Sup Ladies

The feature on female protagonists I wrote for OXM is now online, featuring thoughts from Hideki Kamiya, Valve's Erik Wolpaw, Crystal Dynamics' Darrell Gallagher and BioWare's Mac Walters. In it, I aimed to take the standard wisdom about how to make good female characters from "cover their boobs and make them admirable" to "let female protagonists be people above all." Okay, so it's a bit more complex than that, but the industry folk I spoke to for the piece had some pretty interesting thoughts, and I'd be psyched for you to give it a read.

Also online is video of the Jesse Schell talk I told you about recently -- have a look if you get a sec. Finally, I also recently published an analysis on the state of games for social good, with a list of the Games For Change Festival winning games.

Please Keep Being Stupid

I've decided something: In some games, I want the voice acting to be bad, I want the environments to be listlessly unbelievable, and I want all the characters to be two-dimensional, stupid and annoying. Just let them stay that way, please.

Nope, not going crazy. First of all, in my latest Kotaku feature, I explain how the wildly fantastic Infamous 2 helped me loosen up a little and learn to be the bad guy.

I've always been kind of uncomfortable with pointless violence in video games. Not because I think it makes people violent, or because I think it's immoral, or because I think it's "making a statement" of any kind on the real world. It's just because, when I think of all of the possibilities in interactive entertainment, and the incredible things we can do with games -- it's a way to play, something fundamental to human nature, that can't be emulated in any other medium -- it's always just kind of seemed weird to me that all we want to do is shoot things. Shoot people.

In that context, the content out there and the way some people play often perplexes me, even occasionally grosses me out. I feel uncomfortable with games that look too much like real war, for example. I dislike that developers sometimes utilize sensitive real-world imagery or events to create "impact" for their shallow, repetitive, cheez-ball cover shooters. Like, if you're going to leverage real horrific imagery, real suffering, at least do something creative with it.

Right now, though, for once, I am wrecking the shit out of New Marais. I am a little bummed at how far my Serious-Critic thinking cap has taken me from that kind of pure, mindless joy that can keep you playing video games for hours.

These days, when I write, I feel responsible for encouraging people to ask for more than what we've got, to create more than what there is. But I used to love that pure chaos, the freedom to wreak havok. Loved it about Grand Theft Auto games, too, far more than the ponderous storylines or the missions, most of which I would avoid or let someone else play for me. Until the fourth one. It took itself too seriously.

Then it kind of hit me. In order for unadulterated destruction and killing sprees in games to be fun, it has to be funny.

Its context must be so absurd that you can't possibly take it seriously even if you're trying. In Vice City, I, advocate of respect for women in games, passionate evangelist for games as more-than-toys, blah blah blah, was "that player" -- yes, the one who would beat up a prostitute to get my money back, as the old adage goes. I mean, I literally did that.

Because Vice City was flipping hilarious. It was a perfect illustration of absurdist Miami excess, an excellent satire of what was "cool" in the 1980s, and its humor was, very wisely, an indictment of an entire culture and era.

I mean, do I feel awesome explaining to my non-gamer friends about how I had fun running over everyone whose outfit I thought was too tacky? Is that what I want them to think of when they think of video games? Probably not, because they would then glaze over in the middle of my "satire... indictment... so canny" whatever apologia that I break out whenever I talk about GTA.

And I would be bummed if every game were like that. But Infamous 2 -- granted, much less crude and overt in its opportunities for violence than GTA -- is reminding me that it's okay if some games are just there to pretty much let me explode buildings and cars and people and whatever.

Infamous 2 is not a smart game. I have been playing it every free minute I get for the past four days, and I've done a ton of missions and I still don't really know what the plot is. Something something Ray Spheres, powers, this lady, a different lady, science, powers, a guy named Bertrand, powers and powers, that's about all I got. Cole McGrath is such a douchey cliche that he has to be less annoying as a bad guy than as Mr. Hero Helperton. The voice acting makes me climb the walls (although I do go for that gravelly-type voice Cole has).

The citizens of New Marais dodder around awkwardly like weird little scarecrows, wandering into one another and into firefights; I'm in the center of town throwing vehicles at some giant monster and the cars continue driving around, beeping at me because I'm standing in their way. They say stupid things, or sometimes they just run around in screaming hysterics.

But the game world -- you know, the things I need to climb on and jump off of -- is beautifully made. The game feels brilliant. All the important stuff is perfect, and everything else should stay just the way it is. Because if it were less funny and more real, maybe I wouldn't feel so awesome about ripping it all apart.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to massacring as many civilians as possible to evolve my rank from "Outlaw" to "Infamous." I mean, that's what the game is called, so it seems like that's what I ought to do.

A Tale Of Two Jims

On Wired now is a long public apology of sorts from Jim Redner, the one-man PR team that 2K Games had contracted to deliver Duke Nukem Forever to reviewers. You may have already heard what went down: In a now-infamous Tweet (since deleted, but now screencapped on the Wired site), Redner implicitly threatened to withhold future review copies from those in the press whose tone he didn't like.

