The Brainy Gamer

More reasons not to play GTA IV

I started playing Grand Theft Auto IV the day after it was released and immediately devoted about six hours to it. I had to stop because I was in the middle of another game - The World Ends With You - and was committed to reviewing it for PopMatters (to be posted there soon). I knew as soon as I finished TWEWY I would get right back to GTA IV.

Then Mario Kart Wii came along, and although I have mixed feelings about the game, I had to try out the new wheel. Plus, it's the one new title my wife has been eagerly awaiting. Well, that and the Dancing With the Stars game (with motion controls!), but that's an entirely different and excruciating story. So we played the heck out of MKW for a couple of days and scratched that itch. Back to GTA IV.

Except then an orange Gamefly envelope arrived with a sparkling new copy of Boom Blox in it. Well, I thought, let's just take a quick look and see what Mr. Spielberg can do with a video game. Two days later I'm halfway through the story mode, building my own levels, and suffering from a fairly painful case of "Boom Blox Elbow." Meanwhile, my GTA IV game case sits next to me, with Niko glaring at me from his little top middle square.

That was yesterday. Today was to be all about Liberty City. We put the baby to bed early. My wife went upstairs to watch the Dancing With the Stars semi-finals, so I had the living room all to myself. I'd already decided to start the game over from the beginning (I'm crazy that way), so I thought it might be fun to re-read Edge Magazine's recent cover story on the making of the game. Big mistake.

The article immediately preceding the GTA piece is a short feature on David Braben's Frontier Developments studio and their new game Lost Winds, one of the release titles for Nintendo's new Wii Ware download service. You probably already know where this is going. I downloaded the game, and I've been playing it non-stop all evening.

Boom Blox and Lost Winds are terrific games, each for very different reasons. I admire Boom Blox, but Lost Winds has me completely enthralled. I'll return tomorrow with more detailed impressions of each. In the meantime, if you'd like to see what Wii Ware is all about, I strongly recommend that you check out Lost Winds. It's a superb and charming little game.

GTA IV? Can't wait to get back to it. Actually, come to think of it, apparently I can.

Turning the corner

Back in September of last year I wrote a piece called "Why don't the mainstream media get video games?" It followed the "biggest game launch of all-time" (Halo 3), and examined the woeful coverage from news outlets like Time Magazine and The New York Times. Throughout the media, stories tended to focus on the same three generalized observations: 1) Video games generate big money; 2) Video games attract geek fanatics; 3) Video games are violent.

Now there's another "biggest game launch of all time" in town (GTA IV), and things are looking quite a bit different. While it's still easy to find plenty of stories that focus on all the nasty things players can do in the game (see note below), some of the biggest mainstream outlets have responded in ways that suggest the game is an ambitious cultural achievement to be regarded seriously.

San Francisco Chronicle: Cultural revolution often comes from seemingly imperfect people and unpopular places.The most influential athlete was labeled a draft dodger. The man who helped bring rock 'n' roll to the mainstream grew a huge gut, wore sequined jumpsuits and then died in the bathroom. One of this country's greatest defenders of free speech was dismissed as just a pornographer. But Muhammad Ali, Elvis and even Larry Flynt are remembered for their contributions - just as one day, the makers of Grand Theft Auto will be known as more than peddlers of video game sex and violence.

The Sunday Times (UK): Rockstar North is to video games what JK Rowling is to literature but few, particularly in government, are prepared to acknowledge this. It seems odd that politicians committed to “a smart, successful Scotland” haven't come knocking at [Rockstar producer Leslie] Benzies's door.

New York Times: Grand Theft Auto IV is a violent, intelligent, profane, endearing, obnoxious, sly, richly textured and thoroughly compelling work of cultural satire disguised as fun... [It] sets a new standard for what is possible in interactive arts.

NPR's All Things Considered: The game is more than merely satire. Video games have never been known for expressing the finer points of human emotion...The more I played GTA IV, the more I felt I knew Niko. He's haunted by violence. He walks slowly, and every action is deliberate, as if he were conserving energy. When he steals a car, he matter-of-factly pulls the driver out of the seat and deposits him on the road. There's no joy in it; it's just what needs to be done. And everything about Niko feels uniquely Niko — like when a great actor disappears into a character. It's just not something you see that often in video games.

Rocky Mountain News: I answer the phone and get a nasty reminder that in Niko's world, not only do things not turn out as expected, but the tragedy of his life and of his months in the big city have other, more tragic and lasting consequences, which he and I will have to live with as we continue to explore. In Grand Theft Auto IV the story isn't just an amalgam of cut scenes and cleverly written dialogue, it's the experiences I create, too. It's now, watching Niko stand, his shoulders slumped, that the depth of this game finally hits me.

Newsweek: When you find yourself, as Niko, standing on the edge of a crane, deciding whether to save the low-level hood you've been ordered to kill or speed his passage to the afterlife, what will you do? I let him live, even though part of me very much wanted the instant gratification of watching him fall. What held me back, however, was not just how convincingly the digital actors can portray the series' signature violence (because of the way your enemies stagger, stumble and crawl after being shot, the killings now feel more squalid than exhilarating). It's also because the writers have given our mercurial protagonist a conscience, a fatigue with death and a desire to start afresh. Rockstar managed to convince me that Niko wouldn't do this—so I didn't...That's where the art of Grand Theft Auto IV resides, in the complicated responses it can elicit. Even for those among you who aren't gamers, attention must be paid.

The Today Show: It will be a great shame if the inevitable hubbub overshadows the epic, revolutionary nature of “GTA IV.” The developers, Rockstar Games, have crafted a wildly ambitious game world complete with an engrossing story of an immigrant's rise to power, unforgettable characters and expertly honed gameplay. It will be weeks, if not months, before I get my fill of “GTA IV.”

