highlights

The Playlist / Those Tenuous Twos

  • Reading time:23 mins read

by [name redacted]

You may have read the first part of this column in the December 2009 Play Magazine. It was intended as a single article, and the start of a whole series of such lists. In the event, I was asked (due to my incorrigible verbosity) to break the article into three pieces; only the first found its way to print. Here is the column in full.

Used to be, when a game was successful enough to demand a sequel, the design team would do its best to avoid repeating itself. Though I’m sure they mostly wanted to keep their job interesting, the practical effect was that if the games were different, they would both remain relevant. In an arcade, Donkey Kong Jr. could stand handsomely by its father, each shilling for its own share of the coin. You might call them companion pieces, rather than updates or replacements.

When home consoles hit, design teams were even more modest, and were generally left to do their own thing. So starting on the NES, you will see a certain trend: successful game spawns weird, only tenuously related sequel; fans of the original scratch their heads; a greatly expanded dev team releases a third game, which is basically just the first again, on steroids; fans think it’s the best thing ever, because it’s exactly the same, except better! And to hell with that weird second chapter.

Thing is… usually the second game is the most interesting you’ll ever see.

Catharsis Is Not Enough

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in, I believe, the October issue of Play Magazine.

A new study of gamer health, conducted by the Federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory and Andrews Universities and published in the October issue of the American Journal of Preventative Medicine, observes a correlation between extensive videogame use, obesity, and depression.

The expectation going in was that gamers would tend to have a higher body mass index, and “a greater number of poor mental health days” than non-gamers; after studying 552 adults in and around Seattle, that assumption looks pretty much true.

Brütal Irony

  • Reading time:2 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in, I believe, the September issue of Play Magazine.

Remember last year, when the newly-merged Activision Blizzard decided to shuck itself of properties unlikely to lead to a major franchise? Suddenly several high-profile one-off projects like Ghostbusters were left without a publisher. Though most quickly found a new host, Tim Schafer and Double Fine’s heavy metal adventure Brütal Legend was left grasping. In December the recently progressive Electronic Arts stepped up, and all seemed back on track.

Or maybe not.

Crowded Field, Modest Diversity Slowly Implodes Industry

  • Reading time:3 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published in, I believe, the August issue of Play Magazine, split into a few blurbs across a two-page spread. I thought it rather worked in that format.

While everyone is freaking out about the economy, some trends are older and more reliable. Over the last decade, as the game industry has become big business and budgets have skyrocketed, yet everyone has continued to produce more less the same material, more and more groups and individuals have had to compromise.

The Exposition Tyrant

  • Reading time:2 mins read

That tutorial in Mirror’s Edge… good grief. After a month with the game, I figured out something that is absolutely basic, yet I never clicked on before.

It’s the leg-tuck maneuver, which I knew was there, but I was led to think its use was limited to getting over really close call leaps, for instance if you’re jumping over barbed wire. It turns out it’s useful for everything. It lets you jump onto platforms more easily: lift up your legs to get more clearance. Places where I kept getting randomly snagged when clamboring around, now I can get past without slowing down.

The tutorial, again, made no effort to explain why this move is important or how it works. It just went, PRESS THIS NOW. NO! DO IT AGAIN! (But first watch this cutscene.) NO, DO IT AGAIN! (But first watch this cutscene.) It was like playing Call of Duty 4.

Ideally you’d be following that girl without any real break in the flow, and you’d have Valve-like “Press LT to tuck your legs” prompts passively pop up in the corner. Then you’d get subtly graded. If you did it wrong, it would say “You’re doing it wrong,” and the girl would explain the theory. “Lift your legs, girl! You gonna get tripped up!” Then she’d keep going. If you felt you needed more practice, you could just replay the tutorial. They could give the option at the end.

If you executed it very well, you’d get some kind of affirmation. Maybe just a “hell yeah!” from the girl. If you did all right, it would be something less exuberent. Or just nothing.

And heck, maybe they could string safety nets between the buildings, for the tutorial? Again, just to keep the flow?

The Humanism of Verfremdungseffect

  • Reading time:3 mins read

Objectively, most Doctor Who is pretty crap. So it seems silly to get particular about what’s more crap than what, when you can just be watching and enjoying it for what it is, and reading in what you want to read in.

It’s the spirit and the ideas behind any given serial that grab me. The execution is never even close to adequate in the best cases, so who cares if it’s a shade shabbier or shinier. You just have to be affectionate. It’s the only sane way to go.