Naturally, we games journalists do not take kindly to those kinds of threats. The review copy isn't payola; we do not make a bargain with PR to help them get good press and sell their games. The job of the reviewer is to evaluate the product for consumers.

Before I go any further, a clarification is in order: I don't write "reviews" per se myself these days, although many of you have read my critical responses to or articles about certain games and called them "reviews." For the context of this discussion, "review" refers to work done by the employed games press with a score that appears on Metacritic, as those are the reviewers of primary interest to public relations.

Although in the past, I've done regular reviews for Paste, Variety and the Onion's AV Club, I don't do that kind of work anymore, for several reasons some of which would probably constitute their own blog post. However, I consider all of the professional games press to be colleagues, as we're all in the business of talking to gamers and the industry about games, and I consider us to share a common interest, although we may approach our work from different angles and for different subsets of the audience.

For the record, I didn't receive a review copy of DNF, nor did I play it or write about it after launch. In Nylon Guys I did a pre-release article about the environment around the game's launch and Gearbox's attempt to resurrect a classic, featuring an interview with Randy Pitchford. Aside from some blog-based personal editorialization that illustrates I've a negative opinion of DNF's tone and themes, I have not published any opinions on the final product itself except to direct you to coverage done by others -- colleagues whose opinions I trust as educated, and whose reviews I believe.

Okay, Now That That's Out Of The Way

Most of us, myself included, publicly bristled at Redner's implied threat. In our long-fought battle to earn credibility with our audience, it's become important to us to both demonstrate and inhabit honesty to consumers at all costs, even if game companies get angry at us. That's our job. Conversely, it's PR's job to ensure the best possible coverage for the game they are representing. If that means denying coverage to reviewers they expect will treat the game negatively, that's their right to do.

It's an uneasy dance that often gets difficult when what game journalists want (to be truthful) clashes with what PR wants (to be positive). In fact, that tension is what makes it hard for all of us, whether we write reviews or not, to do our job. In an industry where so much hinges on Metacritic, a bad score can be devastating to a development team, its publisher and its PR team alike: After two years' work and millions of dollars, a score can ruin it all. It's a lot for us to carry and to think about.

Scoring and Metacritic are problematic in and of themselves (Adam Sessler's GDC 2009 anti-Metacritic rant is an excellent illustration why). But where that tension exists, the fundamental mistrust and struggle for control between writers and PR escalates into a bigger struggle between games journalists in general and the games industry. Because so many reviewers also do other types of work, such as interviewing developers, looking inside industry process as part of a preview, or attending events, that there is so much fear and mistrust means it's often impossible to get at the truth.

Very few of us are trusted well enough to be allowed access to even a neutered on-message interview with executives who make major decisions on the industry's shape. Very few of us are allowed inside a studio for an honest look at how games are made, or at the people who make them, information that would illuminate and enrich audience experience with the medium -- and equally-importantly, as far as I'm concerned, would educate developers at different studios about one another and the business in which they work.

The games industry seems to me to be unusually secretive, and it continues to be allowed to be secretive because there's no easy solution to this vicious cycle of mistrust. The unfortunate side effect is that gamers hardly trust their games press, either, watching to see which of us are being "bought", making the wrong kinds of ethical compromises, whether we're telling them the truth.

The net effect: At least when it comes to consumer-facing stuff, we're a crippled, often powerless media contingent that feels bad even using the word "journalist" to describe ourselves even when that is absolutely what we do for a living. We hear all the time that we're "not real journalists" or that there's "no real games journalism."

Neither of those things are true, but you can't deny that there's a landscape that might often lead people to be that reductive about it. There's a poor definition of roles: My audience can't tell a consumer review from free-roaming critical thought; can't tell a news report from an opinion piece, can't tell a business article from a blog post ("great blog on Gamasutra," someone will tell me, after I publish a news interview wholly free from my own voice).

That sucks for our readers, it sucks for us, and it sucks for the game industry.

The Review In Question

Ever since Redner's self-described Twitter "brain-fart", he's said that it was one particular review that set him off -- both in today's Wired guest column and in a long email apology he sent to numerous members of the games press. He claims that this one was not a fair opinion of DNF, but a "scathing diatribe." Personally, I feel that his explication loses most of its steam when he refuses to call out which review was so egregiously possessed of "venom" that it warranted that kind of response -- how can we evaluate whether or not his position is fair unless we can weigh the review in question?

However, the offending review is widely believed to have been done by Destructoid's Jim Sterling, who gave the game a 2 out of 10 and said the game could "only endear itself to the sociopathic and mentally maladjusted." Not having played the game, I can't personally say whether his blisteringly low opinion is warranted. That it's such an outlier tone and score-wise from many other decisively negative reviews of the game seems telling to me, but either way, it's definitely a venomous writeup.

Harsh, yes, but not surprising: Jim's made a career out of his inflammatory public persona, biting language, and viewpoints that are as likely to be jaw-droppingly juvenile and offensive as they are to be crazy hilarious to some.

