Saturday, March 24, 2012

ME3 Ending Debate (the nice kind)


A VISIT TO THE FORUMS
“Oh Mass Effect 3 , they just don’t understand you, be patient with them for they know not what they do,” was my initial reaction to the venom and outrage directed at the final installment of one of my favorite trilogies at first it seemed like the final sequence was a dream and I wondered if something hadn't been slipped into my system and maybe I was indoctrinated or dead or dreaming.  It was weird, but I had no huge problems with it (especially because there was an Adam and Steve ending).  Then I wrote this http://gaymism.com/articles/commentary/galactic-whine-and-ending-mass-effect-3 where my main premise was the whole game was an ending and to distill it down to one decision and fifteen minutes was unfair.  And was angry, so I went to the forums to find out what others thought.  Here is part of what I found.

SLYRED PANDA:
Warning! Warning! Massive wall of text approaching at great velocity. It is advised that you evacuate immediately. Warning! Warning! Massive wall of text approaching, brace for impact in 5... 4... 3... 2... 1...
/startrant
Let me start by saying that the Mass Effect series is my favorite video game series of all time.
Naturally I had high expectations for the game. Overall the game has been exquisitely crafted, except for some issues that should have been addressed in QA... But that belongs in to another discussion all together, for now I will stay on topic and discuss the ending.
The Ending to Mass Effect is not bad. In fact, content-wise, I like it. Bioware did not fail to deliver in the story department, but the execution of said story was quite pitiful.
Issue #1
In ME3, you regain control of Commander Shepard. You've been playing with the same character for years. With this individual you have faced thrasher maws, indoctrinated specters, the collectors and the reapers. Shepard is nothing short of a badass, and thus he is treated as such. Within minutes of starting the game you are back in the Normandy flying across galaxy, rallying friends and foes to join you in the greatest war the galaxy has ever seen. As you progress though the game, many plot points are closed, allies are gained and even entire races are saved or extinguished. The game constantly reinforces the fact that your decisions affect a greater outcome. Will you save the Geth or destroy them? Will you cure the genophage or doom the Krogan to extinction? Cut scenes and dialog play vastly different depending on who lives or dies. In this game, more than ever, you decisions carry a heavy weight... except for the ending. It does not matter whether you choose control, synthesis or destruction of the reapers. The outcome is still the same: The crucible is activated and the citadel is destroyed along with the mass effect relays. Then we (the player) are treated to a brief (and boy I am not a size queen but that was really short and unsatisfactory) cut scene with my crew and a STATIC IMAGE of two humanoid silhouettes talking.
Does it matter that I saved the Geth? No. Does it matter that I saved the Krogan? No. What if I had destroyed the Quarians and not the Geth, would that matter? No.
Nothing matters. Essentially, it all boils down to picking a color. That color represents a decision to which we do not get to see the result of. So in reality it does not matter what you pick, because as long as you fall into a pre-determined set of clauses, you will essentially get the same ending.
I'm okay with my Shepard dying, he dies an honorable death. But I am not okay with sacrificing a great character to see my crew mates in some lush jungle and then a static image with voice over. Talk about underwhelming.

Issue #2
I'm going to talk about another game to illustrate a point. So bear with me while I talk a little bit about Final Fantasy XII. While not my favorite final fantasy, I do believe that this was the first game to really elaborate on the concepts of war, politics, conflict, etc. In previous final fantasies I go the impression that, while they all have great lore, the story was about the characters. In XII, the game is about the world of Ivalice and the avarice of a man seeking dominion over it. The characters in XII are there, but they aren't necessarily the focus. Long story short, not everything is as it seems, and before you know it a third power comes into play: The Occuria. The Occuria in FFXII are essentially the hidden power players in the story, controlling the fate of mankind and blah blah blah (you know the drill if you played the game). This was the "twist" or "shock factor" of the game. I particularly didn't care much for The Occuria, but it was nice to see the closure of a story arc that had been foreshadowed earlier in the game. It is obvious that writers in FFXII took the time to slowly/gradually introduce the Occuria to the player, in order to create a cohesive narrative.
ME3 does something similar to FFXII by attempting to introduce another "power player" to the story, but fails to do in any way that makes sense. In ME3 you've got 3 powers at play, the Reapers, Cerberus and the galaxy at large (citadel races alliance). The Reapers want to harvest everyone, Cerberus wants to control the reapers and the Galaxy at large want both Cerberus and the reapers gone. By the end of the game, you are transported up to "somewhere" where this young holographic kid is talking to you. He talks and talks about "the cycle" and how the reapers have a purpose among other wonderful background lore chatter. But my question when I saw him was: Who the fuck are you?!
Apparently, you might get some foreshadowing on the holographic crucible boy if you talk to Liara at certain times. I do remember there was some discussion about why the Reapers were harvesting people instead of killing everybody. This implied that the Reapers were being led or controlled by somebody else. During my play through, that is all the foreshadowing I got about this fourth mysterious power. The introduction of this holographic boy creates more questions then answers. Who is he? What is his purpose? Is he a VI? Is he an AI? Is he part of the reapers? Is he part of the race that created the reapers? Too many questions unanswered.

