Gaming

Video Games and Later Behavior

May 8, 2014 By Ben Lane Hodson in Gaming 2 Comments

USA Today recently published an article about the effects of video games on behavior: Think you’re immune to video-game violence? Think again. There are some interesting questions raised in the piece and it’s worth a quick read.

A Passion for Video Games

It’s been a while since I ~~had time~~ made time for gaming. I love games and have spent many hours in online worlds, fighting bosses, and racking up achievements but for the past couple of years, every extra moment I have has been channeled more and more into creative pursuits (writing, making comics, filming, etc). I’ve also been a bit disenfranchised by the lack of innovation in gaming. I do make it a point to try out a lot of new games even for just a few minutes and I always read my Game Informer magazine each month to keep up on the latest releases and trends in gaming.

Gaming Studies

There have been so many studies on gaming and its effects that it’s hard to know what’s real anymore. Who to believe. One study says violence in games causes violence in real life while three more say the opposite. Others say gaming provides stress relief while still more say it causes anxiety and aggression.

Why this Study is Different

What’s interesting about this study is the sample size. Over 130,000 gamers were analyzed for this study. 381 factors were considered in the analysis and the big takeaway was:

“We found that violent video games unmistakably raised levels of aggression and heart rate, and decreased feelings of compassion toward others.”

I can accept that and tend to think it’s true even in my own gaming experiences but I’m not as clear on what the solution is. The article suggests we adhere carefully to the video game rating system (not a bad suggestion) but I wonder if the aggressive feelings are really a factor of the game’s violence or maybe have more to do with the difficulty and challenge the game presents which drives the player to focus and try harder to beat the challenge.

Either way, I’m glad we have studies like this and we are keeping an eye on the consequences. It’s something to keep in mind. There are many positive benefits of games that don’t get near as much focus and press and I’d like to see a little more balance as well.

The Dangers of Losing Track of the Vision

February 27, 2014 By Ben Lane Hodson in Gaming, Movies, Writing

I have little time to play video games lately but I never miss reading an issue of GameInformer, by far, the best video game magazine still available to hold in your hands and flip the pages. In the February 2014 issue, an article appeared that described the downfall of LucasArts, for a time, one of the most innovative and exciting video game studios in the industry.

You can read the article here: Fall Of The Empire: How Inner Turmoil Brought Down LucasArts

What caught my eye, besides the near complete disfunction of the organization’s management were the accounts of various meetings George Lucas had with the staff and development teams. Lucas seemingly had to give approval on any game concept that went into production but even after that, he would randomly hold meetings to review the games process.

What’s clear is that Lucas did not understand the day-to-day pressures nor the complexity of creating an innovative video game. I think the real issue here is that Lucas forgot the basics of storytelling as he had become so deeply wrapped up in his Star Wars universe, he lost the great vision he once had. It took on a life of its own and his own creation seems to have left him behind as it grew beyond.

Quoting from the article, one story told of how Lucas would make rash decisions that would effect the entire game production process:

“When Fracture was revealed to the public, its protagonist was a character named Mason Briggs. By the time the game launched, his name was changed to Jet Brody. A person who helped give this gun-toting rebel his original name recalls going through weeks of naming conventions. “Literally, whole teams sitting together, brainstorming what looks good – the first name, the last name, etc. Done, good to go.”

But then a phantom menace struck. George Lucas would periodically check in on the status of the games his company was making, lending creative input and advice. The developer I talked to sighs, and agitatedly says, “In one viewing of Fracture, [Lucas] said it looked really good, but he didn’t like [Mason Briggs’] name. We’re like, ‘What do you mean, George?’ He responded to the effect of, ‘It doesn’t really fit. When he jumps on stuff, he moves pretty fast. I like B.J. Dart.’

“So everybody’s like, ‘No, he’s gotta be f—ing with us.’ He’s absolutely not. So when something like that happened – in the middle of the campaign, mind you – we have to go back through that entire naming convention again… from scratch.” From that second session, Jet Brody was born. Coincidentally. Jett is the name of Lucas’ son.”

But this is the one that really cracked me up. I can’t imagine being in the room when this happened:

“A similar situation arose with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed’s protagonist, Starkiller. “[That name] was only supposed to be a nickname or call sign, not a proper name from the beginning,” a former LucasArts employee says. The development team hoped that Lucas would give Vader’s apprentice a Darth moniker, which at the time, was something that didn’t happen often.

“The team threw a Hail Mary to George, saying the game would have more credibility if the apprentice had a ‘Darth’ title,” a Force Unleashed team member says. Lucas agreed that this situation made sense for Sith royalty, and offered up two Darth titles for the team to choose from. “He threw out ‘Darth Icky’ and ‘Darth Insanius.’ There was a pregnant pause in the room after that. People waiting for George to say ‘just kidding,’ but it never comes, and he just moved on to another point.””

Lucas wasn’t the reason that LucasArts failed. Management, a changing market, and developers unable to communicate with marketing caused the implosion but this is a cautionary tale about working in a medium you do not fully understand. Game development is a collaborative process and making rash decisions without consulting the team on the ramifications was a huge mistake.