Personally, I find the McCoy era warmer than any era since Troughton and more rich with ideas than just about any period since Hartnell. So it’s a winner in that regard.

Thing is, in the end objectivity is an absurd thing to take into account.

Rarely is Doctor Who directed well. Rarely is it acted particularly well. Rarely are the costumes or sets or effects close to convincing. When they are, the lighting gets in the way or the staging makes a mockery of any sense of verisimilitude. Only occasionally is it written with more than passable skill and the faintest inspiration to color outside the lines. Rarely does any story actually take advantage of the format.

Yet the show has heart, and sometimes it’s got some real ambition. Usually it’s in those moments that the practical elements all conspire to ensure failure. But so what?

You just have to watch the show as if you’re watching your local theater troupe. You know these people. You believe in them. You know the odds they’re up against, in portraying what they want to portray. So what if the lighting was a smidge more professional last week; it’ll never be Kubrick, and you’re only making an ass of yourself by expecting it. What you should be paying attention to is the humanity behind it all. And that’s where this show excels.

That’s also why I tend to find any flaws more hilarious than distracting. I’m not working under the bizarre notion that this show needs to meet any kind of objective standard to be worthwhile. All it has to do is engage my humanity — and there’s nothing more human than failure, or more funny than failure at something as unimportant as showmanship. Hell, Kurt Weill would be thrilled. Not all the praise for B-movies is ironic. See the affection in Burton’s Ed Wood.

The show’s abject failure at convincing showmanship is almost universal. It’s a bit more prominent in the late ’80s, but draw your own silly metaphor about degrees of gray. Again, I also find the same period warmer and more inspired than most. However poorly executed it is, it’s patently obvious that the show is being made with sincerity. And that’s the most important thing ever. That, there, is what life is all about.

Annie Which Way

  • Reading time:4 mins read

I’m thinking that it’s the shortcuts an artist takes that tend to date a work. I’ve had Smooth Criminal in my head for a litlte while. And it’s an excellent song, for what it is. It’s well-written — but the entirety of that album is cheap synthesizers, with MJ singing on top.

That song could have been properly orchestrated and performed. And you could trace what decade it came from, stylistically, but it wouldn’t sound “dated”, in the sense that it’s somehow… no longer as relevant? The synth is so cheap and tinny that it’s distracting. And again, the entire album is kind of like that. It was a way for Jackson to have complete control over what he was doing. Which is fine, but then he didn’t go back and flesh it out. The synth was “good enough”. So twenty years later, it sounds like a bit of a cop-out.

And I’m just projecting here, but it strikes me that many of the things that seem laughable or outdated in film or music or videogames are similarly cheap compromises. Some kind of a contemporary easy solution. Whereas the things that still seem relevant today, however you might trace them to a particular era stylistically, tend to find all their own custom solutions to their problems: The Maltese Falcon; The Good, the Bad and the Ugly; a lot of the later-on Beatles stuff.

There are phases that a medium goes through, artistically. Pop trends in simple solutions. Videogames go through a lot of them. “Oh, here’s the proper way to deal with this.” Which is one of the things that bugs the hell out of me with that Ludology business.

Ludology is the academic study of videogames. Which is, you know… it generally tries to be very objective, in studying what videogames are, and how they work right now, and what has been done before, and how to hone that model. It’s proscriptive by implication of description. So what it tends to do is it objectifies videogames as an end unto themselves. As opposed to, you know, exploring how this tool set might be used to say something new or interesting. And it’s got that whole academic sniffiness about it, just to make it the more obnoxious.

An analytical breakdown is useful, but in context. In service to a greater goal. Videogames are about communication, as is all art. Though to a certain extent more overtly than most. Any analysis should be about exploring the mechancis and ramifications of that discussion. Rather than focused on What Videogames Are.

Anyway. I guess this kind of ties into the shortcut thing — the objective treatment of a work, using the standards of the day, tends to in the long run turn the work into a bit of an artifact. So. Basically, there’s something complex going on when you throw a band-aid on and say “yeah, this’ll work.” In a few years, the patchwork will become opaque, and it will begin to define your work.

And that’s also how genres get dumb, when people say “Oh, I like that — I’m going to do something just like it!” That’s the same thing. You’re taking someone else’s solution and applying it out of context. You’re taking a subjective goal and treating it objectively. Until the solutions begin to define what things are, rather than what they’re trying to solve.

