game over? (part one)

so, i'm just going to keep writing about video games, apparently, because that's all i think about anymore. and not even in a fun way, but in a pretentious, overly-analytical scholarly way. like, i can't even play vvvvvv anymore without thinking "why is the female stick figure pink and not some other, more gender-democratic color?" studying cultural and critical theory has already ruined books and films for me. if it ruins video games as well, i'm pretty sure that this world will quickly become one that i no longer want to live in.

but i digress (can one digress before actually stating their main point?).

today i want to talk about public alpha builds and how everyone and their dog is releasing unfinished games nowadays. hell, there are even alpha-themed indie bundles and people paying up to 2 million dollars for a game that hasn't even been made yet. generally, this is pretty awesome: it's another new way that the internet is allowing people to get money directly into the hands of their favorite indie developers and really democratize the game-making process. ideas that would traditionally have needed a publisher (and wouldn't have gotten one on account of being too interesting and weird) can now be designed using fans' money and then distributed for free to collect more fans' money, which goes into the creation of the next big indie thing. it's great.

brought to you by typing "dog made of money" into GIS. you're welcome.

the primary example of this, of course, has been minecraft. i actually got in on the ground floor of minecraft (a few days before the first beta) thanks in large part to my rock, paper, shotgun obsession. and not only was it great to get an excellent game for super-cheap, and great to be able to play said game months and months before it became mega-internet-popular, let alone before it was properly "released" in late 2011, it was a really thrilling process to be able to watch the game develop from inside the game.

there's nothing like buying a game, becoming enamored with its world, and then realizing that for regular intervals over an indeterminate amount of time you're going to get new content and more awesome things added to that world for absolutely free. not only that, you can often make suggestions to the developer and then see your own suggestions manifest in a later build. getting into the minecraft alpha was my first experience with this whole process, and i've bought a number of games in alpha or beta since and gotten to watch them grow, often in good ways and sometimes in bad ways. yet, even when a game develops contrary to what i myself would want, it's generally been a 1-5 dollar purchase, so it's a bit hard to get upset. most people blow more than that on coffee a day, and coffee always does the same thing to me:

what i'm interested in at the moment, though, is not actually what happens during the time that a public alpha game's development cycle is made available to the public for appreciation and scrutiny. instead, i'm interested in what happens when that development cycle ends (often under the opposite of appreciation and much more scrutiny).

take as a sort-of example the recent "completion" of terraria, a minecraft-esque 2d platforming game. the game's original release occurred in may of 2011, and was labeled "version 1.0" indicating that the game was more of less meant to be complete as it was. it sold 50,000 copies in its first day, a fairly amazing feat for a game made by two people and largely marketed through word-of-mouth, and buyers were informed that they would receive all future updates from of charge, but (much like public-alpha games) those buyers were not told how many updates there might be, what those updates might contain, etc. essentially they paid for a project that was still in development.

excellently, the developers delivered an absolute fucking ton of new post-release content, all free, for nearly nine months. then, recently, they announced that the game (which had been expanded far beyond its original scope) would no longer be receiving updates. in a move perhaps unsurprising for the internet generation (but still depressing), this news (that the enormously engaging and excellent game that they'd paid 10 bucks for and then been allowed to get substantively new versions of  for free every few weeks for almost a year) drove the terraria community into a frenzy of name-calling, death threats, and other such bizarre, ugly nonsense. the gist of the response was that terraria shouldn't have been "allowed" to end when there were still so many things that the community wanted to see implemented. and herein lay the dark side of letting your customers buy into your game before you're finished: they seem to lose the ability to understand that you can be finished. technically speaking, terraria was finished when version 1.0 was released. the rest was, as they say, just gravy. to see negative fan response to the degree that resulted from terraria's "ending" is bizarre and disheartening, and i think it speaks to the sense of entitlement that letting your community in on the ground floor of the development process can breed. plus, maybe most terraria players are whiny, entitled jerks (which seems to be the case). hilariously (to me), many players in fact have insisted that they will no longer play the game if it won't receive new updates. not too many years ago (two, actually) you just went to the store and bought a game, and that game is what you got. terraria's fanbase might be a huge pile of asshole-faces, but that doesn't eliminate the fact that between games with 900 dollars' worth of DLC and games that imply a future of infinite content updates for the buyer, people have gotten a little confused as to what exactly they're entitled to for the money that they pay.