You may not know this, but years ago I was part of Destructoid's staff with Jim. The site was quite young then -- we would all talk amongst ourselves about how we dreamed of making it big --and I was still learning how to do this games journalism thing. Without the welcome of Niero, the site's founder, and Colette Bennett, the friend who discovered Sexy Videogameland and invited me to join the scrappy Dtoid team, I don't know whether this blog would have discovered its wider initial audience, or whether I would have become visible to those who eventually hired me for the projects on which I built my career. I owe them a great debt of thanks, and I think well of the entire staff as people.

Oddly, that includes Jim, to an extent. While I definitely don't always approve of his language, his tactics, many of his viewpoints or his method of dealing with conflicts, I respect his right to do it. He has an audience that likes his shtick and he drives massive traffic for those who employ him. It's not the way I'd do it, but there's room for all kinds. I told him as much when I saw him at E3, gave him a hug and tweeted a photograph of us together. While we'll probably clash in public many times when he insults someone or something I like, we'll probably never want to work together, and we'll probably never want to read much of what one another writes, there's no actual feud.

Whenever people ask me about this, I've always said, "The fact that Jim's out there doing his thing doesn't stop me or anyone else from doing ours."

However, an episode like this makes me wonder if that's really true.

Well, Actually, It Makes Our Lives Harder

Jim Redner did the wrong thing, of course; while he is free to send or not send review copies to whomever he wants, threatening people in the public forum is just tacky. It got him fired by 2K. Yet, what's the responsibility of a reviewer, especially in the Metacritic era where that stupid number means so much?

Jim Sterling's cult of personality commands such a large and loyal fanbase that it would be foolish for the public relations community to ignore him. More importantly, it would be foolish for his employers to stifle and censor him: He defines communities wherever he goes, and he manages to command the conversation. Here I am writing about him right now, and this happens whenever a Sterling-centric conflict flares. That's power, whether anyone likes it or not.

Maybe we don't owe anyone good press or a positive review, but do we owe the review process -- and by extension, the industry we cover -- a basic level of dignity? That's an open question for all of us to chew on, but more importantly, for now: To what extent should a cult of personality impact the way this industry relates to its press?

One thing I've always appreciated about Jim is that, at least in the conversations I've been involved in, he has never claimed to be a "games journalist." He's accepted his role as pundit and entertainer and he enjoys it, and he's been honest about not giving a damn how professional we think he is. Again, let him do his thing.

The problem is, Jim disdains the idea of being a professional, but the industry is forced to treat him like one because of the audience he governs. Imagine if a PR firm said, "no, Jim, we don't like 'that thing you do', and we're not going to send you any more review copies." Mass hysteria from the community! "Someone is blackballing Destructoid," the conversation would go; "they're quashing Jim's voice!" people would shout.

That kind of snafu would be even more destructive to a company and its brand than a bad review from Jim. So when Jim doesn't like something, PR has got no choice but to take the hit. That's as much of a vicious standoff as anything PR has ever done to the games press.

Not only does that seem a little unfair, but it does affect the rest of us. We may be able to see Jim as a single figure in a broad landscape of writers, but some of our audience doesn't. The industry doesn't. Again, we suffer from our poor definition of roles. I can't tell you how many people have told me that they think "we are all" bullshit, and they cite Jim Sterling. How many times do the rest of us have to say, "we're not like that?"

Even still, all we can do is to do our own thing, the best we can. I'm not disputing that. The issue I have is this: Why call Jim Sterling a "reviewer" and allow him to participate in the Metacritic system when his methods are so frequently aberrant from the work the rest of the product review community does?

So Hey, Jim?

I'm sure someone will point this blog post out to you, and if you're reading this, all I'd like is for you to consider framing your Destructoid work outside of the review format and to remove yourself, just your "reviews", from Metacritic. Probably achievable just by not headlining it 'review' or whatever -- no one makes Yahtzee give an "official" score. Yes, again, Metacritic sucks and is problematic, but unfortunately it's the ultimate distillation of our relationship with the industry and until we find a better solution, I believe it's best for everyone involved if we approach it with a sense of responsibility and a measured attitude.

I know you believe we cover an entertainment medium and none of us should take ourselves seriously, but you chose your own role, so let us choose ours. We can respect what you do for your readers, but we'd like you to respect what we're trying to do for ours. If you don't want to be a professional, if you don't want to be a games journalist, then leave the reviewers to their own space.

It'd be a win for everyone, I think: You'd be free to say and do whatever you want, and about whatever games you want, without busybodies like me banging on about how you should be more responsible; Destructoid will probably have an even better time working with the business once PR's less afraid of your power as a rogue variable, your audience can get whatever uncensored whimsy you feel like producing at any given time, and no one on any side of the fence will have to argue about whether the impact you're having on people's scores is fair.

Part of why I hate writing formal reviews is because of this ethical minefield and these drawn-out conversations that keep rearing their heads. Bet you hate them, too. So let's neither of us be reviewers, and hopefully the result is more fun for you and helps us journalists improve our relationship with the industry.

Please just think about it?

UPDATE: Responding via Twitter, Jim politely disagreed with me; the following is an unedited quote from his feed:

"To answer: If I wrote my reviews in the same tone that I write my satirical or rant pieces, I think there'd be a point in what Leigh says. However, I do not. I didn't write the Duke review, or any review, to be "funny." There's a significant change in tone when I write them. Even when harsh, I work VERY hard to back up my scores with solid reasoning & feel points of view similar to mind deserve a voice on MCritic.

