For those who don’t know (though if you are reading this I give 4 to 1 odds you do) Ludonarrative Dissonance was a term coined by CLINT HOCKING, here, in reference to Bioshock and was later applied by others to Gears of War, Uncharted and others. It is where the game elements conflict the thematic elements the narrative tries to convey. It’s why the normally happy-go-lucky “normal” guy of Nathan Drake becomes a disturbing sociopath in the gameplay. It’s why the “rah-rah kill them” mentality of the Cogs is somewhat undermined by the fact they cower behind chest high walls at every opportunity despite wearing refrigerators. Not included are getting stuck on the world geometry or running in place against an invisible wall.

First I want to address the common criticism that the word is pretentious. In most cases people don’t know what the word pretentious means. A word can neither be pretentious or not by itself. Not just words, but anything. It is the intent behind something’s use that makes that something pretentious or not. And in most cases the word only comes off being pretentious because people undermine their use of the term by making it seem forced or unnecessary. They prefix it with self deprecating crap like “excuse me for using the term, but…” or “no other way to say it than…” or “pardon me for being pretentious, but…” That crap undermines not only the term but also your argument. People prefix it so that they don’t alienate their so-called “cool” audience. Hint: They’re not reading this.

In a recent Experience Points podcast, Jorge Albor and Scott Juster just tossed the term into the discussion like it were any other word, made their point and moved on. I got what they were saying and everything kept moving. If you feel there is a stigma with such a term, it’s because you have placed the stigma there. It is a useful term. Really it’s because to most people it sounds so outrageous that they can’t help but feel that is shouldn’t belong. That feeling is the feeling that games are some lower form of creative work, because something highbrow sounding doesn’t belong; the feeling they aren’t worthy of in depth discussion. Because that is what Ludonarrative Dissonance is, a term for the facilitating of in depth discussion of games.

Of course there is the fear that this is a slippery slope towards not being understood in trying to broaden critical ideas to an expanded audience. Fair enough, but that comes down to writing. Contrary to what I normally argue, people are smarter than you think. If you present a word or term and they don’t understand they can figure it out. Especially if you are making an argument where you have to explain the Ludonarrative Dissonance. Give your explanation of how the game is guilty of it, a person can figure out the terms meaning. Not to mention that the definition is in the word itself. The ludo- prefix may stump some people, but every English speaking person knows what narrative is. They can figure out the rest from the explanation. It really is not as exclusionary as people make it out to be.

Now to the more relevant point Corvus Elrod brought up in his post that it is a pointless term, using the example of how we criticize movies or TV.

“So we have a situation where the fight choreography does not uphold the fiction behind the show.
But we don’t refer to this as choreonarrative dissonance. Nor, for that matter, do we refer to the poorly written and delivered dialog as dialonarrative dissonance. Or the lackluster camera work as cinemanarrative dissonance.”

No, no we don’t. Why? Because we say all of that in other ways. Yes we call it bad film making, but at the same time that isn’t good enough. If I asked you about a movie and you said it was bad and I asked why, would I really accept bad film making as the reason? No, because that tells me just as much as saying it was bad. Of course it was bad film making if it was a bad movie. Pointless choreography, bad writing, awful delivery, shoddy cinematography. These are reasons that can be presented, argued, and defended. I cannot argue something is bad film making, because I have no idea what you are talking about. You have to go further and explain what specifically and then why. The same is true for games. An example back and forth:

“This is a bad game.”
“Okay then what was bad?”
“It has bad game design.”
“Okay then what was bad?”

See my problem. You have told me nothing and I end up repeating the question. Tell me something. Ludonarrative dissonance is a something. It is a conflict in the elements of the game. It has a definition that is at least a sentence long so it becomes short hand for a concept that frankly is quite common in games today. It is a perfectly valid term for telling what specifically is wrong with a game. Yes you will have to back up and defend your claim, but that is fundamental to every argument.

The only people who have a legitimate gripe about the term are the Classicists who can’t stand seeing Greek and Latin in the same word. But it’s a bit late for that; it has taken root in the critical lexicon. (Edit: This assertion was based on an argument I had with kateri_t on twitter, I apparently misremembered the issue of that argument.)

Anyway that means I’m getting back to reading my backlog, playing my backlog and back to writing. If I have my way I’ll be start posting again next week.

Side note: if anyone has any PAX prime three day passes they aren’t going to be using, please get in contact. I’ll be interested.

You can read it here.

While I wading through the mass of writing and trying to figure out what was worth spreading around I noticed thematic trends floating around this week’s work. That and I while reading one post I began applying the thoughts of other posts to it, even if they weren’t on the same thing. The most pronounced of these were the posts examining Inception and the connection they seemed to have with examination of the self that many writers were doing via examining RPGs. So instead of simply grouping all of the related material together and calling it a day, I tried to do something new. I tried to connect them thematically int he post the same way they were connecting thematically in my own mind.

It was an experiment and so far I’ve gotten really positive feedback.  I would still like to hear how well the connection style worked, was it sloppy, did I not do enough, did I do too much. Like all writers I’m insecure about my own work and my ego has to be stroked/validated or crushed/criticized. Doesn’t matter which, wither will do as long as I know why.

