“AMUSEMENT GAMING” Professionals are Officially Morons

The news in brief, once again secondarily reported from excerpts of The Stinger Report.

At the recent ATEI gaming trade show in London, two new dance games were displayed:  DDRX and Pump it Up: Absolute.  While reading through the report, these two excerpts caught my eye:

“During the show, the machine was overrun by the leading Dancing Stage fan players from across the internet. ATEI’09 had worked with Stinger Report owners KWP to come up with a comprehensive plan to deal with the Non-Trade problem at the show. Though it is impossible to hold back the tsunami of fan players interested in the latest BeMani titles, a need to manage the needs to promote the game and to sell the game (without a hoard of sweating players) proved an interesting challenge.”

“On the UDC booth the company had the highly anticipated ‘Pump It Up!: NX Absolute’ (PC Hardware) – the game was mobbed by fans of the dancing stage title during the show.”

Let me be the first, and perhaps only person to say: WTF.  Two things catch my attention here.  First, a horde of sweaty players?  That’s awesome.  A special Infinity Injun shoutout to S34n, who was among those sweaty players, and who I can only assume was one of the first people to have to deal with the retarded cultural logistics programme these morons apparently decided to implement.

Second of all, is the entire industry collectively retarded?  If you operate an arcade, of all the factors you could possibly know about a game, which is more important:  that it uses a USB memory stick to store player data, that it has a 37 inch screen or, oh yeah, that “it is impossible to hold back the tsunami of fan players”?

One of these things is not like the other.  Maybe the only reason arcades are dying is because operators don’t actually know how to run a business.

-Kilroy Del Dancefighter Economist the First

When White People Attack: NPR, Academia, and Vidcons

Let’s just start with this: monoculture is a stupid word.  A lot of words are stupid words.  Not of their own accord or anything, just by merit of their most frequent users not really having anything important to say with them.  This isn’t to say that not-saying-things is some sort of crime.  If anything one of the redeeming aspects of vidcons is their frequent lack of forceful meaning.  Basically what it boils down to is this age-old truth.  The harder you try, the more likely you are to fuck up.  Formalized academic endeavors are quite frequently perpetrated by people so eager to outrun the competition that they can’t keep up with their own feet.  But enough about my past.  Let’s move on to vivisect others.

The article I linked to in “monoculture” offends my sensibilities.  First of all, it presents the concept of treating video games as a “medium for artistic experimentation and collaboration“.  Second of all, it treats this concept as new; semantically coherent, for that matter.  We’ll get back to this in a minute, but realize that much of what follows, leads here.

Cutting aside all the text and gibberish in the article, there are maybe two things that show up.  There’s the discussion about minimalist games vs. “the typical PlayStation 3 games, which include titles like “Killzone 2, Street Fighter IV and Resident Evil 5.” Then there’s the standard goings-on about illegitimate semantic quibbles, based on several thousand years of bad philosophy.  An expected occurrence from academia.

What is the difference between the artistic game and the standard vidcon?  Art is semantically open to the point that any quabble over definition seems absurd.  Roger Ebert, in one of his timeless anti-medium tirades, contemplated the possibility of an Andy Warhol vidcon.  In his vision, it rested on a pedestal in a glass case, still shrinkwrapped in original packaging.  A debate over the nature of art is equivalent to a debate over which language has the most legitimate words.

Quote:

Santiago adds that she and Chen think of a video game as a version of a poem: “By that we mean that it presents ideas to the player, but it also asks players to bring their own experiences to the table as well.”

Response:

Shut up.  This wordliness could be summed up much more succinctly.  I should know, because I make a habit of converting everything from shorthand to longhand.  Here is the fixed version:  Vidcons should work as subjective experiences.

Much simpler, much more direct, raises a question much more immediately: why?

This is not a new discussion.  In fact, Select Button has been having this exact discussion since its inception.  With almost the same ridiculous tone, no less, which is quite the impressive feat.  But to all of you gaming sons-of-bitches who think that Braid or Winter Bells or Flower represent some sort of paradigm shift, you’re running in circles.  Conveying emotion through a medium is not a new idea.  Neither is minimalism.  Neither is any other thing we’ll ever see in “art”.  What we have here in the emerging tools of the medium are, at most, new instantiations of old methods; old concepts.  Why discuss the emotional impact of cutscenes vs the impact of player controlled scenarios, when you could be having an equally significant discussion over which profanity is inherently the most offensive?

Newsflash geniuses: If I want to evoke an emotion, let’s just say anger, it doesn’t specifically matter if I call your mother a whore, or even how I call your mother a whore.  Past that though, the truth is that it doesn’t matter whether I succeed in upsetting you or not.  It matters whether or not she actually is.