And as far as DNF goes? I'm not the only one and Redner may not have even been talking about me. This was harsher: http://is.gd/sXGODu Anyway, that's my response. Feel free to debate it, but don't flame Leigh or anything. I respectfully disagree - emphasis, *respectfully*."

Happy Birthday, Sonic!

Happy birthday, Sonic the Hedgehog! Today is the blue guy's 20th anniversary, and I was a Sega kid who now feels kind of old. Tim Rogers' Kotaku piece today provides "helpful advice" to Sega on how it can finally make Sonic "not suck" -- mostly hilarious satire, but some for-serious chestnuts in there, too.

Ever wonder what Sonic the Hedgehog is doing now? Good thing I wrote this Thought Catalog piece a little bit back that describes exactly that.

Media As Care For Others

"When you really care about what your game is going to do to somebody... if you put that in there, people feel it and they acknowledge it. They appreciate it, because nothing feels better than the feeling that 'someone else cares what I've accomplished.'"

-- Jesse Schell, G4C 2011 Closing Keynote

Insular Illumination

Horrible insomnia last night; zero sleep. 9:00 AM this morning found me Netflix-ing The Secret of Kells, a very lovely animated film which I hoped would soothing enough to assuage that awful eye-aching, chest-knit agony that sets in when you've been without rest too long and can't find any in the face of exhaustion.

It was! Really enjoyed it. The star is the animation and the visual technique, but the music was lovely too, and I was impressed that despite the fact it's a story of a religious book, it avoided being messagey. It was so pretty I didn't mind it being plot-light; would love to see the same animators do another film with more story substance, as the storytelling was mature and nuanced. I recommend it!

The main theme of the film is the idea that a beautiful book has the power to bring peace. In happy synchronicity, Jesse Schell's fantastic closing keynote of the 2011 Games For Change event today also focused on the idea that communications media -- especially games -- have enormous power to affect behavior and bring peace and world change. It was a very moving talk; you can check out my writeup on Gamasutra right now, although I advise you to keep an eye on the Games For Change video library; I'm hoping they put video of Schell's talk online so that you can watch it yourself.

Also new: longstanding and much-beloved online zine Insert Credit has relaunched! I read Insert Credit before I was old enough to drink, and that's where I first heard of a dude named Brandon Sheffield, never knowing at the time that he'd be a coworker of mine nearly a decade later. It's with great pleasure I accepted his invitation to me to contribute here and there from time to time.

For starters I join all the staff in contributing this piece as part of a huge manifesto-of-sorts on the state of games journalism. It's not a topic I actually like talking about too much -- don't talk about making it better, just do it, is sorta how I roll -- but in this case, I felt I had some new thoughts to contribute, since it's been a while since I addressed it.

Finally, allow me to take a pause on all this positivity to direct your attention to my latest Thought Catalog piece, where I had a little time to try to talk "sense" into those dudes who are always complaining that girls don't like them because they are "too nice." LOGICAL FALLACY.

Games For Good

The annual Games For Change event is going on here in New York City, an event fairly dear to my heart (and not just because coverage of the event in 2007 was the very first feature I ever did for Gamasutra). The field of applying gaming and game design concepts to learning and activism is still shaping up, as more and more organizations notice the enormous economic and social breadth of the medium. This is exciting to me, because it means people will be exploring the power of interactive entertainment and the goodness of play for all kinds of things besides just the fun of it.

This year, the keynote speaker was Vice President Al Gore, who as you know is passionate in his career about global causes, particularly climate change. For such a prominent figure so active in philanthropy to come to New York City to tell nonprofits and game developers hoping to partner in the change games arena that he believes in this power for games was really significant, I think. Check out my keynote coverage at Gamasutra, and there'll be more from the event in the coming days.

On a related note, I was honored to be once again invited to judge the games entered in this year's Life.Love game challenge, hosted annually by Jennifer Ann's Group, which works to educate young people on the dangers of teen dating violence and how to protect themselves and their friends. This year's games were of an impressive quality -- check out the winners! That Jennifer Ann's Group uses game design to reach out to its target demographic is another example of how positive our medium can be. Please consider supporting Jennifer Ann's Group by sharing its resources with people you know or in any way you can.

Yes, games are very positive. Meanwhile, Infamous 2 lets me throw a truck at a helicopter and electrocute those annoying street performers that drum on pails and I love it. More on that soon. Meanwhile, check out the latest GamerDork podcast, where I once again join Leon, Neil and their fabulous accents to shoot the breeze on E3 and the games we've been loving.

Cole, Spyro And The Jerk Trend

I recently interviewed Insomniac's Ted Price at Gamasutra, and I also did a profile of him for an upcoming issue of Edge. Next issue? I'm kind of not sure, actually, because when I write for print magazines lead times are long and I have trouble keeping track. I send in my work and some time later you guys tell me on Twitter that you liked my article. What would I do without you?

