Anyhow, I thought the most expedient way to make the slides available was to PDF them and upload for your viewing pleasure, so click here to view said slides in PDF form. Read in good health!
Also, PDFs don’t involve video, so if you’re curious, on slide 15 I showed the first few moments of this:
Okay so on reflection I had more thoughts to share on the ME3 ending. There are spoilers behind the cut. Also, it’s worth reading through a friend and colleague’scomments on my previous post which are also insightful (spoilers there too, natch).
Okay. Blog posts are supposed to have pretty pictures because the internet hates text but I need to get my thoughts about the ME3 ending on ‘paper’ now while they’re fresh. So here they go. SORRY AMERICA.
[Ed. note: Also, because I wrote this last night at god knows how late, I went through this morning and cleaned up a couple wordings, which are noted]
It goes without saying: massive Mass Effect 3 spoilers below the cut.
Bioware. You people, let us chat. Long time listener, first time caller. Love your work, have even devoted some of my professional research time to one of your creations (Dragon Age 2). Enjoy the Mass Effect series a whole bunch. Am even a SW:TOR subscriber. So I’ve established my credentials as a fan of yours, right? I’m not against you. I respect you. And that is why I have to ask you:
So as you may know, I have an interest in competitive video games and their player cultures. Today Travis George of Riot Games gave a postmortem of the new Dominion play mode they added to League of Legends in 2011. I thought he gave a really great presentation, but the takeaway for me was what he ended up saying about Riot’s goals, ideals, and way of doing things. One of his slides — which, when I got up to ask a question later, I called the “Global domination slide” — was a silhouette of a world map with Riot’s creed in big bold letters: “We want to be the most player-focused company in the world.”
League of Legends Dominion gameplay (Image courtesy IGN)
So, today I attended a talk at GDC given by former Capcom designer Keiji Inafune about the future of the Japanese game industry and what is going wrong with Japanese game creators. As you might know, I recently was a podcast guest of Silly Frags/Gayme Bar collaboration Gayme Probe where I defended the appeal of JRPGs (kinda sorta), and a reader of my twitter feed who saw I was in attendance asked me what I thought about the future of Japanese game development. My response spanned a few tweets and I feel like sharing it with all of you. Since I don’t get the blogging urge very often, I decided to run with the ball.
Keiji Inafune at GDC 2012 (Image courtesy http://www.flickr.com/people/sklathill)
When I was five, my parents got divorced. For many long years, my mother raised me by herself. She worked a job that didn’t put any of her great intellect or passion to work, for long hours, to support us both and to make sure I had every opportunity. And I could be a selfish child, and didn’t always appreciate what she gave up for me.
Today she visited Boston and I didn’t get to see her long; perhaps only an hour. I showed her the office at GAMBIT, and she met my co-workers, and she drove me home. In the car with her were some gifts she wanted to give me… mostly things for the kitchen, as she is notorious for encouraging me to cook. I got a blender and a potato masher. And one other thing.
“Open it. It’s a present, after all.”
Inside was this:
She said the stitching wasn’t perfect, and that she’s sorry it took so long because she wanted to give it to me when I got my PhD, but that it took time to do all of this by hand.
And then she needed to leave, as it’s a long drive back to Syracuse. They were only here for the day. I hugged her, and thanked her, and told her it was perfect. She and my stepfather’s dad, who came with her, got in their car and headed off home.
I managed not to actually break down into real tears until just now, taking those pictures and making this post.
On that quilt is everything. My kindergarten graduation. My high school letters. The shirt designs from every play I was ever in, and from every high school I ever attended. Pictures of my family at my high school graduation, my bachelor’s graduation from Wisconsin. Shirts from Chadbourne, and Syracuse, and Ohio. She said the Syracuse University shirt came more or less literally off my Grandma Harper’s back. And she said it wasn’t perfect, but she wanted me to have it.
It was all the things I ever loved, all the things I ever did that made me who I am, right here. Stitched by hand, by her, as a reminder to me.
I don’t think I’ll ever be able to thank her for it. Words are maybe the only thing I’ve ever been good at, the only thing I ever really had a talent for. And right now I don’t have any that are appropriate. In the end they are limited and I don’t know how to react.
Nothing on that quilt, nothing that was ever true and meaningful in my life, nothing in my life that ever led me to think for even a moment that I was ever worth anything… none of it would have been possible without the woman who sat there and sewed every stitch, and gave it to me and said it wasn’t perfect, but that she wanted me to have it.
