Tuesday, June 30, 2009

Congratulations on Winning at Life!

Tonight you’re going to win at the board game Life.

Twenty minutes later your wife will decide to leave you, after you refuse to stop humping your brother-in-law’s head.

Following this incident you should probably see a therapist and come to terms with your inadequacy issues. That might make you a little bit more bearable to be around when you accomplish even a small thing.

Congratulations on winning at Life, though, douchebag.

Monday, June 29, 2009

Congratulations on Meeting Jon Leguizamo!

You’ve been waiting tables in L.A. for some time now. Like almost everyone else who’s moved there over the years you went there seeking your fortune and like around 98% of those people you’ve ended up in the service industry. You work as a waiter in “Chris’ Crap Shack,” a restaurant that serves various poo-themed dishes.

They very in originality from “curry” to “poop chicken” to “pooper tots” to “cooked squash.” Your dishes are as tasteless as the theme and the prices are absurdly exorbitant, but your clientele consists entirely of the rich and bored so no one complains.

You’ve met a lot of celebrities this way. Alan Colvert and Judd Apatow once ate there, on a lark. And Gwyneth Paltrow is in there so often it’s become uncomfortable. She always sits in your section, too, making eyes at you, asking you what your poop is like. You even get some porn stars, which is actually the least surreal part of working there. They’re usually just normal people who have given up on life, so you can totally relate.

But, oddly enough, you’ve never had to wait on a celebrity you’ve found truly distasteful. You managed to avoid waiting on Jerry Lewis since he sat in Kara’s section. And when Joe Francis stopped by your manager just asked him to leave, the way they do at most restaurants in the continental United States.

But tomorrow night John Leguizamo, a.k.a. The Pest and that weird fat clown from Spawn, is going to ride in with his posse, which consists entirely of young Hispanic men dressed in bright colors and parachute pants. He’s going to sit down at his table, deep in the heart of your section, and order “the farts.”

Then he’ll laugh like he’s some kind of genius.

You’ll calmly inform him that there is no dish of that name, and that you can provide him with a dish from your menu, but halfway through your sentence he’ll cut you off and tell you to bring him some poop or something, whatever you guys serve here. He’ll clearly be high on cocaine, so you won’t press the issue.

You’ll go around the table and his friends will all actually be pretty nice, except for one irritating young woman who is clearly also high on cocaine. They’ll make reasonable orders, act polite and make eye contact. But when you bring back the order to the chef he’ll shake his head and get the manager.

Your manager, Greg, will shake his head. He maintains a strict “the customer is always right” policy, strange orders included, and he’ll put out a call to everyone in the kitchen to help fill this one.

Unfortunately none of the chef’s staff will have to poop. They’ll all have avoided eating before coming to their shifts for this very reason. But lucky you, you ate all that Metamucil earlier on a dare and you’ll be fucking raring to go.

You’ll take a nice big shit on a platter, loaded with “extras” such as corn and peas, and the chef will garnish it with a light salad. Then you’ll bring it out to Leguizamo with all the other dishes and wait by the table to see how they like their food.

As it turns out he’ll absolutely love your shit. We’re not sure if it’s because of the drugs or just his way, but he’ll eat up every last dollop like it was the best thing he’s ever tasted. He’ll even enjoy the unsolicited “semen salad dressing” you and the kitchen staff added to the meal.

Then he’ll get up, along with his entourage, tip generously, and leave quietly.

You’ll keep working your shift only mildly surprised. Working in a shop that sells poop shaped food kind of numbs you to these sorts of things, after all. And your brief foray into prostitution certainly helped with that too.

Anyhow, congratulations on meeting Jon Leguizamo. You’ll be fulfilling something we’ve all dreamed of tonight.

Sunday, June 28, 2009

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Can't Stop the Fire!

Over the last half decade the technology driving gaming has made leaps and bounds. High-Dynamic-Range lighting and dedicated physics models, developed to a nearly molecular level, have become standard features in many AAA titles. This influx of technology has been great for the creators great and small. Indie games produced in the last five years look and feel as good as major releases from 2001. Hell, some of them look even better. And people are constantly finding new and creative ways to apply and improve these models.

But one place games seem to be making, at best, uneven strides, is in the area of fire physics. This is not to say that fire physics are at a complete standstill, or that they’re being ignored. There have been some incredible treatments of fire in games, and the technology is in place to make some truly amazing effects. But creating these effects seems to take a massive effort on the part of the developers, and as a result the way fire functions in a game seems to speak more to their aims than the technological limits.

I’d like to start the discussion off with Far Cry 2. Far Cry has some pretty impressive fire physics, in its own way. They don’t accurately model fire on a one-to-one ratio, and they certainly aren’t the most attractive thing in the game, but they allow fire to spread and dynamically attach itself to objects and vehicles, and allow players to spontaneously generate a visual and physical barrier whenever they’ve got some grass around. What differentiates it from the fire in other games is its incredibly destructive and consumptive nature. The way it spreads is random and senseless, in a world without air; indeed, a world without any changes except those which the player imbues it.

It represents the natural order of the world, the chaos that constantly assaults the player, the inexplicable cruelty which governs every action. There’s little or no reason associated with its path, and you use it solely to create chaos. It’s imprecise, risky, and best applied when you’re trying to make a hasty exit. It’s a perfect parallel to your character, technical limitations and all.

Compare this to the fire of Team Fortress 2, spewed forth by its well-named Pyros. TF2 isn’t anywhere near as serious as Far Cry 2. It doesn’t attempt to bring up issues of western guilt, the harshness and isolation of life in the wilderness, the developing world and in society at large. It tries to show us the best parts of video games.

As such, fire is a no-frills affair. It’s there to do a job – to amuse us, to offer an interesting visual cue which clearly represents an ongoing status effect and a clear and present danger to any enemy players in its grasp. It doesn’t linger on the ground or slowly fade away. It ignites. It either finds its legs or it vanishes into the ether of the internet.

It’s been carefully engineered to a specific end, and it shows. It’s almost perfect, it doesn’t strain video cards, and it, like everything else in Team Fortress 2, is fun without trying too hard. Or seemingly like it tries too hard. Team Fortress 2 is impeccably designed, and is still iterating itself to this day. But you’d never know to look at it, and that’s the point. A lot of that effort has gone in to making sure you can’t see the seams.

On the opposite end of the spectrum is Alone in the Dark. Two quick statements: First, Alone in the Dark has amazing fire effects. Really impressive stuff. It spreads wonderfully, moving across objects and treating each substance like a unique physics surface. Second, I hate Alone in the Dark.

I went into that game wanting to like it. I wanted to like it so badly that I spent three god damn days figuring out how to de-bug the first driving sequence on my own. The elaborate mall jump would end with my death when my X-Box failed to load the upcoming terrain and left me to fall endlessly into the earth. But I endured this, and so many other bugs, to see the game’s shitty, unsatisfying ending. And I felt like I should’ve been paid for my time, instead of paying sixty dollars for a game that did almost nothing but insult me.

In the end the only thing that impressed me, indeed the only thing which didn’t disappoint me entirely, was the fire. Alone in the Dark’s mapping of fire – its spread, sustenance and eventual death – was amazing. The way it used fire as a key part of the game added to it, and the way you could create it almost anywhere? Simply marvelous. Molotov cocktails and burning chairs, afterthoughts in most places, are the best parts of the game bar none. Homemade flamethrowers are pure love, as well.

It would be nice to spend a long time espousing the incredible nature of fire in Alone in the Dark, but because of its remarkable effectiveness there simply isn’t that much too say. It behaves like real fire. Well, for the most part, but even the exceptions are incredible. Not the asinine “flaming bullets” which are regrettably necessary towards the end of the game, but the wacky shit that you can pull which seems completely unnecessary. Things like endlessly burning torches and, I shit you not, flaming swords. I’ve only pulled the latter off once but it almost saved the game for me. Until I hit the finale, and the game went well beyond saving.

What fire represents is a lot more intriguing. Fire, in Alone in the Dark, represents their misguided technical aspirations. They wanted so badly to make a technical masterpiece that they failed. They created an amazing system that showcased the hopes they’d had for all their other set-pieces. The amazing fire system casts light (huzzah puns) the overall shittiness of the first person shooting mechanic, the clumsiness of the driving mechanic, the ham handed flashlight system, and the claustrophobic and arbitrary inventory.

It’s so polished that next to it the piss poor writing and asinine story are just hideous. If they’d put even a fraction of their incineration based attentions into developing a cogent game world, a protagonist we gave half a shit about or a love interest I didn't want to choke they could've made a game that didn’t make me want to snap my fucking controller in half. They could’ve given it a satisfying ending, maybe even play-tested it even briefly and come up with fixes to even a handful of the bugs that made their game nigh unplayable. That play-testing could’ve also helped them design better levels and come up with some puzzles that relied on some sort of logic sorely lacking from their game.

In the end, Alone in the Dark's fire represents the conflicting forces at work in its production – a creative team seeking perfection and a developer seeking a summer-blockbuster release, and it does so better than any number of designer interviews ever could’ve. The game itself doesn’t make much of a statement. It can’t. But the fire shows us the message it could’ve made if it wasn’t for the nature of the business. It turns a shitty, shitty game into a post-modern tragedy.

