Some Thoughts on the Final

I feel I should make some comments regarding the final project for videogame class, the text of which can be found here: http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWgWwM-Bh7toZHd6aGd0c18zNWZiOXIyOGhr&hl=en

I'm not sure whether or not I consider this project a success or a failure. In some ways, I think it won out admirably; it's more or less historically accurate, as Denmark was once the leading Viking group in Scandinavia, and was the primary colonizer of Western Europe in the Viking Age (approx. 793-1100). The Danish founded the city of Dublin and the Kingdom of York, as well as controlling huge swaths of territory in northern France and, at one time, much of England itself (although Norway controlled a great deal of England, too). Given this historical backdrop, and the legacy of warrior-culture, trade, and technological advancement, I think the piece was fairly effective. In retrospect, I should have spent more time examining the Danish motives for conquest; trade and land expansion, as opposed to colonization in the post-Enlightenment sense.

In terms of the fiction established, I am not so sure. Fiction, even when the actions that occur are rooted in the progression of a game (http://docs.google.com/Doc?docid=0AWgWwM-Bh7toZHd6aGd0c18zM2dqbmZ3OGRu&hl=en), proved to be somewhat difficult, and I was forced to invention (at least of motive but not action) in a few instances. As I am not an experienced fiction writer, it was an interesting struggle for me to come up with a myriad of events and purposes behind them. It also takes a lot longer to write in this fashion than I'd anticipated. Further, I am not at all content with the closing, and I plan to heavily revise this piece for publication on my main 40oz website later.

In terms of marrying fiction to the gameworld, with a historical backdrop, I think the piece was more successful. More than anything I wrote this semester, this piece was entirely experimental and was something I've never done before - and I fear this comes out in the piece, particularly in the abrupt transitions into dialog from exposition. I originally intended to combine the prose with images of both battle and map, and to draw up battle plans for major encounters, which I found I was unable, due to time constraints, to accomplish in time to turn the piece in. I plan to add these in for the final piece on 40oz.

My main concern is that not everything ties together, and I'm not entirely sure how to do so. Even still, it provided an interesting platform for me to experiment with; not quite fan fiction, not quite history, and not quite NGJ, it's something of an intermingling of the three - which is appropriate, considering the social and genetic legacy of intermingling of the Viking people as a whole.

IGS Proposal

My current plan is to develop a game based around signs. Signs and symbols dictate and heavily influence our lives, and I believe that they do the same in games - and I'm curious how players, often having little way in the realm of tangible fear for ignoring signs, react to them.

I plan to use the newly-made-free Unreal Development Kit to develop a small, lightweight game designed around player interaction with buttons and a small series of levels. The buttons will have instructions; press, do not press, although these will be written differently and there may be other options. The intent is to develop the game in such a fashion that allows me, the developer, to be able to see what choices were made by previous players - how many intentionally pressed "Do Not" buttons, etc. I am also curious what happens to players when systems established in the context of the game (ie, "Do Not Press" buttons suddenly becoming the right choice, and punishing the player with the wrong choice by forcing a restart) become changed and violated; will the continue to play, will they restart, will they quit in frustration?

A heavy aspect of this project will be the tracking of progress; from sketches to final product, I plan to document the process entirely and to make it available online. Part of my interest in this project is in the ease of access of doing so; recently, on RPS, some of the writers recently spoke of how this would revolutionize indie game development - and I want to see how this works, albeit on an anecdotal level.

I would also like to work, on a research-oriented level, on previous sign usage inside of video games. These can be audio as well as visual clues. With any luck, I would be able to actually speak with developers that placed these inside of their games, so that I could ask them how they felt they functioned. A recent, notable example of interesting sign usage is found in Borderlands; in many places, two paths diverge from one another. Rather than inserting directions for the player, often, "EITHER" and "OR" are the two choices, with the most specific being "TROUBLE." I have no idea if EITHER is something similar on each path, or something radically different.

Internet Asshole

Although I've read not only the nola.com article and a decent-sized portion of Myers' paper on the character and his interactions, I grow more surprised every time by, well, his reactions to, er, reactions to his character. Myers made it fairly clear that he understood the conventions of City of Heroes, specifically that of the PvP zone:

Eventually, according to the game's design, the players -- who can choose to play as either heroes or villains -- gain access into an area where they should battle each other. The battles are designed to distinguish the most skilled players.

follow by ..

Myers ... quickly learned that players ignored the area's stated purpose. Heroes chatted peacefully with villains in the combat zone. Instead of fighting each other, members of the two factions sparred with computer-controlled enemies..

And somehow - inexplicably, to my mind - Myers was surprised that in his research, which required him to grossly violate the social structures in place in City of Heroes, made him enemies. Alright, so that mischaracterizes his confusion;

Another player added, "I hope your mother gets cancer." Yet another wrote, "EVERYONE HATES YOU."

Myers was stunned by the reaction, since he obeyed the game's rules.