terraria players: "this. we're entitled to this."

on the other hand, there also seems to be a potential problem with developers deciding when their game is finished. again, let's return to minecraft. it's official "release", version 1.0, occurred in november of last year. since then, the game continues to get updates, but markus persson, the game's creator, has long since stepped away to work on other projects, leaving minecraft in the hands of a few of his subordinate designers. recently, each new update is simply met with more scorn from the community, who seems to simply want the game to be "done".

is alpha buy-in the next big thing for gaming? or is it just a more seductive manifestation of caveat emptor?
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i don't have an answer, if you were waiting for one. i do want to write a bit about how the effectiveness of the alpha buy-in idea is affected by individual games' genres, but i think that's a discussion for tomorrow, because i need to get back to work.

this proteus game-thing and the allure of exploration

despite the fancy-sounding title, this post will be all about me gushing over a new game (or sort-of game) that i've been playing.

though, actually, i'm essentially doing that exact thing in my dissertation right now, so maybe the personal and professional dimensions of my life have finally just blurred into one huge hurricane of audience-unfriendly nerdom. oh well. at least i've got this three-day old, re-microwaved burrito. and proteus.

first thing's first: the proteus web site is here. not that it will tell you a lot because it's basically just some pictures right now and some mumbo-jumbo about exploring and feelings and being a game-that's-not-a-game (like seemingly all good games nowadays, it's on sale now but still just in alpha). but, if you're me (you're not, for the record) and you're currently writing a dissertation chapter on how minecraft leverages player agency to create emotional attachments to virtual place (i hope you're not doing this because if you are, we're going to have words, and those words are going to be "copyright infringement"), then you see a byline in your RSS feed about something called proteus being a non-game about exploration that seems pointless but captivates the fuck out of your favorite games writers nonetheless and you say "hell, this sounds stupid as ox shit in a palm tree, but it's five bucks so what the hell?" and you download it.

then you start up the game-thing, watch as the word "PROTEUS" appears and then slowly melts, commodore 64-stylee, off the screen, to be replaced by the opening of a single, blocky eye, an eye that opens on a multicolored, smudgy-looking, fog-socked island...and suddenly you realize that this cheap, tiny, poor-looking not-even-a-game has you by the face and is not going to let go until you realize that you've forgotten to eat dinner, go to bed or even change the pants you just pissed in.

so long, PANTS. i hope you like the taste of PISS.

exploring is fun. pretty much nobody will argue with that, except for perhaps the most extreme type a people (who, in a possibly abbey-esque way, i would argue aren't even really people in the traditional sense of the word). yet, you take that experience of exploration, transpose it into a video game world where quite literally anything can happen (you can, for example(s) fly, turn into a dog, swim for years or go on a murderous rampage without facing any consequences) which seems like it would make it even more exciting, and suddenly people refuse to believe that it can mean anything. because it's not "real", you're just pretending. as if that sofa fort you built when you were four and then cried like a ninny because your big brother knocked it over didn't matter. it did matter, and it's silly to pretend that we grow out of pretending. people cry at movies, at a hypermediated, two dimensional representation of some other person's fictional problems, and yet the idea that video games (a medium in which the player is, by default, naturally a fundamental part of the outcome of the story) can mean something is largely accepted as dumb.

well, enough with the rant. i know you don't believe me (i know it!), but i've played proteus a lot and it's awesome. and by "played" i suppose i mean that i've just loaded up the game a few times and spent awhile wandering around. because that's all you can do. just wander around, and take pretty pictures of the pre-8-bit landscape.

because it's there.