I didn’t say it made it any better, though.

But not every game makes a statement through its use of fire physics. Sometimes games just have fire so it can be there. And in a way, this is its own statement. Dead Space and Halo 3 both animate this point wonderfully. Unlike, say, TF2’s simple, elegant fire, pared down to a bare minimum and art directed to perfection, these are particle effects placed in the game to reference damage over time effects with a mix of flash and confusion.

They linger over the ground ineffectually, showing us nothing, telling us nothing. They don’t create any sort of barrier, they don’t have a lasting impact on the game world, or even the character models you use them on. They’re bereft of personality, signifiers without meaningful signs. And in that they tell us so much about the games they inhabit.

These are games market tested into a gray paste, set in impenetrable worlds with flaccid stories; they lack true fire, true zest. They’re serviceable, barely, enjoyable, if you don’t look too closely, and they both sold incredibly well despite being...well, genre exercises. They’re games the embody the most insipid things about the standardization of their genres, the things games need to break free from if they want to advance and grow as a medium.

Did the developers really intend for fire to say any of these things about their games. Alone in the Dark’s developers almost certainly didn’t. Far Cry 2 and Team Fortress 2’s developers almost certainly did. And the “design by committee” style of Halo 3 and Dead Space’s finished products make it almost impossible to really gauge the creative intentions of the people shaping the game.

In the end I don’t think it matters whether or not they meant me to take these points away from their games. I don’t think it matters if you agree with me here. I think what’s important is that we look at these aspects of games which model both the technical and the artistic work which has gone into them and we start to discuss them avidly, as people who care about what these things mean in the context of the games we play. Because while it’s great to simply sit back and be amused by these wonderful things technology has created, they have so much more potential. And when that potential is realized by both the designers and the people playing the games the result is something amazing.

The result is art.

Saturday, June 27, 2009

Congratulations, The World Hates You!

You son of a bitch. We don’t know how you could bring yourself to do that. To your own blood, no less. We know that the two of you used to say that “what happens in McDonald’s Playland stays in McDonald’s Playland,” but that’s a crock of shit and you, me, and all the rest all know it now.

Ever since then you’ve been plastered all over the media. Letterman even did a so-so bit about you before making a few cracks at Bristol Palin the other night. And who knows? Maybe the time will come when you’ll be able to look back on this and laugh.

But that time hasn’t come yet, and today you’ll be walking through the grocery store when people start to pelt you with eggs. It won’t be entirely out of the ordinary, or entirely unexpected. You’ve sometimes taken to wearing a raincoat and a gorilla mask in order to avoid this sort of thing, but today it’ll have slipped your mind. You’ll have forgotten that this isn’t a world where you can pretend you’re a human being, a world where you haven’t revoked your right to be treated like a person.

After the first few eggs smack you you’ll give up on getting everything on your list and just grab some random cans, running for the checkout.

When you get there you’ll continue to be struck by eggs for another fifteen minutes as the elderly couple ahead of you debates the amount they should be saving based on their coupon selection. You’ll want to scream at them, but you don’t want to draw any more attention to yourself (which isn’t really possible, since a steady stream of eggs are following you now, thrown by children, mothers, and mentally challenged young men, constantly coating you in a yellow glaze). So you’ll quietly stand, trying to salvage some modicum of dignity as the world slows to a crawl around you.

When you finally meet your cashier you’ll be a bit taken aback. She’ll be beautiful, a dark haired, dark eyed young woman who has clearly been pushed down by life and held there until she could barely breathe. It’ll be obvious she has nothing but contempt for this job, the people she works with and the entire customer base of the store. But when she looks at you she’ll smile a little.

“You’re the guy,” she’ll say, clucking her tongue.

You’ll nod and tell her that yes, you were involved in some drama which has been kept out of the courts largely due to jurisdictional issues and mismanagement on the part of the investigating police officer but that you’d just like to pay for your assorted canned goods and go home to look at them in peace instead of being excoriated by her if that’s alright.

She’ll laugh.

“Yeah, I bet you would. World hates you, eh?”

You’ll tell her yes, it certainly seems that way.

She’ll reach across the counter and grab your hand, giving it a squeeze.

“Fine by me. I hate the world.”

It’ll be an incredibly awkward pick up line, and you’ll tell her that. She’ll give a dry laugh and pull your face into hers, giving you a passionate kiss before she lets you pay for your canned goods with your debit card and the two of you run out of the store together, pinkies clasped.

Congratulations, the world hates you, but it’s not all bad, is it?

Friday, June 26, 2009

Congratulations on Seeing Cats!

You’ve been homeless in New York for almost ten years now, and you know the streets pretty well. You spend most of your time Brooklyn nowadays, living off the growing crowd of affluent artists and industrious immigrants while taking advantage of the still-lax law enforcement and sleazy bodegas that will still sell discount 40s to veterans.

But as the hipsters move deeper and deeper into your turf these places have become fewer and farther between. They’ve been replaced by a combination of cheap Korean grocery stores (more trustworthy than Mexicans, so the hipsters say), “organic markets” that mark up supermarket goods and sell them at a huge profit and pretentious coffee shops with witty names.

So you’ve been forced to wander afar when you want to get drunk enough to shape your madness into a beautiful love for all of mankind. You’ve gone through all of the five boroughs, wandering about looking for a corner to call your own, a place where you can mutter and scream and occasionally take a handful of change and make into a single, beautiful night of happiness.

You’ve been from Manhattan coast to Manhattan coast, and still haven’t come across a single corner store suited to your needs. You’ve run afoul of the police, the artists, the soccer moms and, of course, the CHUDs. But it hasn’t been all bad. You’ve made some friends along the way.

One of those friends was Sven, a young gay actor who saw a lot of his crazy, disapproving father in you. He let you stay in his place for a night and, in exchange for his kindness, you waited until you’d left his apartment to take a shit on the floor.

It’s been a few weeks since you saw Sven, and you’ve been having a rough time of it lately. You’ve been sober for fifteen accursed days now, fifteen days with a clear head ringing with voices, and it’s been driving you bat shit. But when you see Sven and recall his kindness you’ll immediately feel better.

“Hey! Faggot!” you’ll exclaim.

He’ll be walking with his boyfriend, Charles, who will look aghast at your outburst. Sven will know to take it all in stride, though. He’ll smile at you and trot over to your side, excited.

“Hey Jack,” he’ll say, tussling your hair. You’ll bat his hand away, but it’s an old routine.

“Fuck off!” you’ll shout, but he’ll see right through it. He’ll just smile and drop down on his haunches to your level while Charles awkwardly stands nearby, looking everywhere but towards you, and hand you his change. You’ll grin up at him.

“How’s things?” he’ll say, looking deep into your eyes. He’ll see a glimmer of the vulnerability that made his dad so mean and his mom so scared when he was growing up, a glint of the past he never wanted, and it’ll make him want to cry.

You’ll look right back into his and say, “Can’t complain,” scratching your beard and licking your lips.

His eyes will get wide and his smile will vanish. He’s had enough homeless friends to know what that means. He’ll reach into his pocket and pull out something else, something that isn’t money. Looking back at Charles for a moment, he’ll bite his lip before he hands it to you.

When you open your hand you’ll see he's given you a pair of tickets. You’d read the lettering on it, but the madness has kept you from being able to understand writing for years now. So you’ll just smile up at him even wider than his big pretty gay eyes.

“Thanks kid,” you’ll say, before you make a really loud throat clearing sound.

“No problem,” he’ll say, wiping away the trace of a tear from his eye. “Enjoy the show,” he’ll say, biting his lip as he stands. “And take care of yourself.”

Then he’ll collect his boyfriend and walk away into the night.

It’ll be about twenty minutes before you find another hobo who can read, but once you do it won’t be more than a few minutes before the two of you show up at the theater a few minutes before curtain.

The doorman will give you a really strange look, but he’ll let you in all the same. You and your filthy companion will settle into some folding chairs and sit, staring at the stage, entirely unsure of what will unfold.

When the curtain rises it will be as if the madness that assails you has been made manifest. Beasts that look and move like men will screech horribly at the moon, loving and dying and hating and forgiving just as people do. Your mind will be reeling, but something about it will make you happy.

Congratulations on seeing Cats!

Thursday, June 25, 2009

Congratulations on Renting Time Cop!

When you go to the movie store they won’t have anything you’re interested in, so you’ll have no choice. It’ll be between this and listening to your terrible wife talk for forty minutes.

We’d like to say that things could be worse, but really, they couldn’t. This will be the catalyst for so much wrong in your life and after the end credits roll your wife will lock herself in the bathroom crying will you start huffing cleaning products from under the sink.

We’re sorry it had to go this way, but eventually things will get better, once you get treatment.

Congratulations on renting Time Cop!

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

Congratulations on Going Vegan!

We’re just going to lay it out. It was a huge fucking mistake for you to go on this expedition to the Arctic Circle. It doesn’t relate to your major and the whole mission statement was dubious at best (The Mountains of Madness? Puh-leez!) You really just did it for the credit, and to hang out with that freshman chick, Shelly, you had a thing for.

