. At first, I had a hard time relating with some of the things he described, and he had a hard time articulating his point of view, not because he isn’t well-spoken, but because it’s difficult to put words to a concept like “this is violent at a very deep level, even when violence isn’t actively happening on screen”.

He described, for example, True Detective as an extremely violent show, not just in the actual acts of violence that are depicted, but in the ways the character move and talk to one another. He said he found the tension extreme, where there was the chance of everything coming to blows at any given moment. I actually have watched True Detective, and I didn’t find it stressful in the same way. He referred me to a number of stories he particularly liked, and while I haven’t had time to watch/read them, I found the references interesting.

I mentioned I’ve been watching some “really weird” anime lately. After talking to my friend, I’m not sure if it’s that the anime is weird or if I just have a skewed perspective. Certainly I can’t in good conscience recommend Scott Pilgrim vs The World to someone who has never played a video game in their life, because an entire cultural subtext is missing that makes the movie charming rather than disjointed and random. I’ve tried to watch Bollywood musicals (they’re all musicals) in the past, and they haven’t clicked, but I see how excited some of my friends get about them and I have to imagine that what’s missing there is the cultural context that makes them click.

I’ve started making an effort to expand my entertainment horizons and try things that aren’t in my usual American framework. The easiest thus far has been anime, just because I already had a foot in that door and it’s easier to get into it here in the States, but I’ve been looking for other things as well. I’ve felt my tastes slowly shifting– I have a continuing disagreement with a friend about the ending of The Wind Rises (I think it’s cathartic and amazing; he thinks it’s disjointed and unsatisfying) and I’ve found myself more seriously evaluating why I like the things I do, and what it is about how I think that makes some things resonate with me and some things not.

That same friend made a comment that really stuck with me, while I was talking about finding ways of enjoying as many different things as possible, finding ways to forge those neural pathways that make certain things resonate with you. He brought up that ever-so-apt adage: “You can’t please everyone”. He’s absolutely right, no single thing will please everyone; it’s more or less impossible.

I don’t think it’s possible for something to please everyone. I do think, however, that it’s possible to become the kind of someone who is pleased by almost everything. I haven’t decided if I think that’s better, or even a worthy goal, but it’s certainly an interesting thought. You would, at least, have a lot of entertainment to choose from.

Source: Digital Initiative
A Someone for Everything

I talked a bit yesterday about FFXIV and how it’s set up like a TV series, with distinct arcs that are broadly akin to seasons, playing out over months until the next one starts up. The first season is the 1-50 game, and like many first seasons, it takes a while to find its feet and, in some cases, loses a lot of people along the way.

The second season has been much stronger, and it ends on a powerful cliffhanger that left me extremely excited about the expansion (the “third season”). I want to talk a little bit about the setup for this, because it’s important to put things in context. If you’re worried about pre-expansion spoilers (and the first few hours of the expansion), here’s a spoiler tag for you, just scroll past to the kitty:

I mentioned previously that you’re a pretty much unstoppable powerhouse by the end of the first couple of major story arcs. It’s something that the game reinforces over and over again– you’re often accompanying diplomats because the people they’re talking to are more likely to listen if they have the world’s most notable badass at their side. In at least one situation, you’re tasked with making a delivery on foot specifically because previous couriers have been ambushed and killed and you’re known to be able to stand up to pretty much anyone. You predictably get ambushed, even your attackers freak out a bit at who they just attacked, and you dispatch them all with contemputous ease, able to identify the assailants for further investigation.

You’re well known, and eventually have a significant reputation. Right at the end of the second arc, just before the expansion, this is all turned on its head. Your reputation is used to put you in a position where you can be framed for a very public crime, and your associates are targeted as accomplices. It’s set up extremely delicately, with the game not telling you what’s going on until it’s too late. For emphasis: the game doesn’t tell you what’s going on until it’s too late. It’s meant to leave you stunned and angry, and it accomplishes this brilliantly. A heinous crime is pinned on you and things go bad quickly, forcing you and your remaining associates to flee. You’re essentially a criminal… except that, as previously mentioned, you’re the most powerful individual anyone knows, and the guards in most cities are terrified of having to face you; they KNOW what you’re capable of, and their masters know their grip on things is tenuous at best, so you’re left to your own devices, just without your organization’s headquarters or resources.