I’ll always respect LucasArts for many of the amazing games they released during their time. The article’s worth a read if nothing else than to remember to never stop learning and to be a little more humble.

Sequels, Prequels, & Reboots

November 28, 2013 By Ben Lane Hodson in Books, Comics, Gaming, Movies

Spend any amount of time reading comments at a movie news website and you’ll notice endless opinions lamenting the end of creativity in Hollywood. Wailing over the latest reboot to a classic film that didn’t need a reboot. Weeping at the next prequel to a movie we loved, that contains absolutely no tension because we already know how it ends. Gnashing of teeth at studio executives working on a sequel to a film that already has three films and is growing more tired with each entry.

How do I know there is so much anxiety over this? Because I’m one of those vocal people that bemoans the lack of unique and creative ideas whether it be movies, books, comics, or even video games. But as much as I’d love to have movie studios and publishers take more risks with untested and innovative projects, I’m afraid the general public has seriously out-voted me with their dollars.

Take a look at this graphic that shows the highest grossing films so far in 2013:

Notice anything familiar? In the top five alone, we have four sequels and one reboot. Of the 22 films listed here, over 2/3 are either sequels or reboots or based on existing properties in another form of media such as books. So why is Hollywood repackaging the same things over and over to us?

Because we buy them. They are a safe bet. For all the complaining from audiences about the lack of creativity, when Hollywood takes a risk on a new property, it won’t even come close to what they can make from an established franchise. The numbers prove that although we say we want more creativity, we don’t support it at the same level.

Why is Hollywood Obsessed with Blockbusters?

Vulture has a great article that describes this phenomena: Why Hollywood Is Caught in the Blockbuster Trap — and Won’t Break Free Anytime Soon. The bottom line is that they are running a business, and businesses want to limit risk as much as possible, and by focusing on established properties, they have the best chance to make the highest profits.

The Paradox of Creative Projects

There’s a bit of an ironic twist to new properties that find success. Pacific Rim, for instance, is a film this year that has a fun and interesting take on the monster / robot genre while not being based on any specific previous film or book. It did well at the box office (although not as well as a sequel would have). But here’s the ironic part. After Pacific Rim was released, fans turned out in droves to talk up the film online. They pleaded for movie-goers to get out and watch the film to support it. Why? So that it could get a sequel!

It’s all about the franchise.

When Will this Trend End?

Not anytime soon. The model is still working. In today’s market where more media is competing for your limited entertainment dollars, safe bets are the first priority. George Lucas and Steven Spielberg have been saying for a while now that what it will take to break this trend is a couple of big budget failures, all in one year, that cripple the studios and force to them to take a look at this business model.

When you have all your eggs in a few baskets and they crack, you are forced to re-examine your strategy. The hope is that the long term trend will be more of the big budget spread across smaller films instead of spent on one giant tentpole. This gives room to take smaller risks that have a higher chance to, at least, break even.

The best way to get Hollywood (and any other media publisher for that matter) to produce more new creative ideas is to vote with your dollars. Support the things that are new and innovative. Avoid the sequels, reboots, and prequels if you don’t want more of them.

Do Genres Still Matter?

October 28, 2013 By Ben Lane Hodson in Books, Comics, Gaming, Movies, Music, Writing 2 Comments

The movie Alien (1979) is a great example of a cross genre film. Is it Science Fiction? Well, they are in space, they are surrounded by technology and computers, they communicate with a machine called “Mother” and there is an android. Seems like you can easily check the box for “science fiction” but wait… Aren’t people getting killed left and right? Isn’t there a giant monster stalking people? Isn’t half the movie more about suspense and terror than technology? So maybe it’s a horror movie.

What we’re left with is a cross-genre film categorized as science fiction / horror or is it horror / science fiction? When you go to the store to buy the movie, you typically find the film in the science fiction section. But who decided that it was more science fiction than horror?

What is a Genre?

What does genre mean? How do we categorize something as one genre or another?

Setting
If it’s raining and your characters are haunting the back alleys of the 1920’s Chicago streets, there’s a good chance you’re in a noir or crime story.

Goal of Author
Many classic science fiction stories are more concerned with making a point than telling a story. The author’s goals play into what genre the story is interpreted as.

Type of Story
If you’re writing a romance, you better have people falling in (or out) of love.

Audience Expectations
If your readers are crime fiction fans, then they’ll be expecting clues to help them determine the murderer. If you provide superfluous details that might be right at home in a literary fiction, you may frustrate and confuse readers.

Everything is Niche Now

No matter what form of entertainment you’re talking about, things have become more niche. Whether it be books, music, movies, or video games, we’ve seen a merging of two or even more genres. Whereas pulp science fiction stories from the 1950’s had little characterization but heavy “science”, now we have deep characters, science, and even fantasy elements in many of the most popular science fiction books in recent years.

Chris Anderson, in his book, The Long Tail: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, predicted this evolution of popular media into ever more specific niches. With a virtually unlimited supply of content (where we are quickly heading with media), people will gravitate to more personalized content. Genres will have sub-genres which will have sub-genres into ever more specific and targeted layers.