So in the end, no pun intended, I was left dazed and confused. I did not know what to say or how to react. I did not know where my crew landed. I did not know what happened to the Krogan, or to any other species in the galaxy. The premise of the game is to "Take back Earth" and save the galaxy, but in the end we really don't get to see how things turn out. Was earth rebuilt? If the citadel and the mass effect relays were destroyed, does that mean that earth then became the epicenter for the rest of species who were displaced by the war? The purpose of a good ending it to provide answers and closure. This ending only created more questions. Yes you could read in to the ending and assume that earth was saved and civilization carried on, but is that how you really want one of the best video game trilogies to end? I think Mass Effect deserves better than that.

/endrant


  
Frag Dean
I respect your viewpoint and the time it took you to get all that down, but I see it all differently, Mr. Panda.
Shepherd has done amazing things and made huge decisions and, for me, those decisions were endings. We do not know if the Krogan are given their fertility what they will do with it, Clan Urdnot seems ready to lead their people to new greatness, will they stay in control, will the salarians attempt a new sabotage, will the Krogan begin a campaign to create an empire, can the they control their urges? These things cannot be answered at the end of the game (especially if there will be further forays into the ME universe sans Shepherd).
Shepherd was a great leader and he brought the races and cultures of the galaxy to a new place, a new start- this is the best anyone can do. He is not immortal or omniscient. I liked that he made these tough choices and he, like us, can only guess at what will happen and hope for the best. At some point the galaxy must be responsible for itself. I liked that there was no best ending and that the final shots are of others. It's their turn.
It all turned a little bit Jesus-y, but myths are there for a reason. His memory has been left, lives of been touched, futures have been molded. Shep was fucking busy.
The day one dlc argument has never been very convincing to me. The game is huge and comprehensive; it's not like we didn't get our money's worth. If you love ME3 you can get the content day one and play through it instead of a few months later and then maybe play through again. The dlc was quality and added to the universe and I'm glad it was there.
I see your powers argument, but I believe Cereberus was indoctrinated, the Illusive man did it to himself and then people he kidnapped to serve, Cerberus as an organization out to protect humanity ceased to be, they had obviously given up their "morals" when they attacked human colonies and killed and indoctrinated humans, so I think your counting is too high, the weird little boy at the end says the Illusive man was his creature. Yeah, the force behind the Reapers taking the shape of a little boy was strange. It seems the big conflict was between organic and inorganic life and the cycle of destruction that we bring ourselves to through technology that we can create but cannot control. Tower of Babel, nucleor weapons, Icarus, we overreach, and instead of the galaxy being destroyed we killed organic life while keeping a reflection of it to save the whole. We are the infection.  I'm guessing the dreams were that force trying to rule Shepherd and failing. Shepherd was proof the cycle could be broken.
No story wraps up everything and if it tries it seems frail and false. The big arc was completed and I don't think we can really ask for more.
  
  SLYREDPANDA
An alternate ending... March 22 at 8:05
SlyRedPanda
Something I found at other forums that I think is worth looking at
...and my response:
This is what i wanted. Good or bad. Happy or Tragic. It doesn't matter. But I want something to play out. I want Galactic readiness to matter. I don't understand how somebody who has mediocre galactic readiness can have the same ending as somebody who has united an entire galaxy. This ending would show case all of the hard work done not only throughout the game, but throughout the trilogy.
EDIT: This doesn't mean that I want Shepard to live. The Reapers are, after all, a very powerful force in the galaxy. I still think the ending should be limited to the three choices it gives you. I just think there should be more exposure to the Galaxy at war conflict, which was the main focus of the game (and the multiplayer) before the ending.