I finished Tom Bissell’s Extra Lives over a week ago, before E3 started. I wanted to finish those posts on inFamous before I got around to writing on the book. Now having settled down and let the pages stew in my mind for a time, I find there is not much to say.

The book is very well written. I finished it in two days and didn’t take any self-discipline on my part to get through it, which is saying something. In this tech saturated, attention deficit age, actually sitting down and doing one thing is both a miracle and reprieve. Bissell’s words flow like nectar down one’s throat, unsweetened and unpreserved. They are the raw and natural words of a man speaking from his, if not heart, than his truth, his center, his being. Extra Lives is a deeply personal book and as much about Tom Bissell as it is about video games. But then if you are going to explain why they matter, why they culturally matter, then you can’t stick to billion dollar figures and hundred million player headcounts forever. Those numbers get people’s attention and nothing else.

I’ve read quite a bit of the material previously. The first half of the Resident Evil chapter appeared in the inaugural edition of Kill Screen. Most of the GTA4 chapter had made the rounds around the internet a few months back. But I didn’t skip any parts of the book. It was a pleasure to read again and actually much easier. One thing I notice in the transition of his words from screen to page is the ease to read them. On my laptop I found the GTA4 story intolerable and I couldn’t get through it. In the book I devoured every word.

He goes through a number of contemporary games and explains their personal significance as well as gamer cultural significance. To someone as initiated as myself the explanations of the games were a little extraneous, but they were short and I realize their necessity. Actually, while reading them I was surprised how succinctly and eloquently Bissell was able to explain Gears of War as something more than the completely horrible and void of worth violence porn as it would seem to any outsider. He is able, in the same breath, to explain Resident Evil’s horridly painful camp and distressingly evocative horror. But probably his best assertion in the whole book is found in the author’s note at the beginning. “In this book I risk…to explain why I believe video game matter – and why they do not matter more.” He can’t get away with not addressing it, no one would believe him, and he navigates head on through the swamp. (“You were almost a Jill sandwich” anyone?)

What is especially wonderful is that the book constructs a compelling argument that video games are art (Ebert is wrong etc. etc.) without ever dealing with that particular question head one, like so many of us had. He circumvents the question entirely and starts his book from a position that they are and anyone reading it is on board with it, whether or not they actually are. From this position he is able to explain and discuss games with their creators, other critics and the reader the ideas, themes and emotions behind these games. He headed the argument off at the pass, as it were.

“It seems to me that anyone passionate about video games has better things to do than walk chin-first into a sucker-punch argument about whether they qualify as art. Those who do not believe video games are not or ever will be art deserve nothing more goading or indulgent than a smile. (p.34)”

I had meant to get down my own words on paper with no influence from any other sources, to see what my thoughts were as pure as they could be with only the book in my head. They were too jumbled, so I dumped the plan and listened to his interview on the Brainy Gamer podcast. (One of the best episodes yet.) Afterwords a question loomed out of my head: Who was this book for?

While reading it I was struck with the notion that while it was superbly written and was mind opening to the idea of video game criticism and of it being an artistic medium. At the same time he wasn’t going far enough for me. I’ve read most of his assertions and revelations on Fallout 3, Gears of War and Grand Theft Auto IV elsewhere and they were more extensively than what Tom did in his book. As much as I enjoyed it, I was not the target audience. It was a rehash of the 101 for me.

Then I saw him explaining the individual games calmly, detailed and concisely before moving on to the deeper explanations. But as quick and well done these descriptions were, I cannot see them a grand enough argument to convince or even hold the attention of anyone not already game literate. He seemed to deliver more on the why not than the why in the middle if you were coming into this tabula rasa. While reading it I realized I could not hand this book to either of my parents and expect them to get what I get or see what I see. He also diverges this audience away from him further when he recalls as his fondest memories of Grand Theft Auto IV to be I “sniped the pilot of a zooming-by news chopper while standing on the GetaLife (read: MetLife) building and watched it whirlingly plunge down into the street and explode. (p.179)” Who not inundated with at least an ounce of the “hardcore” culture is going to read that and not have the argument undermined for them? Hell even I cringed at the implications of these moments. They weren’t and cannot be explained in any decent manner to anyone who doesn’t already get that the chaos has no meaning beyond the visceral thrill of it, even within the game’s universe.

The only answer I can reach is that the book is for the game literate, but not the critical literate. There is not enough here for the “hardcore” critics and/or thinkers of video games and at the same time there may be too sparse on too many subjects to hold the minds of the uninitiated. The book focuses, and rightly so, on the middle ground. The gaming literate that might not have realized there was a critical community-like Tom didn’t realize a few years ago-and have an internal inkling or desire to go beyond enjoying the spectacle and the “just a game” aphorism. Those with the curious, however brief, question mark appearing over their heads.

If I had to call Bissell’s book anything, it would be a well polished stepping stone for the community as a whole. If nothing else he got it published and that is enough to keep hope alive for a brighter future for the gaming community and superb games on the horizon.

