Avataritis

Martyn Zachary 18 Comments

There’s a condition spreading rather like wildfire in the gaming medium – and no, it’s not a strain of the influenza. The latest game to fall prey to this affliction is Obsidian’s Alpha Protocol:

“Michael Thornton is you. He’s been specifically designed as a blank canvas; a host for your own personality and playing style.” 1)http://www.computerandvideogames.com/article.php?id=223828

The "Original"
The "Original"

This is avataritis, or, the video game industry’s highly emotional, pandemic response to finding the easiest, most efficient solution to the very unique dilemma presented by its ever-widening player base. Leigh Alexander framed the problem appropriately – though in relation to difficulty – a mere week ago at Gamasutra: “the concept of ‘everything for everyone’ won’t help.”

Now, to offend half the blogosphere offhand: For the purpose of this article, we will consider avatar customization a convenient narrative cop-out. We shall also assume that no mechanisms are in place stopping developers from writing and designing heterogeneous yet fully structured, narrative-based computer games with carefully constructed and immutable, unchangeable characters.

Therefore, the current rat race for the best, most customizable avatar shall thus be perceived an abhorrent one, damaging to the maturing and growth of the narratives in video games. (Obviously, there are occasions wherein the “tabula rasa” scenario is a fully motivated one, either by its ludic or narrative function, but assuming this to be a default state to be aspired to seems ultimately misguided beyond the MMO.)

The remaining half, then, shall also be offended as we sequence into a discussion of the representation of ethnic (and other) minorities. I’m not going to discuss these themes directly, instead drawing attention to how egalitarian, census-oriented game criticism and research sometimes intentionally avoids the more literary functions and realities of video gaming narratives.

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Lost in Trans-Civilization

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

Scivelation Logo

A few months back, we brandished our interest towards BWF Game’s little-known upcoming Source engine project, Salvation. Just goes to show how swift the turnover rate is in the gaming business these days: Over the course of mere months, the game has now been rebranded as Scivelation, and instead of the previously utilized Valve tools, is now built on Epic Games’ Unreal III Engine.

“Set in the distant future, Scivelation’s universe is a world born out of the ashes of conflict and misery. An oppressive global dictatorship, known as the Regime, has risen to power after the aftermath of the Apocalypse; aggressively seeking out and eliminating any opposition to their tyrannical government.” 1)http://ve3tro.com/6213/scivelation-announced/

Scivelation_01_wallpaperFor me, the rather obscure mash-up title – Griffin McElroy already lamented the lack of a proper pronunciation guide 2)http://www.joystiq.com/2009/10/11/scivelation-announced-but-poorly-pronounced/ – recalls the word skive (also rarely spelled as scive, according to the OED), which means “To evade a duty, to shirk; to avoid work by absenting oneself, to play truant.” Whether this is BWF Game’s intended meaning remains to be seen, of course, but with the player character taking “his or her place amongst the ranks of the resistance” 3)http://ve3tro.com/6213/scivelation-announced/ in the narrative, this interpretation of the title does not seem an immense stretch of imagination for me.

After the jump, I have set up a modest comparison of screenshots between the two versions (Source and Unreal), and some more analysis about the game.

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Cherry-Picking Easy Targets

Martyn Zachary 4 Comments

Dragon LollipopI have been, for some time now, ever-so-slightly weirded out by the overall response to recent trailers for both Dragon Age and Mass Effect II. I hope you guys aren’t getting all high-brow on me now, because with each release of a new trailer, a progressively growing influx of critics seems to creep out of the woodwork, fighting for a better seat in the great ivory tower of condescension.

Beyond the hyperventilative and the hyperbolical, I am nevertheless genuinely surprised at the magnitude of the negative reaction; Even several favourite blogs and bloggers of mine – that I thought were above and beyond this sort of moral mongering – have engaged in the beatdown. Obviously, I’d rather not single any particular example out (sorry Nabs!), but I do hope you’ve seen and read posts discussing the trailers so as not to think I’m stark raving mad!

Finally, because this post is essentially complaining about complaining – or torpedoing, as this activity is called – we’ve dedicated an all-new category, the Devil’s Advocate, to it. I do detest this type of thing out of principle, harping in on someone’s cause in an attempt to prevent any potential success in its very infancy. If you really are that worried about what BioWare or EA are doing, by all means, continue to try to get your voices heard.