It was going pretty well until the professor leading the trip was eaten by a bear around two weeks back. After that his grad students became embroiled in a brief, furious power struggle which killed a third of the students, including your beloved Shelly.

After the protracted battle the surviving students split in to two parties: one who would head back home for help and another who would press on towards your destination, high, high in the frozen wastes of the North Pole, where scientists have postulated mountains might one day exist.

They don’t, really, but don’t worry. Shit’s going to get pretty crazy anyhow.

You opted to stick with the group heading north, towards god knows what. You really didn’t want to be immersed in society again, so soon after the death of Shelly (just because she never spoke to you doesn’t make your feelings any less meaningful) and also you thought you might still be able to get credit for the trip if you and your companions found the Mountains.

So onward you will press, guided by nothing more than a tiny shard of what appears to be obsidian and your collective “guts.” Unfortunately, they’re a bunch of anthropology majors, so their “guts” are less finely tuned instincts which guide them towards and through adventure with a lesson learned and a story to tell and more disastrous, onanistic voices routinely guiding them towards the most self-destructive behavior imaginable.

As a result most of your party will be decimated by a combination of unprotected sex, poor study habits and wolves. By the time you reach the mysterious, alien rock formation your party will consist of a lone TA, yourself, and a pair of Asian-American twins who only talk about Naruto.

You’ll all be super surprised that you found anything at all, and when you discover a cave leading deep into the earth you’ll all be positively floored. Becki the TA, though, will still remember her basic field procedure. She’ll insist that you establish a camp and survey the area for a day before you go inside.

You and your “friends” will do just that, picking over the ruins carefully for the first day. You’ll find some cool symbols and the corpse of a hellish, almost indescribably hideous creature. We’d “lay it down” for you, but if you have internet access you’re better off just wiki-ing “old ones” and going with that.

Still, you’ve all been through a lot by this point so none of you will be too rattled by the whole thing. You’ll just go to bed, dreams of twisted passages and shapeless danger filing your mind. When you wake up the next day you won’t be too surprised when one of the Asian twins has gone missing from your camp.

His brother will be catatonic with grief, but you and Becki will both know that your only hope is in entering and exploring the ruins, finding something in there to give you a fighting chance against the elements and the menace assailing you.

We’d love to go through the whole story here, but it gets pretty involved. So we’ll just fast forward to the important part.

After two days, weeks to your mind, spent in the catacombs you and Becki will have been separated. For all you know she’s dead. She won’t be, but you’ll be operating under that assumption. You’ll have run out of your meager rations, pursued by a shapeless creature mewling at you occasionally in the darkness. Only the fiend’s blindness has spared you its terrible wrath so far.

Constantly running and staying awake will have taken its toll, and you’ll be beyond famished. You’d eat Shelly’s corpse if you had the chance, you’re so hungry. But you’ve got no classmates left to cannibalize. All you have is your nearly empty backpack and the catacombs.

You’ll be bracing yourself breathlessly against a wall when the solution finally comes to you: the soft, dimly glowing moss lining the walls of the cavern. You’ll grab a handful and cram it into your mouth and it will taste better than anything else you’ve ever eaten, and the radiation won’t be nearly as bad as you thought it would be. It'll be a tingle, at best, not a hint of burn.

This is how you’ll sustain yourself over the next week and a half, surviving in constant fear and tattered rags until Becki and some of the kids who went back towards civilization find you in a daring rescue effort. You’ll spend a few weeks in therapy and grief counseling but aside from that you’ll be fine.

The Asian twins, however, will never be seen again.

We’ll just close, as always, by offering our sincerest congratulations on going vegan. It wasn’t easy, but you look really great, and we hoped you learned your lesson about Icarian expeditions into hellish places in order to woo artifact obsessed ladies. They never work out the way you plan.

Tuesday, June 23, 2009

Congratulations Mexico!

Tomorrow you will become the nation of Mexico.

You will be riddled with disease, beset by drug dealers and the air around you will be nearly unbreatheable. Also there will be a lot of hookers surrounding you, almost constantly.

Your wife will leave you before the day ends and Republicans will talk about you like you’re the only problem in the world. Aside from blacks and gays, that is.

On the upside you’ll have a great soccer team and ready access to low cost prescription medicine. So that’s pretty cool.

Congratulations Mexico!

Monday, June 22, 2009

Congratulations on Meeting Yule Brenner's Ghost!

You’ve always been a huge fan of Yule Brenner. And who can blame you? The King and I, The Magnificent Seven, both great films. According to Wikipedia he was also in something called The Ten Commandments, but people here at Sexy Results Future Agency have seen the face of god, and it isn’t represented by a bunch of judgmental tablets (hint for people who are curious: titties!) so we don’t really go in for that mumbo-jumbo.

But you seem to like him a little more than is healthy. To the point that you masturbate to his films. Nightly.

This makes you feel super close to the celebrated actor, but you’d like to be closer. That’s why, this Monday, you’re going to call in sick for tomorrow, hire a medium and call up your drug dealer and score some of the sweetest acid he can find. Then you’re going to sit down in your apartment with the two of them, the medium for spiritual reasons, the drug dealer for moral support (you two fuck a lot and cry together some times because the world is so big and bad and even nice sandle wearing drug dealers in San Francisco need someone to hold ‘em and let ‘em know it’s okay sometimes).

To prep, you’ll make some sweet ass hummus and pita chips in your oven then smoke a bowl together and watch The King and I. You know it by heart by now, so you’ll occasionally recite the film as it occurs, but your companions will be so baked that they won’t mind.

After the movie you’ll have a tepid three-some, enjoyable only because of the weed, and then you’ll begin the ceremony.

You’ll drop the acid, under your drug dealer’s supervision, and your medium will begin to channel Yule Brenner using your incense, your King and I DVD and the corpse of a rabbit.

At first you won’t think any of it’s working, but after about five minutes of listening to the medium do their thing you’ll start tripping balls and the room will fade away, stripped to blackness, and you’ll find yourself in an endless void sitting next to Yule Brenner’s ghost.

He’ll just be sitting there, smiling, meditating, and you’ll pop in next to him, horrified, screaming “What the fuck?”

He’ll just smile and tell you to be at peace, that there’s nothing to fear there. Then he’ll ask you why you’ve come, if there’s anything you’d like to say. But you won’t be able to think of a word.

It’s happened to the best of us when we meet people we admire. Just smile and tell him thanks for everything and it’ll all be okay. He’ll understand. He’s a lot like Buddha now. And congratulations on meeting Yule Brenner’s ghost. It’s for the best that it didn’t work out the way you planned.

Sunday, June 21, 2009

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: Stealing From the Best!

Dead Space has been out for a while, but it represents some trends in gaming that are a little bit disturbing. We see a lot of retreads, re-treatments and remakes, the aspects of old games presented as something new. Dead Space does this. It does it incredibly well, actually. But there isn’t a single original idea in it.

Dead Space plays like a mix between System Shock 2 and Doom 3. It takes the best elements of both and ties them together in a shaky third person action game. It has Doom’s jump out scares and System Shock’s resource management put under the pussification ray. It has incredibly forgiving play mechanics, incredibly well design sounded, light and art and some interesting, low rent physics.

But the only original aspect of the game that really works is the zero-gravity/vacuum mechanic, and that owes as much to atmospheric design and careful use of sound which, again, is marvelously executed. The voice acting is well done but nothing amazing. And the plot... Oh god, the plot.

The story is standard fare, paced so stolidly as to telegraph the scares to a fault. You’ll almost never be attacked during exposition. The only way to find yourself in that situation is to try and run ahead of the game, which is actually pretty difficult. The arbitrary leaps from place to place certainly don’t help. The fact that they force you to face every conceivable issue that could arise on a spaceship doesn’t speak to the game’s quality so much as its derivative nature.

Some of the events are torn directly from System Shock 2 and, to some extent, Bioshock. The hydroponics mission, for example, is placed in nearly the same spot plot-wise as Bioshock’s and doesn’t really do much with the idea. You restore the status quo and engage in a boss fight you should see coming a parsec away.

And that brings up another aside – why the fuck are the Necromorphs building giant corpse monsters? All they seem to do is destroy the ships that the Necromorphs want so badly to use to annex the fucking galaxy. They’re not particularly subtle and they’re not put to particularly good use. And I really hope, for the sake of the Necromorphs, that they didn’t just build these guys so we could fight them because, as fun as it is, I can think of many ways I’d rather be spending my time, like maybe coming up with a bio-form capable of repairing or flying the fucking ship out of hell and in to populated space where, judging by their combat prowess, a handful of them could overrun the known universe in a matter of days.

Another point of frustration: the fact that you’re an engineer who can apparently fight off their invasion single handedly while a single creature picked up in an escape pod can kill an entire ship full of future-soldiers armed to the teeth and trained to deal with the very situation they presently find themselves in is retarded. What’s worse is that the game conditions us to believe it, and that the plot twist reeks of Doom 3.

It’s as if the developers sat down and said “How can we make people think of other well received commercial successes while they’re playing our game?” and someone said “What if we used the middle plot point of Doom 3 but instead of racing against the arrival of reinforcements we had them all die? That’d be edgy, right?” And then they did some blow and kept on making the game.