Tuesday, March 20, 2012

Galactic Fail

Mass Effect 3 Ends in a Whine

I am so done with whiners and misplaced crusading.  A number of gamers have been complaining about the ending of Mass Effect 3 and through the magic of the internet they have found a place to congregate and whine.  A fund was even started to have the ending of the game rewritten.  Agog.  I'm agogged.  A more agogging fact- a complaint has been filed with the FTC.

Saving the galaxy was not epic enough

This shrieking minority is upset because they wanted more choice in the ending which I read as- they want a perfect happy ending where no one dies and everything is fixed.  The game begins with Earth being destroyed by the Reapers, millions are killed, cities erased, a small force remains to fight back and while they are doing this, you as Shepherd are attempting to make alliance to save what is left of the Earth and the rest of the galaxy.  On the way you see massive destruction of other planets and civilizations.  How is any ending going to fix this?  Who would believe that ending?

Mass Effect 3 is the last in the trilogy and, to be honest, the whole game IS an ending.  Players get to see plot points wrapped up, visit their old acquaintances and see what time and the war have made them; there is denouement for all the major and many minor players in this drama, and these are peppered throughout the game and don't just get forced on you at the end in some sort of cutscene.

Mass Effect treats us as adults.  We know that "War is Hell."  We know their are tragedies and causalities and heroics and lost causes.  Mass Effect does not talk down to us and tell us everything is going to be alright and it was all just a dream.

What the?!

So what is this really, this outrage and cacophony?    I can't help but make parallels to our own country in three wars that we don't hear much about, partially because we don't want to and we don't know what we're fighting or quite why we are fighting, and we don't know what victory in this places could even look like, so we ignore it.  We feel powerless because we felt we had no choice, no one asked us or explained to us and we have partisan arguments that never quite hit on the truth.  We don't want to look at what we've lost because of these wars or the price those that have chosen to fight for us have paid or how they have suffered.  Could that be why?  Do we want our games to show us a simpler world without any gray and heroes that shield everyone from pain and defeat?  Have the constant bombast of entertainment news shows and their extreme views that turn the other side into Hitler and make any contrary idea mark of a traitor, infiltrator or liar become how we talk?

Is it sadness over the ending of a beloved trilogy, your last chance to be your Shepherd?  Do gamers feel all their effort and struggle was for naught because the Reapers really did almost destroy all life in the galaxy, and we were powerless to stop it?  Is it a feeling of entitlement?  Maybe the internet gives everyone a microphone and we feel the need to create drama and to be right and righteous.  Maybe some gamers can not handle reality or endings.  As much as I believe there are sane voices that can tell people to calm down and take a real look at what they are screaming about it really seems that that only causes some to scream even louder, to drown out their own thought, to avoid introspection, or entertain any emotion but anger.

AT first I found the whole thing silly, then the vehemence of the arguing made me try to look again and see what they might be saying.  Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but does every opinion need to be shouted full voice, does every opinion need a villain?  The Mass Effect 3 ending deserves reflection not reaction.  There is so much about that game that is good and to say the whole thing is trash and attack the creators who have given us something beautiful is childish.  All the shouting just proves the game is something special because otherwise it would not even be worthy of a whisper and would be dismissed.  It disappoints me that a group of people shout at the top of their lungs, cover their ears, close their eyes and let no other possibilities in and they can't stop to take a breath and look again.

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

Misogyny and Street Fighter


“You can’t (take degrading and misogynistic language) from gaming.  You can’t because they’re one and the same thing. This is a community that’s, you know, between 15 and 20 years old, and sexual harassment is part of the culture, and if you remove that from the fighting game community it’s not the fighting game community.”  Of all the shouts and tweets and statements that came from this this tiny story that became huge- this is the most telling.  During a Street Fighter vs. Tekken promotional event on Cross Assault Reality Show various slurs were shouted by competitors, some of the worst being a chant of “Bitch, bitch, bitch” when a player chose Phoenix as their fighter and later when she was defeated to a roar of, “Rape that bitch!”  Bakhtanians attempted to justify that behavior in an unfortunate statements defending misogyny.  Patrick Klepek of Giant Bomb reported this story and it spread quickly around twitter and the internet.  Why the blow up when this thing goes on constantly in any multiplayer game and has been reported on again and again?  This time an “expert” said out load what most already knew, that they know what they are doing, they are remorseless about it and they feel it is their right, and the biggest mistake, saying that THIS is the community, and THESE folks are the community, and implying the rest of us are not real members.  Bakhtanians claims that he and these others are the real community.  Oh no he din’t.

