It's fun to look back at what we thought the future might be.
It's why Tomorrowland was better before they updated it, and why Buck Rogers, The Jetsons, Star Trek and the like make us grin. It seems we've come far enough that Ghost in the Shell has entered this category as well.
Ghost in the Shell felt incredibly futuristic at the time of its release, and saw 2029 through a particularly Japanese lens-- a world of artificial humans, gleaming Tokyo skyrises, and rampant cybercrime by extranational organizations.
It's a world where people replace their bodies with mechanical ones and love jacking cables into their skull sockets, and today it all seems pretty silly, if still cool in its retro way. The original movie is almost 15 years old now, and the manga it's based on even older, so it has a right to be outdated.
But it makes me think about what form my version of a soon-to-be-retro future vision might take. And it mostly centers around the net, subconscious media, and the death of the written word. I imagine a world where each one of us is connected to the other by a digital "psychic" network.
I've been using Twitter from my computer and my phone, allowing me to see what my friends are up to at any given moment. Between blogs, social networking sites, and web-enabled cell phones we're capable of being connected to our chosen network of individuals and organizations constantly-- constantly, but indirectly. To update my current activity on Twitter, I have to access a web-enabled device, open up the software, type in the text, and upload the entry to the net; similarly, to check my friends', I have to access a web-enabled device, navigate to Twitter or refresh the page, then read their entry. Along with needing the physical device present, I also need to occupy multiple parts of my body-- eyes, fingers-- to complete any given transaction. Even a cell phone call requires at least my ear, if not a hand. All of this makes communicating with others a semi-exclusive activity which, when attempted simultaneously with another act, is distracting at best and dangerous at worst. In any case, it's cumbersome. At the root of all this is that we must input and output data physically, via our hands and sense organs. Our bodies introduce one step of remove.
I imagine a world where any required communications hardware is minuscule and acts merely as a relay-- it could be carried on something like a keychain or necklace, or maybe implanted subdermally if you're more sci-fi inclined. This device is keyed exclusively to the user's particular brainwave pattern, and transmits data directly into and out from the user's consciousness as pure knowledge. The sense organs are bypassed entirely, allowing the user to acquire new information without manually processing it via representation in the world.
Consider a present-day RSS feed from a news organization like CNN. Maybe I have it set up on my cell phone, and each time the RSS is updated, I receive the headline as a text message (I may reply to the message to receive the full story as a series of texts.) I feel my phone vibrate, open it up, check my new message, read it, and now I have at least the knowledge provided by the text: "Obama secures Democratic nomination," let's say. This process assumes I notice my phone has received a message, and that I am able to execute the required functions with my hands and eyes to receive this knowledge.
In the future I'm picturing, once I've attuned myself to the future version of CNN's news feed, each time the feed is updated I simply "know" what has happened. So, I've signed up, I'm driving along in my car, someone at CNN updates the feed, and within moments I simply become aware that Obama has been nominated.
It's a world where the collective unconscious exists as a literal entity. When a major news event occurs, everyone in the supermarket would instantly know what had happened, and be able to turn to one another and share their shock, sadness or delight without having received the information itself from an audio/visual broadcast, or relayed it via word of mouth.
From the invention of the printing press to the popularization of the internet, text has been the primary means of mass communication; the technology I'm picturing ("direct knowledge transmission"-- DKT?) would make the written word all but obsolete. Buildings could be wired to transmit information from limited-proximity nodes, making physical signage pointless: as one approaches a door they become aware that it's the men's bathroom, or better yet a map of the building is transmitted to anyone crossing the threshold onto the premises, providing the user with the foreknowledge of where their destination is and how to get there. Decentralized information would no longer be visual or auditory-- instead of using Google image search to look up pictures or video of a celebrity, you would transparently become aware of what they looked like, just the way you remember the faces of people you've met in real life. Many concepts could be received simultaneously by the user, condensing the act of processing a day's news into seconds, instead of the minutes or hours taken to read a series of news stories or watch a cable program. Foreign languages would no longer be a communication barrier, as your conversation partner's speech would be translated into your own language by the net in realtime and delivered straight into your brain. At any time you would have knowledge of your current bank balance, the time, date, phase of the moon, strength of the US dollar, what music your best friend is listening to, exactly how far you are from the corner of Market and Sixth in San Francisco (and how to get there from your current location,) so on and so forth-- the act of wondering about any given concept would send out a query to the net, and in moments you would become aware of the knowledge you seek.
