In reply to 'Rules of the Game' by Daniel Golding

Note: In 2012 Hyper magazine published an article by Dan Golding titled 'Rules of the Game'. I'm not sure (that is can't remember) what position he was taking in the article but this was my response. Having discovered this in my files yesterday, I thought it was written well enough to be posted here.

I think we can safely say, and agree upon, that video-gaming is not a sport. Sports, in my opinion, require physical activity beyond twiddling your fingers and exercising the synapses in your brain. I believe that a game needs competition, and that competition must be an adversary of some type. This begs the question, is chess a game if you are playing against yourself? Well, I would argue, yes, because you are facing the adversary who just happens to be yourself. Fair game, I guess.

It's easy to view sport orientated videogames such as Wii Sports and Tekken or Street Fighter as games because they inherently take the forms of sport and apply them to the computerised world, thus taking out the 'sport' but retaining the game. So by that definition, game is form, not activity.

Any sports-modelled videogame still requires a competition-based form to involve yourself in the playing of: whether you are playing against your flatmate or the computer, you are still playing against an adversary that you may not win against.

When we enter the world of story-based videogaming, we are not entering a game, as there is no other competition, no one I am competing against; I am simply taking part in an exploration of a story-based entertainment. By picking up a console controller, customising my character and deciding which reply my character will answer with, I am no longer a passive viewer accepting another person's story as it is told to me, but an active part of the story who makes sincere and often involving decisions about how another person's story is going to be told to me – that is interactive entertainment. It is not a game, there are no rules, but there is a specific storyline that must be adhered to to get the full entertainment value out of.

The problem with viewing story-based videogames as a 'game' is knowing that it is a forgone conclusion that you will win, when essentially, all you are doing is concluding the story that you begun by opening your videogame box and inserting the disc – practically no different than picking up a DVD and inserting the disc, or via a different medium, picking up a book and opening the first page.

No matter what setting you play the story-based videogame on – even on the hardest setting – you can win if you put in enough time. The reality of the true game is that another player just might be better than you no matter how much time you put in. In that sense, only the videogame itself is your adversary. Can I really beat Dead Space 2 with only three saves allowed? I certainly can! (The question is, can I be bothered?)

Online is different though. Online we have competition. We have many players playing against each other, racking up high scores and at times competing for prizes. And, although I have never played online, are there not rules that accompany how you play online? Or perhaps, codes of conduct would be a better phrase.

A game of chess, or tennis, dictates how you play simply by the rules that have been created to accommodate the form of the game. Yes, it is possible to cheat, and there in lies the necessity to acquire a judge or adjudicator to impart impartiality.

Videogaming requires no referee, no adjudicator to check if I am cheating or not. That, assuming cheat codes are available, is entirely my choice, and at the end of the day I only answer to myself.

When playing a traditional game in competition with another, you cannot afford to stand around and do nothing, otherwise your adversary will take advantage of your slack and begin scoring points against you. Many videogames I have played, I have allowed my character to stand around doing nothing, or hide in a corner to generate more health.

I believe that developers need to ask themselves whether they are building a 'game', or an 'interactive entertainment'.

If developers really want their products to be viewed as games, they need to stop making every mission and quest so easy to complete by providing instructions, cues, markers and arrows that make the story and puzzles nothing more than a walkthrough.

On the other hand, if developers are only making interactive entertainments, then it is the attitude of gamers themselves that need to change. The reason Prince of Persia (2008) flopped was not because of the game, which was a beautifully rendered semi-cell shaded enjoyable romp through an imaginary fairytale land, but because of the voices that decried its 'easiness' and the resulting criticisms towards the gameplay (and rather thin plot). For once, I had an interactive entertainment that obeyed its own internal logic – if the story requires my character to win-out in the end, then it makes complete and utter sense that he doesn't die during the story. PoP (2008) I believe, is the first true example of an interactive entertainment through the videogame form without relying on the actual 'game' element whereby it is necessary for you to try not to die or be 'beaten' by the computer.

