Raining In The Real World

Yesterday, I used pretty deliberate language when asking you guys what you've been up to gamewise over the post-Christmas "drought." Seems anywhere you go these days, from the media to hardcore forums, many folks are waving the "nothing good is coming out" refrain as readily as we trotted out the "omg too much to play" campaign over Christmas.

But it sounds like SVGLers, at least, have had no such desert of entertainment in January, nor do you expect to have one in February. Or March, for that matter. I absolutely loved hearing about what you all were playing, if only for the sheer diversity in the comments. Many of you reported not yet having gotten through Fallout 3's 80-plus hours -- really? Oh goodness, what's wrong with you? Some of you have set specific goals to more thoroughly revisit titles you have already played, and still others of you are choosing installments from gaming's illustrious back catalog -- you know, real vintage stuff like Super Mario Galaxy.

And you guys are the ones who read video game blogs, one way of telling that you're possibly a bit more enthusiastic than the majority of video game consumers -- who, rarely reading video game blogs, probably have no idea that there is a "drought" going on.

67 percent of Call of Duty 4 players haven't gotten the sequel yet. And of those that did, half of them played CoD4 regularly right up until the launch of World at War -- an entire year. Interesting to keep in mind what the real world's like, you know? (Which is what motivated me to write this a couple months back.)

Oh, and if you're wondering where those numbers come from, social network GamerDNA's been working together with Gamasutra to do a series on player engagement with sequels. So far, we've looked at the Gears and Call of Duty franchises, comparing one against the other and also measuring whether the release of a sequel elicits a predictable response from owners of the prior games -- and whether DLC really serves to increase engangement in the long term (some interesting stats there for those that love charts. Charts!) Check 'em out.

Busy, Episode 2

Sorry for the delay in posts, everyone! Have been a little busy trying to do several things at once, as is so often the case (and quitting smoking! Seriously!).

So, here's a little check-in note. How are you handling the legendary post-Christmas drought? I have been handling it by sucking hard at Geometry Wars. Every day. What are you playing, and how do you like it?

Exposing Lara's... Equanimity?

By now you've probably heard somewhere, like a noisebriar sticking to your clothes in the digital wind, that Eidos would like to make the Tomb Raider franchise and its heroine more "female friendly." Trina of ladybusiness-focused site GamingAngels recently collected some thoughts on this from game industry gals she knows, and I contributed.

Decided to share here what I wrote to her, and see what you guys think. I know there're plenty of gals who read SVGL, but an utterly unscientific population sampling suggests that my audience, like most gaming audiences, is majority male. Still -- and maybe one day I'm owed a deck in the face from Gloria Steinem -- whenever we as a society discuss gender issues and "what women want," I get a pang of concern for the dudes. I'm probably fortunate to grow up in this era instead of in a previous one, but I don't like that we're allowed to discuss what's "female-friendly" and yet generally feel comfortable already assuming what's "male-friendly" (guns! explosions! boobs!) -- and permit girls' club attitudes while boys' clubs are conceptually frowned upon.

I also think the idea of "female-friendly" is by itself a little bit cringeworthy, because it assumes that all women have the same taste, and all women are interested in the same ideals. But I'm hammering on semantics here -- largely to make the point that this is a discussion in which I hope SVGL's entire audience feels comfortable participating.

Semantics aside, look. I think I get what Eidos wants to do, here. Lara has a reputation as a bombshell -- okay, okay, sex object. She's perhaps the game biz's most famous piece of eye-candy, and somehow over the years she's become iconic of the concept that 18-year-old boys drool over pixelated boobs. I can see how this has made some women feel as if Tomb Raider games are not "for them."
But when it comes to why women don't feel comfortable with this or that video game, I think it's a way bigger issue than just one character's looks and body. They could overhaul her completely in some kind of extreme way and I still doubt that it will be some magical cure for female perception of the brand -- and they might even alienate existing fans, which won't help their ends.

Eidos is trying to widen the franchise's appeal because Tomb Raider: Underworld didn't sell like they wanted it to. I also suspect Eidos is trying to clean lingering skeletons out of its closet so that a strong company will want to buy it out, but that's just a guess. Finally, when releasing a title in a franchise that's sucked for years during a packed, starkly hit-driven recession holiday, I think weak sales are to be expected no matter how great this installment is.

But if they think that making their larger-than-life heroine look mundane and conservative will make the game appeal to more women, that seems pretty dumb to me.

People often point out the implausibility of Lara wearing hot shorts in the snow, or having bare legs when she plans to be climbing stalagmites or obelisks or something. Well, I've been noticing game characters' implausible clothes for ages -- none of the FFVII crew bundled up at the Icicle Inn, Solid Snake didn't mind lying belly-down in the snow at Shadow Moses and I've watched shirtless musclemen brave the elements for over a decade with nothing more than a chuckle and "that's video games for you." The argument that we're not trying to desexualize Lara, we're just trying to make her realistic doesn't hold water.