What's stunning to me is that Myers didn't understand the repercussions that his actions would have. By merely noticing that the lack of player versus player action in the player versus player area and realizing that it would make for a worthwhile research concept, he had to have been aware of the way that online games, particularly MMOs like City of Heroes, function. People that play by the rules are celebrated and permitted to hold status in the community, and those that do not are ostracized. This, really, is common in any MMO that I've ever played. While I realize that this is entirely anecdotal evidence, this behavior is mirrored in such a fashion from server to server and game to game that I am inclined to believe that it is simply the norm.

Another example of the sort of action that Myers was engaging in is affectionately known in many online games as "ninjaing," which is the name given when one player attempts to take items that he either did not earn or cannot use. In World of Warcraft, this occurs when a player presses the dice-shaped button after an item drop regardless of whether or not he can use it; in Everquest, this was the name given to groups of players that quickly swooped in and stole a monster kill without waiting in line - which may have been several hours long. Whether in WoW, EQ, or any other online game, ninjas, once publically known, are typically ejected from social situations and openly mocked in public areas.

While ninjas typically get the worst treatment, this sort of social device is used on pretty much anybody that violated the social codes of a given game; gold farmers, drama queens, assholes, and gankers like Twixt are often placed here. Given that Myers has been studying games for some time, and had presumably played other online games in the past, could it really have been that surprising to him to have his life threatened because he was ruining an aspect of the game for some people?

I don't think so - even I, who merely troll public channels and enjoy picking fights with random people and making my name notorious, have received multiple "death threats." That last phrase is in quotations for a reason; to my knowledge, nobody in America, or even the world, has actually been slain as a result of an MMO dispute. I believe nobody has been killed because, well, it's mostly people getting caught up in the heat of the moment and they don't generally have the capacity (or, really, the drive) to hunt someone down and kill them just for being an asshole on the Internet.

The Internet is filled with assholes. Believe me, I know - because I am one of them, particularly while playing games. To me, being an asshole on the Internet is just part of the game. In real life, I'm usually a pretty nice guy. I like to argue and disagree with people, but I'm generally rather civil and not terribly antagonistic about it. Being an asshole inside of games allows me to move through my day to day life without feeling the need to be an asshole there, too.

As an Internet asshole, I fully accept that I may become a social pariah, an outcast from the popular and the norm. I'm pretty okay with this. It strikes me that anybody that assumes any sort of mantle other than their own personality should be prepared for the consequences that such a mantle may bring - and being an Internet asshole, like myself and Twixt, means that you're going to piss people off.

And when you piss off the wrong person, you just might get a death threat.

It's sort of like getting onto the subway on a hot summer day in a busy car, squeezing in between people to get into a seat, and then defecating in your pants. I'm reasonably sure that this is legal, but I'm also reasonably sure that this will get you punched in the face - and at the very best, you'll be asked, likely with fists, to leave the train. I can't imagine anybody would be surprised by the reactions of the people on the subway, so why should anybody be surprised by reactions of people in online games?

They revolve around violence, even if it's cartoon violence. People lust after swords, scream for bloodshed, and spend their afternoons smashing villains with fists and sticks and eye-laser-beams. So, I ask again: is it any surprise that some people find an appropriate response to in-game provocation to be .. violence?

Considerably More Than 40oz With: Risen

As a general rule, I dislike boss battles. Mostly, I dislike them because they feel so disjointed from the rest of the game experience, and final, endgame-level encounters often seem to violate this more than standard bosses - especially if the game doesn’t have boss encounters in the traditional sense.

In some games, boss battles are great, and often serve as the pinnacle of the experience; what would the Megaman X and Zelda games be without boss battles? Arguably, the great joy of the games are in exploration and discovery, but in these cases, the boss at the end of a dungeon or level seems to provide a great capstone for the experience. I understand that some games, like Shadow of the Colossus, contain nothing but boss battles.

And then there are games like Risen, for whom boss encounters seem inevitable but somehow alien to the experience. Having just completed Risen, I found it to be one of the finer open-world RPG games I’ve played in awhile - and it was brutally difficult, often punishing a slight mistake with a player death. For me, that level of difficulty made the game engaging - for the majority of the game, I felt like I was the weakling shipwreck survivor that the plot told me I was. After tens of hours digging through ruins and working my way up the monster badass food chain, I eventually felt - both through getting damn good at sword play and attaining the sweet loot of the ancient world - that I could kill anything on the island.

It was at this final moment that the trouble with boss encounters began to plague Risen. The sweeping majority of the game is spent fighting beast-type monsters or humanoid-type monsters, with the latter carrying weapons and the former using tooth, claw, and brute force. Each of the variants demanded a different approach; wolves and stingrats require a shield to block, guys with swords quite effective parrying and lunging, and ashbeasts require well-timed dodging and precision strikes with large weapons, as shields are useless against them. For the most part, this system worked well - it required a flexibility on my behalf that wasn’t usually immediately obvious, and only trial and error could defeat various enemies.