Going into E3 I wanted to see only a few things: Beyond Good and Evil 2, The Last Guardian, Dragon Age 2, Mirror’s Edge 2 and anything that hadn’t already been announced. That last one is a little innocuous, because with the exception of The Last Guardian, none of the others on my list have been announced. Well I was heavily disappointed. (You have till TGS to make it up to me.)

Other than great unity that I felt with the twitterverse during the Press Conferences I got two things. One was the announcement of the next project from the studio ThatGameCompany. Journey is visually minimalistic like their other games and because of that strikes my imagination. WE don’t know what it’s about or have even seen any video of it being played. And yet I’m more excited about it than any of the over a dozen shooters put on display.

The other thing this E3 did for me was convince me it might be time to get a Wii in the near future. The number of games I actually want to play on it has reached my threshold to make it worth it. It helps that it can play Gamecube games like Wind Waker and Eternal Darkness. With Epic Mickey, Donkey Kong Country, Goldeneye 007 remake on the horizon and games (now much cheaper) like No More Heroes, Lost Winds, Zach and Wiki, Lost Winds, and Little King’s Story. I think I may have reached critical mass of quality games I want to play on the system. Good thing I waited until a time when the Wii now does what it was always supposed to.

I think a major blocking point of the system is how much it relies on nostalgia to market their games or at least get gamers to care about them. I have never played a Zelda, Metroid, Kirby, or really a Mario game for any decent length of time. So I have never cared about these franchises based on their name value and that is the only way they have ever been sold to me. I recognize them as great, but I can’t get excited about them. In fact I’ve had to wait for there to be enough non Nintendo franchise games on the system for me to start caring.

Actually going back to the Nintendo Conference nearly all their announced games relied on nostalgia to sell them to us. Plenty of people got excited about them, amazing so. I couldn’t understand it, until they revealed Goldeneye; I was tearing up. That’s great for those have been on the bandwagon the whole time, but what about us that might be interested, but have been with the non-Nintendo systems through their lives.

I didn’t mean to go on. So that’s it. E3, the biggest week in gaming, gave me Journey, a downloadable title for 2011 and seriously considering getting a Wii buying most of the games used.

Note: I am not excited about inFamous 2, more curious and not because of E3, but because of my posts.

The gets the major criticisms of the system (and really all major morality systems in games these days) so now we can move on to what this particular system represents. Joe Tortuga has said that inFamous equates good with altruism and evil selfishness. This is a great starting point, but I think there is a little more to it than that. Cole has the same material motivation regardless of what he does, to get him and his friends out of the city. The moral choice system is all about how you go about it and why you do it. It’s a game looking to the morality of methods rather than what you are doing. Or it is during the story moments at least. The ludic system outside of mission rewards conflicts with this assessment, because once you’ve chosen a path you have to stick with it if you are going to get all the upgrades and you’re going to need them for the later enemies.

If I can be so bold as to asses the philosophical implications of what you are doing in this super powered conflict, the choices and role you set for yourself is one between Heinleinian co-operation and protection versus Randian domination and selfishness. The good morality is where Cole seeks a path of noble co-existence and in the face of a threat protection of the weaker race. The evil spectrum, however, seeks a path of conflict and eventual subjugation by purporting your genetic superiority over the heads of the masses. Does Cole choose to follow an ideal of co-operation to foster better results through more difficult and trying means or follow the greater good through methods of conflict believing he knows best because he is superior? Or to put it in terms more of my intended audience can understand; it is the Professor Xavier school of thought verses the Magneto one.

Or at least that is the conflict as the designers try to portray. Like I said in my previous posts, the earlier sections of the game are clearer and follow a vision while the later ones tend to get muddled and loose sight of the implied objective to the mechanic. The first two choices are prime examples of this. Do you choose share the food equally to those that need it or do you keep it for yourself because you can? Do you fight the riot cops mano-a-mano because you have the strength to do so or do you sick them on the crowd and make the fight much easier and bloodier? There is no one to force you one-way or the other. To quote Ayn Rand, “The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me” seems very apt to the evil half of this dichotomy. Had they stuck to Heinlein/Rand conflict the morality meter might have made sense; it would have given us concrete attributes that we can map the morality meter to. This is a well-worn conflict, (X-Men, Harry Potter, Dragon Ball Z, Marvel’s Civil War, He-man and the Masters of the Universe) though this is the first time I’ve seen it represented within an individual instead of two opposing individuals/groups.

As it stands in the later sections of the game a host of issues come up where the morality meter loses focus of what it was representing. Why would the police help you in terms of the prison riot, after you’ve taken missions to fight and kill them? Why would people call to you for help with their surveillance problem if you’ve been indiscriminately murdering people left and right? Why would a photography student want to take pictures of you doing stunts knowing you could electrocute him just as easily? Why would you capture Alden and not kill him and remove the threat period? Why would you blow up a gas tank to weaken an enemy and harm civilians when you have already fought and beaten several of this type already? And why in the hell would people attack you, ineffectively I might add, when you could zap them into nothing?