There were portions of the discussion that I didn't end up using in either interview; among other things, we talked about Spyro, and I asked him about Activision's multimedia toy project, Skylanders, that stars a tougher, scalier version of the little dragon that seems more likely to jive with its target audience -- today's tweens, presumably -- than the friendly spark-puffing purple guy of yore.

Price, who is one of the more pleasant executives I've ever interviewed, told me he likes Activision's take on Spyro -- "Boy, Spyro has changed!" he laughed.

For Insomniac, Spyro was an effort to diversify after Disruptor, the company's debut game, which had been a first-person shooter capitalizing on the Doom trend. The studio, which has now been around for 17 years, was relatively young at the time, and still defining its flavor, but even with Spyro the team was discovering that it liked unusual weapons, as in all of the dragon's different breath abilities.

The mascot platformer genre was in its heyday, if you remember. It wasn't just Sega and Nintendo that chose characters to represent themselves in Sonic and Mario -- almost every studio was trying to pin down a cute-but-cool animal buddy that could represent it. It was the 1990s, and it was important to be "radical", in the 1990s sense of the word, which meant your mascot had to be cute and appealing, but he also had to have "attitude."

"There was always that tension within the studio, a good tension, about who Spyro should be," Price told me. "We started out with a Spyro that was kind of cocky and a jerk... we found the fans didn't necessarily appreciate the cocky nature, and it made him a less endearing character."

In other words, it was possible to take that "attitude" too far. These days, although Insomniac is still successful with Ratchet games, mascots in general are fewer and further between, and probably for good business reason, as Sega's numerous off-the-mark attempts to resurrect the Sonic brand have demonstrated.

Recently I have played two video games back to back where the protagonist is a cocky jerk -- and they even have the same name, Cole (L.A. Noire and Infamous 2, to be specific). Is "cocky armed jerk" the game industry's new "mascot character?" I certainly think so. I even find hometown-hero type Nathan Drake to be a little bit of a dick, but I think I might be in a minority here.

But in a sense, I think we're seeing the same bell curve trend happening with our modern protagonists that touched the mascot action genre in the 1990s. In an effort to answer our cries for something more interesting than the silent space marine, games are giving us all kinds of "tortured, complex" dudes, arrogant bastards who don't have to be a "good guy" to win. Maybe they're even setting themselves up to be hoist by their own petards, because those are apparently themes that show games fans how modern and edgy our narratives are.

But Price was correct: After a while in the 1990s, we became turned off not only by the glut of sameness in the mascot genre, but even more by the "attitude" that was supposed to make those animal characters so cool. I think the reason the mascot genre became less relevant wasn't necessarily because we were oversaturated with the format or because we were tired of that type of game mechanic and level design: I think we stopped liking that type of hero.

When's the last time you played as someone you found truly endearing? How many more jerks, named Cole or otherwise, do I have to play as this year? Do you guys notice this as well, and are you bothered by it? If so, what do you think historical patterns indicate might be coming next?

In unrelated news, it is Friday, this weekend is Northside Festival and I'm going to see Woods tonight, one of my absolute favorites. This weekend is also exciting because my friends' band Quiet Loudly are playing with Holy Spirits, whom I also love. Holy Spirits just did a lovely cream-and-gold vinyl split 12" with Mutual Benefit; you can listen to it on Bandcamp and I highly recommend you do! (Substitute all these links for the usual 'Today's Good Song' and you come out ahead!)

In honor of festival weekend I've written The Different Types of Drunk You Can Be at Thought Catalog. I'm a jerk. And now we're back on topic.

Electric Core

We've all still got E3 on the brain, I guess. More things I did there: Hung out with Lisa Foiles, who gave me a pretty hilarious spot on her video toplist of "things you really missed at E3." Tim Rogers' Duke Nukem impression is also included. Watch it, it's funny!

Other things I did: Talked to executives, and a couple of those interviews are go! THQ core games boss Danny Bilson talks to me about defining the core space in a world where everything is going social and online; EA Sports' Peter Moore also weighs in on the latest trends, telling me there won't be any offline games in the future, and sharing some thoughts about Wii U.

I've also just started playing Infamous 2, which showed up while I was in L.A., and I should have something to say about it soon. You guys like it?

[Today's Good Song: 'All of the Lights' Mashup (Kanye x Ellie Goulding x Portland Cello Project), The Hood Internet]

For Dummies

If you're not sure what it's really like at E3, or have trouble explaining it to a friend, I am here to help you. I've written "7 Things You Do At A Video Game Conference," a guide for dummies. Or for cynics. Please, please do not take me seriously. At least not too much.

In addition to those things, while I was at E3 I also did an interview with Insomniac's Ted Price about going multiplatform with Overstrike. Amazing dude, amazing studio.

Eurogamer's review of Duke Nukem Forever is the most thorough and best one I've yet read. The only defense people who are, for whatever reason, big fans of this game have been able to mount is that it's impossible to review this game in context, yet this review handily acknowledges all the forces that might come to bear on a review of a forever-awaited sequel in a defunct franchise and explains itself well in their light.

I mean, it seems that way to me, at least. I was never really even interested in original Duke Nukem; back in those days I could barely be bothered to put down my Genesis controller long enough to say, "first-person shooters? Those aren't video games, those are weird sports for boys." Ha.