Part of this sudden enlightenment is surely due to the fact that these and other outlets are hiring writers who understand the medium and happily refer to themselves as gamers (Heather Chaplin, N'Gai Croal, Brian Crecente, etc.). I'd like to think it also has something to do with the quality of the game itself. Despite the franchise's long history as a target of media outcry, GTA IV appears to have turned a corner in the minds of whatever critical mass is required to make something culturally acceptable. Given that it's currently fashionable to speak in praise of GTA IV, there's probably some bandwagon jumping going on as well. I'm sure the backlash is due any day now.

Whatever the reasons (and whatever you think of the game), it's encouraging to see a significant portion of the mainstream media respond to a video game in this way. Perhaps it signals the emergence of a more widespread cultural appreciation for games in general. I'm not expecting an overnight conversion, but this at least feels promising. I don't need the New York Times to tell me video games matter...but I want them to anyway.

Note: Many newspapers and websites rely on the same source (in this case the Associated Press) for their coverage or reviews of GTA IV. Consequently, the following phrase can be found in various versions of the AP story reprinted in dozens of newspapers like the Kanas City Star and the Indianapolis Star: "Critics say the extreme violence in "Grand Theft Auto" video games could be harmful to children, and Mothers Against Drunk Driving has complained that the latest version includes the ability to drive while intoxicated."

Confounded by the Kart

If I added up all the hours I've spent playing games with family and friends, Mario Kart games would easily top the charts. The rivalry that has developed between my wife and me has reached Yankees/Red Sox proportions with accusations flying around like "You've been secretly practicing on this track, haven't you?" or "It's obvious this game penalizes the best driver!" It's all in good fun, of course. No, really. It is.

But since we picked it up, I've developed an odd, ambivalent attitude about Mario Kart Wii. We're playing it a lot. I like the new tracks. The game looks good and plays smoothly. Online racing works seamlessly - much better than Smash Bros. Brawl. The white hot spousal rivalry continues.

So why don't I like this game more than I do?

Maybe it's the wheel. Aside from its online modes, the addition of the Wii Wheel is the only significant upgrade from previous Mario Kart games. It works surprisingly well - better than I expected, actually - but I still prefer the thumbstick, mostly because it's what I know, and it offers finer control. Still, manual steering is a nice idea, and a recent dinner guest (a longtime Mario Kart fan) happily chose it over a nunchuck when we offered it to him, and he had a blast.

Maybe it's the wacky, frenetic unpredictability of the game. In the past, this has always been a major draw of the franchise for me. A last-place player can make her way to the front of the pack on the final lap if she gets just the right combination of shells, stars, and mushrooms. I'm not talking about anyone I know, mind you. Just the generic "she" writers throw in to balance the pronouns. I don't personally know anyone who consistently relies on that strategy every...single...time.

Mario Kart Wii ramps up the item frequency to a degree that renders most races a strategic crapshoot. Grabbing first place and hanging on to it until the end is virtually impossible. It seems perfectly clear to me that my sudden inability to win races has nothing to do with diminished skill or prowess. It simply must be that abominable blue shell. Right? I mean, that's got to be it.

I think if all calamitous events in life were preceded by the sound of an ominous whooshing sound emanating from the palm of your hand, we'd all just chop our hands off and be done with it. That's what I think.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. Why don't I like this game more?

Maybe the bloom is off the rose. My friend Mitch Krpata recently described playing the game with a group of friends - Kart fans all - and watching them gradually lose interest after only a short time. They moved on to Rock Band and played non-stop for hours. I think I understand that reaction. For me, the wheel simply doesn't add enough oomph to the experience of Mario Kart Wii to make the game feel significantly distinctive from previous Mario Kart games. Had Mario Kart Wii been released at the launch of the system, would it be different? Have Wii Sports and other motion-controlled titles diminished the novelty of the Wii Wheel? Maybe so.

Or maybe it's just me. I could see myself lovin' this game if I could ever figure out how to get back on that tall middle platform with the fireworks and confetti. But some people I know keep hogging it for themselves.

;-)

Questions for the community

About a week ago, Angela from Lesbian Gamers invited me to collaborate on an essay addressing the hostile climate that frequently arises within the gaming community. After tossing around some ideas, we agreed that we felt uneasy about proposing a one-size-fits-all "solution," nor were we interested in pointing fingers or dredging up a long history of internet blowups and controversies. So what, then, to do?

We finally decided it might be most useful to point at some specific concerns and then simply raise a few questions about how to address them. We don't expect to uncover a miracle solution, and we're aware that many people may not share our concerns. But for those who do, we hope a conversation will help identify ways we can work together to create and nurture a community with higher standards for vigorous and respectful discourse.

So here goes:

---

This short essay is an attempt to engage others in a conversation about how we can work together to enhance civility and raise the level of discourse about video games. We realize we're members of a diverse community, and we're not interested in squelching strong opinions or dictating a set of inviolable rules. But we think there must be constructive ways to address the hostility, belligerence, and stereotyping that so often characterizes public conversation about video games among gamers.

The hate mail, berating commentary and forum spamming we've seen on our own sites and others (much of which is deleted before ever seen) emanates from within the gaming community itself. Ironically, the medium we love that provides us with so much joy has also developed a fanbase with a reputation for anti-social, intolerant behavior in both Australia and the United States where we live. We know it's a gross and unfair mischaracterization, but the broad set of cultural assumptions about games and gamers is largely negative, and we too often affirm those assumptions by our own behavior. We're not interested in being scolds or behavior police, but we face an uphill climb convincing a parent or new gamer whom has visited a tirade-filled forum, or whom has been repeatedly attacked on Xbox Live as a "faggot," that video games are good for our souls, as James Paul Gee suggests.

As bloggers we understand that personal expression and a free exchange of ideas are fundamental to our purpose. As a community, how can we meaningfully respond to the creators of the "Ladies of Liberty City" video in a way that might encourage more reflection about what such a video communicates and whom it may harm or offend? How can we constructively address members of our community who use the public and anonymous nature of our forums and comment areas to attack or berate others? Is banning specific commenters or IP addresses the best solution? We can moderate and filter, but is there something meaningful to be gained by allowing such people to publicly have their say? Can we nurture a community that responds to these situations in a useful and instructive way? Can we engage a critical mass of gamers willing to model respectful disagreement and thoughtful discourse?