I was really impressed with Underworld. I thought Lara's physicality was enjoyable and amazing -- far less to do with how her body looked, and much more about how she used it . Not once did I sit there feeling bad because I don't look like her, and I don't like the idea that women are so fragile that sexy fantasy women should never be allowed in video games -- especially when we allow sexy fantasy men. Please, Big Boss, do not put a shirt on.

I'm pretty sure all us gals are smart enough to know that Lara is a video game character and not a real person. Maybe her body proportions are unrealistic -- but, uh, the fact that she leaps across chasms in the Amazon, balances on hairline ledges and discovers mysterious artifacts with ancient powers is acceptably grounded in reality?

I don't believe that women have a problem with Lara, other than that we've been conditioned to blame her. I think it's Lara's social context -- Lara's audience that makes them feel unwelcome (and stuff like this). And once again, this comes down to the longer-term history of the video game industry, which marketed itself for years as a toy for teenage boys, and now will probably take years more to get rid of that stigma.

You can even say it's the fault of society, fond of judging which kinds of things are "for girls" and which kinds of things are "for boys", that makes women feel like they ought not to try something like Tomb Raider. Maybe it even makes women feel like they are *supposed* to be insulted by Lara, even without having taken a look at their own feelings around the issue.

I don't know, but I'm pretty sure that when it comes to the relationship between women and games, much broader things need to change than the long-established aesthetic of Lara Croft.

Tape Song

Are you guys tired of the "what's wrong with the games press" discussion? No?

Actually, I'm totally tired of it, but when I got invited recently to be on the ReAnimators podcast to chat about it with a couple of animators for a developer audience, I had to. If you think gamers can have animosity toward us writerly sorts, you should see how often devs hate us more.

Having the discussion going on from both perspectives, and considering both perspectives, was not only really fun, but really enlightening. I've said it before, but it's rare and weird how rarely people who make games and the people who cover them actually talk directly. So if you're not totally fatigued with either the topic or the sound of my voice, you should check out ReAnimators -- those guys, Mike Jungbluth and Ryan Duffin, were cool to talk to!

The Girls Are Back

Time goes by quickly, which is why I can't believe it was over a year ago that I discovered an indie game called Dangerous High School Girls In Trouble! It was an early build back then, but I liked it, a lot, championed it a bit here and there, and wrote a review over at PlayThisThing and a blurb in Wired.

Fast forward to today, and I'm really happy for the game's creator, Keith Nemitz, for his nomination in the second annual Writers Guild of America awards for games. It sort of boggles the mind to see a small one-man labor of love up there alongside Goliaths like Fallout 3, Star Wars: Force Unleashed, Tomb Raider: Underworld, and Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3.

I'm looking forward to carving out some time to see the latest version of the game, since a lot's likely changed since my first time with it -- congrats, Keith!! Definitely recommend you guys take a look, too.

My Dark Master, Kieron Gillen, actually just did an interview with Keith over at Rock Paper Shotgun wherein he talks about his philosophy on writing in games and the WGAs themselves. Highly recommended!

Also boggling the mind is the fact that Tomb Raider: Underworld is nominated for its writing. You know, I liked Underworld. Quite a lot, actually; by the numbers, more than most other things I reviewed this year. But the story direction and dialogue would have probably been the only thing I didn't like about it. To be frank, it made no kind of reasonable sense, and you're talking to someone who calls MGS4 her Game of 2008.

I'm all in favor of a minimalist Lara. And no, that doesn't mean I'm down with this vague idea that we should "revamp" her as "female-friendly" (what does that even mean?) -- but let's talk about that one tomorrow. What I mean is the story actually made me skip the cutscenes to get to the gameplay (and you know that's not like me).

So how'd it get a nomination? Well, for one thing, writers must belong to the WGA in order to be considered, and I'm told not all that many game writers do, so the choices are limited. If bleh, Underworld's story was at least literate, and the dialogue itself was no worse than stuff you'd hear on popular modern-fantasy TV serials.

I wonder a lot about writing in games, actually -- it's not like you can grab some novelist in on the project and give them carte blanche. Game design is, of course, paramount, and unless you're a tireless indie like Keith, the writer is just one (or a few staffers) among heaps of design types who basically want the writer to act as garnish, not main course. I'll bet it's stressful, and I wonder how many decent writers there are building game stories where the end result is ultimately nothing like they hoped.