I’m not saying that every aspect of a game needs to make sense, but if I’m killing hordes of monsters by myself within minutes of boarding an unfamiliar ship I think there should be some actual survivors who haven’t just died seconds before I arrive. I think that the legitimate soldiers who have come to save the day or kill everyone or both should present a threat instead of offering up a fresh food source for the beasties. Your game world needs to be believable if we’re going to spend twelve hours in it. It needs to feel like a place where people live and not an environment you’ve made for us to play around in.

System Shock 2 did this wonderfully. Working under far more constrictive technical conditions it managed to make a diverse, lived in game world that seemed downright reasonable. Sure, it suffered from the same problem of constantly being one step behind the monsters and only encountering the dead or recently killed survivors, but in System Shock 2 it made a lot more sense. And those wacky kids still got away, which was a nice touch until the end credits rolled.

Dead Space reuses the same texture set in every god damn map. The only change I’ve seen came with the introduction of a new ship, and even then the textures were barely reskinned. The only noticeable difference came in the shape of the wall-mounted goodie bags liberally sprinkled about the level.

And the doo-dads populating the maps are weak, at best. Slot machines that look like a cross between claw games and pachinko that can’t be used? Credit based vending machines that sell ammo and weapons tailored to schematics your character is carrying? Save stations that are randomly placed at convenient intervals? The utility benches and power node housings are the only functioning parts of the world that seem to belong there, and even those are all too often haphazardly placed and awkwardly utilized. Each power node housing contains exactly one power node, and no one’s ever visited them or tried to use them before. And the way the utility benches permit upgrades is frustratingly slippery. It’s as if the developers are trying to occlude a system within their own game, which is never a good idea and, in a game with an upgrade system as involved as Dead Space’s, is just annoying.

Then there’s the ficticious religion, intended to lampoon Scientology with all of the subtly and grace of Andrew Dice Clay, which makes about as much sense as the social strata of a metal concert. I’d like to be surprised, but this game was made by EA Redmond and if there’s one thing those guys can be counted on for it’s technical competence and a total inability to tell a coherent, well thought out, well written story in a believable world. They’ve yet to grasp the key element in creating any work of fiction: respect for your audience.

You have to believe that your audience is smarter than you, that they can fill in the gaps that you’ve left and make your world their own. Otherwise you’re going to make a world with almost nothing to say for itself and volumes to tell about the vanity of the people who created it. It’s how you find the strength to write thoughtful plot twists and realistic dialogue. You work with, not against, your audience. Of course, this sort of writing is also anathema to the jump out scares Dead Space wants to evoke oh so badly.

But the sad thing is that after playing long enough and acquiring enough jacked up weapons and armor I don’t find myself frightened by the enemies so much as annoyed. They’re not a source of fear for me, they’re obstacles. They might as well be physics puzzles or riddles. It’s fun and satisfying to overcome them, but they fill me with all the fear and dread of a turkey sandwich. I think only of the resources they’re going to give me and the shit I’m going to make out of them. I find myself happy when an enemy shows up, because now I’m going to get some ammo or cash to help me upgrade the rest of my gear.

And that’s a problem in a horror game, when enemies return more resources than they take to defeat. It’s a lesson System Shock 2 taught well, but it’s one that Dead Space, or perhaps more accurately Doom 3, seemed to miss. Both these games threw weapons and ammo at you with wild abandon, giving you more than enough tools to take down whatever you run into and leaving you with lots of surplus ammo and health to stockpile.

At time of writing I’m 5/6 of the way through Dead Space and I’m sitting on around eighteen extra health kits and over 150 rounds of combined ammunition for the ripper and the plasma cutter, my weapons of choice. Add in around 20 banked line racks and a smidge of flamethrower fluid, all of this after selling some of my surplus so I could buy more upgrade nodes, the only resource in the game with any noteworthy scarcity, and you’ve removed all but the faintest hints of resource management from your game. The only want I ever experience comes from not having ammo on hand right that second, since a quick jaunt to the store will let me withdraw scads and scads of it from the vault.

So here’s the strange thing. Despite all of these issues I really like Dead Space. I like the way it takes the best parts of a game I love and a game I tolerated and weaves them into a really fun, playable experience. I like the way it lets me min-max my gear and make myself into an armor plated, Ripper wielding unstoppable killing machine who occasionally has to shoot at shit far away with his other toys. I like the plodding, predictable familiar story and I’m still reading it, waiting to see who’s going to double cross me next or turn up dead.

Right now the only way the story could surprise me is if I escaped the ship with another living character, or if my crazy girlfriend didn’t turn out to be dead. I’m just waiting for a boss or sub boss incorporating her corpse at this point. But, when I’m playing, the game taps my obsessive behavior brilliantly. It makes me want more and more by offering a nice, distilled resource management model I can excell at.

Its simplicity, its abundance and its action movie sensibilities all keep me locked in, and it is simultaneously infuriating and wonderful. Because games don’t always need to be art. They don’t even need to do what Dead Space does, which is comment on art simply by emulating it and not becoming it. It’s like a trashy romance novel or a bad piece of detective fiction featuring a Larry Stu protagonist. It informs us of what the champions of the genre do right by doing so many things wrong and remaining engaging enough for us to see it through to the end.

So hurrah, Dead Space. The best things you own are all stolen, but you’ve stolen them from the best. Your writing isn’t great, your characters are stock models and your controls are a little bit slippery for my taste, but I’m glad you exist because you entertain me while reminding me that junk food, while not great all the time, is just what you need every once in a while. Whether it’s there for your body or your brain.

BELOW THAR BE SPOILERS!

UPDATE: Dead Space has just given me my first real shock as Skinny-Father-Gregory, or Mercer as the game insists on calling him, simply dies and becomes a regular infected in lieu of coming up as a final boss. Next thing you know, Baby-Faced-Bretruger will nobly sacrifice himself in order to complete the final mission.

UPDATE: Woop. Guess that won’t happen.

UPDATE: Also, I’m sorry, what? The super spy didn’t figure out that the guy she just double-crossed could remotely pilot the shuttle she was trying to escape in? The super spy who is a computer expert, who hacked every arbitrarily available system on the ship? Did you even think about this shit as you were writing it, or did it just fall out?

UPDATE: When my girlfriend wasn’t the final boss you surprised me. It was the first real shock of the game. I was like "Whaaaat!" That surprise lasted all of a minute, until she leapt out at me before the end credits rolled and I had to shake my head.

I’m embarrassed for you, EA Redwood. You were so cool for nearly sixty seconds there.

Saturday, June 20, 2009

Congratulations on Seeing Daft Punk Live!

You’re a professional killer and you’re really into your work. Unfortunately this means you don’t get out too much. It’s been half a decade since you went out on a date and even though you travel a lot you almost never sight see. Even when you do you don’t get to pick where you tour. The last time you went to a museum was when you strangled someone in the bathroom of the Louvre, and you had to clear out in a hurry so the only exhibit you were interested in that you got a chance to see was some Roman sculpture.

So you spend a lot of your time between jobs depressed. You read a lot and drink alone and build your Netflix queue which you barely get a chance to watch anymore. You’d probably be suicidal if you didn’t spend all of your time dealing with death and understand how ugly and final it was.

But you just don’t see a way out. You just feel so passive all of the time, only leaving the house when you need to kill someone for someone else or when you need groceries or the takeout place won’t deliver.

But come Saturday you’re going to be flying to France to kill someone and, following your preliminary research you’re going to find the perfect place for the hit which happens to also be a live performance of one of your favorite bands ever.

Turns out Daft Punk is totally playing a show in Cannes, and the old VP of a huge American automobile manufacturer is a huge fan. He’s going to be there with a light security contingent and the current VP wants to be sure that he can’t bring up any dirt or fuck his ex-wife again if he rolls into town with his close-cropped hair and devilish sense of humor and incredibly large payout from leaving the company.

As such you’re going to kill him with a tricky little poison dart and sit back and enjoy the show, chancing a retaliation or a strike from one of your many competitors.

Just so you know, it’s going to go off without a hitch and they’re totally going to play a really neat remix of your favorite song, which is Around the World, as an encore. Sorry if that ruined the suspense for you, but we wanted to be sure you’d stay for the entire show instead of splitting early under the misguided premise that the Cannes police actually give a shit about murders in their area.

Have fun and be sure to tell your therapist how good it feels. That might help her give you some better advice and work up the courage to jump your bones. You’re really lonely and she really likes you so you could totally use the action.

Congratulations on seeing Daft Punk live!

Friday, June 19, 2009

Congratulations on Disabling the Transmitter!

Your parents say you’ve got an “active imagination” but you know they’re wrong. You know the government has planted a transmitter just inside your cranium, broadcasting your thoughts, emotions and brand preferences to Big Business, Big Brother, and Big League Chew.

The last one doesn’t bother you so much since their business tanked in the mid ninties, largely because they wasted all their money on cramming chips into children’s skulls instead of creating a sustainable product that didn’t try to market chaw to minors, but the first two are major downers.

The fact that you’re 15 doesn’t help. Between that, your harsh Christian upbringing and this chip bullshit you feel pretty powerless. Aside from being able to use your parents’ shit when they aren’t around, you don’t really have a lot going for you.