Or are we wringing our hands about something only a relative few of us care about? Is it unlikely we can do anything substantive to create a more civil environment among gamers? Should we simply do what we can as individuals and hope things improve over time? We'd like to make a positive contribution, but are we being hopelessly idealistic?

These are earnest questions, posed in hopes of engaging conversation and clarifying for ourselves the best way to proceed from here. In the end, we love games and gamers. We want to help foster a welcoming community for everyone who loves games. We welcome your ideas and feedback.

Angela and Michael

The value of a good slider

Before GTA IV sucked me into its sordid vortex of vicarious licentiousness, I was spending most of my time playing Square Enix's new RPG The World Ends With You for the DS. I encourage you to click on the link to the game's media-rich website, as it does a great job of conveying a sense of what the game looks, plays, and feels like.

Much has been made about the many ways Square Enix has revised or reconfigured the standard JRPG conventions in this game, and the experience of playing it certainly feels fresh. Part of this is due to the game's stylized environment and its mash-up of modern urban Shibuyu Tokyo tweaked with manga visuals and hip-hop/electronica vocal music.

But the revisions that matter most are under the hood, and one design feature in particular seems to me particularly inspired. The game lets you dynamically adjust its difficulty settings in two separate controls. One of these we've seen before: a simple "easy/normal" toggle selection ("hard" appears later as well) which influences the overall difficulty level of the game. This setting can be changed at any point.

The other difficulty adjustment is much more interesting. The game presents you with a slider which can be dynamically lowered to reduce your HP. Doing so makes staying alive much harder, but increases the drop rate and quality of pins you collect to use and sell in the game. Decreasing this slider to its minimum value makes battling a very hard, but very rewarding experience.

Playing with this 2-pronged difficulty adjustment system adds an incredible amount of flexibility to The World Ends With You. Other games provide such options, but often only at the beginning. I can't think of a another game that encourages and rewards such on-the-fly tinkering with dual gameplay difficulty settings like this (though I'm sure someone will let me know if I've forgotten one). Players who don't want this "crutch" can ignore it altogether. Frustrated players who get stuck (a frequent reason many players abandon RPGs) can get a leg up and move on.

And, of course, freaks like me can fight the same battle repeatedly, toying with various combos of difficulty settings and HP slider adjustments just for the pure joy of it. This is when my wife usually tells me that I need to seek professional help. ;-)

I'm working on a thorough review of the game, and I'll let you know when it's finished. Somebody please tell Niko Bellic he's on his own for a day or two.

Brainy Gamer Podcast - Episode 13

A week of GTA IV run, gun, and fun (all while not playing the game); the emergence of the gaming tripod; IGN video madness; and an interview with Kirk Battle (AKA L.B. Jeffries) - all in this edition of the Brainy Gamer Podcast!

• Listen to the podcast directly from this page by clicking the yellow "Listen Now" button on the right.

• Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.
• Subscribe to the podcast feed here.

• Download the podcast directly here.

Links mentioned in the show:

L.B. Jeffries' Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games
Moving Pixels Blog
NPR's coverage of Grand Theft Auto IV by Heather Chaplin

The gaming tripod

Longtime gamers know that console wars are usually followed by periods of relative calm when the games themselves take center stage. With three apparently viable consoles and two well-established handheld systems all in place, now would seem to be such a time. It's been seventeen months since the launch of the Wii and PS3.

At the risk of ignoring many interesting games, I believe three just-released titles provide a telling snapshot of the gaming landscape. Grand Theft Auto IV, Mario Kart Wii, and Wii Fit provide three very different experiences for gamers and represent three distinct legs of a "gaming tripod" that illustrates the evolution of the medium in some useful ways. If you can bear with my awkward metaphor just a step further, I'll suggest that a tripod is apt because its primary function is to provide support and stability for a device (in this case, the games industry) perched on top.

GTA IV is the grand epic narrative experience - the evolved descendent of RPGs, adventure games, and other genres that rely on storytelling as a central component of the player's experience. Obviously these games contain ludic properties as well (rules, interface, timed objectives, win/lose missions, etc.), but at the risk of reawakening the slumbering narratology vs ludology beast, I believe GTA IV, more than any previous GTA game, aspires to provide an immersive storytelling environment and an empathetic connection between player and protagonist (Niko Bellic).

Mario Kart Wii is the latest installment in a series that has always focused on playful colorful fun. No backstories. No cutscenes. No story-mode. The avatars are significant only to the degree that they represent various sets of racing characteristics. Most players don't associate meaning or identify with the characters in any certain way. Large bearded homophobic men will happily race as Princess Peach in a pink buggy if doing so will give them a racing edge. It's hard to imagine two video games more different - stylistically, tonally,  structurally, and aesthetically - than GTA IV and Mario Kart Wii. And that's a good thing for my tripod theory.

Wii Fit (available now in Japan and Europe - I played it at GDC in February) is something altogether different. I initially assumed its appeal would be based on integrating the balance board into games that could make unique use of it (snowboarding, surfing, etc.). I was trying to squeeze it into a paradigm I understood, and seeing the balance board as simply another game controller, this made sense to me. While it's clear the device can function in this way (and it ships with a collection of "balance games"), Miyamoto clearly has something very different in mind. If he were a tripod-metaphor man, I feel certain he would see Wii Fit as the third stabilizing leg of the gaming tripod. ;-)

Wii Fit is designed to function as a health station for families. Combining yoga with aerobic and muscle exercises, the system builds a game framework around these activities to provide feedback and make them more fun. Your avatar levels up (or down in this case, since it's based on weight and fitness) by grinding through repetitive but fun and rewarding tasks in a persistent environment tied to real time. The persistent real-time environment is the world you live in. When you check back into Wii Fit after that beer and bratwurst bender...your avatar will know about it and suffer the consequences with you.