The problem is he’s not the community and they are not the community; people with the highest score do not get to make the rules and the peasants do not have to bow and scrape and avoid master’s eyes or else they are a bitch that needs to be raped.  The community is not just nerdy white guys, women are there too, and gay guys, and straight guys with a modicum of modesty and a hint of decorum.  Being the loudest doesn’t make one right, and while many of us turn off the sound or do our best to play with folks we know instead of adolescents practicing their swear words it doesn’t mean we’re not there, and now that someone who claims to represent the community has stepped forward and basically said this is how we talk and it is alright and if you have a problem with go play something else like StarCraft the rest of us can say that it’s not alright and it’s not just a few misguided kids who are not representative- a representative has  said that this is the community and ,”sexual harassment is part of the fighting game community and if you remove that it’s not the fighting game community.”  A light has been shone on the reality of entitlement and that if you are a women or a minority or not dedicated to playing a game 8-10 hours a day you’re not part of the club and you have no say.


This situation shares the shame shades as the airing of George Fisher aka Corpsegrinder’s homophobic rant at Blizzcon which the president, Mike Morhaine aired and endorsed in front of Con attendees.  His original apology was much the same as Bakhtanians’s  saying he’s sorry IF anyone was offended and it was just about his passion for the game (full statement can be found here http://www.giantbomb.com/news/aris-aris-bakhtanians-releases-statement-on-recent-comments/4007/ ).  Morhaine later amended his apology in a much more contrite statement http://gaygamer.net/2011/10/blizzard_president_apologizes.html.

Yes, it is the good ol’ US of A and we do have freedom of speech, and people can, for the most part, speak however they like, but when a company represents itself publicly with folks like this it just underlines and condones this kind of talk which they seem to think is part of how things are done and really just a big joke which losers don’t get and those losers should just lighten up.  What can we do?  Speak up.  When someone talks like that, call them out as matter-of-factly as possible.  If they scoff or grow louder bombard them with “Sunshine, lollipops, and rainbows/ Everything that’s wonderful is what I feel when we’re together!”  Even if we are not female or a fag or whatever minority they feel like debasing, we as a gaming community need to be heard, and I think that is why these little stories became so large, so thank you Patrick Klepek and Tiny Dancer and Kotaku for bringing this to our attention and calling them out.  Let’s keep doing that.

Sunday, February 26, 2012

How Video Games Save Education


I know education and I know gaming.  I’ve taught middle school students for the last fourteen years, and I have struggled as most teachers do to get the next generation to participate in their learning. Students sit glazed over with bored expressions as we tell them the way to learn is completely separate from their methods of interaction with the world.  Our education system was created near the beginning of the last century and had a purpose that is different than what we currently need and hasn’t been much revised since.   As professionals we’ve done cooperative learning and differentiation; we offer scoring guides and samples and student choice, and our literature has been sanitized so hard that is colorless and tasteless if a little too sweet.  None of this is part of the rest of our kids’ lives, where they become someone else, live through stories, or watch them unfold.  Popular video games have much to offer our students, a world they are interested in, a system of constant rewards and variety, and methods they already use to relate to the world.  The games need not be created specifically to educate because within them are complex systems to be studied, stories, characters, worlds, conflicts, geography, architecture, psychology, as well as critical thinking skills, evolutions to inspect, explain, explore, and evaluate.  Games need not be the whole of education, but a tool, combined with elements we already use.  Critical thinking in one area can be transferred to others.  If we show everything games can contain to students we open their minds and challenge game designers to keep up with us.


What’s Wrong with Education- I Know, Call on Me!!