like this mountain. this mountain is not a real mountain (surprise!), and to climb it, all i had to do was hold down my "w" key whilst pointing my face mountainward using the mouse. yet climb it i did, because that same base part of my brain stem that screams "go up!" when i see a high thing in real life kicks in inside proteus as well. and, if you're feeling lazy, climbing a virtual mountain is way the hell easier than climbing a real one. is it as meaningful? not really, but it still beats the hell out of watching bear grylls do it on tv.

proteus does have some...i guess you'd call them "events". that is, occasionally while exploring you'll stumble upon something and something will happen and it will be cool because you don't expect it. however, these things aren't judiciously spaced out within the gameworld, or scripted, or really triggered by anything that i can tell. you just randomly happen upon them...or you don't. i've played for about 30 minutes 4-5 times now, and each time i find something i didn't find before, and some of the things i saw the first time through i've never seen again. occasionally there'll be a dry spell of sorts where i'll walk for 10-15 minutes without seeing anything interesting but i don't feel like this is unreasonable. i mean, i go on 20 minute walks all the time in "real" life and often the first 15 minutes are boring...that doesn't mean i kill myself before i get to the end. at least, not usually. so to reflect this, in proteus  i sit down and decide beforehand that i'm going to play for a certain time. invariably, by the end, it's been worth it. just loosening yourself from that cycle of expecting something to happen every thirty seconds is maybe something that is really good for video games right now. hell, it's probably really good for your actual life, if you live with that expectation of constant outside stimulation.

"when the moon hits your eye like a piece of bread that got crushed at the bottom of the grocery bag..."

oh, and in addition to being all explore-y and otherwise "pointless", proteus is procedurally-generated both topographically and aurally; that is, the island you explore is different every time you play, and the background music is made from various ambient soundscapes that are stitched together on the fly by a computer algorithm depending on your location in the world and what's happening around you. i was a bit leery of this second property at first, but last night while playing i had a moment that really sold me on it. while i was standing on top of a hill, watching a rainstorm blow inland from out in the ocean, the soundtrack (again, randomly) latched on to this particularly interesting bass groove, coupled with a weird reverb effect i hadn't yet heard in my two-odd hours of playing the game. it repeated a few times, each time modulating just a bit, until it had established a sort-of theme that somehow suited the aesthetic of the rainy landscape perfectly. it was, for lack of a better analogy, as if the landscape and the music were two jazz musicians who had just briefly, perfectly locked onto one another for thirty or so seconds and created an instant of music neither could have made alone. i've never had anything like that happen in a video game before, and it was worth my five bucks by itself.

hey, look! it's pullman in the winter!

anyway, proteus is a badass simulation about what it's like to be the spirit of a disembodied alien warlord trapped in the corpse of a cybernetic zombie rottweiler.

wait, that's not right.

proteus is a non-game about doing something we often don't even do that well in "real" life: taking a few minutes to appreciate the swell of a particular hill, or the graceful flight of a barn owl, or the way the light changes just before the sun hits the horizon. and that is, in a lot of ways, a more important and engaging challenge than slaughtering ten thousand space nazis in five minutes using your gun-chainsaw or whatever the balls passes for an "achievement" in most games these days.

okay. now i've got to back to writing real things about fake things instead of fake things about real things.

things i heard today, part three

1. [On C Street, just outside of Valhalla, courtesy of a girl in a tube top and shorts and heels, despite the fact that it was snowing sideways]: Girl 1: "Hey motherfucker! Yeah, I'll cut your dick off with a knife...is what I would say to him if he was here."

2. [In the Emerald Downs parking lot, from a group of four guys gathered around a car]: Guy 1: "Hey, faggot, I didn't know you were legally allowed to buy a car that color unless you were sixty years old!" (The car was silver.)

Also, in two separate places along B Street, two different people (with different "hand"writing) had written the word "FUCK" in the snow using their fingers within about fifty feet of one another.

things i heard today, part two

1. [On the Hello Walk, one guy to a group of his guy friends] Guy 1: "Yeah, so then she was just standing there, waving her snatch at me!" Guy 2: "Yeah?!" Guy 1: "Yeah, and I just really wanted to punch her as hard as I could in her snatch, you know?" Guy 3: "Yeah, I totally get it!"