Unfortunately, none of the lessons that I had learned as a castaway served as it became clear what was required to defeat the final encounter. It isn’t that the encounter was bad - I found it entertaining, if painfully easy and quick - so much as that it wasn’t like the rest of the game. As the thing did not lunge, I had no use for dodging. As the thing could not swing a weapon, I had no use for parrying. As the thing could not move, I had no use for the fancy footwork and swordplay I’d become so adept at. All that was required was holding up a shield and jumping over disappearing floor-bits, and striking the thing when I reflected his own fireball back at him. Once it became clear what was required to slay the thing, it was a simple matter of paying attention, and within moments, the encounter was over. Disappointing, disappointing.

It felt as though all of the work I’d put into the game was for naught, all of those deaths at the hands of giant sword-swingey types a pointless lesson. It strikes me that a final encounter really ought to be a culmination of every skill a player has acquired in the game, and in this, Risen is a miserable failure. Magic has no use, alchemy has no use, being clever and reading the opponent has no use. It’s a good thing that the rest of Risen was so damned good, as even though the final encounter was unrewarding, learning to effectively kill everything else was great fun.

Even the very first beast encountered - an evil, cruel-looking and overlarge sea-vulture - was initially challenging. Blind, over-aggressive swinging resulted in pecked-out eyes and blood on the sand. Wolves, when attempted without a shield, lead to being killed while trying desperately to parry. Hell, even gnomes - which look astonishingly creepy - were enormously difficult initially.

This difficulty level is only enhanced by the visuals and sound effects of the game; while neither are quite top-notch, they lend the game a grim and bleak atmosphere seldom done nearly so effectively as in Risen. Really, the entire experience of the game reminded me of the ruined and blasted feeling of being in Tristram in the first Diablo game. That somber, moody guitar-twanging is even present often in the music while exploring the island of Risen, and the generally-depressed and angry human citizens even further crystalize this feeling.

And they really are depressed and angry - the vast majority of interactable NPCs encountered are assholes, often cursing at you and occasionally picking fights with you. Their attitude never quite seems forced and never quite feels trite - often, it simply feels believable, which is quite a testament to the writers over at Piranha Bytes. Most people were believable with what seemed to be legitimate struggles. Surprisingly - mostly because it seems to happen so rarely - I never quite felt like somebody’s bitch when I was off running errands for them, and my taking up of their quests often seemed the best thing to do. Not just because of the potential for a reward, but rather because it sounded fun.

While there didn’t seem to be a great deal of optional, side-quest type stuff to Risen, the quests presented had just the right amount of variety, mood, and adventuring to keep me thoroughly engaged throughout. Often, I was more interested in questing for people more to see what they would do than how it would benefit me. Some were entirely social; solving a murder in the Volcano Monastery meant interrogating monks, digging up graveyards, and even becoming a drug dealer. One notably long quest required the befriending of a bar maid, an imprisoned lord, uncovering a smuggling operation and, finally, traipsing around the island with a treasure map, digging up the bodies of mutineers. Although these quests were ultimately of the “Go here, find item, bring it back” variety, my reasons for undergoing these quests were varied enough that it didn’t seem problematic or, more importantly, at all boring.

For all of the wonderment that Risen brings to bear on a narrative and thematic level, it only really falters from technical considerations; jumping is stuttery, movement is slow, and things often never quite seem to fit together correctly. Exploration - arguably the most important aspect of an open-world game like Risen - is hampered often. Risen also likes to force the player to endure unnecessarily long cut-scene type moments whenever a chest is opened or ore is mined. Fortunately, the actual combat mechanisms were great - sword and hammer-swinging felt real, with sequential swings flowing naturally from the first, and the weapons often struck each other realistically. That is, unless one tries to use magic spells in an encounter - attack spells are merely the shootey variety, and the delays encountered when readying one of these spells can often be fatal. Other spells - such as healing and levitation - are used by way of pre-made scrolls, which sometimes works well and sometimes does not.

There were also a few plot and item problems; I was never really at all clear on why the main plot device of the game - rising ruins - occured, nor why they were populated by the race of monsters that they were. Even the guy that proved to be the central player in the plot never made this clear when illuminating the other mysteries of the world. Although the player can mine, I never found much use for the raw quantity of ore acquired after making the initial items and jewelry; there weren’t many options at all. I also never figured out what in the world either the wisdom stat (which grew to ridiculous levels thanks to how it is raised) or the “Seal Magic” category on my character page was for; at the end of the game, it sat at a steady zero of four possible points. While Seal Magic clearly wasn’t necessary, it would have been nice to know what in the hell it was for. Maybe it’s time to load up an older save game.

Overall, Risen is a fine and glowing experience; short of a few problems, the game speaks volumes to what is still possible in the world of PC gaming. Not that Risen wouldn’t work just fine on a console - but rather, Risen is the traditional experience of the PC RPG, and it succeeds here on spades. Deep character interaction, compelling plot twists, and a fundamentally sound swordplay system that was fun to play make Risen exactly what the PC needed: a damn fine game.