What’s amazing about something like The Maltese Falcon — the Huston version — is that there are virtually no shortcuts. There’s pretty much never a sense that anyone involved just pulled something off the shelf and said “okay, this takes care of that. No one will notice.” Even though it’s the third version of the same movie to be made by the same studio, in under ten years. So you come at it now, and everything feels like they’re figuring it out for the first time, on their feet. Everything is custom-tailored to the situation. And it’s gripping and relevant and alive, every time you see it. And this is what makes a work timeless.

Where is Zar? Zar is gone.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

Classic screenwriting (both film and TV) does take on something of a middle school essay structure, doesn’t it. Tell the audience what you’re going to do, do it, tell the audience what you just did. I guess with a new medium it’s seen as necessary. Then when people get more comfortable with the grammar, you can stop patronizing them and get down to business.

What’s weird about videogames is that mainstream games at least have kind of gone the other way. Now you buy a top-shelf console game, you won’t even be allowed to play it properly for the first half hour. Unless it’s Zelda. Then you might have to wait three or four hours before you get started. Whereas in 1987… plop. There you are. Make sense of it the best you can.

Is there a good reason in there to assume the audience has, on average, grown less sophisticated over the last twenty years? And Wii Fit aside (which is kind of a different issue), is there much evidence that patronizing the audience leads to greater sales? Generally the only people who buy videogames are people who buy videogames (which is where Iwata comes into the discussion, and then leaves by the back door). And generally they only get to play them after they’ve made a purchase.

It’s one thing to make a game accessible. Not to overburden the player with complications right from the start. That’s just good design.
The hand-holding that’s been going on, the last ten years though — that’s something else. Something insidiously banal. It’s not just that the art hasn’t been progressing since 1998; it’s been moving backward.

Lacking the How-Do Ken

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I wish it were still possible to go into an arcade and wander around, seeing new things, doing things I hadn’t done before in a videogame. Like when the arcade was full of new things like Rolling Thunder and Double Dragon.

I remember what a revelation it was that you could run over and pick up the bat, or duck behind the tires. And any multiplayer was generally cooperative. You watch someone play, you think “hey, that looks neat”, and you jump in to help him.

When Street Fighter II was new, I could just go in and play it the way I’d play Final Fight. It was like a complicated eight-stage boss run.

Then everything became about penises, and today there’s no point even going into arcades anymore. The moment you start up a game, someone more obsessive sidles up to punish you for the affrontery and take over the machine. It would be neat to go out and see some of these new games, like Street Fighter IV and KOF XII, but the novelties have mostly become a thing of nuance. And if I’m not going to be allowed to play them unmolested, and study them at my own leisure, why bother? I’ve got enough things waiting in line to irritate me, without actively seeking them.

The thing is, this is all an aberration. Today the hardcore competitive aspect has gained dominance, but that’s what happens to unchecked hardcore competitive anythings, usually to their eventual downfall outside of that core group that enjoys butting heads. Some people just like to eat their soup without others homing in and pissing in it. I’d wager they would stand in the majority, actually…

Doesn’t help that games are rarely just a quarter anymore. I spend my dollar, whatever, I want to get the most out of it. If I choose not to pay the panhandler, I don’t want to get chased for a block and shouted at. (Which may sound familiar to San Francisco residents.) Maybe it would be different if there were, like, a set fee that you pay going in the door. But on a pay-by-play basis, fuck that.

If there’s a reason that arcades barely exist anymore — well, I’d put this at the top of the list.

The Process

  • Reading time:9 mins read

Following some earlier points, a forum I frequent saw some discussion on the apparent deification of the Doctor over the last few series of Doctor Who. Someone strongly objected to what he saw as Davies’ “all-powerful, all-knowing, ‘he’s a Time Lord, he can do anything’ approach to the Doctor”. Thing is, that’s not really what’s going on.

Generally Davies tries to undermine that concept, and show that it’s just bravado. Both in and out of the fiction, that myth is just the way that people perceive him, and the image he tries to project.

There’s a long discussion of this on one of the Moffat commentaries, amongst Davies, Tennant, and Moffat himself. They talk about how, for all of the facade he puts on, all the mythology that springs up around him, some of which he encourages, there’s nothing really special about the Doctor. His only real asset is that he can (usually) talk his way into anything.