I'm not the biggest sci-fi buff: is this vision of the future already an established one that I hadn't been aware of? Is it too out-there to be a feasible future at all, or will it soon seem short-sighted and quaint like Ghost in the Shell's mechanical humans? Imagine if we never had to type another word or make another phone call, but had more knowledge instantly available to us than ever before.
6.21.2008
Retro
6.16.2008
6.08.2008
Nintendo
6.06.2008
101
The highway is kind of horrific. I've been doing a lot of highway driving lately for my job (about an hour every day,) and it's the only place I'm routinely exposed to the indignity of death, at 80 mph no less. This morning I saw unidentifiable lumps of shredded meat between two lanes, probably a misguided forest creature but maybe someone's former pet? Who needs that in their head? On the off-ramp into Novato I saw a dead little spotted fawn curled up on the shoulder. I'll sometimes see people's dogs, golden retrievers and such, that apparently escaped from their truck bed or back window, pathetically laid out against the center divider.
I dunno, it's just strange how getting a new job has indirectly exposed me to seeing all these poor dead things. If I notice something in my peripheral vision along the side of the 101, I kind of dread looking directly at it, because who really wants to look over and see some sad, dead animal lying there in the middle of their morning? What a world!!
5.21.2008
Interviewed
A brief interruption to the Call to Arms: Michael Abbott has generously allowed me to contribute to his latest Brainy Gamer Podcast, by encouraging me to blather on and on in response to his thoughtful interview questions. Give it a listen to hear my thoughts on art school, Gears of War, and playing video games on the last day of your life.
5.20.2008
Call to Arms 2008
Entry 00: Puppy by Steve gaynor
Entry 01: Couples Counseling by LB Jeffries
Entry 02: Family Commute by JC Barnett
Entry 03: Last Call by Borut Pfeifer
Entry 04: Sellout by JP LeBreton
Entry 05: Resonance by Michael Clarkson
Entry 06: Strange Land by Steve gaynor
Entry 07: Jump by Duncan Fyfe
Entry 08: Potter by Steve gaynor
Entry 09: Survival by Coleman McCormick
Entry 10: Bubmershoot by Dan Bruno
Entry 11: Friends Like These by Justin Keverne
Entry 12: Bereavement in Blacksburg by Manveer Heir
Entry 13: Fruit of the Womb by Roberto Quesada
Entry 14: Peace by Christiaan Moleman
Memories. Feeling. Meaning. Conflict.
They can all be expressed through interaction-- games. Interactive experiences are driven by design. And we're all designers. Of any discipline involved in game-making, design's door is open widest. There is no barrier to entry. Players, artists, teachers-- we're all designers.
The challenge then is to express through interaction an experience that the player will find meaningful-- something novel, poignant, interesting, personal, or enlightening. As video game designers, we've explored a few forms of conflict with great fidelity: mostly direct and violent; mostly expressing the feeling of prevailing over one's rivals.
So, Fullbright proposes a public thought experiment; a decentralized game design symposium; a call for new takes on interactive expression. If we've succeeded by now in conveying feelings like "exhilaration," "fear," and "victory," and conflicts such as "individual power vs. strength in numbers," "man vs. rule system," "entropy vs. order," and "good vs. evil," the Call to Arms focuses on some more elusive aesthetics. Here's the procedure:
Below are my initial proposed feelings:
Next, my initial proposed conflicts:
This exercise bears something in common with Clint Hocking's "Seven Deadly Sins" elective from the Game Design Workshop; for a starting point, check out how one team of designers at this year's GDC expressed Gluttony with a card game. Alternately, note how BioShock used a character-based approach in expressing Altruism vs. Self-Interest, and whether its mechanics supported the implications of that conflict. Or, how Jason Rohrer explored the bittersweet melancholy of aging with Passage.
Scroll to the post below this one to view Fullbright's treatment of the sadness of loss for a simple example entry (and let it embolden you to be un-self-conscious about posting your own ideas!)