Education is stuck in recycled programs we rename and trot out every few years, and standardized testing and finger-pointing and lower standards and victimhood.   Conversations in this vein are not helpful and amount only to hand-wringing and magic cure-all tonics.  Our current educational system was created post WWII where our national goals were to prepare most students for vocational or factory jobs and a chosen, blessed few for college careers.  Nowadays students need college degrees for entry level jobs; factory jobs were outsourced or made obsolete by technology.   Our everyday experience has changed drastically from when I was in school in the 80’s.  Now everyone has a cellphone and the internet and the internet on their cellphones, there is DVR and gaming systems that do more than game.  97% of teen boys play video games regularly and 94% of girls do the same.  What is wrong with education is we keep telling kids how they are supposed to be educated and assume they’re going to be excited and grateful- they’re not.  Imagine what it’d be like to be asked to sit silently and read a book or puzzle out a math problem on your own when everywhere else kids are bombarded and a part of media.  They are keystrokes away from a hundred people.  The world is literally at everyone’s fingertips, and we are asking them to be solitary, silent, and focused when every other second is filled with light, color, sound, and text.

Books are fantastic and should never go away, but even the ways we can read have expanded.  We need to meet kids where they are at and begin to incorporate more types of the media into classrooms, especially video games.  Video games are available to wider and wider audiences and every individual can find a game that suits them.  Games are interactive and give immediate feedback which encourage players to go further, to try again, to be curious and this is the foundation for learning.  Jane McGonnigal points out that we will fail and fail again in games and happily return until we succeed.  Games are cooperative and competitive and students are inherently social. Games are a language children understand and part of their daily lives.  Why aren’t we using them to teach?

WHAT VIDEO GAMES HAVE TO OFFER

It’s obvious,  kids love games, adults too.  Ask a teenager the perfect character build in Modern Warfare or how to beat the big boss in Mario Sunshine and they can tell you in detail.  Ask them how they solved a puzzle in Uncharted or to describe what happened in Rapture and they will.  There is nothing wrong with the minds of our youths; they are just as spongy as they’ve ever been, but this does not appear as obviously in their schooling as it once had because we are looking for it in the wrong place.

Video games, even the popular, pulpy ones contain volumes of useful information, insight and creativity.  Almost every game from zombie invasions to MMA fighters have some sort of storyline and idea of characterization and character development.  Many games look at themes such as war, family, utopia and dystopia, redemption- some in such a way that moments stay with you well after the game.  We can teach students to look at these, evaluate them, compare them to other works and media.  Games explore gender and social roles in ways that are more personal because players have a stake in them; they are living as that character in that world, playing through their circumstances not just reading about someone else who will make their own decisions.  In games, students can explore the consequences and effects of different actions in the same situation.  Games can practice morality and ask big questions.  Games ask us to take care of our avatar and the world they are inhabiting, isn’t this what we want ?

Games are filled with systems that students can learn to break down and investigate as they would in science or math.  Design elements, setting, geography, characters, can be explored and explained, researched and studied on the veracity of the game’s historical or scientific settings.  There is almost no subject that cannot be studied in video games, and it is work students will want to do, and can continue doing in their own homes.  When our youth are shown an expanded way of seeing, of knowing, of evaluating they can use it anywhere. The video game industry has grown from a few guys making puzzles for their friends to a work place with specialists, writers, actors, programmers, designers, and games have developed their own canon and giants on whose shoulders the next generation stands.


Then there is the creative and praxis side of things where students can be asked to plan games, create characters, settings, stories, themes, systems and they can do it in small groups or on their own.  They can research, revise, and learn the creative process that is used in every field, conceive, experiment, evaluate, scrap, revise, start again and it takes place in a world of infinite answers instead of just one. 

Education needs games.  They can create a love of learning.  They can engage.  We need to meet the kids where they are at and to catch up with the modern day and the reality of how people glean and disseminate information.  Our kids are playing them anyway, why not show them all the magic that is there? Why not teach them how to be wonderers and thinkers?  Isn’t that the purpose of education to begin with?

Saturday, January 28, 2012

Positioning Gays in History through Gaming

XCOM by Firaxis Games got me thinking. It has not been released and won't be for a while, so all I have are my own thoughts and the little bit of press I've seen, but I'm excited.  Dr. Weir is a closeted man and an important character in the game which is set in the 1960's.  He is part of a group of great thinkers attempting to defend humanity from supernatural threats.  Let's talk about why this is notable.