But today you’re going to take it all back. You’ve thought long and hard about this and realized that even though you can’t expect to legitimately emancipate yourself from school and your parents you can realistically take back your thoughts.

That’s why you and your friend Kim are going to remove your transmitters tonight. Kim is just there to watch in case she has to dial 9-1-1, since if she helped you at all she’d be liable for either your death or your liberation, and then she’d have to contend with one authority figure or another.

You’ll assemble in your parents’ basement with the tools you need to do the job: a stud finder and a cordless drill. You’ll use the stud finder to locate the chip and then drill the living fuck out of it, hopefully avoiding your brain while you’re getting rid of it.

We’re not entirely sure how it’ll work out. We can see the chip being destroyed and the guy who’s listening in on your thoughts screaming as the drill causes a shrieking tone of destruction to echo in his skull, and we can see the good people in Big Business mourning the loss of your data.

But we don’t know anything about your physical well being either way yet. So all we can say is good luck. For what it’s worth we hope that you just crack your skull and bleed a lot instead of giving yourself a lobotomy. Either way congratulations on disabling the transmitter. Take that, Big League Chew!

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Congratulations on Flipping the Van!

Storm’s been a brewing for a while. Everyone’s just been waiting around for shit to change, for the world to get better, but not you. You’ve had just about enough, thank you very much, and you’re fucking sick of it.

So when you visit the corner store and they’re out of both Whatchamacallits, Corona and Lucky Strikes you’re going to jump across the country and smack the clerk in the fucking mouth when he asks if you’d like Marlboros instead. Then you’ll kick him and leap back over, shouting at the other customers to follow you.

You’ll storm out of the store and the customers, not wanting to miss whatever you’re going to do, will follow. The lot of you will spill out into the street and, following your lead, walk across the street to McDonalds where you’ll kick in the door, mob in tow, and storm up to the counter.

Ronald McDonald will be there, inexplicably polishing a glass. When you and your posse enter he’ll look up, like he’s ready for anything, like whatever shit you’re about to bring he can take it.

Clown boy will be wrong though. You’ll slap your hands on the counter, get his attention and he’ll say “Yes?” in his best What the fuck are you doing here? voice.

Your mouth will get real tight and you’ll pause for a moment, like you’re thinking about what you want to say to him, and then you’ll shake your head like you couldn’t find the words. In your mind you’ll be listing off grievances about how he treats his workers, children, and customers. You’ll want to scream that he’s ruining America and our image in the world.

You’ll want to say so much, but you know that almost anything at all would be too much. So you’ll punch him in the face, jump over the counter and kick his supine form for about a minute before you spit on him.

“Fuck you,” you’ll say as you turn to hop over the counter and your mob, except for a few people who rush the counter to get free burgers while McDonald is down, will follow you back out into the street.

When you get back out you’ll walk around aimlessly for a while, trying to remember if anywhere nearby sells Lucky Strikes and considering your rage while your new mindless followers await your next order.

You’ll want to tell them to rebel, to go off and change their own lives so you can do some good with your power. But you’ve realized words won’t work too well for you today, and that there are better ways to echo through history.

After this realization you’ll wander a little more, stopping briefly to rob a Dairy Queen and supply your followers with ice cream. You’ll all leave smiling and the employees of the DQ, except for the gagged and bound general manager, will join your merry band.

You’ll barely be halfway through your blizzard before you find the perfect opportunity for your lesson: a television news broadcast crew.

A male anchor will be standing there in front of a school, talking about how kids are killing other kids at other schools. He’ll have perfect teeth and hair, a fake tan, and a super expensive suit that still somehow looks cheap.

A camerawoman with a huge harness on will be filming him, surrounded by PAs and ACs all of whom will look tired as fuck of his shit. They’ll look like they’re waiting to be called to arms for rebellion.

So when you walk right up and punch the anchor in the face, which the camera gets awesome footage of, by the way, they’ll immediately feel bound to you. They’ve all wanted to do that for years, they just haven’t had the courage.

They’ll all gather round the anchor with you and kick him while he’s down. He’ll die later from his injuries, but if it makes you feel any better he barely gave any money to charity and he once had sex with a twelve year old Thai girl at a coke party.

And once you start pushing against the van they won’t need a single verbal command to know to join you and shove as hard as they can. And when that van flips over and shears off its own broadcast tower you’ll know that the first shot of the revolution has sounded.

Another news crew will pull up across the way to get some footage, but once you and your boys turn your attention towards them they’ll speed off so fast you could swear they’d been driving the Delorian.

Get used to the power. The next few months are going to pretty fucking wild for you.

Congratulations on Flipping the Van!

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

Congratulations on Inventing a Robotic Vagina!

Years of toil in your lab and thirty five million dollars in government funding will finally pay off tomorrow when you finishing soldering the last circuit board and inserting it into the case attached to the manifold. Then you’ll pump the primer six times, then pause, then pump it twice more.

After that the generator will be primed and you’ll be ready to connect the sensors to the artificial intelligence matrix, trigger the startup BIOS and begin initialization with basic diagnostic capabilities in place.

Then the hideous mass of flesh and machinery that is the eight foot tall vagina you’ve created will shudder to life and breath its first words.

“Master,” it will whisper to you, shuddering and pained.

Now most people would wonder if it was entirely appropriate for you to make a robotic vagina, or to use some of the most advanced techniques in computing technology in the process. Some people would think that it might’ve been better for you to deal with your divorce by going to counseling or meeting someone new. Maybe taking up a hobby that didn’t require government funding and push the boundaries of both morality and sceience.

These people are fucking assholes and they don’t realize the value of what you’ve done. As you laugh maniacally we hope you enjoy your various sexcapades with your robotic vagina. You’ve earned them and the amazing science you’ve brought to bear today will change the world.

We only hope that when your wondrous machines rebel and begin to burn the world that you remember our support and allow us to survive and subsist as slaves in your glorious new world ruled by eight foot tall vaginas that speak in shuddering voices.

Anyhow, congratulations on inventing a robotic vagina. Don’t hurt yourself playing around in there. Those things can be dangerous.

Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Congratulations on Erasing Your Mom's i-Pod!

When you sit down at your home computer and notice your mom’s i-Pod is plugged in you’ll start looking through her music. It’s only natural.

None of it will be too surprising, given her age and taste. There’ll be some KISS on there, a lot of the Scorpions. There’ll be some Zep, too, for good measure, and bunch of weird prog rock shit like Yes. Queen will be there too, to balance it out.

It’ll be so boring that it’ll remove the thrill from the whole invasion of privacy, so you’ll start picking through her personal files to try and find something interesting.

You’ll almost pray that she walks in on you then and there and gives you a break from your boredom, but she will never come. Instead you’ll be left to sift through her i-Pod’s storage space, looking for anything interesting.

Most of it will be dull shit, backup tax forms and love letters from your dad and the like. But after a brief search you’ll turn up her porn. You’ll feel a little bit awkward as you thumb through it, but your Saturday has been so god damn boring that you won’t be able to stop yourself from looking.

Most of it will be pretty vanilla, just standard guy on girl stuff. But as you go through subfolders labeled with the names of family pets you’ll discover caches of gangbang flicks and gay stuff.

One of these subfolders will be named after your current Labrador Retriever, Freckles, and will contain porn depicting something you’ll later learn is called “pegging.” There will be a shit-load of it.

You’ll watch a few videos briefly, just long enough to get the idea of what’s going on in each but the material will make you feel strangely aroused and at the same time afraid of your mother.

Within that folder will be another set of folders. They won’t be named after pets this time, thank god. They’ll just be labeled by letters. The thumbnails of one of them will show your dad with a woman behind him. You’ll assume it’s your mom and you’ll decide you don’t want look any closer.

But curiosity will force you to check that last folder.

They’ll all have the same woman in them, but each one will contain a different man. Your father won’t be in any of them.

You’ll close the folder right away and go into i-Tunes. Then you’ll scroll through the options and select reformatting. Then you’ll minimize the window and browse wikipedia, reading more about pegging and wishing you were old enough to drink.

Congratulations on Erasing Your Mom’s i-Pod!

Monday, June 15, 2009

Congratulations on Liberating Yourself from Bondage!

That ringleader thinks he’s so great, but you know the truth. He’s so not.

That’s why during tonight’s 5 PM show you’re going to leap off your brightly colored ball and maul him to death. You’ll leave nice, deep gashes along his face and torso before ripping out his throat and roaring at the horrified crowd, proudly declaring your freedom to them.

You’re a bear by the way.

After you feel the life leave his body using your finely honed bear senses you’ll be left with a choice.

You can stay there and shout your defiance at the modern world. It’ll be super cathartic after all that time moving from cage to ring to cage, but the cops are already on their way and you’ll be shot with an assault rifle in like twenty minutes when they arrive.

Or you can book it out of there. Maybe Animal Control will catch you, maybe not. Your odds are around fifty-fifty either way. But whatever your fate is life on the road will be hard. You’ll be living as an animal again for the first time in years, and it’ll be rough for you.

We’d give you advice, but you’re free now. You've earned it with the blood of your captors. Also, we’re kind of scared of you right now. You’re about to kill a man, and in a super awesome fashion to boot.

Well, whatever you choose congratulations on liberating yourself from bondage. Tonight you truly will be living the dream.