What is meaningful to you? How can that be conveyed to others through interaction? Design play to share that experience with others. Heed the call to arms!
3.16.2008
Requests
Things I'd love to see more of in video games today:
- Interactive conversation. Let me talk to NPCs, even if it's in a very conventional way. Dialogue trees are okay as long as I can be engaged in meaningful conversational exchanges with NPCs.
- Functional spaces. A house you could live in, not a movie set or dressed up tunnel. Bathrooms, kitchens, fire exits, storage closets. Apartment buildings filled with apartments, not painted-on doors lining the halls.
- Mundane places. Malls, gas stations, diners, houses, apartments, cafes, hotels, shops, offices.
- Living worlds. Places currently in use, populated with non-hostile NPCs. Not derelict, destroyed and empty ruins. Places filled with living people going about their daily business. Friendly, happy people being nice to you. Not dead worlds, where the only actors are the player and things that want to kill the player.
- NPC Mentors. NPCs who know what they're doing better than the player does and will lead the player through the world, adding life to the gameworld and giving the player an example to follow. Better than the old disembodied voice in the ear. Good recent examples: GUN's tutorial level featuring a hunting trip with your Pa; Call of Duty 4's Pripyat level featuring Capt. MacMillan as your mentor.
- Real-world clocks. Animal Crossing knew what time and date it was in the player's world, setting the events in your virtual town by the real-world clock. Day turned to night in your Animal Crossing town just as it did in your own living room; when you visited your town the next day, things had changed while you were away. Lends the gameworld a feeling of realness by implying that it keeps going even when you're not playing. Makes play of the game part of your everyday life in a low-impact way over the long term. Why haven't any other non-MMO games seized on this?
- Hand-scale interactions. Let me grab and turn doorknobs, pick up items, interact with computers, write & draw on paper, zip zippers and button buttons, slide open drawers, and perform other hand-scale tasks manually with full interactivity. Good recent examples: pulling and twisting the controls of Samus's ship in Metroid Prime 3; picking up items in Crysis; interacting with computer screens in Doom 3; most all the interactivity of Penumbra: Black Plague.
- Etc.
3.11.2008
Idealism
Three movies I love, which speak to anyone who wants to make a difference through the entertainment media:
Ed Wood -- Tim Burton's masterpiece. Profiles a strangely chipper lost soul of a man (Wood, played by Johnny Depp) who putters around film soundstages as a gofer but desperately wants to direct movies himself. When given the chance, he finds he's utterly unequipped to do so, flaunting his neuroses as he fails painfully and absolutely. Sometimes your best just isn't good enough, no matter how much you want it. Soul-crushingly sad and depressing for anyone at the bottom who dreams of one day making it big.
Barton Fink -- The Coen Brothers' surreal tale of a celebrated playwright's failed attempt to illuminate the plight of the common man, and break into Hollywood at the same time. While Barton's aloofness is unfortunate, his intentions are good; regardless, his minor sins are repaid with interest as his livelihood, family and everything he aspires to are crushed before him simply for trying to make great art.
Sullivan's Travels -- Surely part of the inspiration for Barton Fink. A minor film director aspires to create socially meaningful film about the plight of the common man (his dream project: an adaptation of "O Brother Where Art Thou," a made-up book spoofing The Grapes of Wrath and decades later the name of a Coen Brothers film.) His producers tell him he doesn't know the first thing about the common man, so he sets off on a journey of discovery, riding the rails dressed as a bum and accompanied by the plucky Veronica Lake. After many trials, Sullivan realizes that making stupid crap for the lowest common denominator to laugh at has value after all, and gives up on his high ideals of "art" and "social impact."
Any more to add?
2.23.2008
Thanks
Thank you to everyone I met over the last three days, who have made this my most incredible GDC yet (you know who you are.) It was wonderful meeting you all in person for the first time, and having that opportunity to exchange ideas and experiences, if only briefly. In the past, my most exciting memories from GDC were events; this year it was the people. I'm sincerely looking forward to seeing you all again soon.