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The Celeb Pong Trap

Martyn Zachary 2 Comments

pongThere’s a recurring pattern to interviews that never fails to amuse us me: Often, when musicians, actors, artists or other celebrities get polled for their favourite video games, there is a great, great tendency on the interviewers’ part to home in on their formative experiences.

“What was the first game you played?”, we often ask.

This is all fine and dandy – that is, up until someone falls prey to Pong. Don’t get me wrong; having to quickly bring up a childhood experience can be extremely difficult, especially so in the context of a fast-paced interview, and it’s only natural that these factors result in the interviewee resorting to examples that seem both fitting and illustrative. Only, due to the very relative age of the video game landscape, this effectively means games such as Pong, Space Invaders, Mario or Zelda, all suitably ubiquitous, canonized and readily accepted.

“…Pong. We were obsessed with it. That was it, man.” 1)http://www.rollingstone.com/rockdaily/index.php/2009/03/21/metallicas-james-hetfield-calls-guitar-hero-a-gateway-drug-inside-the-bands-new-game/ –James Hetfield

“Let’s go back to the beginning…Pong.” 2)http://videogames.yahoo.com/celebrity-byte/dwayne-the-rock-johnson/532302 “I looooove video games, absolutely. POOONG!” 3)http://multiplayerblog.mtv.com/2009/03/13/dwayne-the-rock-johnson-honestly-discusses-infamous-doom-movie/ –Dwayne Johnson

Part of the problem is the established practice of luring interviewees with leading questions. The other part, then, might have to do with the interviewee’s need to satiate the perceived target group of the interview. And heck, we gamers are notoriously hard to please!

“I’m still playing Pong.” 4)http://www.latinoreview.com/news/interview-michael-clarke-duncan-neal-mcdonough-and-taboo-on-street-fighter-the-legend-of-chun-li-6259 –Neal McDonough

“Frankly I would rather go fishing than play Pac-Man, or I’d rather go play golf with Alice Cooper than play Pac-Man. And I hate golf and everything to do with it. I hate golfers. [laughs] I’m just not a game kind of guy.” 5)http://www.rockband.com/zine/tull-interview-part-two –Ian Anderson

Surely, we still boot our NES from time, but whoever plays Pong these days? In this way, it’s ultimately our fault that our questions do not allow for more breathing space and room to our interviewees. Should we not allow our interviewees to cite games that we’ve never played ourselves, games that we have never even heard of? Games not called Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Halo or Grand Theft Auto? After all, there has to be someone out there to cite a Russian real-time strategy, or a German-only point and click.

“Galaga, Space Invaders, Pac-Man … I’m not much into games now” 6)http://videogames.yahoo.com/celebrity-byte/hugh-jackman/1308738 –Hugh Jackman

“I was a huge Defender, Galaxian and Space Invaders fan back in the day.” 7)http://videogames.yahoo.com/celebrity-byte/slash/1158324 –Slash

Next time you read or hear anybody cite a game in this manner, you’ll knowingly shake your head, smirk and think to yourself: It’s a trap – the celeb Pong trap!

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Dark Forces, Rogue Leaders and Goodwill

Martyn Zachary 1 Comment

LucasArts recently re-released their long-running, beloved Jedi Knight series digitally on Steam to a rather ecstatic response to boot; only, a major wrench got thrown in the gears when the parties responsible failed to appropriately revise the games for the most current generation of operating systems. As a result, the three earliest releases – Dark Forces, Jedi Knight and its expansion disc, Mysteries of the Sith – suffer from instability, incompatibility, crashes, bugs and other lesser issues.

Steam Ad for Jedi Knight Collection
Steam Ad for Jedi Knight Collection

This is a rather shocking turn of events after a wildly successful reintroduction of the classic LucasArts back catalogue to audiences old and new, and indeed strikingly qualitatively different from the previous batch of releases, especially so when taking into account that fixes to some of the aforementioned issues are in fact readily available! For instance, players who already own the games on CD can simply extract the original wave audio for their background music to work (thanks Richard!).

It is only natural, however, to find the company trying to think up ways to maintain the newfound revenue flow and subsequently benefit from the excitement caused by these re-releases. Therefore, it’s also all the more disappointing that oversights such as the aforementioned might considerably affect the public perception of the company’s current endeavours.

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