There has never, nor ever will there be, anything more perfect than this gift, no matter what she says. Because this isn’t just a reminder of me. It’s a reminder of her.
As I pretty much just said on Twitter, any topic that reaches five Twitter posts’ worth of commentary from me is going to get a full-on blog post. We’ll see how long I stick to that.
Lately I’ve had discussions in multiple arenas about what makes a good Final Fantasy game. Co-GAMBITeer Matt Weise and I were chatting earlier about how we both found FF8 to be one of the more enjoyable in the series, despite the hardcore types’ response to it typically being somewhere between “SQUALL SUX HE IS AN EMO” and cross-grabbing, holy water-dousing, exorcism-like bellows of “Anathema!” The reasons why there vary; the character of Squall and his dispassionate act 1 attitude are part of it, as is the game’s aesthetic focusing rather intently on sci-fi elements rather than traditional fantasy narrative (yet Final Fantasy IX, which brought back the traditional fantasy narrative, was also not a fan favorite either).
But the holy grail of FF-dom appears to be Final Fantasy 6. When Kotaku, with their typical caution-to-the-wind exaggeration, calls it “the most beloved Final Fantasy,” it’s a point I’m willing to concede them. Whenever I hear people talk about which FF they love the most, FF6 is almost to an individual the one chosen. There are some exceptions (Kristen! hay gurl, shout out). I mean, just in language from that Kotaku story:
Why do people love Final Fantasy VI, or Final Fantasy III as it was known in the states? Because it nailed every aspect of why we love Final Fantasy as a whole. The compelling characters, one of the greatest video game villains of all time, the rich, emotional story; Final Fantasy VI has just about everything.
This phrasing is what made me go: “Whoa, step back there, Chocobo.”
Now, do not get me wrong, mostly because if I ever implied I didn’t like FF6 in any way I’ll wake up tomorrow with a moogle’s head in my bed. I genuinely loved FF6 when I played it. I agree that the character design was great and the individual characters had distinct and interesting personalities, PC and NPC alike. Kefka is a good villain, too; it’s no surprise that his voice actor in the Dissidia: Final Fantasy series has taken a distinctly Mark Hamil-as-the Joker in Batman: the Animated Series approach to the character, because they have much in common.
But I think “rich, emotional story” is not something I would apply to FF6. Perhaps it’s just a matter of semantics, which I can accept, but I often feel like in their rush to nostalgia, Final Fantasy series fans overattribute… something. I don’t exactly have a word for it. I just have a hard time thinking of FF stories as “rich, emotional” stories, or even as “deep” stories, or “engrossing” stories. For the most part, my memories of these moments are that the games were awesome fairy tales. They had straightforward narratives that didn’t take chances or make you think too hard. The only one that managed a successful twist was Final Fantasy 7, and I give that game credit for it: the death of [redacted] is one of the great spoilers of all time because of its tremendous impact, but hilariously, it was something that no RPG could get away with after. Like some great acts with tremendous impact, they could only do it once.
Since then, we’ve been on the lookout for potential [redacted]s from minute one of every RPG we play. And to be fair, we’ve even found a few. But boy, for that one moment of taking a chance on something not often done before — killing off an actual playable character — the writers of FF7 made an impact.
This is, perhaps, why I feel that the stories of the FF series — even some of my favorites, like FF10-2 and, yes, even much-maligned FF13 — are interesting and enjoyable, and even well-written, but not rich or engrossing. On the average, they don’t take chances, they don’t do anything particularly new. What they do is present the standard Propp-ian, journey of the hero narrative with a cast of interesting characters, a fun battle system, and gorgeous graphics/settings. In fact if I had to put words to a suspicion, I’d say that character design and world design are taking the place of “rich, emotional narrative” for those who have this amazingly overpowering nostalgia. Certainly, I think that’s the case in FF6. It’s absolutely the case in FF10-2, my favorite FF to date. 10-2 is fundamentally a story about characters and locations, not events; without FF10 as a precursor, FF10-2 wouldn’t function. The enjoyment of the game, for me, was seeing the growth of Spira as a world, and Yuna (as well as the remaining FF10 cast) grow/change as people. But the actual story of FF10-2? Boringly generic. A threat rises, and the power of love and teamwork sees you through. If it weren’t for the very witty dialogue, the story would be entirely without merit on its own.