2.06.2008
Concepts
A former colleague sent me this link which, as a fan of Monolith's games, I found really excellent. It's the flickr photo album of Monolith's art director, which includes concept pieces for the NOLF series and FEAR as well as sketches and studies from life. The drawings themselves are quite nice, and I always love seeing original concept work from great games. It's interesting seeing early sketches from FEAR that line up with comments I remember Craig Hubbard making about revisions that occurred over the course of that game's development: for instance, Jin was originally to be sniper support for the FEAR squad, which is why they gave her the red trigger finger on her glove; in the sketch here we see an early Jin with her rifle (which, by the way, appears to simply be the G2A2 with a large silencer attached. Not ideal for sniping considering how it handles in FEAR.) Similarly, it would seem that the ghoulish Assassins originally carried submachine guns. Lots of interesting behind-the-scenes insight to be found.
Oh, here's a funny connection I discovered while researching FEAR during my time in Texas: one of the main factions in FEAR is the ATC, Armacham Technology Corporation. Around midgame you raid their offices and mow down wave after wave of their private security force, including opponents in hulking powered combat armor, trying to discover the secrets behind Paxton Fettel and all the strange goings-on in and around the city's Auburn district. Displayed throughout their facilities are graphics and replicas of orbital satellites.
Funny thing is, the ATC first appeared in the backstory of Shogo: Mobile Armor Division, the first game that Hubbard was the writer and project leader for. According to an article on shogomad.com, Armacham is "one of the dominant megacorporations" in the Shogo universe:
Armacham Technology Corporation got its start with the manufacture of commercial satellites and ground-based communication systems. Eventually, they would expand to encompass civilian and military vehicle manufacture, musical equipment, security systems, and, predictably enough, MEV and MCA ["mobile combat armor"] technologies. Their MCAs (they discontinued their MEV lines after some early experiments) immediately caught the attention of the private sector and various military organizations alike.So, in both FEAR and Shogo, ATC manufactured communication satellites as well as powered combat armor for private and military use. Is the implication that FEAR and Shogo take place in the same universe, with the events of Shogo simply occurring many centuries further down the line? Going a step further, do the events of NOLF also take place in this same universe, some 40 or 50 years before the events of FEAR? I haven't seen any evidence of this last connection, but it's interesting to consider all three of these stories occurring within one strange little off-kilter alternate reality.
Well, enough geeking out for me! To get back to the point: I do wish more game concept art like the above were available, anywhere, in art books or online. It's nice seeing all the concept pieces in No More Heroes' New Game + mode, but why aren't all those concept works up online somewhere in high resolution (aside from a few nice images I found scattered throughout IGN's NMH screenshots?) IGN also houses a handful of gorgeous character concepts from Monolith's Condemned: Criminal Origins, but I unlocked all the concept art in that game and I know there's more to be found. Where's the rest of the great foundation sketches that led to the visual look of all my other favorite games? Granted I probably just haven't searched hard enough to find more of this kind of material, but it seems only the most wildly successful franchises make their concept art easily accessible, usually in the form of an expensive art book like the one for Half-Life 2 or World of Warcraft. Either that, or you get something like the anemic little "art book" that shipped with the Persona 3 special edition, which Atlus practically might as well not even have bothered with.
Have you got any good links to more video game concept art available online? Leave a comment, I'll appreciate it.
[Update: After a bit of googling, I found Creative Uncut's game art galleries. Much of it is devoted to concept art from fairly minor fighting games and JRPGS, but some interesting properties are represented including Bioshock, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil, Chrono Trigger, Okami, and Zelda. More resources to come, hopefully!]
[Update2: RPGamer has an extensive collection of concept art for nearly every RPG they list, both Western and Japanese. Click an upcoming, series, or other game title, then click "art." Their set of Mass Effect concepts is rather nice, for instance. Too bad the site is genre-specific.]
1.31.2008
Plush
Today a friend gave me a small plush Mario head. Somewhat distressingly it has a cavity carved out of the top of its skull, to function as a cell phone holder apparently. It's cute though.
The disembodied head reminded me of the profile select menu from Super Mario Galaxy, wherein the 3D-rendered heads of your Miis float and spin in space. And then I thought of the custom action figures you can order of your character in WoW. And the plush Weighted Companion Cube from Valve.