Scoring:
Visual Representation: While not bleeding-edge by any means, Risen looks exactly as the them states it should: dark, moody, and morose during thunderstorms and evening hours, and bright, glowy, yet still desperate in sunlight hours, everything looks and feels just right. Monster design was some of the scariest and most intimidating I’ve seen in a game, and both the monsters and the weapons of humans delivered their attacks with a pleasantly convincing heftiness. Unfortunately, it was difficult to actually see the front of my character, and the armor I found myself wearing was as blocky as it was flowing. There was also very little variation in models once new ones were established; monsters weren’t recycled as much duplicated throughout, and I must have seen the same bearded man-face twenty times. Score: 1.7/2.0

Gameplay and Level of Immersion: Due to great music and dark visuals, Risen is a fundamentally immersive experience. That the player is weaker than almost everything around him at any given time furthers this. The in-combat gameplay, as mentioned, is mostly awesome when using a sword or other weapon, but falters when using magic or scrolls. Exploring was both a positive and a negative experience; getting killed easily by monsters forced me to come back later, but jumping around and finicky movement in general made me want to stand still more than move. Score: 1.7/2.0

Mechanics and Technical Considerations: The game only crashed twice in almost forty hours of play - a very high mark. FPS ran at consistently high-levels, even when many things were happening on-screen. Some tactics, such as the first charged swing when leveled sufficiently, guaranteed a damaging strike or an interrupt; unsure if this was intentional or accidental, but granting an unbeatable strategy made the game a bit easier than it should have been. The crystal magic system was unimaginative and ineffective in combat, and the scroll system, while forcing the player to plan ahead, was constricting; forcing me to dig through my bags mid-combat to cast a shield spell was an unnecessary pain. The inventory system was typically cluttered even though it sorted things by category. High marks, however, for forcing the player to learn the game on their own and not handing things to the player. Score: 1.5/2.0

Quality of Narrative: For most of Risen, the narrative is top-notch. Both by way of visual /audio cues, good voice acting, and a downright fantastically-written story and character dialogue trees, Risen aims to compel and it succeeds. Easily the best feature of the game - a high mark, considering that the player ends up more or less pigeonholed into a single path once initiated. That this path feels naturally the best choice grants Risen that much more believability. Unfortunately, confusing and unresolved plot elements towards the end of the game dissolve this, as does the ceasing of interaction with any given NPC once their only questline has been completed. Score: 1.9/2.

Connectivity: No multiplayer features, and the Risen official blog seems to contain no mention of upcoming downloadable content. Looking around the net digs up a few player-made mods in production, but it doesn’t look like anything is complete. As a result of this, I’m taking a pass on gauging Risen in the context of connectivity; I’ll amend this as I see what mods become available, and how flexible Risen is to being modded. I suspect that even a cursory attempt here on behalf of Piranha Bytes will push this to at least 1.0. Score: x/2.0

Note: Going to avoid factoring in Connectivity at all.

Final Score: 6.8/8.0
Final Score with Flex Points: 7.0/8.0
(Justification: Risen is one of those rare cases where the overall experience trumps the negatives of Mechanics and Technical Considerations, and deserves to be pushed up ever-so-slightly as a result.)


40oz with: FIFA 10

Sitting down to collect my thoughts on EA’s FIFA 10 on my couch with a 40 of Miller Lite at my side and my favorite Windir album on the stereo, I couldn’t help but think of how alien the situation sounded in the context of thinking about a predominantly European game/sport.

And then, immediately after, I realized that it wasn’t - at least, not in terms of what Arntor (that Windir album) does for the theme of the evening. Arntor is an album of dualities, and often ones of polar extremes. Among the most aggressive and screechy of [very] late-90’s black/folk metal, Arntor was nonetheless painted to a canvas of enormous complexity and artistry that can be as blunt as a sledgehammer and delicate as, well, the finesse with which my room mate can pull off a cross-pass scoring goal in FIFA 10. It is this artistry and finesse that I think unites the two and distinguishes it from more American music and past times, such as football and Slipknot.

(Okay, so Slipknot by no means defines any quality aspect of American metal, but it’s a fun gauntlet to throw.)

So: folk metal, 40oz, and FIFA 10 - they all go quite well together. Inseperably well together, as FIFA 10 is a game about isolated, beautiful moments of synchronization that are entirely amplified by the effects of the alcohol. The surprise interception followed by a fast-paced goal-scoring breakaway. The feeling of handling a complex passing situation flawlessly, and finding yourself balls-deep in the goal net with little opposition from the keeper. You know the sort of moments - those ones that memorialize the ridiculously awesome plays of a game’s history, the ones that every fan has seen in the form of some compilation or another. Generally, I am uninterested in these things, but somehow, inexplicably to me, FIFA 10 makes these moments shining and glorious for me. (Even though my room mate is almost always the one on the winning side of such encounters.)

A bit of disclosure, though: I’ve played FIFA 10 exclusively in LAN multiplayer mode with my room mate, so that will predictably color my thoughts on it. However, I’m a bit of the opinion that the function of any arena-based game like this - and any sports game is, by definition, an arena game when it migrates to vidscreen-and-controller status - is to facilitate competition between two (or more) human opponents. Sure, npc-type opponents can be present, but the focus ought always be on the humanoid. It is unlikely that this is an at all fair way to approach FIFA 10, however, as it was pretty clear to me that a fleshed-out LAN experience was not the intention of Electronic Arts. At least, I really hope it wasn’t.

