A Game of Dicks

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?

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.

What Games Can Be

Video games are a relatively new form of media; it started with text adventures and pong and they were like children making up a play, it grew up a little more with the Playstation and Xbox when game design teams and franchises were introduced, but it is only recently when we have reached a wobbly adolescence where we are testing what we can do and who we want to be and thus the question, “Are video games art?”  Obviously, there are writers and artists, animators, all who fall into the category of  artiist, so I think what is meant when the question is asked is, “Do video games  give us different. deeper perceptions of ourselves and our world?”  What they really want to know is do video games challenge and engage us; the answer is they can, and I have proof.

Silly Frags is starting “Gayme Probe” which takes the tools we use to break down and interpret art, literature and films and apply those tools to video games.  It is a discussion that I hope you will be part of; I hope it is something that lets you see more in the games we love; I hope it encourages a discussion we can have with gamers and nongamers and something that touched us.

 Like literature and film games bring us into a new world, a world that we can interact with, and this opens the possibility of players seeing themselves in how they play, who am I, who do I want to be.  Jane McGonnigal has created a movement (Gameful.org) and written books encouraging us to bring our game traits of courage, persistence, curiousity, altruism, into the real world, and also is finding ways to use game to solve real world problems, poverty, sickness, division.  Game designers themselves are bringing complex themes into their games. 

Bioshock and Bioshock 2 looked at me as a player and made me look at myself as a person.  Spoilers will follow, be warned.  Bioshock takes place in a fallen society.  Instead of a city on a hill we get  one buried in the ocean.  It has dedicated itself to one ideal and was destroyed by it.  You are at first a stranger to Rapture, you’ve arrived a regular guy caught in madness, a magical drug that allows human DNA to be rewritten and restructured that they call Adam.  The drug can cure disease, change or apearence, enhance mind and body, and even give humans what would seem like magical powers, fire control, electricity, and more.  You arrive with nothing and are given your first dose of Adam.   You are told you’ll need it to survive.  You also get to see its effects; the inhabitants of Rapture have become twisted creatures mutated physically and psychically broken.  This could be you.

 Normal gaming tropes have trained us to level up and become more powerful, kill, kill, kill, and you’ll be better- it’s just how it works, but Bioshock makes you shift your view, the monsters are not monsters, they retain part of their humanity, they speak, echoing moments of their former lives.  They speak to themselves and others, and through these bits a player gets to know them and see their tragedy and pain.  Killing isn’t quite as easy when can see the citizens are ill, and we see shadows of who they were.  The city around you is testament to their great minds, we hear their voices in audio diaries.  I didn’t want to kill them, in fact at times I stayed hidden listening to them, watching them.  They can be seen in relaxed mode- they are not always balled fists waiting for a battle.

Then the creators throw in another dilemma, the Big Daddies and Little Sisters.  Big Daddies are huge oafs in diving suits, intimidating and powerful.  They have lost the power of speech and speak in what sounds like whale song.  They protect their Little Sister, a dirty, little girl who moves in optimism and innocence through her grisly harvest of Adam from the bodies of the dead.  The Daddies will not attack unless you attack them or menace their charge.  They are magnificent and frightening, gentle and menacing, loyal and loving.  Do you kill them?  Do you take their Little Sisters?  The game does not force morality on you, in a few cases you are must  kill a Big Daddy, in the rest you are encouraged to kill them and you are offered rationalizations, but  there they are near you and offering no anger, gently following their little girl as fathers do.

The game twists the knife one more time by giving you the option to harvest the Little Sisters for a large Adam bonus or save them for a much smaller one.  The game reminds you that this is not just like opening a chest for your treasure, and it is not looting the corpse of an enemy who tried to kill you, this is a little girl crying next to the body of their protector.  The game even tells you it is looking at you.  The first time you are giving the Little Sister choices you have a witness, a woman who says you can save them, it’s not a dirty murder in a dark corner, the girl cowers and pleads and someone is watching you, someone sane, but Rapture is dangerous and resources are scarce, what will you do?

Bioshock 2 does something outright amazing; it made me put down my controller; it made me responsible for my in game decisions; it blew my mind.  This is a big spoiler, so if you haven’t played the game skip this paragraph.  In Bioshock 2 you are a Big Daddy looking for the girl who was your Little Sister.  She offers what aid she can telepathically.  Fatherhood and family are big themes well explored in this game, and ones I shall get into in another essay, but it is at its clearest when you find Eleanor has been watching you the entire time, learning who she wants to be through your actions, did you harvest the other Little Sisters to get power to save her, did you kill people blocking your path.  Eleanor and the game have watched you and when Eleanor makes her choices at the end of the game you feel powerless.  You were her father, you have created the woman she will become, did you teach her care, did you teach her forgiveness, or did you teach her the powerful survive and everyone else is just a tool to be used and thrown away?  She tells you what you have done and who she is and you are now helpless to change it, you had your chance to shape her, even if you didn’t know it, but your cruelty and kindness were noted.  At this point suddenly I, as a gamer was responsible for what I had done in the game, did I just kill everything in front of me as I do in most games, but in this game I was given choices and I made them and while I believed there were no consequences; there were.  Now when I play games I try to see if there is a way outside of killing to solve my problem.  I even look for games that don’t have killing as their premise.  I am not against killing games, but Bioshock 2 showed me something about parenthood and how kids see what we do and not just what we want them to when we are in lesson and lecture mode- they see how we treat the stranger in the store, our neighbors, the person who cut us off on the highway.  They see who to be by watching who were are, and Bioshock 2 captured that in a game and made me feel it.

Games can be art.  They can be rich and complex and ask us important questions, and in our Penetration segment I will be writing essays and doing interviews about how they are already doing it.  Please join me.

Looking with Book Eyes

I know I talk about Bioshock in every podcast.  I think I may have built it up in my own head beyond was it really was.  When I first played it it was amazing, all of it worked together to flesh out this world that kept slapping you and force your eyes open with it meaty fingers.  The period music that was cheerful, mournful, and eerie; it spoke of happier times, of being carefree, and then dropped in that dark, claustrophobic atmosphere it metamorphosed into at best irony and at worst derision, "How dare they?" it seemed to say, "How dare they believe they were above it all or that they were better.  How dare they think they could create something better and have no consequences!"  That it all fell apart on New Year's Eve and was somehow stuck in that day, a city that was to make everything better and brighter struck down in the infancy and promise of the new year, the sagging banners, the masquerade masks all of it hanging wretchedly covering the decay that had once been beauty.

Rapture was haunted and you walked through it seeing it's grandeur and its degradation, its promise and its secrets.  You could see its unraveling in a way none of its inhabitants could, and you could do nothing to stop it

The first scene, the plane crash, the light house, the bathosphere trip, wondrous and beautiful yet unsettling, and then when the bathosphere arrived in Rapture the horrible helplessness of the murder in front of your eyes and the fear that your were trapped and you would be next.  I had never been so pulled into a game, and I had never been so constantly engaged.

The Frags are going to do a special series of segments of looking at this game and others as we would a novel, examining it closely, breaking it down, looking at themes and symbols, analyzing characters and setting.  We want to see what games have that can stick with us and how they can speak to us.  We are calling this segment "Gayme Probe."  Please join us.