How cool would it be if you could upload your Mii to Nintendo, and they'd create a little plush version of its head as a keychain/cell phone dangly/cell phone holder/general purpose plush ball? Seems possible, considering the limited number of variables that can make up a Mii. What a funny gift to give to your friends: a little plush version of your own cartoon head. I'd buy one probably.
1.15.2008
Jaunt
Went on a bit of a voyage this morning. Well, more like a short jaunt. But I dug up some interesting material that I'd missed first go-round.
- I believe I came upon Magical Wasteland via his comments on someone else's blog (lovely how that works.) This post on industry keynotes is particularly scathing and hilarious (though I gather it's old news for those more attentive than me.) I was also happy to rediscover this awful piece of writing which I myself had noticed a while back.
- Via the above, I read through a good deal of Unobscured View, a blog on the business of game development by an honest-to-god industry veteran of 20+ years. This eye-opening post in particular might make one think very bad things about the prospect of entering into a deal with a large publisher.
- Borut Pfeifer is another blogger/developer who's had an article or two published on Gamasutra/GameSetWatch. His link collections are much funnier and more exciting than mine.
- I'm a year and a half late on this piece as well, but it seems terribly right-headed and sensible. I like to think that the article comes as a challenge: for game criticism to become a relevant field, we as developers need to get up and make games that are worthy of serious criticism. Easier said than done, but I'll give it a shot if you will.
1.07.2008
Fail
Yesterday, I walked out of my apartment to discard something on the curb. As I set it down, I noticed a middle-aged woman walking hurriedly up the sidewalk. She stopped at the corner and looked down the street, shouting, "Astor!" She turned around and walked back past my apartment building to the restaurant next door, which was just starting to get set up for its dinner hours. She peered inside and asked, "Did a little dog run in here?" She paused and went on, "Oh, my god. He ran away!"
Now this was clearly a setup for a subquest. I should have learned from games that I needed to approach the NPC and talk to her. I'd probably ask something like "What happened? Is there anything I can do?" She would have given me a task such as "search all the bushes in the area until you find my lost dog," at which point I'd go around shaking each bush until the dog ran out and reunited with its owner.
But I didn't. Apparently games haven't done a good enough job of shaping the way I approach situations in the real world. It's a shame, too. I could have leveled up.
1.06.2008
Resolutions
Today I went on another of those "great, all-morning voyages" of discovery through the internet. Via Jonathan Blow's blog, I found his and Chris Hecker's "New Year's Resolutions for Game Industry Newbies," which quite rightly suggests that anyone aiming to break into the games industry actually get up and make something great, which no amount of chatting with developers or reading industry news can make up for.
Elsewhere on Hecker's site I found his transcript of the original print ad for Electronic Arts, presumably from 1983 or '84. It seems sadly ironic now, more than 20 years later, to think of such noble (and still relevant) aspirations leading to the advent of more than a dozen Need for Speed sequels, the EAspouse debacle, and "one to three feature innovations per title."
I found a strangely moving elegy to the end of Bob Barker's tenure on The Price is Right through, embarrassingly enough, googling my own URL (the writer references "Evelyn" in a post about photography of the dead and dying.)
Finally, via GameSetWatch's most recent microlink roundup, I found SexyVideogameland, the blog of Leigh Alexander. In one of her posts, she profiles an extremely surreal and fascinating Japanese point-and-click flash game called "Guest House," which is worth playing through for its stifling atmosphere and wonderfully realized expression of dream logic (though I'll admit I had to look up a walkthrough to find the stupid coin hidden on top of one of the breaker boxes.)
The post linked from GameSetWatch contains scans and transcripts of Alexander's childhood Phantasy Star II fanfiction, hand-bound with a stapler and lovingly illustrated in glorious colored marker. It reminded me of all the reams of paper I'd filled with video game drawings as a kid, hand-bound with a stapler and illustrated in glorious colored pencil, a few of which I've held onto over the years. My earliest writings were illustrated stories based on Mike Tyson's Punch Out!!, which I was fairly obsessed with at five years old. Then I moved on to drawing my own versions of Contra, Double Dragon, and the TMNT arcade game, including pages of ideas for new weapons and levels. It's funny to think that it took me til halfway through college to realize I wanted to be a video game designer.