2. [In front of the library, two girls] Girl 1: "I just don't get why I have to take this class, you know?" Girl 2: "Yeah..." Girl 1: "I mean, I just don't see what history has to do with anything!"

diss extracts: interlude 3 (part 2 of 2)

here's part two! if you have no idea what's going on, read part one first.

At first, I panic. The world seems to tilt on its axis under my feet and I find it hard to breathe. Reflexively, I use the moon to take a bearing and still firmly in the grip of terror, I start running. Remembering the pile of bones and the charred stone, I keep running. I run for nearly a mile and then, seeing nothing and hearing nothing, I come to a panting stop. Suddenly my back hurts where the rocks in my pack must have slammed against it over and over while I ran on, unaware. Scanning the area, I recognize the grasslands around me and the gentle slope of the ground to the north as it moves toward the edge of another, smaller lake. I am still far from home, but I'm headed in the right direction. At least there's no–

My thoughts and blood are frozen as a piercing shriek cuts the air. In its wake, I hear the rattle of bones. I know these bones too well: they live somehow without skin, without organs, powered only, it seems, by malice. I turn towards the sound and in the moonlight, silhouetted against the hills to the east, I see the skeleton, already nocking an arrow and drawing its bow. It's still too far away, I think to myself as rationality wars with terror for command over my thoughts. Sure enough, it fires an arrow – the twang of the bowstring mixing with a gleeful murder's hiss – and I watch it arc gracefully through the night sky before it thunks into the ground twenty feet in front of me.

Suddenly, a snarl from behind me yanks my attention away from the skeleton. So there are enemies on at least two sides of me, now. I need to get to high ground, ascertain the situation, and decide how to fight my way home. There is a rise to the southwest; I jog toward it, putting the skeleton at my back but moving at a pace that makes it certain it won't gain ground on me while my attention is diverted.

The zombie, of course, is waiting for me at the top of the rise. By the time I see him, I don't have time to check my momentum, so I dive and roll under his first swing, ending up behind him. He turns slowly, but it takes me a moment to shrug off my rucksack and yank my old sword from its scabbard. By the time I've drawn my weapon, he's shambling forward to rake his claws across my face. I don't let him, obviously. I take one step back to put myself out of his range and then I follow behind his swing with a descending cut of my sword, hacking off the offending limb.

Zombies cannot feel pain. Once I did not know this, and that ignorance nearly cost me my life. Now, though, when the zombie responds to losing his arm by immediately swinging the other one at my chest, I'm ready. Snapping my sword back up, I step inside this second swing and cut the arm off before it gets to me. It slaps wetly against my chest as it falls away, and I take a step back, putting distance between myself and the zombie's teeth, which are his last remaining weapon. He comes at me immediately, as I knew he would. As he does, I hear an arrow wizz by both of our heads, but there's no time to worry about that yet. Instead, I set my feet, grit my teeth, and let the zombie impale himself on my sword. Then I quickly plant my foot in his chest and kick, sliding my blade free as he crumples to the ground.

Thanks to the time I've wasted on this skirmish, there's no point in trying to develop a plan now. From atop the rise, I can see the countryside swarming with dark shapes in all directions, and the skeleton is almost on top of me. By the time I shoulder my rucksack and slide my sword back into its scabbard, it's already nocked and drawn another arrow, so I take off as fast as I can to the southwest, running in a zigzag pattern and hoping it's less of a distance to my house than I suspect.

The next two miles are a blur of desperation tinged with fear as I slowly become aware that I am being hunted, herded by a large group of skeletons who are – unfortunately – not nearly as stupid as their zombie allies. Over flat land, though, I can outrun them on foot, and as the light of torches comes into view slowly but certainly to the south, I actually begin to think that I'm going to make it home safely. Then, I top the final rise and see how thoroughly I've been outmaneuvered. Quite literally at the door of my house wait two enormous, red-eyed spiders and one of the grotesque, limbless, mottled-green creatures I've come to think of as “creepers”.