GTA IV And The Dark Knight: Films And Games In 2008

[GTA IV's New York]

I'm hardly a film buff -- my friends know it's a challenge even to get me to pay attention to a YouTube video, so I've only seen a few of this year's major movies. I am interested in criticism, though, and often read reviews and discussion about other media, like books, music and film, to see what I can learn about the way longer-established media is treated by its press.

So although Slate does a "gaming club" each year now, featuring a fine cadre of Our Own (Croal and Totilo included -- hey, where's my invite, dudes?), I actually found myself reading Slate's movie club critical roundtable more closely.

The Me-Too Moment

I got sucked in when Slate critic Dana Stevens pointed out how the Times' David Carr likened the year-end film slate to "drinking from a firehose". -- Hey! We went through that too -- we're just like you, Mr. Carr!

Continues Stevens, "It's such a treat to kick back and think about whatever moved us, provoked us, or annoyed us enough to persist in memory, regardless of prestige level, release date, or marketing budget." Hey, hey! That's how I feel right now, too, now that the firehose-drink is over.

"When the club convened early last year, there seemed to be a consensus that 2007 had been a bumper-crop year for movies," Stevens goes on. "Everyone's top-10 list looked like a bouncer's clipboard at a velvet-rope club, with extra contenders elbowing their way forward.... there were so many movies that caused near-universal swoons...."

Whoa, now she sounds almost exactly like the prefaces that I and many of my colleagues placed ahead of our year-end favorites! "Compiling the list for 2008 was tougher," she adds. "I'll confess that, while I admired every movie I chose, in a stronger year some of them might have felt like filler. Did any of you find it similarly hard to sift the gems from 2008's dross? I'm not trying to get all end-is-nigh on you here, but didn't this year's field feel a little fallow? Not one of the posh holiday Oscar-seekers made me sit up and say 'Wow'..."

Just swap a few terms out here and there, and doesn't it seem like you could be believably reading a commentary on this year's holiday video game slate? I recently pondered the same "was it really a bleh year?" question with almost the same exact tone.

[The Dark Knight's Chicago-ish Gotham City]

Stevens also says: "Then there were those movies that seemed important at the time but have diminished in retrospect. For me, one of these was The Dark Knight." Swap "Dark Knight" for "Grand Theft Auto IV" and I think I know how she feels.

I think you get the idea. We learned a long time ago that it's not always constructive to compare films to games, as the analogies tend to fall apart at almost every key point. That makes it all the more fascinating that, somehow, film critics and game critics appear to be feeling the same way about their medium at year end. Like "us over here" in video games, film critics felt overwhelmed, struggled to pick out a "best", and had wildly divergent, often conflicting favorites lists.

But, Like -- Why, Though?

So I read some more of Slate's movie club, wondering to what the critics attributed their mixed opinion this year. Critic Lisa Schwarzbaum added a thought: "You know, the way I've been explaining away the eh (or is it meh?) year at the movies that Dana identifies is: In 2008, real life trumped anything we might have seen on screen."

Oh-hh. That just might be it.

One key difference between films and games is that although both are, in general "entertainment" and "escapism," it's always seemed to me that film much more accurately mirrors ongoing, present trends and interests in broader culture. Take a glance back at any period in time and look at its films, and you'll see that they always bear some relationship to that era's zeitgeist, more often a reaction (a fiction that directly opposes or complements the reality) than a reflection (an accurate mirror thereof).

Games, I think, are too new to start showing those same tie-ins to either American or global culture -- the idea of a "global audience" alone is still fresh, and if we're seeing trends in the industry, they seem related more to maturing technology or evolving design rather than the idea of games playing a significant cultural role as escapism.

The most interesting trend to me alongside the climate now is the fact that games seem to be strengthening (did you see GameStop's record sales while just about every other retailer's tanking?) while film audiences are waning [*], but as far as subtle microtrends around the art and emotion in different genres that directly correlate to culture rather than insular, game-specific evolution, I doubt those connections exist yet.

I think that'll change, of course, since the biggest stumbling block most publishers hit this year was the failure to understand nontraditional audiences -- you know, "everyone else". But could it have been difficult, in the environment of 2008, to relate to films and games that attempted to march on as "business as usual," to ignore a recession, a war and an historic election as much as possible and produce reasonable facsimilies of the sort of entertainment they'd have had success with in happier times?

Especially with games, the titles that launched this Fall and holiday were generally planned years before, well into development long before this sudden sociological hard turn emerged. Slate's film club also seemed to suggest that the movies they were evaluating admirably aped all the traits of "important films," but alongside a sudden shift in their context, failed to capture what is truly important to audiences right now.

Escapism And The Real World

Says Schwarzman: "The logic doesn't track if you follow it through, I know—we're looking at projects that have been in the works for months, years, or, in the curious case of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, decades. But I do think that the global and domestic convulsions of the past year have been so gripping that something handsome and polished... feels even less satisfying. They're all movies that keep viewers at a distance... they're all received notions of what we think of as 'the good stuff.'"