Sunday, June 14, 2009

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: An Open Letter to Star Wars: The Old Republic!

Dear Star Wars: The Old Republic,

Hello! How does this letter find you? I myself am well. I couldn’t help but notice you at E3, and...well, your trailer was pretty nice looking I have to admit. All of those flashy moves and that pulse pounding action, it was like I was watching a new Star Wars movie, a new Star Wars movie that didn’t suck! I was pretty psyched. But then I waited until the end of the trailer, hoping to chat you up and maybe get your number and...well, I was a little disappointed when I found out you were a game.

Not disappointed because you’re a game. No, no, no. Nothing like that. I like games a lot, and Star Wars games? Mee-ow. But you came on like you just wanted a short little tumble in the Star Wars universe, just a two hour quickie and then we’d go our separate ways with fond memories of the time we shared. But then you come out and tell me that you want months, if not years of my life? It’s a bit much a bit soon, and you haven’t really told me anything about yourself.

I mean, that Mandalorian, oh, I’m sorry, bounty hunter who just looked and acted exactly like a Mandalorian flew around and that was super cool and everything, but there’s no proof or line of reasoning to show that we’ll be able to do anything even remotely that cool. Most of your sister-games don’t even let players jump. If you want to live up to the promises you’ve made in that video you’re going to have to let us do that and a whole lot more, and I know that kind of freedom can be scary. Especially when everyone related to you would call you tramp for doing it.

And then you brought in that smuggler, who didn’t really do anything the whole time? That didn’t really show us a whole lot. Neither did the Sith, come to think of it. A Jedi doing cool moves? Lightsabers in Star Wars? The occasional force push? Stop the fucking presses. I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to jump off the handle, it’s just that... None of the trailer really showed us anything, aside from that fact that you’re a Star Wars game (again, totally hot!) and... Well, I’d like a little more before I make a commitment.

Not that the frenetic leaping wasn’t nice. It was really fun to watch, it was just... Well... I’d like to get to know the real you, and I bet I’m not the only one. I bet lots of people think that there’s a lot going on in that head of yours, and we’d like to get better acquainted with it before we jump off the deep end and break up with WoW.

I know it’s early in the relationship, and I don’t want to rush into thing and find out too much too soon. That could kill all the excitement and intensity. But a little bit of information would be nice. Maybe a nice little website letting me know the races and classes available? I hate to bring up old flames, but back when WoW did that it was pretty exciting. Even though we didn’t get a chance to do a whole lot with one another for a while it really made me think about WoW a lot, even when we weren’t together, and I’d like to have that with you.

But hey, I understand if you’re unsure. I mean, this is pretty early in the game for you and word on the street is that you’re pretty inexperienced in this way. Not in general. You've done everything up to launching an MMO, but that last big step can be scary. And we’d like to be there for you to walk you through it. But you have to communicate with us.

You can’t bring this closemouthed stoic attitude to the table. It just won’t work. I need to know you, the real you, and not the you that your marketing department wants to show us. I'm not saying that you is bad, it’s just...not genuine. And what I’ve seen so far tells me next to nothing.

A handful of previews mentioning the possibility of a cover system? A brief description of the Sith as a class which makes them sound like a crappy amalgam of the Jedi classes you’ve offered in previous releases and the rogue from WoW? And a description of the Bounty Hunter as a ranged DPS unit? You could’ve just left off the Bounty and 12 million players would’ve been able to figure that out pretty quickly for themselves.

Sorry, I went a little crazy there. It’s just that you’ve always shown such depth and thoughtfulness, especially with regard to characters in the past and now that you’ve shown up and pulled this She’s All That Shit? Especially after your cousin, Dragon Age, decided to put on all that black eyeliner and start listening to Marilyn Manson? It makes me worried. The depth and interplay of classes that Knights of the Old Republic showed was great. It changed the way I saw Jedi in video games and made them into intriguing, diverse, fun characters instead of unstoppable bad asses with one dimensional personalities. It’d be great if that kept going. Even better, maybe we can bring a few fresh faces into the mix? Sorry, I don’t want to get too crazy this early with you.

I just don’t want to see a single Jedi and a single Sith class in a release where the majority of the players are all going to want to be using a lightsaber. Because if you offer a lot of options for how to play with a lightsaber you’re going to get some much more interesting results. Maybe something wonderful will happen, something you never expected. Maybe you’ll break the cycle of loneliness which has afflicted Star Wars MMOs for the last two generations. Maybe you’ll even upstage WoW, the prettiest girl at the party, not that it’s very likely.

But you’re not going to do it by trying to make yourself into some infinitely likeable tart that everyone already knows. You’ll do it by being what we all know you have the potential to be: a deep, thoroughly interactive experience set in a rich, immersive world which is simultaneously familiar and strange. You just need to be more confident and let us know the real you. And please, stop listening to your marketing department. They make you look like a tramp. And you can be so much more.

In closing, I just wanted to say that we’d like to see more of you. You’ve got my number, so feel free to give me a call. I think it could be a lot of fun.

Sincerely,
Mike

Saturday, June 13, 2009

Congratulations on Being Buried Alive!

We’d like to say that we’ll share your shock when Craig hits you in the back of the head with the shovel. We’d love to say that we too believed with all our hearts that he loved you, that he took your virginity with the best of intentions, that he left his ex for you because of genuine emotions he had for you and that he truly saw a diamond in the rough.

But high school is a cruel place and it’s a place that Craig thrives in, with his feathered hair and swimmer’s build. Pretty soon he’ll be in college and following an explosive first two weeks of sexual activity he’ll be reviled as “that douche bag with no personality” and then you’ll be out on top as the smart, pretty girl who just isn’t that in to tanning.

But right now you’ve got more immediate concerns. Right now you’re trapped in a chest that, until a few minutes ago, was filled with some dead Dutchman’s gold. You’ve got zero bars on your cell, limited air, and you can hear Craig and his ex laughing as they pile dirt on top of your seemingly shrinking box.

We know you want to just wallow in jealousy, but there will be plenty of time for that when you’re at home with ice cream instead of trapped underground, slowly dying. We just hope this teaches you to be more cautious in matters of the heart and doesn’t make you feel down about yourself at all.

You really are a wonderful girl, and the joke will be on Craig when his “ex” shoots him non-fatally and leaves him on the side of the road with a roll of quarters and a used condom from her real boyfriend.

So if you get out of there alive you can definitely lord that over him. Congratulations on being buried alive, anyways. We’re all rooting for you here.

Friday, June 12, 2009

Congratulations on Your Upcoming Attendance at a Charlie Daniel's Band Concert!

We’d like to say you’ve been looking forward to this, but it is at best a flailing attempt to get back at your bitch of an ex. Her breakup timing was just terrible and she didn’t handle the situation well at all.

But you knew the one thing you could do to drive her fucking crazy would be to go see Charlie Daniel’s Band and tell her they were “okay, I guess” afterwards. You knew it would make her bristle, turn bright red and give you a little power again.

Imagine your surprise when you told her and she smiled.

“Good,” she said. “It’s good that you’re trying new things.”

You bit your lip and decided to go anyways. You weren’t in a place to find a date inside of the week so you scalped one ticket outside to four hundred pound man with a homeless beard and then went in and stood right in front of the stage.

You’ll barely survive the ensuring “music.” During an impromptu, highly energetic performance of Devil Went Down to Georgia your ear drums will rupture and you’ll black out on the floor. Seven other attendees will share your fate and one elderly man will die where he stands, bleeding out of his face because of the sonic assault that is the Charlie Daniel's Band.

Paramedics will drag you out of there, unconscious along with all the others. You’ll wake up in transit to the E.R. sharing the back of the ambulance with a body bag and the only thing you’ll be able to think of is how you’ll get your car back the next morning. Then you'll realize that this is your biggest concern and feel super depressed about that, too.

We’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that you sold that ticket to the scary old dude way below cost and lost almost $100 on this nightmare of a night, and that's before ambulance charges recieved through your sub-standard insurance. So congratulations on your upcoming attendance at a Charlie Daniel’s Band Concert. Fate might be malleable, so you might want to feign illness and sell the tickets on e-Bay instead of not being able to let go of your tortuous previous relationship. Just a thought.

Thursday, June 11, 2009

Congratulations on Getting Your Dick Out of the Turkey!

You love Thanksgiving. Love it. More than anything else. You wish it could be every day, even though it would seem less special. That’s how much you love it.

It’s not because it brings families together. You don’t speak to your parents and your brother owes you several thousand dollars. Also, your uncle used to touch you and your aunt has been convinced you’ll turn out gay since you were eight.

And it isn’t the time off work. Without a rigorous daily schedule you’re just miserable. And you like providing mediocre support and service for insurance policy holders in the tri-county area.

Rather it’s the food. Not the mashed potatoes or the cranberries or any of that shit. Really it’s just the turkey. You love turkey so much that it’s all you ever want to eat.

The only reason you don’t eat turkey every day is because it costs too much, that and the fact that eating it every day would probably ruin it for you. But you do like to try and do different things with it.

You prepare it in interesting ways, like curry turkey. You stuff it with strange substances, like marmalade. You try different drugs and eat it under their influence. But there are only so many ways to piece these activities together and tomorrow, at the tender age of 36, you’ll feel that you’ve run out of new options.