Your Wii Fit avatar connects to you on a substantive and physically realized level. Instead of slicing your way through armies of orcs slouched in your chair munching Funyuns, Wii Fit presents you with an avatar who can only succeed if you do. She may not look nearly as cool as your Mage in her flowing robes and open midriff, but your cute little Mii has eliminated a layer of separation between you and your on-screen persona that no video game has ever removed. Guitar Hero and Rock Band come close, but Wii Fit requires your whole body and extends - if you "play" it right - into your whole life.

So in an odd and unexpected twist, Wii Fit arrives as a perfect complement to the narrative and the ludic. In its own unique ways, it is neither and both of these. Some will consider it no kind of game at all. It's a glorified scale that connects to your TV. Others, I believe, will engage with it in a variety of meaningful ways, both mentally and physically.

If you look at it the way I do, Wii Fit (and the door it opens to consumers putting a versatile gaming device in their living rooms) GTA IV and Mario Kart Wii look like three stable legs of a sturdy gaming tripod. At least for now. Who knows? Maybe this thing could become a four-legged table.

Podcast 13 on the way

I considered skipping 13 and going right to 14, but curses schmurses, 13 it will be!

I'm preparing the next podcast and, as always, will happily include your games-related questions, comments, or feedback. GTA editorials are also welcome. ;-)

Send an email or mp3 audio file to me at brainygamer@gmail.com, and I'll do my best to work it into the show. Look for the podcast here and on iTunes this Tuesday.

Thanks very much for listening!

One more take

After I posted my short and admittedly angry piece earlier today, several thoughtful readers suggested I elaborate on my objections to the IGN "Ladies of Liberty City" video. I agree that I didn't properly explain my point of view, so here goes. After this, I promise it will be back to normal programming.

I think it's unlikely I'll be able to persuade anyone of anything, especially given how polarizing this and other GTA-related issues tend to quickly become. But I can at least try to clarify my intentions in posting as I did. I'm speaking, obviously, only for myself here, but I feel strongly about this, so I'm sure my tone may be seen as harsh or dogmatic. I don't think there's much I can do about that.

What IGN did was morally and ethically reprehensible. They posted a video using stitched-together segments of GTA4 gameplay to show a series of incidents where women are paid for sex and then shot and killed, or run over by a car and killed. This montage was not delivered as some kind of ironic social critique. It was, essentially, a hip, funky homage to killing women.

A similarly heinous compilation pieced together in any other medium and posted on a highly visible website would be denounced immediately, if it ever saw the light of day. Why is it somehow acceptable - and why are responses like mine considered "hysterical" - simply because the video uses footage from GTA4?

I'm not the first person to suggest we're reinforcing the marginalization of the medium by falling back on the "it's only a game" argument (I would extend this to include "it's only GTA."). I recommend Mitch Krpata's "Sex, Violence, and Video Games" for more on this. He says it much better than me.

Of course it's possible to do all the things the video depicts while playing GTA4. It's possible to do all sorts of ugly things in all sorts of media, as well as in real life. The fact that it's possible doesn't make it acceptable to do what IGN did. If you want to play GTA4 at home and kill as many prostitutes as you can, that's your decision. It's another thing entirely to make a compilation video featuring one killing after another, set to music, and post it on your website that receives over 20 million unique visitors per month.

The video is a construction. It was deliberately made, edited, and posted. Someone made specific choices about what this video was intended to communicate. It's not simply "footage from the game." I am suggesting that whomever is responsible for it ought to be held to account.

I've played two hours of GTA4. I have no idea if it's a good game or a bad game. It's irrelevant to my argument. I admire Rockstar for their innovative approach to video game design. They have made an indelible impact on gaming and gaming culture. These facts are also irrelevant to my argument.

Finally, I don't mean to suggest there's some kind of monolithic entity known as the "gamer community" of which IGN is some sort of spokesperson. We're way more complicated than that. But there is a culture and community of gamers out here, even if we don't all think or behave alike. It's fair to say that video games continue to suffer a serious image problem in our culture at large. Making the case for video games as a legitimate form of human expression is a long uphill climb. I know this from personal experience as an educator facing resistance, misinformation, or simple ignorance from my peers and colleagues every day. I realize lots of gamers don't care how we're perceived. In my career, I don't have that luxury.

I'm trying to move the ball forward. That's why I started this blog. It's hard for me not to take it personally when a major media site devoted to gaming posts a video like this because they think it's funny or cool or subversive or whatever. From a purely selfish perspective, it makes everything I'm trying to do as an advocate for video games more difficult to justify or explain. This may not matter much to others, and that's fine, but it matters a lot to me.

Pushing back

When one of the major games media outlets (Fox-owned, ironically) does something like this, we can let the politicians and cultural hand-wringers frame the discourse for us...or we can do it ourselves.

Thank you very much Leigh, Lux, Stephen, and Angela.

Dear IGN,

Removing the video and saying you "crossed a line" is a woefully inadequate response. You need to issue a formal public apology, and the people responsible for creating and posting this video must be held accountable. Jack Thompson is the least of your worries. You need to answer to us, the gamer community, many of whom resent the self-inflicted black eye you just gave us.

Step up and do the right thing. Until you do, I will no longer visit your site, your sister sites (Gamespy and Rotten Tomatoes) or your podcasts. I encourage others to consider doing the same.

Stars in our eyes

Lots of people are suffering from GTA4 hype-fatigue, and it's easy to understand why. The marketing machine is clearly in overdrive when you see Kotaku's Brian Crecente on ABC World News, X-Play's Adam Sessler talking to Geraldo Rivera on Fox, and GTA4 feature stories on NPR's Morning Edition, Day To Day, and All Things Considered - all on the same day. The buzz is loud, repetitive, overkill...and I'm lovin' every minute of it.

Some smart bloggers like Mitch Krpata have suggested we ought to be concerned about the "culture of hype" that's such a big part of the gaming community. Others like Ben Fritz at Variety raise concerns about "exclusive reviews" bestowed on outlets that have promotional deals with the publisher.

These are reasonable concerns, and I take them seriously. But at the same time, I've been joyfully riding this GTA4 hype train for months now, and I'll be a little sorry when it finally ends. Of course, it helps that the game appears to deliver all that Rockstar promised, but even if it didn't, I still would have enjoyed this crazy carnival.