• 2012, Whangamata

Monday 1st December, 2014

What’s been happening Mr. Stubbs?

Far Cry 3 has been happening, that’s what.

Was it any good?

Well, it was a lot of fun once the story pissed off. The worst thing about this game was being locked into missions. Second to that, I think, was the story itself. I felt so bored by all the cutscenes. I did like Vaas as a villain though, but like some forum commenters, I too thought he was under-developed. Hoyts turned out to be nothing interesting so it would have been far more interesting to see Vaas still alive and trying to kill Hoyts as well. The player then could have had the choice to let Vaas do it himself, but making him more powerful, or to try to kill Hoyts first to stop Vaas from gaining power, but having to deal with Vaas at the same time as a consequence. Or something like that. Overall, the story theme, that of slave-trading, was fine, but I thought the whole mushroom tripping and amazon-warrioresque aspects were generally pretty dumb and pointless. So many times through a cutscene I was pressing buttons on the controller in hope that the apparently non-mapped ‘skip cutscene’ button would suddenly spring into existence. But it didn’t, and I was left to voice my non-caring attitude out loud.

The story might have had more impact if the player character was one of the local islanders themselves and had to pick up weapons to save a bunch of white-American holidayers, or even make them a bit of a mix-up: French, Canadian, American, etc. In some ways, it could test the player as to how much they need to care about some random people opposed to their own fellow local inhabitants who were also in danger of being kidnapped by Vaas and his pirates. Or even, if the fellow inhabitants were getting disillusioned and slowly going over to Vaas’s side, so then some of the missions would revolve around collecting evidence through the kidnapped holidayers, or otherwise.

And with that idea in place you could even throw in the twist of if you save the foreigners, they call their parents/family to say that they are okay, but if you don’t, the families come in with their ‘big foreign weaponry’ (government sanctioned, or private) and completely fuck shit up but in doing so bomb you and the locals, thus turning them into the new and more powerful enemies.

Hmmm. Sounds like a completely different game now.

Far Cry 3 just needed to stick to its basic slave-trading template with one insane villain who was growing more and more powerful.

Here’s another way of getting around the “white guy saving the locals” colonialism aspect of the game:

1. Player is local guide that takes holiday foreigners on their trip,
2. Player is kidnapped with the foreigners,
3. Player is constantly being taunted by Vaas to become a pirate like him,
4. Player is constantly asking themselves how important saving the foreigners are, opposed to the player-character’s local community who are also in danger of being kidnapped, or losing faith and going over to Vaas,

This would have then given greater impact to the final choice of taking the life of the foreigner at the end, especially if she was the first one you saved and became a love interest who actually fought along side of you.

But then, in this version there’s no mushroom tripping either, so that choice might not work as well.

But it could.

Imagine if the syringes that the player crafted became the trip sequences whenever they were injected, and the game twisted everything around so it felt like you were fighting your own people until the effect wore off. Some players might enjoy that and do the syringes heaps, others would never use them again, but the final mushroom trip you were given took you over the edge forcing you to question everything and making that final decision more potent.

As it was I just wanted to throw my controller at the wall because the designer or writer had dared to expect me to think a final choice was hard to make when throughout the entire time I was completely invested in saving the lives of my friends. Liza’s whining throughout did nothing to change that.

I Choke

“Drifting body, soul in search of…”

Part One

All I wanted to do was hold her; to feel the curves of her body flow into mine. Have her knowing that comfort could be found in my arms. Or simply to feel something…

Something other than hate.

So beautiful she looked and full of grace as she stood above me, stacking spare stock on the top shelf. Blonde hair curling down to the nape of her neck, the back: statuesque and carved out slightly to hips that rested on thighs, giving the perfect suggestion of feminine strength.

To reach out and touch those thighs and have her crumble at my touch, to feel her sinking into my arms and giving in to

Whatever.