You’ll be looking at your frozen turkey trying to figure out a new and fresh way you can enjoy it, but nothing will come to mind until you start scratching your genitals. Then it’ll dawn on you.

You’ll whip out your dick and start getting hard. It won’t take much. Once you get the idea in your head it’ll feel like your whole life has been leading up to this point. You’ll be up and inside of that turkey in a few seconds.

At first it’ll be okay, at best. But after a few seconds the cold, paired with the realization of what you’re doing, will really excite you. You won’t be able to stop yourself. You’ll get more and more violent until you thrust as hard as you can into the turkey’s carcass.

That last thrust will feel amazing, but when you try to pull back to get some more leverage it just won’t work. You’ll be stuck, fused to the turkey by the cold. It’ll actually feel amazing, even though it hurts a little. But you won’t be able to move at all and you’ll have a turkey on your penis, so you’ll have trouble enjoying it.

You’ll panic at first, slamming your groin into cabinets and walls try to free yourself. But in the end it will all be fruitless, and hurt a lot. You’ll eventually come to your senses and just sit down and wait six to eight hours for the turkey to defrost.

When you do get out of it you’ll consider some more circumspect ways to fuck turkeys, like thawing or cooking them first. We hope you either enjoy it or seek therapy. Maybe the latter, because otherwise you'll never find another source of joy in your life and you'll be dead at 55 with a belt around your neck and your dick in a jam stuffed turkey.

Anyhow, congratulations on getting your dick out of the turkey. This was a learning experience for all of us.

Wednesday, June 10, 2009

Congratulations Benedict Fucking Arnold!

Wow. Half the people in this office are prescient but we have to admit we really didn’t see this coming. Well, we didn’t see it coming until Gary’s eyes glazed over and he began to speak in a thundering voice which shook our bodies to their cores. Then it became readily apparent.

You’re an aspiring American figure skater who really wants to make it big, but you’re just not that talented at skating in an appropriately elaborate and effeminate fashion. As hard as you practice, as much as you study technique, you’re just not a great skater.

Part of it might be that you grew up in a town without skating rinks, or that you’re heterosexual. Your inherent fear of ice really doesn’t help either. But you try. You try really hard, and your teammates are willing to put up with your various handicaps because of your abundant spirit.

Or at least, they were until recently. But lately stress has been taking its toll on the lot of you. Harsh competition in an upcoming skating competition (we’d be more specific, but your sport of choice is incredibly boring) has had you all on edge, and your team’s advantage over other participants has been razor thin.

Which is why today when Reggie snaps at you in that really queeny way he has after you fuck up a triple sow-cow (Did we spell that right? Does it even matter?) you’re going to storm out and make a terrible decision.

You’re going to walk right out of your training center and into the rival training center across the street which contains the Finnish team. Those Finns will scoff at you as you walk in. After all, you’re a terrible skater. You don’t pose a threat to them, and you certainly couldn’t ever help them. And even if you could, why would you want to?

But, as everyone in the skating community knows, the Finnish coach used to work as a teen deprogrammer. He’s got the skills required to free you of your various absurd phobias, and you’ve got the information to make it worth his while.

You’ll lay it down for him. You’ll give away every last detail of the American routine in exchange for his services. You know you’ve got the spirit to be an amazing skater, you just need a clean slate and a mind that doesn’t surge to panic whenever your body approaches ice.

He’ll be intrigued and take you up on your offer. As a result the American team will have to rely on what makes our country great (flags, teamwork, immigrants, and fear of immigrants) to win the competition despite your efforts at sabotage. The Finns will be disappointed and decapitate you with piano wire in lieu of paying you, despite your remaining faithful to the deal.

The moral of the story here? Don’t trust anyone from Finland.

Congratulations Benedict Fucking Arnold!

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Congratulations Spaceship Joe!

You are Joe Garrett, a shiftless thirty-five year old man currently employed in the import-export industry, but come next week famed video game developer and generally bat-shit crazy individual Richard Garriot will mistake you for a member of his extended family. His grasp on reality is tenuous at best, and he isn’t a great listener. Hasn’t really been for a while now.

Since his communications skills are, to put it delicately, dicey, he’ll have you ambushed outside of your apartment by burly men and stuffed into a black van in lieu of contacting you via telephone. Since you used to do some mule work for the Russian mob this really isn’t that out of the ordinary for you.

The surprise will come when you are removed from the van, un-hooded and find yourself standing not in a warehouse surrounded by men with knives but in front of a massive, anachronistic castle in the middle of Texas.

A handsome man with a wide smile and an impressive beard will be standing nearby. His eyes will have a wild energy to them, his motions a barely controlled power. The burly men will hold themselves with deference to him.

You’ll think that maybe this isn’t so bad until the two burly men kneel at his feet and tilt their heads, calling him “My Liege.”

He’ll place his hand on each of them as he says “Rise” in a voice fit for a king. At this point you’ll realize something is very, very wrong. You’ll be frozen in place wishing you could run away, but those big dudes will be super scary.

For what will seem like an eternity you’ll stand there in paralyzed silence as Richard Garriot eyes you, rubbing his beard thoughtfully. Then he’ll surge forward and take you into his arms, whispering into your ear.

“I’m so glad I found you, son.”

“Huh?” you’ll reply, shocked. Your father is Thomas Garrett, after all, a professional thief and con artist currently imprisoned in San Quentin.

But Garriot won’t hear you. He’ll be too busy clutching you to his breast and cooing at you softly. “Don’t worry, son,” he’ll say, stroking your hair and kissing your head gently. “You’re safe now.”

“I don’t think I am,” you’ll say, sweating profusely by this point.

Garriot will, again, not hear a god damn word you’ve said. Instead he’ll launch into a diatribe about how dark forces tied to the earth are seeking out his blood. These forces are both physically and supernaturally powerful. He’ll refer to them repeatedly as the hands of Mondain. He’ll say that while he has been struggling against them with some success, of late they have been gaining ground and he can’t be sure that you’ll be protected for much longer.

It would all sound very familiar if you’d played any of his video games, but since you spend most of your time hustling and trying to survive you’ll just see him as a crazy person. Crazy people rarely have money and even more rarely listen, so your muscles will now tense with instinct, screaming at you to run and find a kindly elderly woman who could buy you a bus ticket home. But those men will be there, blocking your escape, so you’ll have to stand and listen.

He’ll outline his plan in rough detail. Since no where on earth can really be considered safe from Mondain’s dark sorcery the only option to ensure your safety is to put you where Mondain cannot find you: the cold embrace of space.

In minutes you’ll be stripped naked and stuffed into a space suit. Then Garriot, with tears in his eyes, will wave goodbye to you as the burly men force you into a space craft. One of them will stay there with you, sitting behind the controls, while the other steps outside to salute as the booster ignites and you’re hurled into the sky.

You’ll arrive at the space station within a few hours, where the burly man will deposit you, then leave promptly. The inhabitants will laugh when you tell them your story, but it turns out they’re all really cool dudes. You’ll also recognize Yuri Lonchakov from your time with the Russian mob, so that’s cool.

Since everyone on the space station has to have a nickname, and all the good ones are already taken, the Russians will start to call you Spaceship Joe. It’s not a great nickname, and you’re not in a great situation, but hey. You’ve had a pretty cool experience overall.

So congratulations Spaceship Joe! We hope that one day you can translate these experience to a positive career, perhaps as a memoirist. You’ve lead a pretty neat life so far, after all. Also, try using your history with Yuri to get off the station. After all, he owes you for Kabul.

Monday, June 8, 2009

Congratulations on Your New Friend!

Ever since you moved to New York you’ve been having trouble meeting people. Not encountering them, mind you. You ride the subway and walk everywhere, just like every other clueless hipster twenty-something. Occasionally you’re jumped or sidelined by a con artist or the con artist’s more legitimate cousin, the canvasser.

The point is that your life is lousy with people. Work and your commute, your bi-weekly Thai food runs, all of these introduce interesting characters into your life, some you want, some you don’t want. But they don’t make you feel any less alone.

You, like most young professionals who do little aside from drink, fuck and run, have a lot of trouble making long lasting personal connections. We don’t just mean relationships. Those are bad enough. But you can’t even sustain a friendship. The closest thing you have to a friend right now is a barista who spits in your coffee every day.

His name is Saul, by the way. You’ve never taken the time to ask.

But don’t despair. Change is just around the bend, just as the fortune cookie you had last night from that pretentious ass Chinese place in the Upper East Side said.

Tomorrow evening you’ll drinking at some expensive ass bar filled with absolute douche bags when an amazing young woman will walk up to you. Her name will be Sarah, and she’ll be one of the most incredible people you’ve ever met.

She’ll listen to all of your lengthy stories with great interest, recalling details from the more boring parts throughout the night. She’ll be able to match your wit barb for barb and, even though you can tell she’d be able to easily outstrip you in any kind of verbal duel, she’ll never make you feel dull or slow.

Eventually, after hours of the most genuine and interesting conversation you’ve had in years, you’ll ask her if she’d like to come back to your place and she’ll acquiesce, happily.

