My PSN Card
So, there’s this article on videogames as art over at Bitmob.com.
Rob Savillo’s response is one that I was split on. I agree with his complaint about the use of classic rhetoric. We’ve come a long way in a few thousand years, we ought to adapt a new way to discuss our art.
However, I completely disagree with his assessment that critics have as much right to codify art as the artist. Critics have as much right to comment on art, talk about whether they like it, whether they think it’s good or bad art. But to define art is entirely outside their jurisdiction. I used the 3/5ths doctrine as an example of a time when consensus had nothing to do with truth. I’m not sure the argument landed, but I’ve reproduced my comment below.
My ultimate point is this: We need to talk about our art by using the scholarship of today and we need to recognize that even consensus does not equal truth:
The weird thing about the constant call back to classic rhetoric is that it ignores the constant evolution of art/commerce. It’s as if everyone has spent time in ONE class on art history or spend the day on Wikipedia reading about “Art” capital letter. Then, with no sense of the actual artistic community, they’ve decided what is or isn’t art.
The movie “Battleship” is probably not art, but that’s a matter of intent, not affect. If someone out there really believed in “Battleship” and created it with their own time and money, but thought: “This will be a commercial failure, but it’s something I believe in and something I want to say,” that’s ultimately all it takes to be art.
That doesn’t automatically make it good art, but we can open up an entire discussion about the arbitration of good vs. bad via the subjective.
I just finished a master’s degree in a field that is so “artsy” that it can make you sick. I’ve been nominated for awards by one publication, and then panned by another. It leaves me wondering, even as I move on to the next phase in my career, whether I’ve ever been good at what I do.
Spend time in one graduate workshop as an artist and find out that they’re all circles of people with different ideas about how to negotiate art and culture. One person will applaud the same choice that another derides. Meanwhile, the idea of what is or isn’t art gets debated by the critics. As if their conversations about it will somehow ratify it or exile it.
Sad news for everyone, artists included: No one agrees, least of all the people creating art. I once had a guy tell me that an entire piece I’d worked on was useless because I was a fan of Pearl Jam. This guy has an MA in my field.
People like Phil Fish make the same kinds of douche-bag sweeping statements about things like Japanese games—meanwhile a Japanese developer has created a hard-core darling in the Dark Souls/Demon Souls franchise. Even his clarification about “modern” Japanese games is one clearly created in a vacuum of his own ego.
We often find ways to ratify our own enjoyment, our own biases and our own prejudices. This means that there are people out there who really believe that EA is the worst company in the world, that Japanese games suck and that we can codify art and call it a day.
We can’t even agree on morality. Who should live or die. Society is still struggling with dialectics from thousands of years ago, the Catholic Church is still sending out thank you notes and apologies for stuff that happened in the 18th and 19th centuries. The U.S. government once ratified a document that listed blacks at 3/5ths of another human being—and people thought that sounded about right.
That may seem tangential, but the point is simple: We once had a legal document that devalued the humanity of an entire culture—and many of those injustices continued into the modern era. We’re not going to agree on what is or isn’t art, and any consensus, no matter how warm it makes us feel in our tummies, is going to revoke or ratify the art or works of another.
It’s intent. If you meant to make art—if you created a thing that you value and believe in, and you did it because you went to your seething continent and dragged back the wilds of your unconscious for all of us to view in menagerie—that is art. If you cynically created a piece of commerce in order to cash in on a commodity in a passionless vacuum—that’s not art.
But hey, even if I’m wrong about my definition, and Battleship the Movie is somehow art too—I’m not going to argue for or against it by using the voice of scholars that would have mistaken a film for sorcery.
One of the primary reasons for the recent streamlining of my blog was my recent application to the Guildhall at SMU.
For those of you who aren’t aware, the Guildhall at SMU is one of the top graduate programs for game design in the U.S.
Says who?! How dare you! But, if you must know, says the Princeton Review. SMU doesn’t have an undergraduate program, so I’m not sure how they’d stack up against all of those other programs, but #5 is pretty good.
I originally heard about the program from Ex-Bioware writer Drew Karpyshyn (Mass Effect, Knights of the Old Republic, Revan).
I was down about my first year of graduate school and looking for advice. He told me that Bioware hires a lot of their people from the Guildhall (in fact, one of the lead producers of Star Wars the Old Republic apparently said that Star Wars wouldn’t have shipped on time without the people they hired from the Guildhall).
Given that Bioware is at the top of my list when it comes to dream jobs, I can’t think of a better place to begin my work.
I submitted my application on April 6th. I should hear back within the month. I’ll let everyone know how it goes and I’ll even make my design examples available once my status has been decided.