The Importance of the Closet

I love that gays are being portrayed as out and proud,or at least out and nobody cares, in games like Dragon Age 2, Skyrim, and Fallout.  It shouldn't be an issue.  Gays should be treated as equals.  Who we fall in love with and who we have sex with should not be huge factors in how we save the world, except, this isn't reality and was nowhere near reality in our not-too-distant-past.  Our queer brothers and sisters were forced to hide and subjected to battery, blackmail, blackballing and humiliation.  There was not a community to fall back on, there was no PFLAG; you were diseased.  Something was wrong with you.  You were crazy.  Many believed this.  Gay as identity in my research on the subject didn't come into being until the 70's.  Homosexuality became more visible after WWII, but it was seen on an individual basis, a few who who had chosen same sex lovers, strangers in society, products of war maybe.  We had to create a culture, see ourselves as a group to even find a closet to come out of, and that didn't happen until the late 60's early 70's.  In 1973 The American Psychiatric Association changed it's entry in the DSM (Diagnotic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders) to ego-dystonic homosexuality, saying that homosexuality itself was not a disease, the problem lay with individuals uncomfortable with their sexuality.  Even then being queer was tough, gay men themselves had only straight society to base their identity on, thus the question, "Who was the man and who was the woman?" in gay relationships.  Then came the, "Gay men can be doctors and lumberjacks and gay women can be pretty and feminine (interesting how men got career as identity and women got gender markers).  If you can find the book The Homosexuals, read it.  It is a fascinating and tragic picture of the gay movement in the 70's.  It's a series of interviews with "successful," "attractive," and "masculine" men and it is meant to show that being gay doesn't stop us, but within these interviews you can see these men's deep sadness and inability to make connections or find lasting happiness in their success, and their need to prove how manly they are.  Many of the bravest of us were shoved in the background because the ladies weren't feminine enough and the men were too fae.   The drag queens started our revolution and then were pushed into the closet.  The 80's brought AIDS and we were seen by the greater culture at best as tragic victims and at worst cursed and toxic.  Every decade brought us a little further and every decade we found new strength, our own strength away from masculine and feminine.  All glorious really, all painful, all triumphant, all beautiful, all ours.  That is our past and it deserves to be seen and we should be proud of it.


The closet is our history.  The brave struggle of our forebears brought us to where we are now.  By acknowledging that in their game Firaxis and 2K situate the queer community as part of American history.  We get to see a gay man contributing through science and courage to our country and our world.  We get to see the hatred and vitriol flung at him, and not just us, but anyone who plays the game. We get to see his struggle with self-hatred that was so much a part of who we were.  The USA won't be shown as a perfect country and example to the world and the good ol' days were not better.  These messages I believe are vital.  Our past can be ugly and sharp-edged, but it should not be glossed over and ignored, and youth today in and out of our community shouldn't just see us in our fabulousness or just shrug and say, "being gay is no big deal," while it is fantastic that is the pervading view it misses our pain and our fight with ourselves, with our world, our society, our families, our bodies.

Dr. Weir's story is not the focus of the game and from what I've read players will get to delve into various characters backstories, all of whom were driven into this fringe department because of their fringe status in society that kept them from moving up normal ladders to success.  This is also great. because we are not the only ones with painful pasts, and then the game doesn't become something just trying to make a statement; it becomes part of American history.  I hope they do us proud.

Thursday, December 29, 2011

A Game of Dicks



I finished playing Shadows of the Damned, and I'm not going to spoil it for you, so relax, let's just sit down together and have a conversation about cock, and how the game might be deeper than you think. Together we will deeply penetrate the shadowy recesses of the game. Also, (more sexual innuendo about anal sex).

Now that we got that out of our systems let's get down to brass tacks. The game is set in the tone of Day of the Dead or From Dusk Til Dawn. The protagonist is Garcia Hotspur and his shapeshifting ex-demon, Johnson. Garcia's girlfriend is kidnapped and killed over and over again by the Demon Lord Flemming and his minions. There are many, MANY, penis jokes, MANY! but I believe the game is not about Garcia's search for his love, but instead his relationship with his wang.