More than anything Rockstar, IGN or other commercial outlets did to promote the game, GTA4 hype was driven primarily by the gaming community on hundreds of forums, chat rooms, blogs, fan sites, and any other viral social venue you can think of. In the build-up to GTA4, all Rockstar really needed to do was release the occasional trailer or screenshot. We took care of the rest.

We did it because GTA4 belongs to us. It's our game, and we chat, speculate, and argue about it like it's a new house we're all about to move into. We want it to be perfect - everything we expect from a GTA game, plus more - and our landlord Rockstar has been very good to us in the past. We've been watching them build this house for years, and they're finally ready to hand us the key to the front door. Hell yes, we're excited. Who wouldn't be?

I think we should hold onto the GTA/Halo/Final Fantasy/Metal Gear/Zelda next-installment pandemonium phenomenon for as long as we can because, inevitably, it will eventually disappear.

There was a time when movie audiences behaved this way. Big premieres once drew legions of fans, celebrities, and media swarming the entrance of the theater - cameras snapping, limousines depositing VIPs. Even in small towns, big movies like Gone With the Wind or Ben-Hur were often celebrated with special costume parties, promotional giveaways, and other festivities. My mother still owns a special commemorative plate she received at the premiere of Cleopatra in Upper Sandusky Ohio.

No one feels this way about Hollywood anymore. They don't need us, and we don't feel any sense of belonging to what they do. The old movie-magazines are gone and so are the fan clubs and big premieres. It's hard to take Hollywood seriously anymore when it tries to depict itself as the enchanted land of dreams. We still love movies, but most of the old magic is gone. Hollywood is a business, and we know it. So are video games, of course, but can you think of a single movie studio that elicits the emotional attachment from its customers Nintendo enjoys?

I was talking to a friend the other day about GTA4. We were imagining what online multiplayer would be like and reminiscing about previous GTA games. I'm fairly certain we had stars in our eyes. I hope they don't disappear any time soon.

When you wish upon a star

A couple of days ago I suggested the video game industry could use a few "boutique developers" designing high-quality games positioned somewhere between big-budget titles and indie games. I noted that film studios like Miramax have found a lucrative sweet spot releasing ambitious, edgy films targeting the film-enthusiast audience, proving such a strategy can be artistically and financially successful, at least in the movie business.

Today, Gamasutra published a story on Genius Products, co-owned by Miramax founders Bob and Harvey Weinstein, and its decision to enter the video game market. Genius will publish Line Rider - winner of the 2007 GDC award for innovation.

The story contains an extended interview with Mike Rubinelli, head of product and aquisition at Genius, who describes the company's strategy and their awareness of how often big media companies have fumbled the ball.

I've been in the business for 17 years, so I've seen the MGMs come and go. I've seen the Warners come and go, and come again and go again and come again. And I've seen Universal and Universal Games, and then it was Vivendi Universal, and all the iterations of Hollywood trying to figure out how to get into the gaming space and saying, "You know what? We'll just put some of our creative guys on it, we'll leverage our licenses, and then we'll be in business." And then two years down the road and a lot of red ink later, they decided, "Gee, this is a lousy business to be in. What were we thinking?"

Rubinelli describes the Weinstein's thinking - influenced by their experiences in theater and film - about how to establish a company driven by creativity without being harnessed to a "signature" or a casual/hardcore moniker.

Line Rider is a perfect example of what we're going to attempt to do. We're not going to go out and, you know, try to...out-Call-of-Duty Call of Duty, or Halo, or any first-person shooters.

We're not going to compete with those guys. We're not going to compete on the big role-playing front. ... [T]o me, the stars of the company really are the titles, and the titles have to speak volumes about who we're about. The titles have to be our branding. ... [W]e're going to sign up titles so that when we go to the critical press community, we don't say, "Here's our first-person shooter," or "Here's our sports game or our driving game. ... No. "Here's our unique-playing game that you may or may not know, but once you play it, you'll understand why we signed this up." There's a certain charm and appeal and uniqueness to it.

He goes on to discuss Genius' intention to revise the standard industry "formula for success" in ways that enhance creativity and enable risk-taking:

For people to say, "Oh, I played this game a year or two years ago. It's like that, but it's got more levels. It's like this, but..." We don't want to do that at all. I think what's happening in the big publisher circles is that it feels like they have to make these $10 or $15 or $20 million development spans, and because the price tag is so high, they work to turn this into a bit of a science.

It's like, "Okay, the formula for success for this game is it has to have a $10 million marketing campaign, it has to have this many levels, it has to have online play, it has to have these eight buzzwords, and it's got to have this and that. We've got to spend this much money, which means that the development team has got to be this big and it's going to take this long to develop."

They try to back their way into a product more often than not. I think that can be really dangerous, but when you're spending that kind of money, you know, you want to be safe...We want to take on stuff that we feel like is creatively very interesting and not necessarily meaning that we have to spend $10 to $15 million on development. I mean, we may, but we would only do that if we felt that we had a game that really stood out and was incredibly unique.

It obviously remains to be seen whether or not Genius and the Weinsteins can navigate the peculiar video game space, produce unique and creative games, and make money doing it. Their initial strategy seems to be focused on identifying promising indie game designers and backing them with resources and distribution. We'll see how effectively they're able to build and sustain an environment necessary for great games to emerge.

It's easy to be skeptical about Genius evolving into a vibrant boutique development studio, but the Weinsteins have a history of proving the naysayers wrong in Hollywood and on Broadway. I'm not betting against them.

As always, Gamasutra is on top of the story. You can read it all here. Thanks to Chris at The Artful Gamer for the heads-up!

The GTA bookshelf

Swept up in the pandemonium surrounding the biggest release in video game history, what's a guy like me to do?

Read! :-)

Tomorrow's release of Grand Theft Auto IV is the latest installment in a nine-game franchise that has played a pivotal role in the history and evolution of video games. As you might expect, much has been written about the GTA series, not all of it focused on Hot Coffee and imperiling our youth.