“He’s almost a charlatan,” Moffat said, “in a good way. He poses as this god-like figure, but he’s just a bloke under there.”

Man and Myth

So much of the new series is about people’s perceptions of the Doctor, counterposed with the reality of the Doctor. This is precisely what “The Girl in the Fireplace” is about. Look at the way Reinette mythologized the Doctor in her own mind, and turned him into this huge figure from her childhood, a man of magic and awe. And there he was, just bumbling around, doing his thing as best as he could. Occasionally showing off. Occasionally acting like a complete ass.

And we, as adult viewers, see both sides. We know that the Doctor is just this guy, doing the best he can, yet we also know him as a figure of myth and legend who brings us monsters and death, because that’s what he chases and that’s what we tune in for — but then he does his best to put it right, and usually succeeds.

It’s not that he’s innately special; he just operates on a different plane from what most people see as normal life. Specifically, he lives the life of the protagonist to a long-running TV fantasy adventure. In that, he sees things that most people don’t see, and does things that most people don’t do. And to be credulous and put ourselves in the weekly companion role, that allows him to introduce us to fear and wonder, and just maybe expand our perspectives, with the assurance that everything will be all right in the end. Roughly. Usually.

So basically the new series is just being postmodern, and aware of itself as a modern myth. And it toys with that. (See “Love & Monsters”, that Clive guy in “Rose”.) Granted, in execution it’s gotten a bit lazy of late… But going by the commentary, everyone still seems to be working on the same wavelength they were in 2005.

Jesus Guises

Of course, “Forest of the Dead” plays a lot with the notion of an all-powerful Doctor, from River Song’s tale of the man Tennant becomes to his apparently new ability to enter the TARDIS by snapping his fingers. As far as River Song is concerned, though, that’s her mythologizing him again. It’s just her own personal impression of the man. Assuming she’s referring to a particular event, and knowing how the Doctor does things, you can imagine the sort of circumstance in which a whole army would run from him. As much as she talks it up, the actual event was probably some bizarre and desperate slight of hand on the Doctor’s part. Yet it sounds impressive if you don’t know the details! As things do.

Everyone believes in the Wizard of Oz, but he’s just a schmuck behind a curtain.

The snap is a little different. I halfway expected that to be revealed as Donna opening the door for him, but no. Then again, you know. TARDIS. It likes him. If anything is truly special, it’s his box. With a little thought, given the Doctor’s bond with the TARDIS, the snapping really isn’t that remarkable. It’s a bit of a parlor trick, really. Consider that Rose flew the thing just by staring into its console and wishing.

Then there’s that ridiculous floaty denoument from last year, which a lot of people point to. That’s not a good example either. It really, really wasn’t executed well, but that’s supposed to be about the power of humanity and hope and faith (to contrast with the Master’s message of despair), with the Doctor as just a focal point of all of those emotions. It’s only in encouraging everyone to believe in him, in becoming a legend, that he gained his power — which is sort of the concept I’ve been talking about, except made clumsily explicit and practical.

Bibliocranium

The encyclopedic knowledge business is getting tiresome, however. “Silence in the Library” is probably the worst offender yet, on this front. As “Midnight” shows, often it’s dramatically better not to have a clue what you’re facing.

The problem, as I see it, in the Doctor already knowing what he’s facing most of the time is that it removes a sense of discovery and danger and wonder from the proceedings, and all the emotions and ideas those might conjure up, and skips right to the business of solving things — a process that the new series (rightly) considers so obligatory as to use all of these shortcuts (sonic, psychic paper) to speed it along.

It’s meaningless to hear someone name something fictional, then watch him fiddle together some random fictional nonsense to defeat it. What really gets the head and heart going is something like The Empty Child, where — although there are hints along the way, and the Doctor may have more or less figured it out by halfway through episode two — the threat largely remains undefined until the end of the story, leaving the protagonists to react the best they can to their immediate circumstances.

Which isn’t to say that every story need be a mystery; it’s just that having bottomless resources is boring, especially when all you’re conjuring up and babbling about is fictional fact. Show, don’t tell! If the Doctor has seen it all before and can defuse any situation by pulling random convenient facts out of his hat, that basically tells us that what is happening right now doesn’t actually matter; that the show is just a sequence of doors and keys, and the Doctor already has most of the keys on file. So why are we watching it?