I handed her a small pile of books and she smiled at me. I nearly crumbled.

I want you, I say. But she doesn’t hear because I’m too scared to open my mouth and voice the words – to give meaning to what I feel.

I feel weak.

Once I was strong (I think), but now I face a wall ten years thick.

And the wall is untouchable.

* * *

“Oh no,” Susan said with a roll of her eyes. “Kristian’s working today.”

From beside her Jane groaned. “So the creep comes back.”

They shared the joke with a giggle as Kristian walked up to the counter, eyes darting here and there before his gaze rested firmly on the floor. “Hi.”

Susan backed off, obviously inconspicuously. Jane turned a straight-faced glare at her that pleaded desperately, don’t go! Don’t leave me alone with him, I’ll do anything if you stay, and finally, I’ll get you back for this! But Susan was gone, behind shelves tidying.

Jane tried to ignore his presence. Perhaps he would eventually go away, get bored and look for something else to do. Unlikely, considering the message that was drummed into every new staff member’s head, as well as those who forgot: “Always have two people at the counter.” The boss’s irritating voice pounded the message into everybody’s head whether they wanted it or not.

So here she was, stuck with a dark and greasy, heavy breathing freak, who seemed to be inching closer and closer – like a virus invading her body. Jane thought she might be sick. If he got any closer, she surely would be.

Just ignore him.

But she couldn’t.

Look at the way he served customers. Was a grunt a “yes” or a “no”? And what does a smirk mean? Didn’t he know how to smile? Jane wondered if any of the customers would come back. Ever! His feeble attempts at kindness only seemed to scare them. “No, I don’t know where the c-cooking books are.”

The lady looked displeased. “Why not?”

He shrugged his shoulders. “Because I don’t.” He turned to Jane with a disgusted look on his face.

How could somebody like this get a job in the first place?

“I’m sorry, he’s new.” She pointed to the left, past Kristian’s furrowed brow. “Over by the gardening books, two rows down from here.”

The lady thanked Jane and walked off.

He served some more, just purchasing items, but with little recognition to any one who came to the counter. Jane knew that learning could be difficult, but this was ridiculous. All he had to do was smile and say “thank you”, or at least just smile.

After serving the last customer he stepped back from the counter seemingly downcast.

Great! Am I supposed to feel sorry for him now?

This quiet moment seemed to go on too long, especially with Kristian fidgeting like an insect beside her. She decided to break the silence, say something nice. Maybe he just needed to be spoken to, helped or encouraged to try a little harder.

“Hey, don’t worry about it. You’ll soon pick it up.”

He glanced at her. “Pick what up?”

“How to do everything, y’ know, learn where everything is.”

He didn’t say anything, just looked away again. Jane didn’t know if anything more should be said, so she thought back to her first day on the job. Hadn’t the other staff members encouraged her to learn where everything was? “When you can, just take a walk around the shop, find out where everything stays. For example, the book section over there; to your left, the stationary…” But Jane had been willing to learn; Kristian on the other hand was barely even making the effort to smile. She felt obliged to say something, but how? Casually: “Hey Kristian, just try to make the customers feel welcome, y’ know, smile a bit more.”

“Oh, is that all I have to do?” He looked really annoyed.

“Well, yeah.”

He turned away. Maybe she was being too forceful. Encourage him, say something nice.

But it came out wrong… “Y’ know, kindness doesn’t come without a smile.”

He turned to face her, a gaze that hid itself under that low furrowed brow, and said: “who taught you to smile – a hyena?”

No, don’t say anything. But Jane wasn’t sure she could say anything, so she turned her head away from him. Turned her whole body too. Now he wasn’t worth noticing or paying any attention to, because he was just a joke – nothing more.

“How could you do that to me? No, don’t laugh. It’s not funny damn it.”

“Yes it is.” Susan slapped her thigh as Jane sat shaking her head slowly.

They were on their break, seated on the other side of the complex, away from the mid-week customers mingling about looking for bargains; unafraid to talk out loud now they were both away from that creepy freak.