First, Paula, the woman he professes to love, is mostly a stranger, we know nothing about her except what she looks like, the first we see of her is when she is hanging in a noose above his bed- her thong is much in evidence. She dies at least three times in the opening, demons crawling out of her flesh (like a baby from a vagina), this will happen often in the game, we see her and then a new demon crawls out of her, because, according to Flemming, all demons want to be in a nice piece of ass. Her dialogue in the game is mostly a screaming of Garcia's name (much like one might do during sex), and inquiries on why he isn't saving her (men are selfish in their desire) and why he keeps letting demons kill her. Eventually we find out little bits about her, like that Garcia found her in a dumpster and took her home. So, basically she's trash someone else threw out (or she lives there?) and since she was discarded Garcia just takes her home and she says nothing to him for months (or was she talking and he not listening). Garcia often claims to love her, but obviously knows nothing about her, and it isn't even clear she likes or wants him. She is almost always in negligee that Hotspur says he picked out for her. So, woman as fantasy object and not person, so much so that she came across to me as beard. She is supposed to be what he desires, but he obviously has no idea what real women are or of any sort of complexity of emotion. This is not a game about love or any kind of intimate relationship. There is nothing real about Paula, and Garcia tries way too hard to convince us he cares about her and how sexy he finds her. You may be thinking now that this is just a cheesy horror/adventure game, and what should one expect from this; it's cheap, vapid, and schmaltzy, but there is a complex relationship explored in this game and it is between Garcia Hotspur and his penis.

So, Paula is not Hotspur’s focus it is Garcia's constant companion and guide, the ex-demon Johnson, if you don't get the penis reference in Johnson it's OK, there are more. Johnson takes many forms, a torch to light the way, various guns, the boner, the big boner, the skullblaster. Guns as phallic symbols are obvious, their shape, a symbol of power, the explosions they make, and Hotspur's gun is named after an erection, they are beating off that metaphor to death. Garcia is Mexican, and the hell he travels through starts as a Mexican town, but Johnson speaks with a British accent- his desire is both part of him and alien. Johnson is always able to meet his need and fit the situation, apparently telepathically since Garcia doesn't tell it what to do, but Johnson also has a mind of his own, and also has his own desires when in one portion he gets demon phone sex and grows much larger (the big boner) and has his own ejaculation scene, Garcia is shown holding the gun in such a way it appears as a five foot, metallic, phallus. As stated earlier, Garcia is guided through the hells by Johnson, who also lights the way. The whole story seems to be a metaphor of Garcia controlled by his desire and desire for release. He does not really know why he does what he does, where he is going, or why Paula was kidnapped, the situations move from a realistic town, to dungeon, to garden, to swamp, to (ahem) tower; the levels follow no reason and are sometimes juxtaposed in terms of opposites- they are all different metaphors for sex (taken in the above order would be pleasure/pain, utopia/natural/beautiful, beautiful/wet/treacherous, phallus). A few levels are dreamlike paper cut-outs of Hotspur and demons, during which Hotspur flies across the level, further demonstrating the (sexual) fantasy atmosphere of the worlds. He is called to these levels by a opera singing demon woman who only sings and dances, again a symbol of desire without any humanity, she has no identity beyond her appearance and has nothing to say for herself. She also leads him into greater and greater levels of danger, as desire can do.

This all seems to be in his head. He pretends to be chasing Paula, who appears, dies, disappears, runs, disappears again, but often exists in the background dying again as Garcia ignores her and shoots demons with his boner. His desire is focused on what is in front of it. Johnson goes from confident to afraid to sarcastic, and himself not always clear on what is happening or why they are progressing- desire only aware of itself and its need always pressing forward. Garcia is trapped in this world where he is powerful and powerless- Paula keeps dying in front of him and revealing herself as a pretty costume for demons to wear and Hotspur falls for it each time.


Hotspur is driven by his desire, but doesn't understand it. He is led through his sexual fantasy levels by his boner, but even these levels are murky, the demons he is ejaculating hot death into are sexless and naked, most often with male frames, sometimes with female frames and missing their abdomens (read women as sex objects the procreating part missing- the uterus where the baby would gestate). The levels themselves are sexual fantasy with a frightening veneer which, like everything else in the game, obscures the sexual part. Darkness is Garcia's unbeatable foe, and his boner lights the way. Garcia can not define himself or his world without his cock as reference. Paula, his "girlfriend," is only sex object, and a very stylized one at that, she is the model of a perfect woman, innocent-looking and slutty, helpless and dangerous, simple and mysterious, silent and blank, she is relegated to calling out Garcia's name (as one would during sex) and wondering why he can do nothing to save her and why he lets her keep on dying. So what is dying? Is it the woman Hotspur has no way of relating to outside of sex? is it Hotspur's desire which ends with each climax? Is it the fact that Garcia is not into women at all, but feels obligated to be the macho lady killer with the most ladiest lady? Add to this that she is unattainable and belongs to another, the Lord of Demons, and one is left to wonder, does Hotspur only want her because he can't have her, because she is impossible, and therefore he has no obligation to fulfill her in any way which is impossible for him either because he is gay or is lost in his own cage of penises.