These problems can be solved had Sucker Punch really worked out what they wanted from the morality system. At times it’s about a conflict of how you do things and at others a straight up good/evil morality play, ignoring the relativism of such a comparison. Such a good and evil dichotomy has to recognize they are two sides of the same coin differing only by margins. The margin they chose in this case is method. But they ignore that and in same cases offer two completely unrelated options. The only way for the story to reach its conclusion as scripted would be to focus on method, which is a far more interesting concept than what we ended up with. In that case when people talk to you while you are choosing the infamous path, they would focus on ends, knowing appealing to your means would be pointless. It would also bring the title into alignment with the meaning. Famous vs. infamous isn’t a question of what you do, but how people perceive you. It’s one of the reasons I find the choice about the poster to be actually be meaningful rather than extraneous. Either way you are technically famous in that a lot of people know who you are. For example you can be famous for your card playing, meaning you’re really skilled, or you could be infamous for your card playing, meaning you are a known or suspected cheater. The end result is the same; it is the method and meaning of what you do that matter.

This conflict is especially interesting in light of the game’s ultimate mission. It was to make Cole capable of making the difficult choices; able to do what is needed to be done. Exploring the morality of how he does it is made even more important, because Kessler doesn’t care how you do it, just that you do. This is fine and makes him a better than average villain (for a video game). While the game’s entire premise is worked up on how you do it rather than what you end up doing. It gives you no options in that regard and recognizes the limitations of the medium, but instead of embracing that and working with it to proved an interesting how assessment, it uses it as a crutch for some subpar morality meandering.

While the story of inFamous is told through the standard methods of cutscenes, found messages and calls from allies and mission handlers, it adds aftermath commentary. In the form of propaganda the game provides story related and world building feedback on your actions. The messages only relate to the main story missions so the words don’t change, but the effect they have on you as the player as you relate to your in game character is different.

The first of the two main propaganda machines are the USTV acting as the government mouthpiece with its all too peppy and creepy anchorwoman assuring the public that everything is all right. It’s an obvious fact that we as a city are not the intended audience for these news reports, because anyone with working eyes can see they are lies. They display everything as sunny and keep to the script. All the credit of any good Cole has managed to accomplish is given to military efforts. The picture of the city is painted rosy, saying that things have almost returned to normal within the quarantine. It subtly leads the player to realize that no one will ever leave Empire City to make no one can contradict the government. It is truth control.

The other voice is the Voice of Survival, who starts as a teacher and motivator on how the people can survive their new circumstances and in some cases acting as a public service announcement as in the case of the children needing coats and blankets. He later turns into a propaganda machine himself, creating panic and subverting any good being done in the city by deliberately misappropriating credit and painting Cole out as the enemy regardless of Karma level. The turning point begins when Cole gets out of bed and steps into the public, right after the food drop. Through most of the game we think of him as popularity hog, noting that fear and panic causes more people to listen to him. But he is not a propaganda machine for himself, but was working for the First Sons the whole time. Here good intentions gone awry.

The dichotomy between them is not really right wing vs. left wing that so much of our modern news networks have become about. Truth control and keeping to the message is not unique to the right as American political news channels would have you believe; it has been used extensively by the left in communist dictatorships. Nor is the anti-government, rabble rousing anarchy movement so entrenched in the left as European history would have you believe; if Texan governor calling for succession and the many militia cells around the country are any indication. Instead the dichotomy on display is one of power. USTV instills power into the hands of the establishment as a faceless entity (again not a construct of communism and the left). The Voice of Survival instills the power into total opposition of the others’ messages regardless of idealistic consistency. (I know I’m going to get flack for this) Think of it is as Lawful Evil vs. Chaotic Evil. The dichotomy is not in purpose or method, but in who benefits.

USTV is far more obvious in both its purpose and backer (I wonder if it is because of their more structured nature and obvious lies to anyone in the quarantine). The Voice of Survival not so much. Only at the end when we see him as a pawn in the hands of Kessler and the First Sons does his motives make any sense. He isn’t anything, but anti-Cole and anti-government. Grievances and ideals do not matter so much as personal motives for the propaganda. His lies are not as obvious, because anything happening on one island has no way of informing others on the other island or even other parts of the same island. The Voice of Survival props himself up as the news hound of Empire City against the obvious lies of USTV. He becomes more credible regardless of his lawlessness.

Of course that is not to say Cole does not participate in his own version of propaganda. He has no TV stations or broadcast equipment (although I don’t know why not with what else his electricity powers can do). He has the advantage of being on the ground. His actions speak far louder than either of the propaganda machines. If you stop out of your way to save a fallen person by electro-shocking them back to life, you have changed that person’s mind about you. If you suck out their life force, then those around will you for what you are. The selfish and violent verses the altruistic and precise and which one you let the citizens of the city see. Additionally, one of the side missions is for you to choose which poster a design student will plaster all over the city. Neither has a message in anything but what the art conveys. ‘Do you want to be seen as a savior or as a dominator? the game asks? These posters will be with you until the end of the game and will subtly alter the perception of you. They are your propaganda as you try and disprove the TV talking heads or confirming what they’re saying.