So Are Genres Still Necessary?

If there are no genres, how do you describe a book? In fact, it could be argued that as the supply of content increases, genres play an ever more important role in giving us context and understanding. The problem is that when you have so many genres, they become confusing and meaningless themselves.

This is why I Ignore genres during first drafts. I don’t want to be boxed in. Genre is definitely helpful for me to describe the book to others once I have a good idea what it is turning out to be but I don’t necessarily sit down to write a specific type of genre. I work to make a great story and then let it go where it takes me.

I’m honestly not sure how we are going to find ways to categorize and understand the mass of knowledge that is growing exponentially currently. But for now, using genres and sub-genres is “kind of” working and it’s the best we’ve got.

The Day I Lost Faith in Blizzard Entertainment

September 11, 2013 By Ben Lane Hodson in Gaming

In 2007, my brothers and I did a summer road trip. We visited two of the biggest nerd attractions of the year: San Diego Comic Con (Biggest comic book convention in the world) and BlizzCon (Blizzard Entertainment’s fan convention). It was like three geeks going on a pilgrimage to a kind of nerd “mecca.”

My Love Affair with Blizzard

I remember playing Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness for the first time around 1996. We had two computers linked by a serial cable. I can’t begin to describe how amazed I was being able to play another person in a true strategy multiplayer experience. The armies seemed gigantic at the time as wave after wave of orcs and humans battled to the death.

Warcraft II: Tides of Darkness

1998 brought the release of one of Blizzard’s masterpieces Starcraft. The unit counts were higher, the gameplay more polished, and now there were three races to choose from. But online multiplayer via Battle.Net gave Starcraft a staying power that keeps it going even to this day. Playing over local area network until the early morning hours on weekends proved that Starcraft continued to be fresh and interesting no matter how many times I played it.

Starcraft

Then came Warcraft III, an absolute game changer. Whereas, an endless list of games had tried to capture the magic of Starcraft & Warcraft II by upping the unit counts and graphic quality, Warcraft III introduced an entirely new concept: heroes. Here came the ultimate “micro” game where you not only had to manage your armies but also manipulate your hero at the same time. It frustrated the die hard strategy players (who were used to the Starcraft strategy of “mass troops”) but the nuance of this game made it instantly my favorite. I even got so into it that I competed as a 2v2 team on Battle.Net, eventually reaching the top 100 best 2v2 teams in the world.

Warcraft III

World of Warcraft finally made MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) work for the masses. World of Warcraft made the previous user benchmark of Everquest (around 200,000 players) look like a “beta trial” by bringing in over 5 million players in its first year. I reached level 60 within less than two months of the game’s launch. (Yes, I wasted a lot of time on that game but it was SO fun).

World of Warcraft

So it was at the height of my Blizzard excitement, that we walked through the doors of BlizzCon 2007.

Blizzard Drops the Ball

Looking back, maybe it was a question of expectations. I knew Blizzard had finally “made it.” They were rich beyond their wildest dreams. Surely, BlizzCon would be magical. Compared to my experience at San Diego Comic Con the week before (which had been absolutely mind-blowing – meeting James Hong, the Blade Runner 25th anniversary panel including Ridley Scott, etc.), BlizzCon was a let down of epic proportions.

I was so distressed by the experience I wrote an open letter to Blizzard on the CrankLeft blog. Here’s an excerpt describing SwordBoy’s (my brother’s character name in WoW) experience trying to play the Lich King demo:

Swordboy goes and waits in line for an hour to play the Lich King demo. He finally sits down and selects a level 70 character to play (No, you couldn’t play level 80’s). He starts walking around, trying to figure out how to play the Death Knight class. He chats on GENERAL. “How do we play the Death Knight class?”. “You don’t”, says another player on the channel. “Its not playable at the conference.” Swordboy: “Then what are we supposed to do.” “I guess just walk around.”
I am not even joking. Blizzard announces the Death Knight class, the new Northrend land, and all they let you do in the beta was walk around in a single zone with a fake level 70 character. No Death Knight, no Rune experimentation, no new spells, no new talents. Some new enemy models and lots of trees (basically more of the same for WoW). Swordboy is so pissed, he leaves before his 20 minutes are up.

If you have the time, this is a funny read. I can’t believe how upset I was. The sarcasm and animosity just drips from this post.

Things Haven’t Improved

Frankly, it’s all been downhill since that day. I continued to play World of Warcraft for a few more years. Expansions came and went but the game basically stayed the same. One day, I realized I had other things to put my time into. The shine had come off the coins spent on the subscription.

Starcraft II arrived and ended up being a let down. It looked great to be sure but where was the innovation? A few new races, better graphics, new play modes but in the end, they could have just released another expansion for Starcraft that did all of this. My son and I played Diablo III. It was fun for the first few hours but it suffered from the same issues as Starcraft II. Amazing graphics, some new loot, and player classes but little innovation.

Where Do I Go From Here?

I don’t hate Blizzard. I’m happy they’re successful. I’ll always love the truly innovative games they built. I’ll continue to buy their products because they’re high quality and fun. But I won’t expect them to be innovators. At least not like they were.