Keys are for Doors; Heads are for Thinking

You can do a certain amount of this with a smirk and call it postmodern, but you have to be deliberate and do it well — as in “Rose” or “Aliens of London”. “Doomsday” treads a bit close, but gets away with it on the basis of sheer chutzpah. Lately, I think the handwaving has just become a smug excuse.

It’s a similar feeling to what I get with post-NES era Nintendo games — Zelda, Mario, Metroid. It’s all about hunting for the correct key to pass the appropriate tile, and moving on to the next section. Interpretation, picking away at the cracks, the sense of endless possibility you get in something like the original Zelda or Metroid — all gone, in the face of cold, arbitrary mechanics. Which ties into the whole modern fallacy of the Videogame, that assumes that doing things, simply pressing buttons, is and should be rewarding in and of itself.

Mind, this isn’t a crippling problem with the show — yet. As I said, though, it is getting a bit tiresome. And I think this year in particular, it’s starting to undermine the storytelling. As with the dismissal of killer shadows as “Vashta Nerada — the piranhas of the air!” God, what’s more interesting: shadows that can KILL you, or some kind of gestalt entity with a pretentious name, that the Doctor conveniently knows how to detect and whose canned history he can spin off at a drop of his bottomless hat?

Finding and Doing

So basically, yeah. I see the things that people are complaining about. I just think the explanation is a bit off. The Doctor isn’t particularly powerful; he’s just arrogant. The sonic screwdriver and psychic paper and occasional ironic doodad like anti-plastic work in the favor of efficient storytelling. Take away his ability to quickly solve problems and the story will become cluttered with meaningless procedure.

Take away his ability to quickly identify problems, though, and stories may become far richer. Allow him to dismiss any scenario by identifying it off the bat, and unless the writer really knows what he’s doing, the entire story is in danger of collapsing into meaningless procedure.

I’m reminded of an old review of the Dreamcast version of Ecco the Dolphin (narrated by Tom Baker, don’t you know). It’s a beautiful, atmospheric game with a clever story by David Brin. I’ve described it more than once as an underwater Shenmue. The problem is that it’s just about imposible to play. You can know exactly what you have to do (and it’s usually not that tricky to figure out), and still you need to fight with the game for half an hour, trying and dying and trying and dying and waiting for the game to reload each time, to get through a simple hazard.

I think it was an IGN review that praised the game’s difficulty, saying it was the perfect balance — you always know what you need to do, and the challenge just comes in doing it!

… What? Just, what? I mean, granted, IGN. These guys probably give extra points to a game that comes in a bigger box because it looks more impressive on the shelf. But what?!

Meaning comes from extended and nuanced exploration of a topic. Yet you have to balance the reward of any insight against the frustration involved in realizing it. You don’t want to labor too much in the exploration or in the solution; smack your hand too long on anything, and you will lose grip on the threads you’re grasping, along with any sense of perspective you might have been developing. What you want is to cover as much ground and see as many sides of the issue as you can, collecting strands and weaving them together until you’ve completed the picture as well as you may.

In all things, logic should be always a method; not an impediment, not an answer. When process becomes a barrier to development, or is mistaken for development itself, there is an inherent flaw in the system.

Incidentally, it’s out today.

  • Reading time:2 mins read

I was invited to the launch party for Star Soldier R, a couple of days ago, in an informal capacity. It was pretty great, actually. I sat and chatted with the new president of Hudson USA, whose name escapes me, for quite a while. And the game is pretty good, for what it is — which is a sort of score attack thing, not unlike Pac-Man CE. I asked, in all fatuousness, if it came with one of those Takahashi Meijin tap-timing controllers — and… it sort of does, in that there’s a special game mode for that.

Eventually there was a competition for the highest score in 2-minute mode — and I came in second place! That’s out of the few-dozen people there. Maybe thirty, forty, fifty people? The guy ahead of me chose, as his prize, a six-month supply of beef. Which I’m sure he will enjoy! I chose six months of coffee, and the third-place winner (whom I sort of know) was left with a supply of barbecue sauce.

It’s a good thing that I recently began to drink coffee — if irregularly.

As we left, everyone was expected to take a gift bag; as many did not, I found an extra one ceremoniously shoved into my hand, meaning that I also wound up with an extensive cache of wine, cookies, and chocolate.

All in all, a profitable evening.