For all of the successes of the actual gameplay of FIFA 10, such as seemingly faithful modeling the flow of a professional soccer game that my room mate is so fond of praising, essentially no framework exists in the LAN multiplayer that would make this experience a cohesive and fulfilling experience. While the single player game has options to create and edit plays, players, and teams as well as the actual behaviors of each of the these, the player in a LAN game is allowed to create a team and choose between home or away colors. Formations can’t even be changed in this mode; you’re permanently stuck with the formation that is defaulted to the team. Although I was not expecting stat-tracking for LAN games, it still would have been nice, although it does appear that these are collected when signed onto EA’s servers with the game.

It’s hard to tell why this happened; LAN functionality has never had the breadth that single-player and online experiences (in terms of stat-tracking, etc) have, and LAN is even being phased out in some contemporary games like Starcraft II. Clear evidence of FIFA 10 being a dirty bastard console port are found everywhere though, and even in LAN this is present - which is kind of funny to me because LAN has been the historical province of the PC. Mostly, this presence comes in the forms of controls; at certain points during game setup, mouse controls are disabled and keyboard inputs become the only method available. Confusing, confusing.

The controls of FIFA 10, at least with around 10 games played, remain confusing in and of themselves even - and perhaps most especially - during gameplay. Most of the jubilation of actually performing one of the miracle-type sort of plays is knowing that I somehow got the ball and the player to go exactly where I wanted them to, even though I’m never quite sure how I managed to. There are two bogeymen at fault here; the way the game determines the direction the ball will be kicked, and the way the game determines how hard you wanted to kick the ball.

Sometimes, and seemingly independent of the type of kick or pass you choose to execute, the ball will be sent squarely in the direction where the mouse cursor was pointed. Sometimes it simply would not, and would instead be kicked out of bounds or to the enemy. My room mate says that this is because the game is following a realistic model of where the controlled player could actually kick the ball. Although I’m inclined to agree with him on a theoretical basis, I’ve paid close attention to the body orientation of my players, and still cannot seem to find a consistent model to work from. Often, when I was passing upfield in the direction my player’s body was facing, it would send the ball to specifically the team mate I did not want the ball to go to, seemingly independent of which player was actually closer.

Determining shot strength is perhaps even more painfully delicate, and this mostly seems due to the fact that different measures are used for different sorts of kicks. For example, the level of force needed to execute an effective cross-pass is much higher than the level of force needed to shoot an effective shot on the goal from the same distance. Although this need for precision and multiple sets of power measures may suit some of the more hardcore fans out there, I found it an enormous turnoff.

These complaints aside - FIFA 10 is great fun, especially when played next to a friend and near a large bottle of beer. It’s quite easy to get caught up in the adrenaline-moments of the game and lose track of how loudly you shout when you finally pull off that elusive goal (sorry, Landlord Mary), as well as the intensity of your taunts to your room mate. A rather well-done instant replay features allows for the reliving of beautiful moments or vicious slide tackles, and provides a great capstone for an otherwise overly positive experience.

Scoring:
Visual Representation: FIFA 10 isn’t scoring any awards here; three or four different body sizes for players and about as many face/hairstyles across all of the teams drawn upon lackluster, although clear and crisp, graphics. The crowd looked to be made up of flat bitmaps, a small growth over the Playstation sports games I played in middle school. Even still, things come together nicely for instant replays, and really give the game a visceral edge. Score: 1.2/2.0

Gameplay and Level of Immersion: Again, the instant replay is the real winner here; it highlights great moments and makes the game come alive. The ebb and flow of the game mirror the real-life counterpart well, and the cheers of the crowds are convincing and encouraging as they change in pitch and fervor. Poorly implemented controls and a lack of any real level of pre-game strategizing hurt, though. Score: 1.8/2.0

Mechanics and Technical Considerations: As mentioned above, it’s often difficult to predict with any efficacy how effective the pass or shot one is about to undertake is going to be. The meter indicating the strength of shot is at the bottom of the screen and is small, forcing a diversion of the eyes from the action. When things work as you intend them to, FIFA 10 glows golden, and everything just works - but, again, it is difficult to initiate this due to unpredictability. Score: 1.1/2.0

Quality of Narrative: Lacking any system to establish consistency from LAN game to LAN game, FIFA 10 nonetheless provides ample rivalry opporunities; specific players, such as _________ on the German team _________, tend to get their names mentioned often - and thus become targets for retaliation. The instant replay feature really hammers home a great goal and makes the viciousness of a slide tackle from behind all the more brutal. Score: 1.6/2.0

Connectivity: The game rarely if ever stuttered, either in terms of FPS-lag or network latency. Connecting to actual games involved what felt to be an inordinately long pause before newly-hosted games could be seen by the joining player. Again, no real ability to plan any strategy, which seemed to be an exclusive negative to the LAN feature. Having played the game only via LAN, I’m not sure it would be fair to heavily dock the game here. Score: 1.5/2.0

Total: 1.2+1.8+1.1+1.6+1.5= 7.2/10

Sexual Acts, Sexual Objects

What I found most interesting - and perhaps most damning - about not only the articles and their breadth but the selection of the articles themselves - was the entire lack of commentary on sexism and the treatment of women in popular videogame culture. Almost suggesting that how videogames imagine women as a non-issue, their objectification was not only unexamined, but untouched upon.