In the mean time, I’ve got to wrap up my writing thesis and put my extended stay at UNT well behind me. Well, except the part where my wife is working on her second and third BAs at the university right now.
Is this what the song “Hotel California” was about?
How many times can Kotaku shit all over journalism before I take them out of my feed? I always worry that I’ll not have my finger on the pulse if I don’t at least know what gibberish they’re spouting, but the quality of their writing and their reporting is somewhere vaguely above “fanboy with a blog” status.
They recently did a podcast offering advice to people who want to write about the industry. Kotaku was offering HELP to people who want to figure out, “how are we so good at this guys!!??”
They’re the Fox News of videogame news coverage. It’s not hard to emulate that. Just talk loud and start a bunch of shit. Like Dane Cook, you can believe that the page hits make you successful.
So,
There’s a column on the Escapist website today about the potential Anonymous attack on “The Internet” scheduled for March 31st. That’s tomorrow if you read this in time…if you don’t, then we can assume that the world is in a post apocalyptic death spiral–gg everyone, gg (that means Good Game in the massively multiplayer world…and humanity seems to qualify).
After the column there’s a lengthy thread of “commentary” by “people” weighing in on how great or awful this will be.
One of my favorite responses came from a guy named Kieron Lees (A so-called “Top Commenter” which I assume just means “talks too much”):
“To be fair, if you people took the time to learn how the stuff you use actually works, this wouldn’t be a problem.”
I’ve copied/pasted my response to this and I’ll leave it at that…since no one will ever be able to use the internet to read this anyway.
“That’s actually not fair. It’s not a good argument just because it sounds clever.
If your logic worked, which it doesn’t (though no one is suggesting you learn how logic works) then you’d be told that same thing every time you go to a gourmet restaurant, a hospital, a guitar shop or a Gamestop.
Make your own beef Wellington, diagnose and cure your own illness, build your own guitar (don’t forget to construct your own strings) and if you want a game, build it yourself.
Nah, thats silly.
It’s like claiming that to be a great pilot you need to understand how to drill for oil, refine it into jet fuel and then drive the 18 wheeler to get it to your hangar.
Sometimes there isn’t enough time in the day to specialize in everything someone wants to fuck up and hold over your head.”
From his twitter account about 45 minutes ago:
I’m excited for this. Any gamer out there should be.
Peter Molyneux (Syndicate, Fable, Black and White, Milo) has a lot of bluster and a lot of unmet promises, but those two things only come from a man with true ambition and vision.
He sets out to do a lot, and often he fails at it. He sets the bar really high, so even when he face plants into it, he usually has really great stuff imprinted on his forehead.
Seeing that creative energy stifled by Microsoft (the same company that milked Rare and Bungie until they couldn’t stand doing the same crap over and over again) finally seems to have taken its toll. Why wouldn’t it? Molyneux has two titles in the works (other than the vaporware that Milo has become) and they’re both Fable games. I can’t remember the last time Pete (can I call him Pete?) did something that wasn’t Fable.
That’s a far cry from the times when everything he did was, in some way (big or small), innovating the market.
Does that mean that 22 Cans (his new company) is going to be a return to form? Well, if I could predict the future I wouldn’t be typing this, I’d be off in the singularity reveling in my godhood.
Still, as a mere mortal, I’m looking forward to what this could mean for the industry. It’s always nice when our brilliant minds break out of jail and start a riot with ideas.
-Steven
It’s official! Bioshock: Infinite finally has a release date. October 16th.
That happens to be my wedding anniversary, so I’m guessing I’ll get to play when the international players do. Then again, I might be working on my second Masters and sucking wind designing my own games.
If so, Bioshock might only be a thing we whisper about in the dark corridors of the Guildhall.
-Steven
I’m reading The Nerdists Way by Chris Hardwick, and it’s kicking my ass into gear.
One of the things I’ve not touched in the last month is the old MMO machine. I’ve got active subscriptions to both WoW and SWtoR and I still think both games have something to offer. However, what I’ve done instead is devote more time to my craft, my thesis and (obviously) my blog. Getting real production out of my daily grind has been far more rewarding than watching an avatar get slightly cooler looking vapor-gear.
My most recent attempt to make my real life into an RPG is the Nike+ FuelBand. It’s a little watch that tracks steps, calories burned, a thing called “Nike Fuel” and (if you’re really boring) it also just tells the time. It syncs up to my computer through a proprietary USB chord, or to my phone via bluetooth (at the press of a single button). I set daily goals, I get an adorable dancing robot if I hit my goals, and I’m always held accountable for how active I’ve been in a given day.