I don’t feel like talking about vidcons anymore.  I think I’ll go read a book.  The good kind; the kind that determines whether or not your mother is a whore.

– Kilroy del Dancefighter estaohfuckit

Infinity Injun Arcade Terrorism Advisory Alert

Greetings readers.  It is my duty to inform those of you who are still involved in the arcade scene of a pernicious, and I can only assume enduring threat:  Arcade Terrorism.  My source is the Stinger Report.  Being so named I can only assume it will post any updates on this grave security issue.  Rather than paraphrasing, I will simply quote directly:

Date: 24th November 2008	Location: Milky Way Express Arcade, Chongqing, China	Injuries: 5 Fatalities
Incident: The amusement venue was operating normally when a gang of over 20 men with knives and metal bars attacked employees of the arcade facility. At the end of the attack five individuals (four men and a woman) employees of the venue had been fatally injured at the scene; over 80 police and ambulances then rushed to the scene.
Suspected Cause: A police investigation suggested the incident started when a local gang leader approached the venue owner and then called assailants; the woman murdered was the venue owner’s wife and worked in the cashbox, in this Rider Misadventure incident.

NOTE – The number of organized gang-related attacks on amusement and attraction venues has soared – this latest mafia style attack in China is becoming a common problem, with corruption and protection money a factor of operational life in this country. Many countries are extremely secretive regarding the level of the problem, with a number of arcade venues in the UK recently seeing organized gang attacks for the ready money they carry.

That’s right, arcade terrorism.  Not yet in America thankfully, but elsewhere; to an extent we cannot be sure of no less, thanks no doubt to bureaucrats more interested in national image than the actual safety of their citizens.  So for those of you gamers who travel or live in any non-American country, look out for yourselves.  I’m wishing best of luck to S34n and Rosie in particular, since you’re both active in the UK and Chinese competitive dance game scenes, respectively.  May you both avoid any Rider Misadventure.

American gamers!  You are not without risk of your own!  Again, to quote directly:

– Guest Problems

[…]

It was reported in the Wall Street Journal that law-enforcement agencies across numerous States of the USA had seen an alarming number of serious disorderly conduct calls to what they called ‘Pizzacades’ – this term referring in the majority to some of the 540 ‘Chuck E. Cheese’ venues. This situation mirrors park riots at Six Flag venues in California and a riot of guests at a LotteWorld in Soul South Korea

The law-enforcement offices in the WSJ interview stated that it was a mixture of high tensions over children’s parties, crowded conditions and the mixture of alcohol that caused many of these incidents – in some cases arriving at mass riots between children and adults throwing chairs. This bad publicity of the CEC chain was countered by a statement that the sites were instigating measures to address these incidents. The list included the removal of alcohol from the menu (only 70 per cent of the chains sites have it on their menu), hiring of security staff, screening of weapons on site, and the addressing of gang colors and signs on clothing. Guest-on-Guest and Guest-on-Staff violence rose in intensity during the year, a number of near riots and fatal shootings taking place on park property or at FEC venues.

One example of the severity of the incidents for the ‘Eater-Tainment’ scene was revealed recently with the winding down of the METREON entertainment location in San Francisco – it was revealed that four individuals had been shot (three fatally) at the site. A number of venues have become gang turf with the incidents that engenders – though facility operators are keen to play down the association.

So for those of you playing games on American soil, be wary that you are not patronizing a gangland arcade.  It is my belief that riots instigated by debauchery are fairly readily predicted and hence reasonably avoided even without warning.  The issues of gang violence and terrorism are less so, however.  It is my hope that this article encourages gamers to pay attention and stay on their toes, and avoid any grievious physical injury or death.

Book Review: Arcade Mania!

Surely the question that immediately springs to the mind of the savvy reader is “what makes this book review worth my time?  There are many book reviews on this subject, and why should I spend my time reading and digesting this one as opposed to any of the others freely and readily available to me?”  Well dear reader, let me tell you why; because this review has character.  First of all, I don’t just have one but rather TWO copies of the book.  By simple math that makes this review at least twice as good as certain other book reviews that shall remain unnamed.  Secondly, there’s a better story behind it.  I didn’t go the boringly pedestrian route of buying my copies of the book, oh no.  I won them, in glorious MSpaint battle for the pleasure of Sir Aaron of Japan.  A man, I might inform you, of supremely high standing.  His forums exist as a glorious beacon for the righteous and proper ideals of music gaming (even in these dark times).  In addition to all of that, however, he actually makes a contribution to the contents of the book under discussion!  That, my friend, is why this is the superior book review.