There might be a more literal logic behind the sense of deliberate engineering to "the good stuff" -- I've heard film critics say that a lot of the year's film projects seemed expressly designed to engineer Oscar nominations for certain stars, just as a lot of the year's game projects aimed to follow a Metacritic-driven checklist of what makes a "good" game.

Still, the idea of cultural relationship is interesting. I always felt that I related to music critics much, much better than film critics, but if it's true that games as culturally-important escapism seem to be even in some small way in step with movies, it might be a silver lining as we begin 2009.

What about you guys -- if you're into movies at all, did you observe any relationship between how you felt about them and how you felt about 2008's games? Does it come to bear on your social environment or real life at all?

[*I'm told this is not in fact so. That's what I get for watching the news!

**Thanks to Jackson for demonstrating that I might not have been crazy after all and possibly was even CORRECT]

Moment of Silence

It feels weird to try and muster my usual breed of rambling enthusiasm this morning. The sale of 1UP and the shuttering of EGM feels like the end of an era to me. Moment of silence then, I guess.

Adam Rosenberg, who's done freelance at UGO, extracted 1UP editorial director Sam Kennedy's post from the chaos at NeoGAF and put it on his blog -- it's nice to read what Sam has to say on the situation and what he hopes the future can still bring.

I actually only knew a few people over on the 1UP staff, so I don't claim to be especially close to the situation, but it's of course tough to hear that career peers of mine had to lose their jobs, and I wish everyone a quick and secure landing. This is tough news for everyone in our line of work and we'll be thinking of you guys.

Any thoughts/wishes readers want to share?

UPDATE: Another impactful perspective worth sharing from Jeff "Greenspeak" Green.

And, We're Back!

Welcome to 2009, everyone! Hope all had a lovely holiday break. I did work a little bit over the past two weeks, but largely it was the most time I've ever spent away from the computer in months, a concept all of those who are as constantly plugged-in as I am would surely understand is incredibly relaxing.

My year-end feature at Kotaku chose three New Year's resolutions I'd like to see us make as gamers -- and three that I dearly hope the industry will resolve to make. It's idealistic of me, of course, but isn't that the point of New Year's resolutions? Last year I resolved to try and go one week without gaming, if you recall -- and failed.

If you missed Gamasutra's Best of 2008 lists, over the break we compiled all of our year-end bests into a handy feature, with our favorite games, developers, downloadable titles, top trends, controversies, surprises and more. Catch up if you missed it!

I also rounded up a summary of the year's major news events by quarter, covering January-March, April-June, July-September, and October-December. In our biz, sometimes keeping current from one day to the next can get so overwhelming that you forget what happened yesterday, let alone throughout the year, so hopefully these'll help if you'd like to review 2008's events.

Finally, have you been checking in with Ben Fritz's Cut Scene blog at Variety? Ben, Chris Dahlen, Tom Chick and I have been listing our personal ten favorites from the year, along with games we feel were a bit overhyped or disappointing (which, to read the comments, means we despise all that is good and holy and should be disqualified from ever reviewing again!).

My number one choice deviates me from the norm a bit, but is no surprise if you know me. My number two choice, however, is a very close second. I spent the break marathoning and completing that number two choice, and I haven't simply loved a game this much since I was a child. I immediately started a New Game Plus with hardly a pause.

Yes, I'm talking about Persona 4, which I can't wait to write more about. Meanwhile, I've got something of a holiday present for P4 fans: I made ringtones of some of my favorite themes from the game. If you can't get "Every Day's Great At Your Junes" out of your head, do what I did and have it ring your phone.

The first link is in iPhone ringtone format (m4r), and the second one is regular Quicktime audio (m4a). iPhone users shouldn't have trouble just dragging these into iTunes, but in the event you need a program to get it to work, I hugely recommend Efiko's iPhone Ringtone Maker. It gives you a free trial and it's cheap to register. I get miles of use out of it making hugely nerdy game ringtones, and I tend to be pretty disabled about anything gadget-related.

If you don't have an iPhone, you should still be able to make ringtones using the m4a format, and then send them to your mobile using a service like Myxer or something similar.

Ringtones:
"Your Junes" (m4a)
"Battle Victory" (m4a)
"Your Affection" (m4a)
"Main Theme" (m4a)

Bonus Present: Properly-sized Persona 4 iPhone wallpapers 1 and 2.

Hope you enjoy! Okay, year reviewed, resolutions made, gifts exchanged -- so with that, let's kick 2008 out the door and look ahead to the new year! How was your holiday? Made any gaming-related resolutions? Got predictions for 2009? Let's hear 'em.