With who-knows-how-many skeletons closing in from behind me, I don't even have time to be scared. Leaving my pack on this time, I unlimber my bow and draw an arrow. The spiders have begun to move toward me, but seem torn between holding their position and attacking outright. I make the decision for them by burying my first arrow in the nearest one's hide. It hisses and comes at me, oozing a brown-black liquid from the wound. The creeper follows, deliberately, behind it. I simply wait, patiently putting a second arrow right next to the first and slowing the spider down a bit more. It is on top of me, however, before I can draw a third arrow. I drop the bow and draw my sword instead, slicing off the spider's first questing limb. It retreats back a few steps, and I do too. Behind the spider, the creeper is circling to my left, so I move to the right to keep it in view. This odd dance goes on for a few moments, the spider and I taking testing swings at one another while the creeper attempts to flank me. As I hack off a third spider leg, I begin to wonder what exactly is going on. Then a hiss from behind me makes my mistake painfully clear: in turning to keep from being flanked by the creeper, I allowed the second spider to come up behind me unnoticed. And now, I'm trapped and quite probably dead.

Seeing the creeper closing, though, I remember the charred corner of my house and the scattered pile of skeleton bones, and I know that I have one last chance. Going for the weakest enemy first, I charge the wounded spider, bringing my sword down in a two-handed, overhead blow that nearly cuts the thing in half. I try to pull my sword free as my enemy dies beneath me, but the rusty blade has been thoroughly mangled by this last, desperate blow and I realize after a moment that even if I manage to free my weapon, it will be worthless to me. This is unfortunate, but really doesn't change my quite-possibly-suicidal plan. The spider behind me hisses again – much too close this time – as I go for the only other thing I have that could be construed as a close-quarters weapon: my pickaxe.

I manage to raise it in a two-handed grip and take a step over the spider corpse at my feet, which seems to surprise the creeper who was lurching forward on its four mottled-green legs, perhaps sensing victory. Before it can recover, I swing the pickaxe laterally, scoring its hide and driving it back a step. I keep moving toward it, aggressively. As I bring the pickaxe up for another strike, the creeper begins to close again, hissing loudly. Throwing a look over my shoulder, I take a step back – against all of my instincts – and feel the spider's forelegs begin to close around my waist. With the creeper coming down on me from the front and the spider's hungry mouth lurching toward me from behind, I will myself to wait until the last possible second...and then I hurl myself aside as the creeper's hiss reaches its highest pitch.

The creeper explodes – as creepers are wont to do – and the explosion hits me in the chest, seeming to unhinge my bones from my muscles. I'm thrown across the front lawn of my house and I land in a bed of dirt, crushing a row of decorative flowers. The spider, closer to the center of the explosion, is completely vaporized. I try to stand, but the ground jumps down away from my feet and I stagger sideways. For a moment, I simply stand staring at my front door, struck dumb by the explosion. Then the sizzle of another arrow passing near to my head puts things into perspective. The skeletons that had been chasing me over the northern plains have finally caught up. I grab my rucksack and make a run for the door.

I fumble with the door lock, and as a result, I almost don't make it. But the skeletons are consistently poor shots and I finally hurl myself inside, locking the door behind me as they growl in frustration, fired arrows zikking off the stone walls of my home. The torches and the stone walls will keep them out for the night, and in the morning, if they aren't smart enough to disappear underground, the sun will melt them where they stand, leaving little sign of their passing except, perhaps, an incomplete pile of charred bones.

I pant heavily for a few minutes with my back against the door, knowing that the hisses and growls I hear outside will continue for most of the night and that, at some point, I'm simply going to have to just ignore them and go about my usual business of cooking and preparing the furnace for smelting another pile of iron ore.

Today, this world has shown me both of its faces: joy, in the exploration of a bounteous wilderness and in the feeling of hard work well done, and terror, in the persistent threat the night creatures pose to my life and all that I've built here. Ultimately, I am free to make my own life here, but it is a life that is earned, not given.

Survival is hardly a game, after all.