I have yet to play a console RPG that I would really say is, all the way through, a “rich, emotional” narrative. FF7 gave us a brief, wonderful moment of it, but like [redacted]‘s actual life, it was all the more beautiful for its brevity. I’ve played lots of console RPGs that were satisfying, but few that were particularly deep or ambitious. I have to wonder what, in the end, would I even say constitutes a deep/rich RPG narrative. It may be that I simply “know it when I see it.” Unfortunately, I just don’t think that’s happened yet. I am entertained, sometimes enlightened, but almost never drawn deeply in.
When did I last post here? Oh, right… last July. The uh… life situation is now considerably different than it was last July, and the fact that being crazy busy made me sortakinda abandon this blog for a while did not in any way help matters. However, since I’ve all but abandoned the crumbling Babel that is Livejournal and instead worship at the golden calf called Twitter, there hasn’t been much news of me on the internets. More importantly, there’s been stuff to comment on that I realize I can’t properly handle in 140 characters, so I want to make a conscious effort to start blogging again.
Anyhow: last time, on Stay Classy:
I graduated from OU and am now a full-fledged PhD.
I moved from Athens, OH to Boston, MA (specifically Everett, MA)
And that’s pretty much it. When I tell you I have the best job in the world I’m not lying; GAMBIT looks at some really great stuff, and it’s full of super smart and experienced people (though this is not proving great for my meager self-esteem as I often wonder “WHAT THE HELL AM I DOING HERE D:”).
Regardless, I will try to update more often now, for as long as that holds out. Working at a research lab is good for that, actually, as we often have casual discussions that spin easily off into more elaborate analyses of the subject. Presumably, that’s my lot in life. Or so they told me at the super-secret new media studies PhD illuminati induction ceremony.
The dissertation has kept me from posting here, friends, and for that I am sorry. In order to make it up to you, I’d like to present you with the first two pages of that very document. This story is not only how I draw the reader into my study, but it’s also a truly, truly stupid story of my youth that will likely bring a smile to your face.
Without further ado:
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Like much phenomenological research, this study has its roots in my own personal experience with the subject. Thus, the story of this work begins in Waterbury, Connecticut in the summer of 1991, just outside the mall-side entrance of a drug store in the city’s largest shopping mall. Sitting there was an arcade machine of Street Fighter 2, one of the oldest digital fighting games in the history of the genre, and certainly one of the most iconic. A gamer even at a young age, I found something fascinating about the SF2 machine. Dubbed The World Warrior, the characters of SF2 were colorful, brassy, and unique. Massive, muscled Zangief the Russian pro-wrestler would face off against an emaciated Indian yogi named Dhalsim inside a digital recreation of a Cold War-era Russian steel mill. Dhalsim’s voice would ring out, “Yoga Fire!” as he inhaled and spit fire across the field, the fireball connecting with Zangief and briefly causing his entire body to black out, engulfed in a digital rendition of flickering scarlet flame. My favorite at that early age was the only female fighter in the whole group, a Chinese martial artist named Chun-li, whose high-kicking and acrobatic style drew me in.
At the time I lived in Plymouth, CT, a small town outside of Bristol, a good 20 miles from Waterbury. Whenever we arrived at the Waterbury mall for whatever reason, I hoarded my quarters and begged my parents for leave to run off to the drugstore to play Street Fighter. One of my most salient memories of those times was when another player – a teenage boy, Asian, much older than me – stepped up to the machine and put in a quarter. Suddenly, he was challenging me, and we were duking it out in digital form for the right to keep playing. If I lost, then my game was over and my quarter was through. This was a different thing altogether from the normal arcade games I had come to love, shooters like Centipede or Gauntlet or Star Wars, where I could play until the game itself did me in. If I wasn’t skilled enough to beat this guy, then my quarter was gone for good.
I’m not quite sure how, but I managed to beat him. I remember watching him turn to me with a frustrated expression, saying in an exasperated tone, “Oh, usin’ cheesy throws!” I also recall not understanding what in creation he was talking about; to this day, I remember that my young ears heard “Chinsey” rather than “cheesy,” and I assumed he was telling me the name of the secret technique I was using to defeat him. I can only imagine his exasperation when I turned to him and said, bright with pride at my perception of his approval, “Yeah! Chinsey throw, for sure!”
—-
And that’s the story. I’m not even sure why I remember that a staggering 19 years later, but I do. I don’t think I even realized that he was saying my use of throws was cheesy until a good solid 3-4 years later, once I’d had more time playing fighting games myself.
In any event, I now need to return to putting the final touches on the dissertation as a whole. I hope, however, that this little anecdote brought a smile to your face.