In fact, an impressive amount of brainpower has been devoted to writing about GTA over the years, so in honor of the pending release of GTA4 I thought it might be useful to collect some of the more thoughtful pieces and create a sort of GTA bibliography. This list is by no means comprehensive - thousands of GTA essays, news reports, and reviews have been published in the last eleven years. I've focused on analytical pieces that shed light on the games and the cultural phenomenon they represent.

If I've omitted an essay you like, be sure to let me know, and I'll update my post to include it.

• Edge Magazine's April '08 cover story features a 16-page exclusive article Inside Rockstar: The Making of Grand Theft Auto. This is a MUST-READ for fans of the series as it recounts the behind-the-scenes evolution of the series since GTA3 in typical flowing Edge prose - mixed with an extended interview with Rockstar president Sam Houser. I highly recommend picking up a hard copy of the magazine because it features gorgeous full-page art from the games. But if you can't do that, the full text of the article is available here.


• The official Grand Theft Auto site contains information and dedicated pages for each of the games in the series.


• IGN's Hillary Goldstein interviews Rockstar North Art Director Aaron Garbut about the creation of Liberty City.


• Many online sites have written histories and retrospectives of the GTA series. Here are the ones I like best (though nobody gets points for original titles):
  • IGN Presents: The History of Grand Theft Auto
  • Games Radar: The Complete History of Grand Theft Auto
  • Gamespot: The History of Grand Theft Auto
  • Joystiq: Prior Offenses: A Grand Theft Auto Retrospective


• Roger Travis, a Classics professor at the University of Connecticut, has written a delightful short essay called Niko Bellic, a new Odysseus which parallels the anti-hero stature of GTA4's protagonist with Homer's epic warrior.


• N'Gai Croal wrote a terrific piece in 2005 about Rockstar's uncanny knack for tapping into pop culture and underground trends: Why Rockstar is the Leader of the Pack.


• New Media godfather Henry Jenkins on Why Grand Theft Auto Should Be Taught in Schools (an interview with David Hutchison)

Many books and journals contain useful essays on GTA. Most of these aren't available online, but they're well worth a visit to the library:

• Nate Garrelts' The Meaning and Culture of Grand Theft Auto (McFarland, 2006) is a collection of essays devoted to the series and its public and cultural impact.
  
  
• Jesper Juul's Half-Real: Video Games Between Real Rules and Fictional Worlds (MIT Press, 2005) contains a section devoted to GTA called "Games between Emergence and Progression".


• Ian Bogost's Unit Operations: An Approach to Videogame Criticism (MIT Press, 2006) contains a chapter called "Complex Worlds" which focuses on GTA3.


• Katie Salen and Eric Zimmerman's Rules of Play (MIT Press, 2003) contains a section on "Games as Narrative Play" with discussion of GTA3.


• Samantha Blackmon (with Daniel J. Terrell) in Gaming Lives in the Twenty-First Century (Macmillan, 2007) contributes a chapter entitled "Racing toward Representation: An Understanding of Racial Representation in Video Games" focuses primarily on how racial representations/images intersect with issues of ethics and cultural models in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City


• David J. Leonard's article Not a Hater, Just Keepin' It Real (Games and Culture, Vol. 1, No. 1, 2006) discusses GTA: San Andreas and encourages a reading that includes consideration of race and racial tropes.


• Kiri Miller's Jacking the Dial: Radio, Race, and Place in Grand Theft Auto (Ethnomusicology, Fall 2007) analyzes the musical choices made by the games' designers and players.


• Soraya Murray's High Art/Low Life: The Art of Playing Grand Theft Auto (PAJ, Journal of Performance and Art, May 2005) examines GTA: San Andreas as an object of serious cultural consideration.


• Paul Barrett's White Thumbs, Black Bodies: Race, Violence, and Neoliberal Fantasies in Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas (Review of Education, Pedagogy, and Cultural Studies, Jan-Mar 2006) analyzes the game as an opportunity for players to act out popular culture fantasies through representation.

Happy reading!!

Do we need boutique developers?

The next wave of big-budget AAA video game releases is on the way from many of the top developers and publishers in the industry. These games receive an incredible amount of attention - in the last four days Kotaku has posted twenty stories devoted to GTA4 - and these games undoubtedly push the industry forward in many important ways.

While I'm as excited as the next gamer to explore Liberty City or try out Snake's newest camo gear, I'm also wondering if we're as focused as we might be on developing strong, high-production-value games positioned somewhere between big-budget titles and indie games. Obviously, many games fall into a middle range in terms of budget and commitment from developers (e.g. Capcom's Zack and Wiki), but I wonder if there are  lessons to be learned from independent "boutique movie studios" like IFC Films, or from major players like Sony, Paramount and Disney that have created or purchased in-house studios like Sony Classics, Paramount Vantage and Miramax.

These studios typically develop prestige or niche projects that rarely make or lose big money, but often deliver projects that push at the edges of the medium. Such films attract high-talent artists willing to sacrifice money for freedom, but whom have moved beyond the "shoot-it, cut-it and pray for a Sundance screening" phase of their careers. Occasionally - as in the case of IFC's Y Tu Mamá También, a single film can establish the credibility and viability of a brand new studio. In other cases, acclaimed films like No Country for Old Men and There Will Be Blood emerge as a collaboration between boutique studios (both were developed by Miramax in tandem with Paramount Vantage).

Sometimes I think Gabe Newell functions more like an old-school movie studio boss than a game software developer. In a way, he's sort of the Louis B. Mayer of gaming, and Valve the MGM. Back in the golden age of the American cinema, MGM's motto was "More stars than there are in heaven." Newell could make similar claims, and his strategy of keeping an eye out for the best and brightest talent in the industry and getting them under contract to Valve is reminiscent of Mayer's efforts to maintain MGM's stature. Fortunately, from all reports Newell is also a great boss to work for...a claim Mayer (often a tyrant) could never have made for himself.