“Oh poor me. Do you know I was nearly sick when he looked at me.”

This comment caused more laughter to burst from Susan but Jane continued on.

“Why do we have to be stuck with this creep?”

“Evil creep,” Susan insisted.

“Urgh. I hate the way he looks at you, like he’s imagining all the gross things he would do to you if he had the chance.”

“Oh and I’ve seen the way he looks at you.”

“What!?”

“When you turned away from him today, guess where his eyes turned down to.”

Sound travels. And Jane’s scream bounced off almost every wall that existed in the complex. She slapped a hand across her mouth, but Susan wasn’t finished torturing her yet.

“I think it’s obvious he likes you.” She cocked her head to one side and asked brightly, “are y’ gonna ask him out?”

“Don’t do this to me.” Jane’s hand covered her whole face, trying desperately to cope with the pressure.

Susan suddenly grabbed her arm. “He’s probably got a shed at home where he keeps his corpses, people he’s hacked to pieces and stored away so that every night he can go in and look at them and gloat.” This idea plunged her into a deep thought and she started biting a thumbnail. “And falling in love with each one like some sick psycho.”

“Now I know I’m going to be sick.”

But this just caused Susan to burst into even more laughter.

As the days went by, it seemed as though Susan was on a mission to perfect the art of ‘backing off’. The amount of times she had actually stood next to Kristian for more than five seconds could be counted on one hand. More and more it was Jane who was left at the counter watching over his sad attempts at serving while Susan wandered the shop pretending to look busy.

If having to stand next to him wasn’t enough, she also had to put up with him looking at her – very suspiciously. Whenever she turned towards him he would suddenly look away or let his gaze fall to the ground in a show of embarrassment. But occasionally she would catch him viewing her like she was just some object, and Jane became more and more uncomfortable with it. To the point of letting the assistant manager know, even – only she felt this option to be a little extreme and would probably end up feeling guilty about ‘dobbing’ someone in anyway. Besides, the assistant manager was so hard to approach sometimes. Always walking the shop in a rush, like she had important business to do, eyeing her workers to make sure they were actually working and not slacking off – that was almost as bad as Kristian, but not quite.

So what was she to do?

Tell him. Be strong and let him know that you feel uncomfortable and that it is your right to not feel uncomfortable while at work.

Again she was stuck at the counter with him and again he was looking sideways at her – ‘checking her out’ (which was okay in itself once or twice, if he appreciated how she looked, but when it didn’t stop and went on day after day, it became very distressing).

She waited for him to finish serving, turned to him and spoke. “Kristian, I’ve noticed you have been constantly looking at me and I don’t want to sound mean but I’m starting to feel uncomfortable.”

She waited for him to say something. He just stood there looking directly into her eyes. Waiting.

“Well, so, I would sort of like it if you stopped looking at me like that. Okay?” She felt her insides curl. What else could she say?

He turned and said, “Fine. I’m sorry.”

But he didn’t look sorry. He looked annoyed and put off.

And now Jane felt even more uncomfortable, like she had found a place within Kristian, a place he believed in, and squashed it.

The clock read 10:30. Half an hour before she would be released from this torture.

Oh where was Susan when she needed her? Giggling from behind a shelf, not in the least bit sympathetic – just a work mate who pretended to be a friend, but when the friendship was asked for she would run at the first chance she had.

Poor me.

* * *

Her name is Ryoline. Part Scottish, the other half lost somewhere in the Afrikaner.

Assistant Manager.

Eyes that shine, a smile that warms.

I feel strength when I’m near her, a great comforting glow that leaves me thinking how great life could be if only I could reach out and touch her.

But I can’t.

I feel the glow leave my body, strength dissipating and I start choking on the emptiness again. Drowning me.

Like love,

But harsher.

Ryoline drifting about

Like a dream,

Kristian watching himself

Fall on knees.