Incredulity as Metanarrative Itself

  • Reading time:5 mins read

I find it bizarre that people often describe the original series of Doctor Who as more sophisticated than the new one. For its time, depending on exactly what we’re talking about, perhaps there’s an argument. Yet TV writing has come a long way in the last twenty years, and the new series is right up there. Thematically, in terms of narrative and metanarrative and characterization, the new series is at times some of the most sophisticated stuff currently on TV. Especially Davies’ episodes.

As great as it can be at times and for its time (some of the Hartnell era and season seven in particular), the classic series rarely aspires to more than pulp and generally only transcends that through sheer force of good nature. What themes are there tend to be pretty much on the surface, or else rather clumsy and obvious. (See The Green Death, which is held up as a beacon of subtext.) In varying quantities, and again qualified by the standards of TV writing of the time, you can make some good arguments for parts of the Hartnell, Pertwee, and McCoy eras. I’m really not sure what hidden insights you might find in Fury of the Deep, however.

Not that this is a negative in its own right; something doesn’t have to be great literature to be entertaining, and the original series has charm by the bucketload. Usually. Whenever Philip Martin isn’t involved. Further, it’s senseless to criticize a thing for failing to succeed at that which it never even intends to do, especially if its ambition is respectable enough for its context. Yet, there we are. Different ambitions at play. And on a narrative level, the new series is, broadly speaking, both way more ambitious and far more sophisticated, as in part dictated by the different climate in which it’s being made.

Granted, most of the new series episodes not written by Davies or Moffat are also a bit skint on subtext that’s not so blunt it might as well be supertext. Scrolling, blinking captions, at the bottom of the screen. Sometimes they’re a bit skint on text, even. Even Cornell, as great as his stuff is on first viewing, has very little going on under the surface. I was a bit surprised that I still enjoyed “The Fires of Pompeii” after a couple of further viewings, and found some new things to focus on; it seemed like it might have blown its load (no pun intended) on the first impression, rather like “School Reunion” or “The Shakespeare Code”. Still, Davies forms the template. And Moffat plays along, as he simultaneously does his own thing.

One of the big dividing factors is that the new series has an overarching philosophy and message to it, instantiated, challenged, and developed to varying degrees in at least most “key” episodes — that being a postmodern, essentially atheistic critique of modern cultural tropes, weighed against a devout sense of humanism.

Taken from Wikipedia, Jean-François Lyotard wrote: Simplifying to the extreme, I define postmodern as incredulity toward metanarratives. This incredulity is undoubtedly a product of progress in the sciences: but that progress in turn presupposes it. To the obsolescence of the metanarrative apparatus of legitimation corresponds, most notably, the crisis of metaphysical philosophy and of the university institution which in the past relied on it. The narrative function is losing its functors, its great hero, its great dangers, its great voyages, its great goal. It is being dispersed in clouds of narrative language elements–narrative, but also denotative, prescriptive, descriptive, and so on. Where, after the metanarratives, can legitimacy reside?

Emphasis added. If there is one overt defining feature of the new series — one that annoys the hell out of some classic series fans (perhaps understandably, since the bulk of the “classic” series, especially in the more popular eras, does little but revel in metanarrative for its own sake, understandable itself for the context in which it was produced) is utter irreverence toward metanarrative, at times bordering on contempt. Thus, the “overuse” of the sonic screwdriver and psychic paper, flippant get-out-of-jail-free plot cheats like the cliffhanger non-resolution at the start of “The Sound of Drums”, and fast-forward exposition as at the start of “Rose”. Plus, you know, the lack of plot — plot being one of the huge metanarrative structures that has, as an institution, gone beyond its functional purpose for organizing the crucial subjective elements of story (themes and character development) into the sort of tool fetishism that makes contemporary videogames so very boring.

What Davies has done that is clever on more than one level is that he has taken the incredulous structure of a postmodern approach, and with all the faith in the world anchored it with the one thing that he feels the most strongly about, and that he clearly feels defines Doctor Who as a narrative: an utter faith in humanity to find its way, at the end of the day, provided just enough of a window to see outside itself and its own petty momentary neuroses.

Of course, people are fragile and imperfect and there will always be a battle. The stupid apes need to be challenged, and that’s what the Doctor is for. (Of course, in this version of the show the Doctor equally well needs to be challenged, and that’s what humanity is for.) Yet given that opportunity, they are full of such potential. All it takes is a bit of insight and a bit of motivation, and you can break out of all the structures and guidelines that you think define your life (the postmodern part), and change the world. Or at least your own personal world.