But as much as I've long agreed at the consensus that Duke is an embarrassing exercise in looking backward that probably didn't need to happen, I feel weirdly sorry for Duke. I know, I know -- Randy Pitchford was so effing psyched that effing Duke Nukem was coming back that we got this enormous marketing presence stuffed in our craw that told us that if we didn't think stupid dick jokes were funny we had no sense of humor, and if we didn't want to spank women to shut them up we needed to loosen up, and if we weren't also so effing psyched about effing Duke effing Nukem then we weren't even Real Gamers.

I know. It sucked. It was a condescending mistreatment of us as consumers through and through, and this coming from me -- more liable to tell entitlement to quit whining than to take up arms and feel incensed. I'm not exactly glad that the game is getting probably the worst critical reception of any major launch I've seen in years, because who wants developers to fail?

I will, however, admit to feeling sort of satisfied. We all suspected there was no more place for clunky, gross Duke in our modern landscape, and now we can say told you so. More than that, doesn't it make you feel a little proud of the modern gaming landscape? In all of that Duke buzz, weren't you a little bit afraid that he would make a grand return, heralding a new wave of hysteria for the kind of misogyny and poop jokes that we thought were left well behind in our adolescent days? Wouldn't an excellent Duke game have been kind of, y'know, bad for everyone?

Luckily, no: It really is over. There's no room for Duke Nukem, neither its tacky design nor its stupid jokes. And I'm glad.

But like I said, I feel kind of a sympathy pang, too, like when the Simpsons started to show Nelson's home life and you realized how sad the world that sneering bully lived in was. I mean, it was funny, and it helped you like Nelson a little more, but it was sad! It was cute!

And I choose to doubt that anything went on at Gearbox besides a bunch of dudes who had spent a bunch of time working on this, really hoping everyone would love it, or at least like it and have a little fun. And we don't, and that's always sad. RIP, Duke.

[Today's Good Song: Craft Spells, 'You Should Close The Door']

Does Cole Phelps Dream Of Cloned Sheep?

I returned to New York from Los Angeles late on Friday night, and I spent the whole weekend in bed, alternating between sleeping and eating. My limbs ache and my feet still sting. And that was E3! In case you're interested in actually-relevant takeaways, I've rounded up some conclusions about the state of the industry after the event at Gamasutra -- here you go.

Now, let's talk a little bit about L.A. Noire, which I played in the time leading up to E3 and which I don't feel much motivated to resume now that I'm home. L.A. Noire is in a tough spot; you'd be hard-pressed to put it into any extant genre, as it ties a bunch of ordinarily-disparate elements together. The experience of playing it is disorienting and schizophrenic, as Kirk Hamilton highlights with this piece on the game (it's billed as a "review", but I will call it L.A. Noire fanfiction because I want to tease him about it).

Tom Bissell's thorough assault on each little fracture in the game's formula is a long but largely fair evaluation, and it also doesn't neglect all the things that are truly impressive about it. Now, I certainly can't defend L.A. Noire, as I don't even really feel like finishing it, but I will play devil's advocate for a moment, if you don't mind.

I didn't really crystallize my neutrality on the title until I spoke to players who weren't heavy gamers -- the mainstream, cinema-going, noir-loving audience that Rockstar and Team Bondi hoped to snag with this game. I certainly think that if any game can become a victim of the critical echo chamber, it's L.A. Noire. With its weird dissonance between gameplay and story, its bold strides in the direction of lifelike conversation and its pastiched format, it's a game critic's dream; no title ever aimed for realism in narrative that wasn't dragged under the lens of speculation for us to discuss amongst ourselves.

But as critics we have a perspective on games that the intended audience doesn't often share. Most of the reviews I read complained of the listlessness of L.A. Noire's "open world", a massive and beautifully-reconstructed 1940s Los Angeles that taunted with visual richness and epic scale, but was lifeless for anyone who deviated from the linear narrative.

To that, I say it's not an open-world game, and only "people like us" would scrutinize how it does or doesn't hold up to that label. It's a game about conversations and investigations, and as such that entire massive city is simply window-dressing, a way to pace our transitions from one place to the next. That you can have your partner drive and skip those sequences was virtually horrifying to some -- why would you want to drive if there's no reason to and you don't have to and there's nothing to do on your way?

Because it engages you with the setting. They built that huge, gorgeous city just for setting, and I've always found the act of driving in Rockstar games to be a kind of narrative tourism, a zen-like gentle glide on the trigger buttons that gives me a sense of place, of backdrop. I don't need to interact with it for it to have value; driving in L.A. Noire's Los Angeles clears my head. It reminds me where I am. Yes, sometimes I just wanted to get to the next point in the story, to the next clue site and I'd skip it, but plenty of the time I liked reminding myself I'm in the driver's seat, figuratively. This is a game that lets us feel what it's like to drive through old L.A -- that in and of itself was pretty cool to me.