Portal is a boutique studio project. Valve could have made it bigger, longer, and splashier and unveiled it as their NEXT BIG IP. Or they could have simply bought the team and plowed all those great ideas into the next edition of Half-Life. Instead, they made a game that was just the size it needed to be with just the amount of attention it required.

We need more boutique developers. I believe there is a vital market for such games and an enthusiastic community of gamers hungry for such experiences. Not every game requires a 3-year $100 million development and marketing effort. And there's something to be said for allowing gamers to discover a game and push it forward ourselves. This was a big part of Portal's success, in my view, packed as it was into The Orange Box with much bigger and more recognizable titles.

Having said all this, I must also acknowledge that I'm an industry outsider, and I'm sure I bring with me a certain degree of naivete about the complexities of funding and managing game development. Is the idea of boutique game developers feasible? Pie in the sky? Are they already here, and I'm simply overlooking them? Am I drawing tenuous parallels between the film and game industries? I don't know. But if you do, I'd love to hear from you.

Scratching the game review itch

When I started The Brainy Gamer way back in '74 - shortly after Nixon resigned as I recall - I promised that the blog wouldn't be another game review site, and I've tried to make good on that. Sure, I've posted impressions of games like Aquaria, No More Heroes and yesterday's essay on Ōkami, but these were intended more as critiques, examining or contextualizing certain aspects of the games I found interesting.

I do occasionally get the itch to review a game, however, in a way that might be useful to someone thinking about whether or not to purchase or play it. So when I heard that PopMatters was looking for a game reviewer to add to their staff of writers, I applied, and they hired me. When I say "hired" I mean they welcomed me aboard with a smile, a virtual handshake, and no pay, of course. :-) They will send me free games to review, however, which is very nice.

As a writer, PopMatters appeals to me for the very reasons I explored the other day in my post about the undervalued role of the enthusiast in academia. From PopMatters' "About" page:

PopMatters cultivates smart writers from the world-at-large. Our staff ranges from the multiple-degreed and/or well traveled, to young writers of high caliber, to 'seasoned' folks who punch the 9-5 clock, regardless of what type of degree, if any, they may hold. PopMatters recognizes that creative, compassionate intellectuals reside in all levels of society, in all types of societies, and we value their ability to provide intelligent, entertaining cultural criticism in the form of thoughtful, magazine-style essays.

I'm delighted to be part of this effort to produce informed reviews and engaging criticism devoted to popular culture. I'll be contributing one or two reviews per month, and you can find my first piece - a review of Hot Shots Golf: Out of Bounds - here.

Ōkami - second chance at love

Ōkami is the most beautiful video game I've ever seen. Last-gen, next-gen - it's all hooha, really. I don't know how many pixels Ōkami pushes around, nor do I care much about its physics or graphics engines. All I know is that when I look at this game - its flowing streams of watercolor flowers; its ink-and-wash brushstrokes; its Zen-inspired landscapes; its radiant creatures and dancing demons - all rendered through textured filters of canvas, parchment, and wood - I am awestruck by its fluid elegance and beauty. Two years after its original release, no game has yet approached Ōkami's sheer aesthetic ambition.

Steeped in ancient Shinto polytheism, the game features a she-wolf (Amaterasu) as its silent protagonist - a reawakened god in animal form. Her central mission is to drive out the demons destroying the environment and restore the natural balance and beauty of her native land. She achieves this by reassembling 13 Celestial Brush gods, each of which bestows a unique brush-stroke power which Amaterasu can use to create water lillies, fire, wind, and other natural elements. In keeping with the game's organic environmental theme, these gods may be found anywhere and everywhere. As Amaterasu's sidekick Issun says, "The gods now dwell in objects all around us."

So let's think about this. A silent hero she-wolf with a calligraphy brush for a weapon. Cell-shaded flowers and woodland creatures. Shinto polytheism. An environmental preservation theme. Is it any wonder nobody bought this game?

Admittedly, that's a bit of an overstatement. After a slow start (and abysmal sales in Japan) the PS2 version of Ōkami eventually sold about 270,000 copies worldwide. Not bad, I suppose, but when Capcom launched Clover Studio in 2004 with some of its most prolific talents aboard, Ōkami was meant for greatness. Less than a month after Ōkami's North American release, Capcom shut down the studio, and that was the end of Clover.

Will Ōkami's recent re-release fare any better with consumers on the Wii? I'm guessing no. I'd desperately love to be wrong because I adore this game, but I'll wager it sells fewer copies on the Wii than on the PS2.

Why? Too much new and too much old. Ōkami's stunning visuals are more than pretty animated pictures. They function as a graphic framework for the entire game. The Japanese brushstroke motif runs all the way through the experience, weaving together gameplay, narrative, and character. Amaterasu is less a warrior than an artist. Her most effective "final blow" maneuvers don't involve brandishing a sword or gun, they require skillful mastery of calligraphic symbols.

How many devoted gamers are looking for this kind of experience or play mechanic? How many will be satisfied with a reward system that essentially boils down to putting leaves back on trees? How many will connect with a fanciful story drawn from classical Japanese history, myth, and folklore featuring rat and monkey gods, wood sprites, celestial deities from the Chinese zodiac, and an effeminate French-accented villain?

My guess is, unfortunately, not many. For most gamers, Ōkami is simply too unfamiliar, too strange, too "Japanese,"... too whatever. Such gamers often claim they want something different, but in reality they don't. What they really want is something almost the same. Too much innovation - especially stylistic innovation - is generally rejected.

Ironically, the audience most likely to be enticed by Ōkami's eccentric concoction of elements is the same audience likely to avoid the game because it fails to innovate enough: the Zelda audience.

Yes, Ōkami is a Zelda homage - as its creators freely acknowledge [1] - and many of the narrative and character parallels between it and Twilight Princess are rather startling. Ōkami's dungeons are smaller and less interesting that Zelda's, and Issun (who chatters entirely too much)  is no Midna. Nevertheless, as my friend Corvus noted recently "Ōkami is the Zelda game I wanted for the Wii." Even though it hurts a little to say it, I agree.