A lot is covered in a fairly short period of words in this book, something I am at once suspicious of, as sheer unbridled verbosity is quite naturally a major goal of any true writer.  The book is organized as a Japanese game center presumably is, although having never been to Japan I can only question whether or not it even exists.  This in addition to clear contradictions like reports of game centers dedicated entirely to only one game, such as Purika no Mecca, which specializes in photo booths.  As far as I can tell photo booths aren’t actually a game at all.  Strike two Mr. Ashcraft.

The section on music games is about as slanderous and ridiculous as anything that has ever been said on the subject, which leads me to question why Sir Aaron of Japan has chosen to affiliate himself with it.  Then again, an outsider could never possibly understand the complexities of electronic rhythm-action games and the glorious and intricate communities that have been built around them.  This would hold equally whether they were writing a book on the subject or in fact reading it.  Upon investigation it turned out that Sir Aaron had been misquoted.  I suppose such errors will simply have to be written off as an unavoidable part of the cross-cultural discussion.  A non-player will simply never understand such subtle distinctions as, for example, the difference between doubles mode and 2p mode, or the difference between pattern recognition and pattern memorization.  It is not within their range of cognition.

Given this I cannot obviously recommend this book as a sound overview of music gaming.  In fact I am not sure I can do so for any type of gaming, as I can’t be certain that similarly eggregious offenses weren’t commited when describing other important genres and cultures.  However, as an unsound overview it may just be adequate, and in that capacity I not only recommend it but in fact wholeheartedly endorse it.

From this book I learned, rightly or wrongly, about the sheer complexity of 2d shoot ’em ups, or “shmups”.  The genre is much more malleable and rife for creative exploitation than I ever could have imagined, with games like Parodius, Otomedius, and Muchi Muchi Pork apparently combining classical 2d shooting action with pornography!  Truly exciting stuff.  “A shmup is  a good playground to try new game features” says Doujin software maker Kenta Cho.  Indeed.  With a backlog of clever genre mashups to look through, I will have plenty to study for ideas when I begin production on the shmup that I have been planning for the past few seconds.

One of the things that impressed me throughout the book was the constant reports of individuals and small groups who had made big things happen in the gaming industry despite seemingly large obstacles.  This includes Doujin software makers like Kenta Cho, but also Manga artist collective CLAMP and even the group that made Ikaruga, both of which consisted of a mere 4 people.  I guess it just goes to show that people can really do amazing things when they just get off their damn asses and put forth something even vaguely resembling an effort, Jeff.

The section on games of both luck and skill was interesting as well.  I thought it was especially fascinating to see the the subject of bad beats brought up in the context of Mahjong, because it reminds me that there are people who complain that they lost illegitimately or by luck in every game, and even though some of them are bound to be right, infinitely more are just whiny good-for-nothing scrubs.

Lastly the discussion about epic card-based arcade games was, well, epic.  I can’t understand how demand doesn’t exist for them stateside, considering things like Derby Owners Club made the trip across the pacific.  Apparently soccer based card game World Club Champion Football was released in Europe, I imagine principally due to the lasting international appeal referring to Soccer by the wrong name has for foreigners.  Games like Sangokushi Taisen, however, which is set in the Three Kingdoms era of the fictitious nation of China are apparently too culturally distant to present to Gaijin, even though stabbing people with swords for justice is generally a theme that carries quite well across cultures.  It’s also been my experience that westerners are typically quite eager to voraciously and senselessly devour anything that even hints of being cultural (in this case cultural meaning anything from somewhere else).  Truthfully, I always figured eastern culture was more popular in the west than it was in the east.  You’ll certainly never find any westerners extolling the virtues of western culture.  I say that fictional or not, the east is quite marketable in the west, and companies should bring games like these stateside.  I also wish arcades weren’t all dead here.

In conclusion this was a book review.  Goodbye.

-Kilroy Del Dancefighter Estallion the First

Left 4 Dead: Horror without gravitas, zombies without politics

I suppose it is conventional in games journalism that writers take to examining products roughly as soon as they hit shelves, if not beforehand.  It would be awfully dishonest of me to say that I have made a conscious habit of violating this convention.  Mostly I just lack the traditional attributes necessary to such a method of operations.  I tend to spend what money I have on dance games and dance game tournaments, and what’s left over tends to go towards, if not food and necessities, games that have already been well played and discussed and lay discarded.  I lack the journalistic clout to secure free copies or beta copies of things, and sort of doubt I will ever have it; but perhaps all of this is to my benefit.

It’s traditionally said, by people, that an authors work is separated from the author at birth.  In general this sort of thinking has both elements of truth and elements of arrogance in it.  In vidcons in particular however, it seems to become particularly important, if not to take on an important and altogether new tone.  A vidcon is not read for meaning, it is interacted with.  With some fictional tome, the authors concern would generally be that their intended message of the book survives it.  Conversely with many vidcons, the bulk of the player experience seems by nature to be out of authors hands.