I find this paricularly disturbing considering that the piece in What They Play addressed sex inside of videogame worlds and narratives, focusing directly on the act rather than the participants as if it were some sort of Roman arena game and the participants unworthy of notice by the spectators as being "people." Is the sexual act - both as an “unchanging” thing from game to game and the detail in which it is rendered - really the only thing worthy of exploration in a piece like this? I do not think so.

As I did not play Mass Effect long enough to develop a sexual relationship, and did not play the other games mentioned, I cannot comment on them directly - but I can comment on what I have experienced. To do this, I look to three games that have captured my attention in recent months, and the suggestions that they make about sexual relationships, those games being The Witcher, Risen, and Champions Online. (Note: Champions Online doesn’t seem to actually have sex acts inside of it, but I am interested in it as far as it portrays physical characteristics of women.)

To begin: The Witcher. A dark, brooding, and often difficult action-RPG game from the eastern side of Europe, The Witcher follows the path of Geralt, a monster hunter, in his quest to figure out what in the hell is going on with the world. While a rather great game on its own that I enjoyed immensely, its treatment of women as sexual objects is nothing less than childish. So childish, in fact, that when Geralt conquers a woman - often by way of showering her in gifts and complements without actually developing any sort of real relationship - a trading-card-style piece of artwork is shown of the woman in an often comprimising position. By comprimising, I mean draped in nothing but a sheet with a black cat centered directly over her crotch. By childish, well -

Although the actual sexual act is shown in blurry, hasty camera shots that reveal no actual details about the act, the process of getting to the act is perhaps more disturbing than anything the act itself could be. Encountering a woman in The Witcher is tantamount to initiating a mini-game; the first question tends to be, “Is she one of the NPC women that will fuck me?” followed by (assuming that the answer was ‘yes’), “How can I get her to fuck me?” The second question is relevant because each woman seemed to have a particular path that must be followed to convince them to engage in coitus; as mentioned above, some women seek gifts, like flowers or chocolate. Some require a topical, conversational relationship and can be rhetorically convinced to disrobe and engorge. Others require Geralt to undertake a quest of sorts, and reward him with fleshy trophies and a trading card.

My language concerning the first question asked when encountering a woman is important and intentional: “Is she one of the NPC women that will fuck me?” I feel the most crass language is necessary here, as the object here isn’t even getting to potentially see a naked lady: rather, it's a mission to collect a trophy. In a game genre dominated by item-collection, little more can be expected when the player is given a trading card for a sexual conquest.

In a similar vein as The Witcher, the recent Pirahna Bites’ game Risen treats women similarly, although doesn’t objectify them quite as literally. For example, as written about by Alec Meer on Rock, Paper, Shotgun (http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2009/10/07/the-risen-report-first-night/), the first woman - and the first NPC the player encounters - is dressed in a bikini top and a long skirt. To quote Meer, “At this earliest of stages, I don’t have the foggiest what the game’s general attitude to women is – but the first example Risen gives of it is not a positive one[,]” and I found that upon finding myself in this situation that I absolutely agreed.

Things don’t get much better from there, however - almost every woman that I have now encountered in the game has been dressed almost identically, with supermodel/pornstar-esque breast measurements, and an ability to dance like any top-class stripper on the seedier side of Flint. Incidentally, the majority of all of the women I’ve seen in Risen, after playing for about twelve hours, are actually prostitutes. While presumably unintentional, it’s still disturbing; I’ve now concluded the first chapter of the game, explored the three major centers of civilization (two of which lacked women altogether with one notable exception), and found that women exist in quantity only in the whorehouse. Whether it was out of curiosity or chauvenism, I solicitied one of the prostitutes, paying her owner fifty gold pieces. Almost thankfully, the game neglected to provide me with even a cutscene, instead blacking the screen out and having my character deliver stereotypical lines about how he had places to be. Incidentally, she said I was the best that she’d ever had, and gave me a magical scroll as thanks. At least she didn’t give me a trading card.

The Witcher and Risen, in addition to being similar thematically and in terms of genre, are also direct narratives from the game writers to the player. This sort of relationship forces a certain responsibility on behalf of the game-maker to understand the messages that they are sending: similar to a novelist and a film maker, the views of the artist are often expressed by their characters, whether consciously or not. It’s pretty easy to play through The Witcher and Risen and have eye-roll (or disgust) moments and move on, chalking it up to male chauvinism and sexism at the developer level. They’re both pretty clearly games targeted at 20-something men, and should probably be viewed as such.