Like the milieu of inFamous, propaganda is something else that gets shuffled to the sidelines. In the opening chapters it is a constant thorn in your side and a major plot point. It is what starts the riots. Later It becomes nothing but an in game commentary of how different parts of the world take the unfolding events, omitting your actions in them, so Sucker Punch didn’t have to record two different videos, but it has none of the impact or worthiness it did in the beginning. Once my posters were plastered on every wall of the warrens I never felt threatened or othered by the city regardless of what these two sides said about me. Again a great chance for commentary or uniqueness lost on the developers.

Also one last note to developers: If you have audio tracks that are unrepeatable and interesting, DON’T PLAY TWO OF THEM AT THE SAME GODDAMN TIME.

Then the next cinematic paints a picture of a pure John Locke style society arising from the isolation and the destructive factions making a grab for power. Life becomes cheep, brutish and short. The first two missions further emphasize this by placing you in a context where you are fighting for survival. Both the mad dash to the food drop and then the desperate attempt to escape the island show the effects the breakdown of society have had. These two missions give the impression of desperation and need. It was these moments that sucked me into the world of inFamous. I could put aside the floaty controls and the imprecise fighting mechanics. Despite what happens after those two missions in regards to milieu I still felt a connection to whatever dim representation of the setting remained. The game from the end of the second mission onward does all it can to undermine its own setting.

There are too many structural inconsistencies that I constantly see. Only when enemies show up and start shooting does panic break out. There isn’t even a subdued panic from people of having their world turned upside down. The citizens are not used to this world, why would they act calm and collected in the face of starvation, plague and death. They wander about blissfully down the sidewalk as if nothing is wrong and their tax returns are already in the mail. Even when enemies do show up the citizens don’t always behave accordingly. They will run in a panic to get away, towards the firing gangs. They will antagonize them by throwing rocks at the machine gun and shotgun toting bad guys. I was promised a closed off, fish out of water refugee like city and I get a New York surrogate with a convenient reason I can take the Holland Tunnel out of there.

The impression I was given was that we were in a metropolis turned third world outpost due to the tragedy and blockade. Apart from citizen stupidity let me list a few things that do not ring true with the milieu established. Off the top of my head:

-cars are still running with plenty of gas and people with a desire or apparent need to use them
-generators can restart themselves and are out in the open instead of heavily defended and concealed
-police being any force of law and order rather than another faction vying for control or else not having broken down completely without any governmental support
-the trains being of any use or people having anywhere to go using them (the mission where they are used as a prison for hostages actually makes sense)
-being able to restart an entire city’s power regardless of what Cole is capable of, because there is no such thing as a self-sustaining generator
-not speaking about AI specifically, but where are people out on the streets at all if there are roving gangs of death squads about

Given the intro, none of these make any sense. Cole outright told us all law and order was shot, gangs had risen up and installed anarchy. People were being killed and raped left and right. No one was allowed in or out of the city, enforced by a military blockade. Why aren’t the police effectively another gang, but instead going about business as usually? Where is all the gasoline coming from, because it doesn’t seem to have run out after two weeks? This is for both the cars and portable generators. Plus who would waste it on a car in the first place? Speaking of which, where was the city’s power grid getting its fuel. If there is so much crime, killings, rapes and perpetual darkness, then why are people out and about? Shouldn’t they be holed up in their houses most of the time? Why are people excited about the trains running when they can’t go anywhere?

I can excuse the generators since their ludic and narrative purposes are too intrinsic, but at least give us perpetual rolling blackouts. I felt unease and minor terror when I wandered into areas where they didn’t have electricity yet, because it was dangerous for Cole. Once the power was up and running there was no threat anymore to the avatar or to any of the story elements. You can only feel society’s fear and unease if at points you feel it yourself because of how it affects your avatar in the game world. As long as there was a light switch around, I never felt threatened. The few moments where the game seems to know what it should be doing with its milieu are undoubtedly the best of the game. As I said before the opening is pitch perfect, additionally the introduction of each new island presents a sense of terror of the unknown and of unrelenting chaos. When you stepped out of the tunnel or made it over the bridge you get that sense of dread. The lights you worked so hard to restore are gone; you are at ground level and are being shot at before you can even get your bearings. For a fleeting instant you ask yourself, what have these people been going through while I was fixing the other island? A third point was a mission where you protect the engineers who are fixing the bridge between the first and second island. You actually feel like you are making a difference and getting things back to normal. Everything else seems superficial compared to this mission because squads of the Reapers and Dustmen trying to stop you for it would affect their territorial control. Finally the side mission called Gang War simply for unleashing a level of chaos on the screen that you don’t see anywhere else in the game. It was so volatile I could not see what I was shooting and may have only done half the work as the two gangs proceeded to kill each other. These instances reinforced the degradation of society promised by the game.

Empire city is presented as such an important place and in the need of a superhero. The city was hurting and it was up to us to try and put it right. That was the most interesting part of the game: the restoration of society from chaos. The story, villains, and conspiracy were passable, being primed from a comic book aesthetic. I have no problem with the comic book aesthetic, but the intrinsic promise- the set of rules the beginning of a creative work puts down that are the core of the experience that creative work intends to deliver- is betrayed and not lived up to by taking it’s cue from the wrong comic book. It tries to copy the structure of Spiderman when it should have looked to the world building of Brain Wood’s DMZ.