And for a show fundamentally aimed at kids, this is a pretty amazing message to spin.

The Remake of Samus

  • Reading time:4 mins read

Someone put a lot of effort into addressing the common complaint that the entire Metroid series isn’t exactly like Super Metroid, with different maps.

You know what a Metroid II remake would really need? Complex lighting. And lack thereof.

Lack of ambient lighting, a lot of the time. You’d get some from lava, from certain bioluminescent materials, and whatnot. Maybe some areas would be brightly lit. Mostly, though, and at times exclusively, you’d be relying on a certain tapering bubble of light around Samus. Outside of that you’d get a vague hint of shapes and motion. This would also give the game a somewhat monochrome appearance.

Maybe the more injured Samus is, the smaller the window or the dimmer the light, or the more flickery.

Heck, maybe phaser shots would set things on fire, creating light and attracting/distracting certain monsters.

Maybe, instead of a map, a way of marking the terrain. So you’d know if you’d been somewhere. Like, if the spider ball were to leave a faint residue behind…

Shepard: You could even have upgrades that enhance how much light Samus gives off, as an extra bonus.
Like maybe your gun shots are a little more sparkly now.

Me: I can see an argument for adding the charge shot.
Just hold the charge to light the room, pretty much.

Shepard: Try to tune it so that Samus’s ambient light increases as the environmental light decreases.
So at the beginning you’ve got all these fungi and lava pits and glowbugs.
And by the end it’s just… a dead pit.
Maybe the occasional nigh-dead Chozo lamp.

Me: I like how a lot of the natural lighting will be a deep, threatening red.
From all the lava.

Shepard: Mmm.

Me: A lot of the game, where there’s color, it will seem tinted.
Oh heck. And light would generally just show the surface of things. So outside a certain number of pixels (one “block” or so), walls would be flat black.

Shepard: Yeah.

Me: A narrow, well-lit corridor would still leave half the screen dark.
Creating a sort of letterboxed, managed feeling to the space.

Shepard: I wonder how that would look if you had the rare, fully-lit-even-penetrating-the-tiles room, for Chozo Artifact rooms.
I get the feeling players would want to just chill out in those rooms.

Me: That would seem comparably tranquil, wouldn’t it. especially if the light were to have a sort of ethereal, light blue cast to it.

Me: I want to play this now.
Heck, this sounds closer to what Metroid should be doing in general.

Shepard: It is warm inside the power suit.
Everywhere else is cold.

Me: The third game set too much of a template for laying everything out in front of you like a videogame. Here’s this kind of tile, which needs this kind of key to break. You need this to get through here. Everything laid out clearly; you just have to go through the motions. All very rational. Of course, it’s a lot less obnoxious about this than other games that followed (and preceded it). Still, Metroid shouldn’t be an action puzzle game. It’s supposed to be mysterious, oppressive, anxious, and a little wonderful.
The first two games have this.
Fusion does, a little, in its completely different way.
Prime does, pretty much. The first one.

Shepard: It turned “do it because I said so” into the actual story.

To add to earlier ideas: surfaces glisten. So (depending on the potency of a light source and the reflectivity of a material) to things just outside the range of full lighting, you’d still get some faint one-pixel-wide reflection off any surface parallel to the light source, partially outlining an otherwise black mass. Which would be incredible if there were several living things around the edges of the screen.

Combine this with the business about spider balls leaving residue, and there’s a lot of complex stuff going on with edges.

Maybe an infrared visor upgrade, that you can toggle. Danger of flaring sometimes, especially when you’re shooting. When exploring and travelling, generally speeds things up.

On Monsters

  • Reading time:5 mins read

A good monster isn’t just a neat design and a memorable catch phrase; it taps into some deep and basic human anxiety and makes it animate. This is the nature of horror. The Daleks do this; the Cybermen do this.

The Master, as a villain, works dramatically because of his classic archetype: he’s just like the hero, except bad. He just serves to make the audience hate him, out of loyalty to the protagonist. Which is a strong way to go. Anger is just as good as fear.