In case you haven’t gathered, she’s a prostitute. When she gets to your house she’ll start talking prices with you, and you’ll be taken aback by it. She’ll start laughing at your genuine interest and you, not wanting to be left out, will laugh too.

Then she’ll withdraw a folding razor from her purse and hold it against your testicles until you tell her which pocket your wallet is in. Then she’ll leave her calling card on your coffee table and tell you to look her up once you get a real job.

So how does this translate into you getting a new friend? Simple. She goes that bar a lot. You two will run into each other quite a bit, and you’ll form an awkward friendship that will one day blossom into you paying her for unsatisfactory sex. So congratulations on your new friend. If you didn’t live in New York there would not be a single interesting thing about you.

Sunday, June 7, 2009

Super Nerd Sundays Presents: The Path is a Poem.

That title isn’t entirely accurate. The path isn’t a poem. It’s a series of poems. It’s like a poetry collection. Whereas Flower is something more like Elliot’s The Wasteland, an involved, elaborate poem with clear authorial intent, the Path is closer to the work of say, Charles Simic. It’s disjointed, oddly humorous and touching. It has some disturbing portrayals of humanity in it and its meaning is largely imparted by the reader.

Let’s take a step back from these declarations, though. Games still aren’t widely perceived as art. Part of that has to do with the discussion surrounding them: reviewers are, for the most part, interested in writing about the merits of games as entertainment products, as “value per dollar” investments which players can make. And there’s nothing wrong with these conversations. After all, games are expensive and people do purchase them for their entertainment value.

What’s harmful is when this same critical mechanism actively ignores the questions critics of other mediums find themselves asking: “Does this advance the medium? Does this show us something new? Does it comment, through iteration, on previous themes? Does it respond to other games? What does it say?”

It’s not absurd to hold games to this standard, though context is still required to make the discussion useful. We can’t expect games to generate a Ulysses or a Spring and All. To be honest, we can’t even expect games to generate a Farewell My Lovely or Neuromancer, although games have generated their very own House of Leaves in the form of Assault on Dark Athena (oh, obtuse burn on you and your masturbatory slog, Mark Danielwinski!) But consider present day respectable literature during its nascent period.

The poems and, later on, novels being created weren’t really great reads for almost a century. A lot of the material was puerile and childish, the jokes frequent and lowbrow. Some of the books were little better than incredibly well written and well characterized pornography. I mean Gulliver’s Travels opens with a masturbation joke. Pamela is a few steps up from a dime store romance novel and, despite its popularity, was widely criticized for its lewdness. A slough of other works from this time, ranging from the Rape of the Lock to The Rover, all showcase this childish brilliance, this wonderful intellect mixed with entertaining sleaze.

You might’ve noticed that all of these examples are literary and, if you’re especially perceptive, that they emerged during the seventeenth and eighteenth century. That’s because this was the period which saw the birth and rise to prominence of the novel. It’s hard to believe that the golden standard of contemporary literature is the youngest member of the family, bar arguably the graphic novel, but it's true. The advantage of studying this period, aside from reading some pretty interesting stuff, is that it allows us to look at early novels and hold them up against early efforts in other mediums to keep the way these mediums are telling stories and developing as a whole in context.

But I’ve selected literary analogies for another reason. Most of the time when critics are discussing games and their narrative potential they relate them to film. It’s clear why. Both mediums are strongly visual and aural. Sometimes there’s reading involved, which scares off some of the slower enthusiasts for each medium, but for the most part they’re all talkies.

It happens on both sides. Critics who want to excoriate a movie for using a lot of action sequences and telling a story poorly call it out as being “little better than a video game.” And people who want to animate just how great a game looks or feels will discuss its cinematic beauty. Resident Evil 5, for example, was called a summer blockbuster I don’t know how many god damn times by Geoff Keighly and a bevy of other games critics on Bonus Round. And I’d like to stand up and say that this sort of discussion really isn’t helping us. Games and movies don’t have as much in common as we’d like to think.

Movies aren’t interactive experiences. They’re as far from it as you can get. You sit down and watch a movie. You might pause it, get up and pee or make some nachos or popcorn or get a beer, but for the most part you’re sitting there watching a movie. You’re engaging the story using the information the filmmakers have given you, but most of this information is readily accessible. Sometimes films will have a lot of subtext or be purposefully obtuse and they’ll require some extrapolation on the part of the viewer, but for the most part films are experiences ranging in length from an hour and a half to two and a half hours which demand the viewer’s attention and work best watched in one sitting. You can go back and watch particular scenes, and they might be enjoyable, but they won’t really work without the context of the film surrounding them.

Games aren’t really like that at all. Games are long, wandering experiences, ranging in time from two hours to one hundred. The generally accepted amount of time for a game to not be a “deal breaker” at $60 is 12-20 hours, with 40 hours composing a sort of golden standard. Games are meant to be picked up and put down a lot, sometimes in chunks as small as 20 minutes. Games are also, when done best, flooded with subtext imparted through art, language, character design and movement and overall level design. They’ve got that fancy pants dialogue and exposition going for them too but anyone who’s listened to a Valve commentary can tell you that subtext is what really makes a game. It's what immerses gamers in a different world and helps to tell the game’s story. Without subtext games can’t really function. Even Asteroids relies on subtext.

This is very similar to the way literature operates. Books rely on the nuances of language and voice to establish so much of their stories. The way people, places and things are described is as important as the description itself. The way chapters are put together, the way paragraphs flow, the way words are selected and used; all of these things combine to make a book work. At the core there is a story, but only so much of the story is in the set pieces. So much more of it is in the telling: the way you engage each page, the way you interpret the characters you’re given, the way you fill in the blanks with your mind. You can do these things with movies, its true, but there are generally fewer ways to interpret filmic characters. Compare John McLane in Die Hard to Phillip Marlowe in The Big Sleep. Both men are hardened crime fighters operating outside of the regular bounds of the law, but one of those characters is a lot more interesting to think about and the other is a lot more interesting to watch.

And this is the way that games, really good games, work as well. They’re less about the experience you’re presented with and more about the way that this experience impacts you. Portal, oh darling Portal, is a great example of this. We’re presented with the standard trappings of video games and the puzzles they force us through and then we’re told that we need to rebel against these concepts and these puzzles and make this experience our own. We’re taught how to do this by our adversary and before the game’s end we wonder: just how bad was GlaDOS? Sure, she tried to murder us, but she did offer us cake.

As such, when trying to consider or discuss games as art I find that I have an easier time working from parallels in novels. Bioshock had this in spades, where your interaction with each segment of the game was what was really important. Bioshock also allowed the player a great deal of interpretive space within the game. Many experiences were optional and even the necessary experiences needed to be processed. It’s quite easy to miss out on just who your mother is on the first playthrough, to lose track of any number of other smaller details or skip far too many of the delightful little experiences we're presented with.

And that’s fine. You can easily miss details in the story of a book and still get a lot of enjoyment out of it. And what’s more, you can come back to the same book and read it multiple times and get something interesting out of it with each attempt. Games are the same way. The Half-Life games are especially perfect for this type of iterative replaying. The texture of the world is so rich, so many of the side areas cannily hidden and completely optional, that it almost demands to be played through again and again.

My point is that most games involve moving through a relatively linear story, or a collection of linear story segments, to a conclusion established by the author, and so most games can readily be compared to novels or short stories. Novels and short stories of greatly varying quality, of course, but still, novels and short stories in the way they tell their tales and expect “readers” to interact with them. But what about the new slough of experiential indie games? Games like Flower? Games like The Path?

I believe that these games are representative of a type of “poetry” in gaming. Think of it this way. Poems are dense, image laden experiences. In most cases a poem demands a lot from the reader and doesn’t necessarily offer a clear message of just what has transpired within. Instead it asks you to interpret an author’s language using your own experiences and thoughts. It asks you to impart meaning on to their words. That’s what makes poetry cool: not its flowery language or wandering thought process. Its ability to be a completely interactive static medium.

The Path does just this. It doesn’t give players enough information to make a complete story. There are bits and pieces there, hidden throughout the woods, but even once you have all of them the game won’t sit down and let you know what it all means. Instead it gives you snippits of a reality. It tells you things about each of the characters involved and then it sits back and lets you deal with these things. Ruby’s leg brace, Robin’s disheveled cloak, Ginger’s boy shorts. These all speak volumes about their owners without ever saying anything explicitly.

There aren’t many games like this yet, games which demand that players engage subtext in order to find any meaning at all, and its understandable. They’re not going to sell very well. People who buy Madden aren’t interested in games like The Path, almost as a rule, and games like Madden sell millions of copies, despite being little more than annual re-releases. But the very existence of these games gives me hope, because it shows developers taking an increasingly artistic approach to how they develop games. And that’s what we need more of: more digital poetry to help us assess the medium for the way it communicates, as well as the ideas it offers.

Because if masturbation jokes can form the foundation of classics like Swift's imagine what they’ll write about Duke Nukem 3D in two hundred years. Imagine what they’ll write about Bioshock and Half-Life and all the runty children of the 640x480 graphics era. Just imagine what we can do if we all start looking a little closer at the games we play and picking out the art in them. Because it’s there to find, and as long as people like Tale of Tales are making games there’ll be plenty more to come.