At the time I was playing infamous I was coincidentally reading Brain Wood’s DMZ, the comic series where new American civil war has turned Manhattan into a DMZ (Demilitarized Zone). No one is allowed out and only specific people let in, like the main character Matty Roth as an embedded journalist. Gangs have carved out territory for themselves, these new nations measured in blocks. Electricity is only accessible for an hour a day and only from certain buildings. The island is stratified with no one daring to go past   st street. The two setups are too similar for no one to have not noticed. It wouldn’t have been hard to slightly adjust certain things for the presence of super humans. In fact doing so merely exacerbates the conflict already there. It becomes a test of wills only with the strength to back it up contained not within numbers, but individuals.

The similarities continue into the details. The two news organizations in DMZ and inFamous are practically identical, both have become docile mouthpieces of the government and not based off of stupidity and laziness like in real life, but stooges that understand where the power is. Then there is the opposing mouthpiece that pretty much exists to counter the “legitimate” news program. Both Matty’s girlfriend from DMZ and Cole’s from inFamous are medical professionals in training. In DMZ this is used to give Matty and the reader a glimpse into the unsanitary conditions and hardships of the people. InFamous uses it to suggest and imply why DMZ shows and represents. Power struggles are a common theme of the two works, both on the inside and influences from the outside. Rooftop living arrangements become necessary, because street level is no longer safe. Though the rooftops aren’t used as much by inFamous’ citizens. But then I’ve already told you they have as much survival instinct as a suicidal tightrope walker.

I am not saying inFamous should have been DMZ. That is stepping beyond my realm as a critic, but I am going to point out the faults of one work, especially in light of someone else doing it better in another. It’s even more a missed opportunity since inFamous apes the comic book aesthetic and DMZ is, wow, a comic book. InFamous takes too many of its conventions from the wrong sources. It sets up the bad guys and the controllers of chaos and anything bad can be traced to them. Everyone else is a non-entity with no sense of survival instinct or power. Somehow there are no “little” bad guys trying to scrape their tiny slice of the pie when the main psychic villains fall.

InFamous sees itself as a superhero story in a metropolis turned Wild West town, sort of. When really it’s a story of a DMZ (both comic and real world) setting where super powered humans have arisen. They looked to Spiderman, X-Men and the rest of Marvel’s cannon when they should have looked to Brain Wood’s work, Escape from New York and hell the real-life New York blackout of ‘77.

The game was a missed opportunity and given the game’s ending I get the feeling the sequel will have a different milieu, even if it takes place in Empire City. It seems like the designers didn’t quite get what made me want to keep playing the game. It wasn’t the side missions, or the characters, good lord no. It was the city itself and the what-if the game presented about society, which doesn’t seem too much like a what-if anymore.

The ludodechadron and those who bother to read the writings of that large and expansive circle all understand and accept that games are art and have moved on to exploring what that means or now that they are, how to convey specific meaning through them. But every once in a while we have to take a break and revisit the 101 for the benefit of educating, not our detractors, but those who might listen to them without another voice.

Ben Abraham called me out on it on twitter and said that it is a waste of time and that people are smarter than that. I would love to believe him, but people keep proving that notion wrong. See truthers, birthers, and tea partiers for more recent examples. When a wrong and malicious idea gains momentum it stops being an idea and becomes a belief. It’s nearly impossible to undo beliefs and all we can hope to do is mitigate the spreading of such incorrect notions that games are not art.

Commenting on the blog post in question is a pointless endeavor as it has reached 3305 comments at the time of writing. I gave up at around 30 of these essay length responses. I can’t imagine he’s reading them anymore; he is just amazed at the response by this point as he posts on twitter. He has become a troll. He posts things on twitter I can only hope they are there to gain a response, because I can’t believe such an intelligent man would really stoop below his ability. The highlights include, rhetorically asking if there is a classics professor anywhere who would say games are on the level of Homer. Yes and I shook hands with him. Another was asking if there was an art historian anywhere who would support games. There was an entire conference devoted to it.

10 years ago you would have still been wrong, but you might have made a case. Now every argument you can think of already has evidence to the contrary. You ask, “Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art?” My question to you is: why are you so intensely concerned that games shouldn’t be defined as art?

I don’t have really anything to say, because others have said pretty much everything I have to say. Some are closer to my position than others, but all the responses have the following in common: Roger Ebert is wrong. I waited the whole week to get everything in. After this week the discussion should end, because he said his piece and we said ours, you can’t ask for any more than that.

Incidentally I didn’t bother sending any to TWIVGB, because there were too many and Ben has said to the effect we should just ignore him. If he likes he can just link this instead. (Though I waited way too long to post this.)

Ebert’s post sprang up as a response to a talk by Kelle Santiago, so it seems right that we start off with her response to him.

Brain Ashcraft at Kotaku writes an open letter to Ebert.

Daniel Bullard-Bates at Press Pause to Reflect says it right in the title: Why Roger Ebert is Wrong About Video Games.