I kick and scream

Falling again and again,

Make me blind, I must not see!

* * *

How Many Enterprises Can We Destroy?

Star Trek: Into Darkness has everything that both an action fan and a Star Trek fan could want: space battles, fist fights, Klingons, canon characters, aliens, a baddy who is truly threatening and Kirk giving every woman who walks past ‘the eye’.

What more could you want?

Well, for a starters, a storyline that doesn’t end just as it gets going.

One of the great failings of Hollywood producers and writers is their inability to trust an audience with more than just one thread of story – one single thread. Into Darkness was written as though the producers saw the secondary storyline they had presented us with – that of an Admiral wanting to start a war with the Klingons – as too much of a hassle to try to flesh out and incorporate further into the film so decided that it was far easier just to kill it. What we get left with is a bad guy story so standard that you could take out all SF trappings and it would be, at the most, just a second-rate action film.

Warstub, you’re being too harsh. Didn’t you enjoy it?

I certainly did enjoy it. It was action-packed with a story that kept pushing forward, that is, until I realised that it wasn’t pushing forward any more and had settled for the action sequences to wrap everything up with. ‘But, but, what about the Klingons? What about all the death that the bad guy caused while Kirk was on the Klingon home-world? Shouldn’t they be blaming humans for this and deciding to retaliate?’ Heck, with that scenario, the Admiral barely even needed to show up to try to ‘fix’ things and start the war he was after; the Klingons would have been so pissed off that they should have been gathering all Birds of Prey together and initiating a battle in space regardless of what the humans were or weren’t doing. There was this feeling throughout that the writers felt like they needed to fall back on using a canon character to draw in our attention and interest. ‘What else you got writers?’ Well, they said straight back at me, wanna see us destroy another Enterprise? ‘Gee, I don’t know. There seems to an abundance of Enterprises going down in feature length films that it almost seems old hat’ I say back at them. Oh, in that case, we’ll save it then. But just in case, here’s a really, really, big Federation ship crashing into the sea causing a massive wave of destruction and then skidding onto land and ploughing through tall buildings and killing lots of good innocent people!

And it’s not even the fall-back technique in the end – Christopher Pike, Kirk dying for dramatic effect and motivational drive, the attempt at learning human emotion through Spock and Lt. Uhura having a relationship; it’s the fact that none of these things moved together in a fleshed out storyline. Into Darkness did little more than present characters and a bad guy fighting against each other as if to do nothing more than justify itself as back-story. And don’t even get me started on the inconsistencies to canon that seemed to get thrown right out the window for the sake of dramatic effect!*

For the first half, if not even three quarters, this film was really enjoyable and actually quite strong, one I recommend but with serious reservations; and the critique that I’ve bombarded it with is really aimed at the writers and studios who never seem to balance good story with original characters and original plot. On reflection,¹ I’m actually disappointed in how much the film falls back on old characters, because if anything, that’s just a sign of not being able to come up with their own wonderful and original script. I find the story parallels to previous Star Trek films and canon actually souring my original enjoyment of Into Darkness.

“I guess less Trekkie, more action might be the short story,” Anthony Marcoly told TheWrap.² And when you look back on the story, it actually does feel short – even at a full two hours!

What is ultimately disappointing is that the writers had an action-packed bear-bones script that could have still remained faithful to canon instead of sacrificing characters that appear later on in The Original Series just for the sake of drama. That’s just poor writing as far as I’m concerned.

Is it too much to expect more in Science Fiction?

Is it too much to ask for better consistencies in extrapolated universes?

I don’t think so.

1This paragraph was written the following day.

2http://www.ign.com/articles/2013/05/12/star-trek-into-darkness-enjoys-strong-international-debut...
*Yeah, yeah, I know... "It's a different timeline" I say flippantly "whatever!" The use of TOS canon characters is what is so souring - they are only being used for dramatic effect, not as potential storylines. Pike being killed off is proof of this. NO ORIGINALITY! 