The final stop of my journey through the internet today was this piece of critical advice for bloggers, via Duncan's Hit Self-Destruct. It certainly describes my mindset for the first year of Fullbright, where I didn't even have comments enabled or a hit tracker installed. A lot has changed since then, and it's a credo that I need to always keep in mind going forward.
11.27.2007
Soldier
I read a quote last night in The Cage by Kenzo Kitakata:
"What good is a soldier who doesn't want a medal?"
11.05.2007
Muertos
The annual Dia de los Muertos processional was held last Friday in the Mission district of San Francisco. From the site:
The Day of the Dead is a unique festival that is the result of 16th century contact between Mesoamerica and Europe. Conceptually, it is a hybrid, owing its origins to both prehispanic Aztec philosophy and religion and medieval European ritual practice. Ceremonies held during the Aztec summer month of Miccailhuitontli were mainly focused on the celebration of the dead. These were held under the supernatural direction of the goddess Mictecacihuatl. Both children and dead ancestors were remembered and celebrated. It was also during this month that the Aztecs commemorated fallen warriors. According to Diego Duran, a 16th century Spanish priest, the Aztecs would bring offerings of food to altars in honor of the dead. They would also place small clay images that were supposed to represent the deceased on these same altars.
When the Spaniards arrived in the 16th century, they brought the Christian Holiday of All Soul's Day with them. This was a Roman Catholic holy day commemorating the dead in general as well as baptized Christians who were believed to be in purgatory. Spanish priests were quick to see a correlation between the Aztec and Christian celebrations so moved the Aztec festival from summer to fall so that it coincided with All Soul's day. This was done in the hopes that the Aztec holiday, which the Spaniards considered to be pagan, would be transformed into an acceptable Christian holiday.
The result of this cultural blending is an event where modern Mexicanos celebrate their ancestors during the first two days of November, rather than at the beginning of summer. While this modern festival has Christian components, it still maintains its indigenous Native American ones.
I love being back in the city. Attending these sorts of community events is like nothing else.
I only thought of Grim Fandango a couple times, honest :-)
4.23.2007
Evelyn
This weekend, Rachel and I went to Austin, TX. It was a lovely town that reminded me very much of Portland. There were a lot of vintage shops and a lot of tattoos. We even got to see March Fourth, the Portland goth-freak marching band/sideshow act play along with Austin's own White Ghost Shivers at Antone's on 5th Street downtown. It was a hell of a show. Day to day, we ate some of the best food I've had in what seems like ages. Seeing the trailers for the special events at the Alamo Drafthouse made me wish I could attend their screenings all year round. Our time in Austin was a wonderful few days, over too soon.
Also this weekend, Austin put on a "City-Wide Garage Sale" at the local convention center, which ended up being much more of a flea market or vintage bazaar in practice. There were a lot of tchotzkies and knick-knacks, jewelry, beads, old clothes and the like, but one booth in particular caught my attention: it was a seller of old magazine pages, from the earliest decades of the 20th century to the 70's. Full-page ads, illustrations, celebrity photos... and one section labeled "Bizarre." I came to it last and as I flipped through the selection I was presented with an array of shockingly morbid and sensational images, apparently clipped from Life magazine's Picture of the Week section in the 40's.
One picture of the week was a still of a woman's body falling through the air in front of a New York storefront-- according to the caption, she'd been perched on a ledge eight stories above, threatening to jump, and the photographer snapped the photo only a second before she met the earth. Another jumper was a black man who had been interrupted in his suicide attempt at the edge of the Washington bridge. He was being held from falling by a police officer and a priest; the photograph showed him only a moment after he wrenched free, his face twisted in a grimace as he began his descent to the river below. Another was of an overturned semi truck, the cab set aflame; through a small mangled gap in the carriage a young man's pleading face could be seen. The caption read something like, "as the flames roar about him, a truck driver pinned inside his vehicle begs for onlookers to find a gun and shoot him." Another was of a drowned boy being carried from a river bank.