Wednesday I only had the band from about 3 p.m. to midnight and I logged well under my 5,000 Nike Fuel goal (about 3,600). Yesterday (Thursday) I set my goal at 3,700 to be reasonable and wound up with 4,602 Nike Fuel, 20,800 steps and 10.2 miles traveled.
If Sony comes up with a PS Vita app for the FuelBand and includes some trophies with it, I’d finally start to buy into the “Play Differently” mantra they’ve got going.
I’m all for EA’s “Project 10 Dollar” because the company makes all of their money from sales.
Seeing Sony adopt the policy for new PS Vita games, though fundamentally the same practice, pisses me off.
Sony is a hardware company first, a game developer and publisher second/third. They’re asking people to put up 250-350 bucks for a new (amazing) console. There is no back library of used or discounted games yet. It’s games like Lumines (great game, retail cost, no platinum trophy), Dungeon Hunter (40 dollar game that was 6-7 bucks on the iOS app store).
If Sony and other 3rd party developers are going to insult gamers with reprocessed games for premium cost, the least they can do is have a moratorium on the whole “Online Pass” situation.
If I’m paying 300 bucks for your console, a console that we already know can be manufactured for far less, then cut us some slack on early used game sales that help PROMOTE your system.
If, after the system has become more prolific (IF), you sense a need for the online pass–give it a go. But while people are still making a huge investment (loaded with risk as early adopters) you shouldn’t step on their throat.
You haven’t earned that yet.
So, I’ve spent the last several days enjoying (key word) some time with my PS Vita and I wanted to do a breakdown of the titles that I’ve tried out so far. Some of the things I’ve tried out are simply demos, but I’m doing all of this stuff on my own (meaning: without free games flooding my mailbox) so I have to pick and choose what to buy.
Little Deviants:
To put it bluntly, Little Deviants is an awful game. It’s one of the many reasons I wish I hadn’t bought the 1st edition bundle (the other being the 4 gig memory card). The mini-games are awkward (and sometimes derivative of themselves). What is supposed to be a tech demo for all the amazing touch abilities of the Vita is really just a cutesy, narcissistic failure of ideas. During one mini-game you sky dive through rings by using the accelerometer to aim your gopher. I was really enjoying it–for the first two minutes. This mini-game stretched on for ten stages (including three to four bonus stages) before wrapping up. By the time I got done I didn’t care about my score, I just wanted to be done. I didn’t want to play through the whole damn thing again to up my high score from silver to gold. Even if I’d had another ten minutes to spare, I wouldn’t have wasted it on the same repetitive task. The entire game is essentially a tech demo that’s been prettied up and padded to make it seem like a 30 dollar game. It isn’t. If it shows up somewhere for 5 bucks, by all means get it. If not, rent it, hate it, and move on with your life.
Uncharted:
Yeah, this game is pretty sweet, but it feels more like Uncharted 1.5 than anything else. It handles better than Uncharted did for the PS3, it looks better than any first generation PS3 title that was worth playing, and it is definitely an adventure. I don’t think I needed a to hack open cloth doorways for fun, nor did I need the return of six-axis beam balancing (one of my least favorite Uncharted 1 “features”), but it’s still a hell of a game. It’s not the best game for the PS Vita launch (which surprised me) but it’s not going to make anyone want to sell back their system. It should have been the game packaged with every system instead of Little Deviants. You should showcase what your system does best, not simply what your system does. I have a stove that can technically cook babies, but I’d rather feed you a pizza.
Dungeon Hunter:
There’s a reason this game is getting low reviews on even the Playstation Network. It’s a mess. The game is buggy, it suffers from slow down that I wouldn’t expect from such an ugly and simple game, and it’s boring as hell. Let me put it this way: even if this game had zero bugs and prettier textures, even if it did everything it’s supposed to do as the designers intended, it would still be the worst title at launch. At least Little Deviants is a crisp looking and sometimes fun experience. This title is a cheap ploy to cash in on RPG hungry Vita owners until something good hits the device later this year. Don’t get sucked in. Just buy one of the many great PSP RPGs from the Playstation Network and play them on the Vita upscaled (like I’m doing with Valkryia Chronicles II).
Rayman: Origins
This game is, in my opinion, the best PS Vita launch title. I downloaded the demo and replayed it about a half dozen times before I realized that it was just time to order a copy. Even my wife’s been spending some time with the game. She and I are both blown away by the visuals. I wish Mario 3D Land had shown the same level of polish and care when it hit my 3DS last year. I might not have put the damn thing in a box and ignored it since Christmas. Rayman is proof that you can take an old school idea and make it feel fresh. The game is the best looking game on the system, it’s probably the best looking handheld game I’ve ever played actually. Still, none of that would matter if not for the meticulous level design and useful (yet delicate) integration of the touch screen. At the very least, download the demo. It’s a fully featured demo that can be unlocked, so you’re getting a really accurate taste of what you can expect from the full title. Rayman is the game I put down just now to write this blog entry.