It’s a very effective situation, especially because you can’t protect your associates, and the expansion opens with you fleeing to another country. It’s a brilliant setup, giving you the perfect justification for rebuilding in a new place without robbing you of your previous accomplishments. Some people here know you, most don’t, and you can carve out a reputation here once more, all while taking the occasional trip back to your homelands to work on fixing what you lost.

There are a lot of things that the game could have strung you along with– there are plenty of loose ends left just prior to the expansion, but the story does a good job of tying them up without making you wait. Each one has a build, and there’s an overall arc to things– it doesn’t feel like you do your time in the expansion and then get the payoff at the end, nor is everything neatly wrapped up leaving you to explore this strange new world for unknown reasons.

I think we’re good on the spoilers I need; here’s the kitty:

 

Heavensward could easily have ignored everything that came before it; that old content doesn’t matter, you don’t need to bother with it, feel free to move onto the new cool stuff and forget the old. It’s been the WoW expansion model for a decade now, with very, very little that players do actually carrying over from one expansion to the next. If you’re lucky, an NPC or two will “remember you from somewhere”, but if you opted to, say, do dungeons from 1-80 and then pick up the 80-90 game, odds are good the story starting at level 80 and carrying you to 90 will make perfect sense.

The message in FFXIV is that you are powerful, and you take part in a lot of interesting things, but you’re still only one person, and it’s very difficult to change the entire world as just one person. It’s a narrative that suits the overall feel of the game, when there are hundreds or thousands of other players around you. There isn’t a sense that you’re a unique snowflake– you’re clearly special, but there are many people in the world who are special. It keeps the MMO conceit functional without making you feel irrelevant.

Archeage got me thinking down this path. In Archeage, your part in things is special, but you’re one special person out of many, and in some cases not even necessarily that significant. It suits the open-world sandbox game style, where maybe you strike out and become an adventurer or maybe you settle down on a farm and raise chickens. It’s a big world with a lot of moving parts that you are not the center of, and as a result it’s much more believable as a world. More specifically, it’s a world you can be a part of, not necessarily a game you can play and beat.

FFXIV doesn’t do the sandbox thing, but it does a lot of work and pays a lot of attention to the little details that make it feel more like a world. The narrative outright tells you that while you’re an important player in the world, you’re not the center of the universe and things are happening that you aren’t necessarily a part of, and in some cases can’t contribute meaningfully to. Some of the best moments are ones where you, despite your unstoppable badassery, can’t actually DO anything, because you aren’t in a position to talk politics, or move vast sums of money, or conjure food from nothingness for ten thousand hungry people.

The game lets you gently sway from feeling powerful to feeling powerless, and so the moments in the story where a target appears– where you can flex your muscles and punch/stab/blast faces– are extremely satisfying. This… THIS is a problem you can solve, and you are the best in the world at it. It’s a form of friction, only in the narrative rather than the gameplay. You don’t always have control, so you appreciate the times when you can seize control for yourself.

I talk a lot about how important friction is to games. Too much and players get frustrated, too little and they get bored. The very best storytelling, like the very best games, strike a balance where you’re not just being fed victory after victory on a silver platter and are hailed as a Big Damn Hero everywhere you go, nor are you forever stymied as a fourth-string player in a production you’re barely even noticed in. FFXIV straddles the line magnificently, providing genuine but believable frustration and moments of catharsis. There may be ten thousand starving people, but there’s also an invading army at their doorstep. I can’t feed them, but I can sure as hell go fight an army. I’m aware that there are problems I can’t fix, so I appreciate the ones I can, and it makes the world feel more real.

The player doesn’t need to constantly be the hero, the center of the universe. It’s an ego trip that works in a shorter-form game, but in a longer game, one that lasts months or years, that center-of-the-universe schtick wears thin.

Source: Digital Initiative
FFXIV and MMO Storytelling (Part 2: Heavensward)