I’ve had the opportunity to play Left 4 Dead off and on more or less since it came out, and I am proud to say my impressions of it are not the same as they first were.

I must admit that I have traditionally possessed a great hatred for literary analysis, and indeed much of what commonly passes for enlightened discussion.  Virtually any discussion of meaning to me seemed, if not moot, then a fools errand.  As if, say, 8 people read this article and came to a different understanding of it, and then turned to each other and argued over which understanding represented the actual text.  Suppose they come to a conclusion; what have they resolved?  Their time would be better spent arguing over which of the 8 understandings is best, not which is most similar to the authors.  An author is not a foundation for the truth of his words, nor is such a foundation necessary any more than the earth need be resting upon something.

At any rate, Left 4 Dead initially struck me as a very competent, stylish, quirky FPS which makes you fight zombies.  It also struck me as having no story.  What I’ve come to realize is that the story is extrinsic.  You might say meta-textual, but that’s only because you like throwing math-sounding-words into conversations to make yourself feel important.

No, the story is extrinsic to the design of the game and to the specific, meaningful intent of the creators, but not to the experience of the player.  That is a different text, a synthesis of sorts, which is organic and whole and yes, individually subjective, but beautiful.  Let me try to explain the only way I know how; by throwing a bunch more words up on the screen.

It was just yesterday that something outstanding happened, that completely shook the way I was used to playing and understanding the game.  Ever since launch, I realize I had never really encountered a diversity of attitudes in any one campaign.  Looking back this truly effected how I appreciated the game.  There is only so much the game can do on its own, and it does it so well.  The musical cues, the occasional development of the characters through scripted comments, the writing on the walls, and the artistic style of things in general are all top notch.  They can do nothing, however, against the attitudes of the players.

I had been playing this game for what seemed like so long, and I had only ever known two attitudes from my teammates: A focused attitude, and a curious attitude.  One was about treating the game the way most people treat games, with the intent to win.  The other was about exploring and understanding it as a game.  Occasionally this took the form of hilarious trolling.  No matter what the competency of any given teammate, the attitudes were always the same.

Something awesome happened, and it taught me.  A person showed up with a different attitude.  I found, in a team-based game about zombies, an anti-social showboat.  Now of course one must be accustomed to considering such a person as a gamer considers such a person, as a hindrance to ones enjoyment of the game.  At first that was my impression as well.  Then, after being told to stay out of the way, stay off teamspeak, and that the person in question was the most valuable person on the team, three consecutive tanks promptly spawned and beat his “I’ll take point” ass to a bloody pulp.  Meanwhile the 3 remaining members of the team made a run for the evacuation vehicle.  One got jumped by a hunter, the other was pulled right out of the vehicle by a smoker right when we had both seemingly made it to safety.

And so it was that I, who had been up to that last chapter the least useful member of the team both by the objective standards of the game and by common team consensus; so it was that I, (playing Zoey), became the sole survivor.

In any George Romero zombie movie or any horror movie at all we would probably be forced to consider (if not by our own machinations or our inference of the directors intent then by some overzealous cinema buff) the exact significance of the fact that any given character was the sole survivor of the film.  In Cube, the sole survivor is functionally retarded.  This is probably important.  In this game however such an occurrence is entirely unscripted and incidental.  What does it mean that Zoey is the sole survivor?  What significance does the anti-social showboat have as allegory to blah blah blah.  What does it mean that Francis killed Louis with friendly fire?  It can’t possibly have any meaning to it that was intended by the author, it can only ever have the meaning the gamer writes into it.  Admittedly it will often be written straight from another text into this one, but the beauty is that it makes it whole, not some stitched together abomination unto God but its own complete, natural experience.

Realizing that made me think of that guy, getting beaten to death by the third tank, not as a hindrance to my enjoyment of the game but as the greatest contribution to it I had ever experienced.  In what story do you start with four protagonists and have all four cooperate, perfectly, without drama between them or treachery or disagreement, and then reach their goal?  That’s monotonous.  I suppose monotony is not bad, if the tone is pretty enough, and it was for me.  Then someone started singing along, and they were off-key.  It was perfect.

So I challenge you, the reader; add your own games on top of the games you play.  If you were in a real zombie holocaust perhaps you would cooperate as smoothly and efficiently as you do in your campaign, and you would be better for it.  What you may not realize is that you’re adding your own meaning to the game even there.  It is a meaning of cynicism and focus and drive and quiet hope, that drives the characters on screen through their horrors with the same detachment and level-headedness and perhaps gaminess held by you, the player.  If you should ever want a different experience though, you need merely play a different game with the tools you have been given.

P.S . Fuck Roger Ebert

– Kilroy Del Dancefighter Estallion the First