Lumines:
Check your internet bro. They’ll tell you that Lumines is one of this system’s killer apps already. If you like a good puzzle game at launch, but you’re bored out of your mind by Tetris after 25 years, this will probably hit the spot. Bekah (my wife) isn’t allowed to play Lumines because she will become obsessive about it and see it when she closes her eyes. This rule will also apply to the upcoming release of Plants vs. Zombies for Vita.
Escape Plan:
If Sony had to include a title that shows off the PS Vita’s many new ways to play, they should have chosen Escape Plan. Escape Plan is a game about a couple of test subjects escaping from an evil genius. Like Little Deviants, this title makes liberal use of the PS Vita’s touch screen, rear screen, accelerometer etc to swipe, tilt, squeeze and prod your characters from room to room. Unlike Little Deviants, Escape Plan knows it’s a portable game.
I guess the key might be that Escape Plan knows it’s a game at all. You progress quickly through the game’s many puzzles, which makes it fun and easy to replay a puzzle and try to better your star rating (you can earn 1 to 3 stars per level based on how many gestures you used to complete each level and how much time it took you). There are also special challenges (such as beating the game while dying fewer than 20 times) and hidden signs throughout the game for the player to discover behind genetically engineered sheep, trap doors, cages and stacks of bricks. The game is charming. The fat character jiggles. When your characters die a little number ticks up on their stomachs to denote which copy you’re on. There’s a laugh track to offset the violence and sadism. Best of all? It’s only 15 bucks. This is my second favorite launch title behind Rayman.
More Next Week
I’ll be activating my 3G model next week (I’ve decided to replace my First Edition Bundle for all the reasons you might expect). When I do, I’ll pick up my free copy of Super Stardust. I’ll also be checking out a few other titles as they make it to the rental shelf. In the mean time, I’m gonna get back to Rayman: Origins.
My PS Vita First Edition arrived today.
The free month of 3G is a little confusing, so I’ve not bothered signing up (I’m not even sure if I want Super Stardust HD…though I’d have snatched up a Dead Nation game on Vita in a heartbeat). I’ll wait until I’m sure I’m not doing something stupid before I plop down the 15 bucks.
As for the system itself–holy crap this screen is nice. I’d played around with one in a Gamestop last week, but the lights and the sunshine created a miserable glare that really highlighted all the peanut butter covered fingers that had been on the damn thing. Having one in my own hands is phenomenal.
I can’t wait for the Netflix app and I really hope the MLB app makes it to Vita as well. I already use my iPad to watch both on the go–but I also use my iPad for a lot of blogging. If I could watch an MLB (or maybe one day NBA) game on my Vita while I blog with my iPad it would confirm that I was born at the right time.
As for the games themselves? There’s a free app called Welcome Park that teaches you how to use each feature for the Vita. It even rewards you with trophies. In terms of being a series of mini games that teaches you how to use the system, it kind of does a better job of it than Little Deviants. I may talk about that game more in the future, but my initial impression is that I’d rather have 30 dollars. Why Sony didn’t include Uncharted, Rayman (3rd party or not) or even a voucher for a game is beyond me.
I wish we could arrive at a place in the digital world where the opportunity exists for the consumer to have more choice. I’d love someone to say, “Buy our new hardware and you can have any single launch title you like.” It seems like the least you could do for early adopters. It sure isn’t saddling them with Little Deviants–which is, at times, like playing with your own turds.
But man, that screen. Back to that wonderful screen. In addition to looking phenomenal, its touch features make life a lot easier. Browsing the store, scrolling through trophies, browsing the web (which will be better soon I hope) all feel perfect. I expect to pick up my PSP in a few weeks and be frustrated when I tap on the screen and get no response. It’s already that intuitive. I’m sure it doesn’t hurt that I’m in a big time iOS household.
I did an unboxing using my iMac, but I’m not sure that I’ll post it. You can find better unboxings in higher definition (with far perkier hosts). What I will do is follow up this post later when I’ve spent some time with Escape Plan. Until then, I’m off to form a second impression.
Steven Kilpatrick’s Twitter- TheMadSpin: @BrinaPalencia I look like the neighbor from Home Improvement. May 19, 2012
- TheMadSpin: Played Minecraft (XBLA) and Rock of Ages (PS3) in the last 24 hours. http://t.co/vbIy9tYi May 19, 2012
- TheMadSpin: RT @seethrumirror: At last, a peek of what I've been working on for the last year. So proud to be part of #ProjectCopernicus & @38St ... May 18, 2012
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