Out of the new series, the Slitheen probably come the closest to something significant, in a children’s book sense: the idea of adults (especially petty, hypocritical adults) being ridiculous, childish monsters in disguise. Which children all know anyway, but here it is, made real! On that note…

Regarding Daleks

What makes Daleks work is that they embody more than pure nastiness. They’re pure, shrill, unreasonable nastiness. In theory at least, there’s no arguing with a Dalek; there’s no chance of discussion, no chance of compassion. They simply out-and-out hate you for the fact of being you. Whoever and whatever you are, if they get the notion and the chance, they will kill you out of that blind rage just because they can. And there’s very little stopping them.

This is the substance of many of my nightmares: accidentally crossing someone threatening, then doing everything I can to ease the situation, yet everything I say or do just digs me in deeper, makes the threatening person angrier, more violent, more crazed. And there’s nothing I can do to escape or halt the fury. This feeling is something that children, in particular, should understand well. Both the Slitheen and the Daleks call on senses of adults and authority at their worst; they just take different routes to a similar point.

Of course in execution they’re both more adorable than anything. Still…

While we’re here: although Davros is an interesting character, I’m not sure what he really has to offer on a primal level. He’s more of an abstract concept. And not even a very good abstract concept; I’m not sure that the Daleks need a creator, or that we need to meet him. That’s got nothing to do with what makes the Daleks work. Davros does have a right winning personality, of course. That’s pretty much what makes him. And that’s probably why the Big Finish audios are where he really shines.

The Boogieman vs. Dramatic Conceit vs. Mundane Menace

Doctor Who has a lot of “monsters” and villains like this, based on dramatic or thematic concepts rather than anxieties. Sometimes they can be rather sophisticated, as with the Silurians and Sea Devils: good conceits and neat designs, that don’t really have much in terms of boogieman credentials. So (aside from them looking and behaving oddly) there’s nothing really scary about them; they’re just interesting points of discussion.

Then there’s this third tier of monsters, just designed to look interesting and have a slightly alien culture or behavior. In the new series, the Ood are of about the same level as the Ice Warriors or Yeti or Sontarans. Well-developed and often nicely designed, yet (unless used in an insightful way) ultimately meaningless either from a primal or a dramatic perspective. They’re just pure abstraction, for the sake of having an original monster. With some of these, there is potential to pull a Silurians and justify them dramatically; it’s just not happened yet.

Someone objected that the Ood are clearly on a level far below the Ice Warriors or Sontarans, because as with the Yeti or Autons they have no self-determination. Which kind of misses the point, I think; neither do Cybermen and Daleks, really, classically. If anything, Ice Warriors and Sontarans are less of an interesting threat in that they are rational and they have their own agendas that don’t necessarily have anything to do with you personally. Neat designs, certainly. Yet they’re not boogiemen; they’re not out to scare you or get you. They’re just bullies and jerks. Keep out of their way and you’re probably fine. And again, they’re pretty much just dramatic placeholders. One proud warrior race is as good as another.

On the other hand, Autons do work (though I keep forgetting about them) because mannequins are sort of creepy to start with. It’s pretty common to see one out of the corner of your eye and not realize it’s a dummy until you turn and look at it full-on. The Autons to some extent seem to justify that existing fear. It’s not even just about mannequins, though they’re a convenient embodiment of that kind of fear. Imagining that (plausibly threatening) things are animate. Signs of life where there shouldn’t be, yet you fear there might be. Ties in to fear of shadows and snapping of twigs in the forest.

Curiously, all three of Moffat’s threats have been of the boogieman variety. They’re just so story-specific that they can’t easily be used again.

The New Generation – Part Three: Infrastructure

  • Reading time:20 mins read

by [name redacted]

Originally published by Next Generation.

Videogames are finally finding their way. They’re moving in small steps, yet whether by need or inspiration change is in the air – a whole generational shift, an inevitable one. It’s the kind of shift that happened to film when the studio system broke down, or painting broke out of academia and… well, the studio again. In short, people are starting to get over videogames for their own sake and starting to look at them constructively – which first means breaking them down, apart from and within their cultural, historical, and personal context. When you strip out all the clutter and find a conceptual focus, you can put the pieces back together around that focus, to magnify it and take advantage of its expressive potential.

Over the previous two installments we discussed some of the voices heralding the change, and some of the works that exemplify it. In this third and final chapter, we will cast our net wider, and examine some of the cultural or circumstantial elements that either led to this shift, reflect it, help to sustain and promulgate it, or promise to, should all go well. This is, in short, the state of the world in which a generational shift can occur.