However, some games - like Champions Online - are perhaps even more subversive in their views on women than even games like The Witcher and Risen. In Champions Online, as with many other online and role-playing games, the player is allowed to customize the physical appearance of their character. This allows for a veil to be placed in front of the eyes of the player, shielding them from what might be sexist ideas that the game-makers may have: surely, if the player can create their own character, then if it is a false, media-driven idealized image of a woman, then it is the fault of the player.

But what if the player cannot help but create this “idealized woman”? I should probably explain what I mean by “idealized”; the purpose of Champions Online is to create a superhero-type character that can aspire to physical and mental perfection, flawless in physique and in mind. Unfortunately, the “idealized” woman of Cryptic’s otherwise pretty-decent MMORPG happens to be the “idealized” woman of American media; tall, long-legged, large-breasted, seductively-hipped.

Alright, so this speaks to what Cryptic views as the “ideal" woman - but what does that have to do with an excellent and staggeringly-flexible character-creation tool? Problematically, for all of the options allowed in character creation, small, reasonable breasts are simply not an option. Literally, not an option - see the screenshots below. Damningly, when creating a new character and enterting the “Custom Body” menu, the “Breasts” slide bar begins fully maxed-out. Further, it appears to be difficult (if not impossible) to create a more masculine-looking woman. One of the variants allowed in character generation is the posturing of the character; average, heroic, huge and beast for the men, and average, heroic, vixen and beast for the women. My favorite posture for male characters it that of the beast; hunched over, ready to lunge, ready to kill - but the beast posture for women is rather a girl leaning forward on one leg, which looks nowhere near as badass or aggressive.

The other stances are also troublingly sexual; even average, which for the males means standing with both feet firmly planted and not favoring either side (you know, standing normally and at-ease) .. but for females means flaring the fingers ever-so-slightly and ever-so-coyly, with one leg bent forward at the knee. In terms of posturing, hip and breast size, it is impossible to create a non-over-sexualized female character.

In The Witcher and in Risen, the player could choose not to progress down avenues of fucking women NPCs, and is actually fully-capable of treating women with respect and dignity in the course of their adventures. However, in Champions Online, the player is explicitly barred from playing anything but a full-hipped, skinny-but-long-legged, fully-breasted woman that carries an appearance of lustful detachment.

Although the quests are generic and boring and lacking and character and, thus, tend to avoid putting women into any sort of constricting role in the confines of their narrative, the female figures of Champions Online have nevertheless managed to be more chauvenist and objectified than any of those found in The Witcher and Risen. Many, many more games provide examples similar to these three in the ways in which women are viewed as sexual objects first and characters second, but I think you’d be hard-pressed to find another that managed to do this with its character creation system alone.

NGJ: Red Hands for a Red Planet

Funny thing about the sun from Mars; it’s white. It looks white from Earth, sure - but there’s a yellow tinge to it if you look close, a certain golden aura that emanates through the atmosphere and onto the land below. Sam tells me that it’s white here due to certain elements present in the Martian atmosphere that I won’t try and name - science was never my strong suit, and once I realized that her explanation was veering, as always, to the scientific, I stopped paying attention. Mostly, the shift in coloration is just .. different. Landscapes and structures don’t look how they should look, how they would look back on home. It’s funny, the things you miss.

But today, I am thankful for a white Sol. The incandescent beams shine through red clouds and red dirt and red hills, lending a certain, perhaps appropriate, clinical air to the Eos Administrative Building. Nothing on earth could look so pristine, so clean, so sterile - not even the most heavily-scrubbed and brightly-lit operating rooms in the hospitals back home looked so clean as do the EDF buildings on Mars. Sam tells me that this, again, is due to specific elements found in the atmosphere - but I think it’s something more.

Only wanton greed and overpowering capitalism could permit such a colorless structure, only men - creatures, really - obsessed with objectivism could allow for such lifeless objects to decorate their world. Decorate? Pah. Their buildings scar these red hills, they dominate the landscape even sitting so far below the towering mountains that dwarf them. As much as I may have once found Mars to be alien, Mars finds their ivory presence to be far moreso - and far more unwelcome than ever was I to Mars.

The EDF architects’ rejection of life only makes my work easier, makes it easier to justify what I’ve set out to do. Makes it easier to look to their soldiers as drones, as the Martians call them, make it easier to exterminate them like a swarm of robotic ants. It makes it easier to ignore that, underneath all of that powered armor, that they’re human - that back on Earth, most of them have wives, maybe families of their own. But it doesn’t matter. Here, they are white, bright white, and Mother Mars does not permit such ivoried atrocities to consider themselves men like you and I.

Soon, very soon now, I will detonate the triggered explosives rigged to the foundation of the EDF Administration Building. Sam is sitting this one out and remains incommunicado - “The civilians,” she said, “you’ll kill them just the same - they’re innocent. They’re Martians!” She wanted no part in this. I don’t blame her. Sam’s no soldier. She’s no bleeding-heart, either, usually. I’ve no doubt she’s killed by way of collateral damage her share of civilians, and I told her as much. “It wasn’t like this,” she said, “those couldn’t be avoided. You don’t even need to destroy this building, and most certainly not during the day, not when the bureaucrats will be there.”