All in all it is an interesting view of men. Garcia is the very picture of masculinity, handsome, powerful, sexual, well-muscled, very tattoo'd; he seems to be the cypher of all men. He is governed and confused by his penis. He is unable to see past it or even recognize it's power over him. He is pushed onward by his desire which he labels purpose (to save the girl, defeat demons, be good), but is all of his own making, it is all his perception as mutated by his desire. He can not even see it to question it. He can never find resolution, because his desire might slacken but never be sated, so more demons, different demons are created to give him purpose, but all of it is just a paper world masking the emptiness and chaos of his own existence. The only way he can make sense of the world and give it meaning is through his desire, which even he does not understand.

Is this what we are, puppets of desire, directionless, pointless, using our need, the one thing we can feel to rationalize purpose? Are we as flat as Garcia Hotspur? Hmmm. What do you think?

Wednesday, December 28, 2011

The Moaning Ghost of Ayn Rand


BIOSHOCK PART ONE The Moaning Ghost of Ayn Rand

We’ll start with the basics.  Ken Levine of Irrational Studios used Ayn Rand as a start for his game.  You probably know more about Rand than you think if you’ve been paying attention to politics in the last decade.  Republicans seem to be using her philosophy as a springboard into their policies, so when you hear about “job creators” or the” fiction” of global warming or cutting taxes and social programs, then you’ve Ayn Rand whispering. 

Rand believed in individualism and rationality.  To Rand, man’s ambition and rationality (read science) should be unfettered by concepts of spirituality or communal responsibility.  Those oil producers should be able to go after oil wherever they like and have no regulations, everyone should keep the money they earned; man’s responsibility is to himself, “ The individual should exist for his own sake neither sacrificing for himself to others or others to himself.”  Rand was completely against governmental interference.  She hated statism, theocracy, monarchy, dictatorships, pretty much anything that imparted another’s will over your own or attempted to curb the heights man could achieve through his power of his own mind and ideas, “Man is a heroic being with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity and reason his only absolute.”   Everyone can govern themselves.  It is unclear to me where the nonelite fit into this vision, what about those who aren’t the best and the brightest?  What about teachers who make the learned learned?  Parents?  Why should they spend all that energy and effort on another?  What happens when men’s views differ or collide?  And most important to me, what if man’s rationalizing exceeds his rationality- how often do we create a bulwark of ideas to support us and a blindspot to others to rationalize what we want to happen?  Levine and his team took these into account when creating Bioshock.  Beyond this the game shows that any idea, no matter how pure, is tainted and reshaped by everyone who touches it.  We as a society can not live dedicated to one ideal; it will ruin us and we shall ruin it.

Andrew Ryan, Rapture’s creator, was born in Russia and reinvented himself in the USA; he found both political systems wanting (for a great synopsis look here http://bioshock.wikia.com/wiki/Andrew_Ryan) Socialism made sure no one ever gained, a revolution that traded names and made no difference.  In the U.S. he looked down on a government that could take what was his and hand it to others who had done nothing to earn it.  Ironically, Ryan became both these governments in Rapture, becoming a dictator who squashed any opposing voice, weeding out parasites who attempted to live off the work of others.  Ryan made the mistake of missing that he was doing the same, who did he think was keeping his society going, who used their hands and minds to build it?  Who maintained it?  An idea does not make it real.  In Rand’s Atlas Shrugged the elite leave the United states to create their own society far from failing ideologies, while they are gone the world falls apart, they discover an amazing type of energy and will return to create a new world celebrating achievement,  Levine and his crew show what they believe will happen in the world that follows. Their experiment is the city called Rapture, a paradise ruined, an intellectual marvel that consumed itself.