On the one hand, I think it's unfair to compare L.A. Noire to Grand Theft Auto. There are some surface similarities, but they are not the same type of game at all. On the other hand, it's fair to expect that your average consumer will make that comparison: After all, they made Red Dead more comprehensible by permitting the "GTA with horses" characterization, so it's fair that a game with vehicles, under the marquee of the same developer, using some of the same tech and colored with some of the same flavor should invite similar expectations.

I actually never liked action behaviors in Rockstar games. I always found the shooting clunky, missions unfairly time-crunched, overly demanding of precision. Especially as I was largely more interested in the larger arcs: The world-as-character, the typical GTA rise to power and control, and less individual missions where I have to dodge gunfire to pick off yet another fleeing gangster.

What I love most to do in GTA is drive and see what happens. I actually never got tired of exploring the vision of New York as presented in GTA IV -- it felt so rich and alive. I drove until I crashed a car and made someone mad at me, and then I searched for hidden jump ramps as I fled the cops. I went to TW@ and I read all the personal ads. I listened to the radio. That's how I play. Funnily, that's how any guest to my home who'd pick up the game would play, too: We'd all sit on the couch and drink and people would just drive around smashing shit up. I didn't want to play the missions. I didn't care.

L.A. Noire is the first game in the family that was compassionate to my distaste. I hated those damn chase sequences, and I loved being allowed to skip them when I failed. The developers seemed to realize that in a game with numerous elements, some people will prefer some types and others will prefer other types, and they allowed the player to intuitively cause the types they preferred to come to the forefront. That's worthy of praise.

I still wanted that sense of place and the ability to move through it in L.A. Noire. And because it's not an open-world game, and it never even suggested I'd be rewarded for heading off the beaten path, I didn't mind that the only place to drive was really from one location to another, albeit through whatever meandering route I felt like cruising.

Our job as critics is to explore systems and test their limits, but if I wasn't one, would I have really run for hours just to see what would happen even though I had no reason to, even though the game had clearly placed my next locales in my notebook? Throughout the whole time I've played the game, I never drove any other car but the cop car -- why would I? I'm a cop! When people are disappointed that Cole can't shoot people up in the street, I wonder why? What about the game suggested that the player should want to do that?

When we looked at the map of Super Mario 3, backgrounded with dancing bushes for show, did we complain that we weren't allowed to visit them? Nah. We didn't need to; everything that was relevant was clearly demarcated.

L.A. Noire at least aimed to design for intuition, not for our knowledge of game systems. It wanted you to use human facial-reading, not guess at what the game wanted you to do. Unfortunately, this worked imperfectly (enough has been said about the evidentiary system and the doubt versus lie problems that I don't need to add to it), suspending the player into a weird rift wherein you're never sure whether to do what comes naturally or try to figure out what the game wants.

I also think that the developers understood that L.A. Noire in its optimal shape -- a game that focused on interrogation, investigation and story, an "adventure game", if you will -- would have been highly difficult for a wide audience to understand. The mass market would not understand, and therefore not buy a Rockstar game where you can't drive and shoot. I believe the developers wanted to court that wide audience to try unfamiliar game elements by luring them with more familiar ones. It was a double-edged sword in the end, but I think probably a necessary sacrifice.

Because of L.A. Noire's misshapen-ness, its schizophrenia, everyone has trotted out the whole "ludonarrative dissonance" thing again -- you know, the fancy word us game bloggy types use to mean that the gameplay doesn't match the storyline. Grabbing Bissell's example, if Nathan Drake is such a good hero, then why can he kill like 800 people with wisecracking aplomb? How come Cole Phelps can offend witnesses, blow investigations, run over pedestrians, destroy police cars and steal civilian cars and still be commended as a hero, promoted up the line?

You know something? It doesn't bother me. Maybe I'm weird, but I've never believed that a game would benefit from perfect realism, perfect immersion. No, soldiers at war will not regenerate all their wounds if they hide behind a crate, but the regenerating health bar has been one of the most useful and indispensable design developments in the first-person shooter genre. It's just more fun that way.

And now we get to why I waited to decide how I felt about L.A. Noire until I could discuss it with people who were not game critics. Because until I had this job and spent all my time with other people who did, I never minded that games allowed me to do absurd, dissonant things. Only a critic looks at this beautiful, fascinating recreation of a place in time that doesn't exist any more and worries about what you can't have.

Back in the day, I used to like making my sprite run around in goofy circles when I got bored or frustrated, or trying to see if I could get them stuck in a wall. As Kirk and I discovered in the FFVII letters, that we could do squats to earn a wig from a cross-dressing wrestler named "Bro" didn't make the game any less moving, charming or meaningful to us. And I know L.A. Noire made much of its kinship to film and its potential for immersion, but I don't believe that other, older games cared less about story than it did.

Maybe because L.A. Noire takes itself so seriously, we take ourselves too seriously, too. But I think being able to create that dissonance in games is actually important to our sense of power as a player; it helps us control the dispensary rate of the story and its intensity. It lets us know we're the leaders of an interactive narrative when we can stop doing what the game wants and just do something dumb. That's what makes games fun.