Sam, I think, lacks the real will to win this war.

Which I find funny, as it was her and the captain that co-opted me into this fight. I wanted nothing to do with it - I only wanted to mine with my brother. Put some money back, buy my way back home, start a family maybe. I’d thought about buying a bit of land from the Terran government, getting a small farm going, just enough for myself. Then the world could just leave me the hell alone. Things didn’t turn out that way, though.

I don’t know why they pushed me - conscripted me, really - into their fight. They didn’t know me. My brother, Daniel, now he - he I understood. He was always a firebrand, fighting for some cause or another, never able to keep his damn head down. And now he was dead for it. Daniel, like most of the Red Faction, are hot steel. They glow red and bright and true with the justice of whatever cause they rally behind, but they’re malleable, pliable. Their emotions govern them, enslave them. One moment, they’re tearing into an EDF-held village, shooting at seemingly random until the EDF have been purged. The next moment, they’re weeping over the spilt milk of civilian deaths, especially the ones they cause, berating each other for not being careful enough in their death-dealings.

Me, I’m cold steel. Watching Daniel get gunned down for what seemed a minor indiscretion barely registered, and civilian casualties never bother me. Not that I didn’t care about my brother - nothing could be further from the truth - but I assumed that he had it coming, assumed that because I was new to Mars that they’d leave me alone. But then, firebrands almost always have it coming. I fought the EDF initially only because it was a matter of survival; the Red Faction was firing from one side and the EDF the other, and I was forced to choose. Poor decision making process or not, nobody can say that I’m not loyal - to memory, at least. It’s funny though, the way I’ve become acclimated to the white sun, to the red hills and dirt. I’ve never felt a greater loyalty to anything in my life than I do to Mother Mars at this very moment, and - here’s the funny part - I have no idea why. I’d have fought against the EDF in my own way regardless, but this .. this fervent dedication, this loyalty, this .. zealotry, this I do not understand.

Off in the distant west, the loud crack of a sniper rifle rings out, heralding the first EDF sentry kill of the morning. There will surely be more in the hours to come, as offensives are planned for multiple districts across the EDF-held territory. Me though, I’m alone - I prefer it this way. Gives me time to think, analyze, understand - lets me move at my own pace, make sure things get done correctly. I might be going crazy, and what’s damning is that I know it, but I’ll be thrice-damned if I don’t slip down that spiral on my own terms. On terms of well-timed explosives, shining gold in the white morning light.

Sam doesn’t understand what it means to go to war. Sam doesn’t understand that it isn’t merely the Red Faction vs. the EDF, like it was some sort of video game or early 21st century war. Sam doesn’t understand that for Mother Mars to survive, to breathe, to live, then the EDF and their holdings must be purged from the planet. Sam doesn’t understand what it means to bring total war upon an enemy.

But that’s why they’ve kept me around, I think - let the offworlder get his hands covered in blood, let the outsider stain his soul with Martian blood. That’s fine with me. Mother Mars asks this of me, and because she has promised to be good to me, for Mother Mars will I do this, and I will cry no regrets nor speak of bitterness.

When the explosives tear through the building, the orange flames licking the orange sky, not everyone inside will die. They never do. Some get lucky, and by chance place between themselves concrete or steel barriers and the focal points of explosions. Some, inexplicably, will be thrown from the high-rise glass windows to the red earth below and, inexplicably, will survive the impact. Some, simply, will have chosen an opportune time to take a lunch break on the nearby boulevard. I’ve begun to consider them the least fortunate and that it would have been better for them to have died, instantly, in the initial explosion, as they are the ones that will be the first among the survivors to die. They will be terribly aware that a great catastrophe has occured, and fear will grip them - but only until the moment I close the distance between us, and then they will know nothing. What Sam doesn’t know - what I won’t tell her - is that when the red dust begins to settle, I will always be standing amongst the survivors, steel-plated sledgehammer in hand.

I do not relish in the killing. I do not enjoy planting round after round into the spinal column of fleeing survivors, whom run as though I were a great devil, their face a contorted and twisted portrait of abject terror. I do not enjoy knowing that all of this - the execution of the crippled living by way of hammer, the smashing of skulls and spines and hands and legs - is recorded by EDF cameras, beaming the grim footage back to EDF Central Command. I do not enjoy staining the sacred red earth of Mother Mars with the foul and stinking red blood of humans. I do not enjoy that my actions have made me a sociopath.

But what I am is a realist, a believer, a soldier; a mechanic will full knowledge of the tools and machinations of making total war upon an enemy. Fear .. fear is one of the greatest of these tools. It is this tool that softens the enemy, makes them terrified, makes them give ground when they see the grim silhouette of Alec Mason sprinting towards them, sledgehammer clenched-in-fist. It is through this tool that I, and I alone, will not merely drive the EDF from Mother Mars, but beat it into the ground, annihilate it until their biological elements have mixxed into the red dirt of Mars, until the stain of greed and capitalism has been wiped clean from this red planet.

But before all of this, one thing remains: a button must first be pressed.