Fraser Allison of RedKingDreams thanks Ebert for opening the door to so many people about the ideas of games and art and hope they believe him to be wrong.

Mike Schiller at Unlimited Lives decides to go the opposite route by exploring what Ebert got right.

A. Serwer at The American Prospect responds with this short little piece.

Navi Fairy at GayGamer writes he finally understand Ebert. I’m glad someone does.

Ferguson at Interactive Illuminatus calls the idea Games can’t be art a case of mistaken identity.

Scott McCloud of Understanding Comics fame weighs in.

Both Gabe and Tych write their thoughts on it. As well as a comic about it.

Only the first third of this post by Steve Gaynor at the Fullbirght blog is about Ebert, but it pretty much sums up everyone’s exhaustion with the issue.

Even Mike Thomson from IGN has a well thought out, well written piece on the issue, closely mirroring my own opinion.

A little more irreverent on the issue is SnakeLinkSonic at Misanthropic Gamer.

And finally two more visual arguments on the matter. At Game Couch it is a matter of three lighthouses. While Kirk Hamilton creates a flowchart at Gamer Melodico.

[Additional] And now for the folks who I either missed or didn’t get the memo.

Gus Mastrapa at Joystick Division declares the whole argument Pretension +1.

Ben “Yahtzee” Chroshaw turns his attention in his weekly written column towards the issue.

Daniel Golding gets published at ABC Australia saying: Are video games art? It’s hardly worth debating.

At the Italian game blog Ars Ludica, Simone Tagliaferri writes this response.

Sean Sands over at Gamers with Jobs abdicates the entire discussion call any response to the ‘are games art’ discussion pointless and instead asks not for the Citizen Kane of video games, but the Chess of video games.

The crew at GameCritics.com spend the first 15-20 minutes of their latest podcast giving their opinions on the subject.

[Additional +2] Two weeks out and they’re still coming.

Moviebob, aka The GameOverthinker, brings his latest episode to bear on the subject. I was with him until around the 17 minute mark, but it was a minor disagreement. That was also a warning that it is long.

[Additional +3] More stuff that came out and stuff I just got around to reading.

This is the longest one yet people. Tim, love him or hate him I’m not going to judge, Rogers talks about the subject in his latest column entitled ‘I <3 Stupid Games.’ Or at least I think he does. Warning: it may take you 10 – 20 minutes to get through.

LittleBoBeep ignores Ebert in his thoughtful dissertation and just gets down to the issue at hand. But with the Kelle Santiago reference it’s easy to see what inspired the post series. Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.

[Additional +4] GOOD. FREAKING. LORD. Thanks to the trackback below I have just found a link network to a whole batch of new posts. Some are from April. No one said the internet was small. On the plus side I have a bunch of new blogs to follow.

From the site that trackbacked my post I found Jason O. of ButtonMashing to be one of those apathetic to the argument, because it wont matter in 10 years.

Nick Sutter, formerly of EGM/1-up post this response the day after Ebert’s post.

Scott Dixon of GameJudgement mainly tries to do a basic link post of responses with Ebert quotes taking the top half, but he voices his opinion, of the you’re missing the point of the medium variety, so I add it in with the others. ( Note: all of his links are somewhere above save the Destructoid one, because it was more about Heavy Rain than anything Ebert had to say.)

It was a pleasure to read Josh’s post at Cathode Tan, because it took a different approach. It gave a evolutionary history of where modern video game came from. And then proceeded to show that yes games are already in museums, so there goes that straw man bullet point.

In an interview with Charge Shot, Jason Rohrer weighs in on the games as art debate and agrees with Ebert on several points. Saying we’re not quite there yet.

Another oldie I missed the first three times around is by Sinnan Kubba writing for Games Abyss who is a little more…blatant than many of the other responders.

[Additional +5] I’m not even reading these anymore before I post them. Screw it I have better things to do.

Post #1 Ben sent me.

Post #2 Ben sent me.

[Additional +6] I’m just lucky 4th edition DnD introduces the +6 to weapons or this wouldn’t make sense at all.

Random comic with Ebert and art mentioned from the Escapist.

Kevin Ohannessian asked a bunch of industry people at E3 about Ebert and what game they would suggest he play.

[Additional Final] As of 2:08 PM of July 1st in the year of our lord Two Thousand and Ten victory was declared across the interweb and I can finally not give a shit about updating this post anymore.

Famed critic Roger Ebert has written a post about how Ebert was wrong.

[Additional: I'm proven to be a liar] This will be updated as need be, no further additionals, just this one. Furthermore, should Ebert or anyone else take up the similar flag against video games as art, they will not be added. This is only for the Ebert post noted above.

Brian Rubinow parodies the original Ebert argument post, quite eloquently, though I wish it was much more timely.

Ashelia over at Hellmode finally writes her piece on Ebert and his so called apology and the apologies in the gaming community.

My last post was really only the first half of a longer first draft I wrote on paper. When transcribing it I realized it started to meander and connect too many points, so I cut it down and resettled everything else into another post where it would hopefully make more sense.