Ōkami's controls work at least as well as they do in Twilight Princess (aside from a particular waggle dodge move you can safely ignore). Its story is more cohesive and better paced; its characters are more distinctive (Midna excluded); and the whole experience feels less rigid and formulaic than Twilight Princess'. Ōkami's sumptuous fully-orchestrated score, filled with traditional Japanese melodies and expressive atmospheres, sets a new standard of excellence for action-adventure games - one that Nintendo should set its sights on for the next Zelda.

At the risk of evangelical zealotry, I urge you to play Ōkami. Buy it at a discount for the PS2 or pick up a new copy for the Wii. They're both excellent. If I had to choose one, I would give the edge to the PS2 version, which conveys a muted parchment filter art style, rather than the color-bumped Wii version. (You can check out a comparison of the two versions below.) I also prefer combat in the PS2 version, though the Wii-mote works better controlling the paintbrush. Either way, you can't go wrong.

Let's hope I lose that bet.

Update (4/28/08): A bit of digging with help from a reader suggests that the 270,000 unit sales figure I reported for Ōkami is much too low. The actual number of copies sold worldwide is closer to 550,000.

It also turns out that Capcom may not have closed Clover Studio in response to low sales (though this was probably a factor). It has been suggested to me that Clover was shut down shortly after two of its top designers left to form a new development studio called Seeds, which later merged with ODD Incorporated to form PlatinumGames.

The genius of the enthusiast

I reported a few days ago on my progress sorting through all the responses I had received from readers about my RPG syllabus. Since then, Maggie Greene at Kotaku kindly linked to my series, and I have been inundated with comments and emails from dozens of respondents offering valuable recommendations and constructive suggestions for the course.

I can't begin to tell you how grateful I am for this overwhelming response - I've certainly never had so much fun preparing a course. But aside from that, I feel as if I've stumbled upon something that's forced me to take a hard look at a set of long-held assumptions. 

Aside from the utility of many eyeballs generating many responses, I think there are lessons to be learned for educators on the value and promise of sharing ideas, identifying resources, and generally brainstorming with a broad community of people with vast knowledge and personal experience.

For most of my career as a teacher, a clear and nearly impenetrable divide has existed between those of us designated "scholars" and those of us known as "enthusiasts." While I can understand how and why this separation functions and persists in highly specialized fields like molecular microbiology, other disciplines in the Humanities and Social Sciences, for example, may have erected more arbitrary barriers separating  scholars and experts from enthusiasts and devotees.

In the case of the course I'm working on - a history of role-playing games - the community devoted to the subject currently outpaces the traditional scholarship developing around it. Certain scholars like Jeff Howard (Quests: Design, Theory, and History in Games and Narratives) and Matt Barton (Dungeons and Desktops: The History of Computer Role-Playing Games) have written rich, analytical, and well-annotated books on the subject, and I will use both in my course.

But I would shortchange my students if I insisted on assigning only academy-approved published texts and journal articles. The number of valuable online resources devoted to role-playing games is immense, and many of these (such as Hardcore Gaming 101) contain in-depth features and analyses of important games virtually ignored elsewhere. Of course, not every article found online is rigorously researched or well-written...but I would venture to say the same might be said of many published texts as well.

The so-called academy has traditionally resisted recognizing online articles and essays as "scholarly" mainly due to the lack of a peer-review structure and the fact that most online writers have not been properly certified with a university terminal degree. This needs to change. As an educator who holds a terminal degree in my field, I can say without qualification that if I restricted my resources to only those traditionally approved by the academy, I would find myself woefully unprepared to offer the course I'm preparing to teach.

I look forward to continuing to explore the wealth of online knowledge and information related to role-playing games, and I feel certain my students will benefit from this process. I certainly have. Once again, many thanks for all your help. I'm moving on to other subjects for the blog now, and I'll return later with a preliminary syllabus and reading list as soon as I can plow through all the stuff you keep throwing at me. ;-)

Brainy Gamer Podcast - Episode 12

An interview with Chris Dahlen; the gaming community on shaky ground; and it's PS3 go time - all in this edition of the Brainy Gamer Podcast!

• Listen to the podcast directly from this page by clicking the yellow "Listen Now" button on the right.

• Subscribe to the podcast via iTunes here.
• Subscribe to the podcast feed here.

• Download the podcast directly here.

Links mentioned in the show:

Chris Dahlen's Save the Robot
Pitchfork Media
GameSetWatch
PopMatters
Moving Pixels Blog
L.B. Jeffries' Zarathustran Analytics in Video Games

Chris Dahlen - legendary hero

Chris Dahlen from Save the Robot, Pitchfork Media, and other distinguished outlets graciously agreed to record an interview segment with me for the Brainy Gamer podcast. We connected this evening via Skype and chatted for nearly an hour. Chris was terrific, and we covered a nice range of topics. The conversation ended, I thanked Chris for his time, and we hung up.

And I forgot to click the "record" button.

So, yeah, I didn't capture a single word. I must have made some kind of primal sound because my wife came running in. I told her what happened,  and she said to call him back. I told her I was too embarrassed, but she insisted. I saw Chris was still online, so I dialed him up, told him what I'd done (or in this case, not done), and he immediately replied "No problem. Let's do it again." And so we did.

I may be an idiot, but trust me on this. Chris Dahlen is a first-class guy. I ought to know. I interviewed him twice in one night.

Look for the podcast, featuring a recorded conversation with Chris Dahlen, tomorrow night. Oy.

Podcast 12 this weekend

I'm preparing the next podcast and, as always, will happily include your games-related questions, comments or feedback.

Send an email or mp3 audio file to me at brainygamer@gmail.com, and I'll do my best to work it into the show. Look for the podcast here and on iTunes this Sunday.

If you'd like to publicize your blog/site or podcast, send me a promotional blurb or audio file, and I'll include it in the show - provided I agree my listeners would be interested.

This episode will feature another interview with a surprise guest that I'm sure you'll enjoy. Thanks very much for listening!