Bioshock: Infinite - Linear gameplay trapped inside a non-linear story

*End of game theme and story spoilers below*

Any story that has to wrap things up with extended scenes that explain what you have never taken part in (as a game player), hasn't done the job properly.

Spec Ops: The Line wrapped things up by explaining the reality of what you had played through and thought you had experienced, whereas Bioshock: Infinite merely takes you through from A to B and there is very little that you can do or have an opinion on about any of that. In all, if not at least some, of the scenes used at the end, there was opportunity for the player to play through those scenes as part of the developing story rather than take you through them briefly at the end as a sequence of explanations. This game could have had instead Booker and Elizabeth going backwards and forwards through time trying to understand what was happening rather than just experiencing straight forward linear action sequences.

It would have been really interesting as a player to have been able to utilise the vigors to open up special tears that thrust you into gameplay that extrapolated on the Rosalind and Robert Lutece influence and separate involvement in the creation of Columbia. Some might say "but that interrupts the separate realities of Booker existing with him appearing in the same time-frame as himself", but in Infinite that happens anyway - Booker appears in the revolution where he was killed and became a martyr. So what we have is a character who infiltrates different realities that he already does exist in or has existed in, but much of that is mere framework, or even wallpaper to some extent, rather than strong narrative building.

Other things I have and had issues with:

• Daisy as a strong female revolutionary character was reduced to 'crazy black female'
  • I really hated the moment when Elizabeth killed Daisy. I sat there with my controller in my hand thinking 'yip, the white folks save the day again...'
  • Sure, if you put it in context of Booker being the racist Comstock, then it makes a lot of sense, but at that point, you're actually supposed to sympathise with the revolution. I mean, that universe's Booker is a flippin' martyr for crying out loud!
  • Or are you supposed to sympathise? It's certainly a discussion point, I guess.
   
• Gameplay aspects like Elizabeth not opening any doors or pulling any leavers, waiting for you to do it instead even after she has just said “are you going to open the door or am I going in alone?” at which point she waits forever for you to open the door. Nice one!
  
  

• Bullets having a physical effect on ghosts.
  • Okay, so if a ghost can have a physical effect on you, why can't you have a physical effect on a ghost? That's good reasoning, but it still seems really silly in terms of gameplay when a ghost is supposed to be able to move through walls but takes direct damage from bullets.
  • Using vigors exclusively, or combined with ammunition (like transferring shock jockey to your gun), would have made that fight far more interesting and less of a recycled combat moment.

Actually, there's nowhere near as much to gripe about as I'd like to think. My 'exploration with sky-hooks' has been covered.

Overall you could look at both Bioshocks as extrapolating on the pitfalls of idealism and the downfall of civilisations or societies based on exclusivity. And those are good things to discuss, but Infinite, however, left me with my alternative title: Bioshock: The virtues of suicide*. Because, even though there was revolution going on, the player was constantly fighting both sides of the revolution just to stay alive, and was reducing the concepts that could have been exploited in that idea to triviality, or 'not important', because the player has to get from A to B (constantly), and then finely discover his own role in the whole sordid mess.

But is it worth all the discussion going on over at Paul Tassi's two articles? I think any multiverse story can generate that kind of speculation if there is no closed loop or specified number of universes; Infinite spreads its net wide, though traverses only a few of the extended possibilities within the narrative. My general answer to that question is 'no, it's not worth it' but that's personal more than critical, as I would rather have a story teller be definite within their framework of multiple possibilities. As an example of this statement, a novelist may never state a character's age thus allowing the readers to speculate on the moral ambiguity of their actions within a clearly defined framework. It allows discussion to open up on the act itself and whether age actually is relevant in discussing [that] act. Infinite merely opens up discussions on possibilities.

Not to deride that in itself of course, after all, many people find that a fun and rewarding task. And that's fine. Bioshock: Infinite just might become a classic for the ending alone.

But I'll still want a prequel to the original Bioshock!