I wrote about how my exposure to Dungeons and Dragons 4th edition at PAX East sparked that tabletop creative part of me and I started a new campaign. Well here is where I bring that journey full circle back to PAX. While there I got into a discussion with Matthew Gallant and Alex Horn where we got to talking about structure in video games, namely Far Cry 2.

I was told the story of how, apparently, the other writers of the game wanted to give the player the option at the very beginning of the game to shoot the Jackal while lying in bed in a malaria stupor. CLINT HOCKING shot this idea down, though he had to fight to get rid of it. It may make a nice bullet point on the back of the box, but if the Jackal is dead, why would you play the rest of the game. Your ultimate overarching objective had been removed. Even as the game is some people feel that the final objective’s presences isn’t felt enough to make it noticeable and via consequence the game is missing direction. It’s one reason I respect CLINK HOCKING, despite hating the first title he worked on, he understands structure. When I heard the story it took me less than a second to realize there was a problem and identify it.

Please correct me if I’m wrong about the story, but from the sounds of it, the other writers didn’t see a sliver of a problem and thought it was a good idea. So many others, like them don’t get it and throw a lot of cool things into a pile in an attempt to racket up the tension higher and higher.

I can’t just be imagining it. It’s lack of structure that had most of us scratching our heads about No Russian’s point in Modern Warfare 2 or the numerous plot holes riddled throughout Heavy Rain. It’s lack of structure that has me rolling my eyes every time some on brings up Prince of Persia (2008)or force catatonic boredom during grind sessions in JRPGs. It’s why Brutal Legend stops so short it gave me whiplash. It’s where the cries of outrage came from the retconning of Fallout 3’s ending. It’s why people call Bioshock’s last third a padding waste of time. And it’s because of structure that Portal is hailed as one of the greatest video games ever made.

It is a complaint that comes up again and again even if it’s not expressly what people are saying. Sometimes they don’t understand why something is bad and they latch on to the most obvious, a shoddy sequence that tries to make plywood take the place of hardwood dining room floors, when really it could be that the termite riddled supports can’t sustain the oak.

Since games are incorporating story more and more into games, then they have to follow a basic structure. It wouldn’t interfere with gameplay or difficulty. Instead a grasp and implementation of structure would compliment and better the product overall. It would allow for clear and reasoned direction so we wont end up with dead points, ludic gates, anti-pacing amping up of action or failure to end a game properly. (Or begin one for that matter.)

I think some of it comes from most of us having grown up in the 8-bit and 16-bit gaming era where the whole game was set as an extended third act and the backstory relegated to optional material. Now we are setting ourselves up to experience the whole story, with developer only having the skills from an earlier age.

Now this isn’t true for everyone. Bioware knows structure, almost fanatically so. Valve understands pacing like its nobodies business. Bungie doesn’t care for an overall product so much as the next 5 minutes flow and it works. But structure doesn’t just mean pacing it also means setting.

We already know what video games are better at than any other medium. Games are better at setting a world up for players to experience. Fallout 3 put you in the wasteland. The Silent Hill games are terrifying, because the town in a place that becomes real. Rapture was as much a character in Bioshock as Andrew Ryan was. Even Left4Dead story works in its minimalism. The best stories from these worlds were the found stories. Clues and hints in a world that suggested a story outside itself.

Spider: The Secret of Bryce Manor has a story so divorced from its gameplay, I marvel at who thought to put them together. The game is all about feeding your spider and making his way through the mansion. The story is about a love triangle and family betrayal all told through found objects that make up the world. It’s a perfect case study of what games do best.

Uncharted 2, by contrast, gave us such an authored narrative, with linear active story engagement up the ass, but what it had better than every other game was a detailed understanding of plot pacing. Amy Hennig knew that a story arc doesn’t go up and up until the climax; it sweeps up generally with pits and lulls all along the way. Uncharted 2 does this artful precision, even if the story itself is a bit trite.

The Metal Gear Solid series, for all their over verboseness, have marvelous structure when it comes to pacing out the action. (Maybe not so much MGS4.) There aren’t really lulls, but a constant state of tension thrown into sharp relief by the high action sequences. When you are not in alert phase the game is very quite and toned down, with the ever-present threat of being caught around every corner. It allows the world to keep tension there, but it is such a gradual climb, that it could be said that it was level, until you are spotted and have to run for it.

Tension, action and compelling are not synonyms. I have yawned at over extended action sequences, because I frankly didn’t care. When a system built to pull you into a world is only interesting because the player is metagaming it, you have a problem. When external incentives like achievements and trophies are why you keep playing or why you are expected to keep playing, it’s a problem. If your game is designed to draw the players in on merits of ouroboros like activity, see Farmville, it’s a problem. A game that cannot stand on it’s own merits has a problem. (Another rant for another time.)

Structure, however a designer employs it are the bread and butter of the medium. At its most basic, structure is the rules set that governs its magic circle. At its most expansive it is how all information is delineated from the system to the player and back again.

To paraphrase last weeks post, cause it is such a good line: the designer creates the story, but the player creates the plot. Just make sure you know which part you’re dabbling in. CLINT HOCKING did.