I don't expect the game to compensate for my desire to push back against it from time to time. That'd be ridiculous. How would I feel like I've momentarily escaped their systems if the systems won't let me, if they call me to account in a big way for every pedestrian Cole accidentally crunches, if they force me to be demoted because I scuffed my car? The thing people call "ludonarrative dissonance", at least in this case, I call "being a video game."

And I don't know if I would have even noticed it, been bothered by it, considered it a mark against the game if I hadn't been part of the critical sphere where we're constantly examining and questioning immersion. All good video games, no matter how realistic they strive to be, require a suspension of disbelief in order for the game design to work.

That suspension of belief, that okay, I'll meet you halfway, between player and designer, is something we elect to do. I say this all the time, but I think engaging with a game and its weird rules is always a choice. Any player who sits down with a controller in hand and expects the game to fill in all the blanks for them is going to be disappointed.

All that aside, it mostly doesn't work as a game. The evidentiary and conversation system has players constantly feeling inexplicably punished, constantly second-guessing themselves. You can blow a case simply by visiting sites in the wrong order, with no clue as to what the correct order would have been until you fail. The core mechanic's fundamentally busted, and that's not all right.

I do think that engaging with it is still more fun than it's getting credit for, and it's interesting at least. When people ask me whether they should buy it I say it's hard to explain, not "it's bad" or "you shouldn't." That it's hard to explain is an unfortunate consequence of the fact the game tried some brand-new territory.

I think L.A. Noire's main problem is simply that it tried too hard not to be a video game. But if you read the E3 analysis I linked up top, you'll see I believe there are so many titles out there content to just be video games, to just be products, and to just be the same kind of product, that I appreciate the effort. We must take halting steps before we can stride in different directions. L.A. Noire might be some kind of five-legged mutant, but I'd rather that than yet another cloned sheep.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DAPHNY

#BIRTHDAYPRINCESS

News From E3

I'm sitting on the floor of a very crowded press room, preparing to go see BioShock Infinite, which I am beginning to suspect will be the GREATEST VIDEO GAME IN THE UNIVERSE. So I'll make this quick with a few key stats:

Favorite Games I've Played So Far: Rayman, Ghost Recon, El Shaddai

Best Press Conference: Microsoft

Most-Heard Marketing Song: Kanye West, Power (as predicted by Sam Kennedy)

Most Attractive Employees: Ubisoft

Favorite Hands-Off Demos: BioShock Infinite, Metro: Last Light

Bands Publishers Like To Play At Press Conferences: Los Campesinos, LCD Soundsystem, The Kills, Tokyo Police Club, Yeasayer

Celebrities Seen At Press Conferences (Including video): Peyton Hillis, Ice-T, Drake, Lil' Wayne

Number Of Drinks I Had Last Night: 7

I've written up Microsoft's conference, EA's conference, and an interview about Dead Island so far, much more to come.

Finally, they are giving out copies of the beautifully-redesigned new EDGE at E3, so if you have one my column is on page 32.

Adventure

I've talked a lot here and there about how my background in crude old adventure games was significant to my childhood, but today I fill in the 'Gaming Made Me' column at Rock Paper Shotgun with a little homage to the granddaddy of them all, Adventure (or ADVENT or Colossal Cave or however you like it to be called).

Today, though, I'm going out to have some fun before the flight to E3. It's Open Studios and Hillstock here in Brooklyn on the same weekend, so I'm going to drink a bunch of bloody Marys and support my friends' bands!

I'm Gonna See The Folks I Dig

How is it that it isn't even E3 and I'm already tired? I hung with One Life Left maestro Ste Curran this past week here in New York and finally learned to play cricket (special thanks to Sabrepulse for being my batting coach), so I suppose I've been a little heavy on the revelry.

Heavy on the L.A. Noire too. I expect to write more on it quite soon (my preview ran in the May issue of NYLON Guys), but right now you can read takes by Kirk Hamilton, Tom Chick and Mitch Krpata.

Meanwhile, I did this story on the complex journey Jason Rohrer's Diamond Trust of London's taken on its way to a publishing deal with Zoo Games -- he and I talked about how the evolving DS software market hit everyone hard and what the consequences could be for developers in progress like him.

And I joined the awesome Michael Abbott on the Brainy Gamer podcast, just to make Manveer Heir mad, basically. Also to talk about my work lately, the internet and E3, I guess. I love-love-love talking to Michael and hearing his excellent radio voice. Tom Bissell is on this one too, so there's that! Check it out.

Let's see, what else: If you read OXM, I have a feature in the magazine this month that's like six pages long, dealing with the state of female protagonists in games. They seem to be working hard to up the magazine's ante, and although I actually haven't seen a copy myself, I hear good things. Try to find it if you can: I talked to a lot of cool people for it, like Hideki Kamiya, Erik Wolpaw, BioWare writer Mac Walters, Darrell Gallagher from Tomb Raider, and so on and so on.

You can find me in Edge mag every month from now on also. I'm extremely excited about this.

I leave Sunday for E3, which I'm covering for Gamasutra. I doubt I'll blog much, but I'll try to make sure my Twitter is useful to you, packed with exciting, newsworthy/drunk updates from Los Angeles. California, will you take me as I am?

[Today's Good Song Album: 'Sun And Shade', Woods]