I was shocked that any of these would be in the back pages of Life magazine-- how could images so raw and grim see national print? Was Life a different magazine sixty years ago? But one image of all of them stopped me cold and wouldn't leave my head:
The small caption, inset onto the photo itself, reads, "AT THE BOTTOM OF EMPIRE STATE BUILDING THE BODY OF EVELYN McHALE REPOSES CALMLY IN GROTESQUE BIER HER FALLING BODY PUNCHED INTO THE TOP OF A CAR" An excerpt from the facing page elaborates: "On May Day, just after leaving her fiancé, 23-year-old Evelyn McHale wrote a note. 'He is much better off without me ... I wouldn't make a good wife for anybody,' ... Then she crossed it out. She went to the observation platform of the Empire State Building. Through the mist she gazed at the street, 86 floors below. Then she jumped. In her desperate determination she leaped clear of the setbacks and hit a United Nations limousine parked at the curb. Across the street photography student Robert Wiles heard an explosive crash. Just four minutes after Evelyn McHale's death Wiles got this picture of death's violence and its composure."
I was instantly awed by the photo, transfixed. It's incredibly dramatic, and fraught with contradictions; I was amazed at how beautiful and elegant Evelyn looks, so peaceful, at rest. But of course the reminders of her state are unavoidable: the twisted metal and granulated glass that envelops her; the shoes lost and stockings tattered about her ankle; the way her hand grips her necklace, desperately, with a permanence. But her appearance is so delicate-- she's made up, with lipstick, and her dainty white gloves. There's no physical signs of bodily trauma, no blood, or limbs at tortured angles. Somehow it is an image of peace in a death where there should be none.
All that afternoon and the next morning I was thinking of her. I had to return to the garage sale and buy it. I couldn't explain why, and I still don't know. For some reason I felt that I needed to take it with me. The image is powerful.
Looking for an attachment for this post, I put her name into google. A grad student's homepage features the same image, and a story of the author being touched by the photo at a young age. She also shares that Evelyn was turned into Pop art by Warhol; the caption to Warhol's appropriation of the image reads much differently from both Life's and my own interpretation: "The repleated image of the body of a suicide, crumpled, twisted and almost unrecognisable within the near-abstract forms surround it, presents one more disturbing vision of disaster." This text, in my opinion, is utterly removed from the image itself, and what makes it so affecting. Evelyn is not crumpled, twisted, or unrecognizable; quite the opposite in fact is central to why her picture holds such power. She is whole, composed, graceful in death, almost as if not in death at all, but at rest, asleep, as the evidence of trauma billows around her, seemingly kept at bay by her own defiance of its chaos.
In any case, it's clear that I'm not the only one who's been moved by this photo over the years, and a copy of it is now in my home. It was an odd purchase, one I can't necessarily rationalize-- I haven't got anything to do with this picture but keep it in a drawer. But it was something I couldn't leave in that box in Austin, for whatever reason. I wonder what Evelyn would think if she knew that people born 35 years after her death would be touched by the image of her final sad, defiant act.
4.12.2007
Kojima
I'd been aware off and on that Hideo Kojima keeps (or I should
say, kept) a public blog, but had never taken the time to read through it. Today I started digging into his posts from the beginning, and I think they're quite fascinating. His posts focus very little on game design or theory in any way-- at most he mentions in passing the goings-on of the development process at Kojima Studios. Instead, his blog entries are heavily diaristic, and demonstrate that he is an extremely observant and reflective person. The detail of his descriptions of everyday occurences and abstractions of reasoning are interesting to follow; he has a unique viewpoint, and while I find game-based writing to be useful, I think I enjoy Kojima's observations on life at large more interesting than I would his notes on game design. It's a shame his blog didn't even last four months (late Sept. 05 to early Jan. 06) but the volume of writing during that time is generous.
Upon reading his blog, I felt jealous of Kojima. Not for any of the prestige aspects of his career, but for the simple daily amenities he describes. I miss living in a city where I can walk to anywhere I care to visit. I miss having trains to ride on. I miss ducking into a cafe or record shop on a whim, just because I'm passing-- of seeing people, masses, milling about the sidewalks. I miss the corridors of the city streets. Tokyo and San Francisco are an ocean apart, but the rhythms of the lifestyle aren't so distant. Living in Sugar Land is an exercise in isolation-- when I walk to a shop, it's down long, curved, four-laned streets, lined with nothing but fences until you reach the highway. The sidewalks are empty; there are no other people around, just cars with mirrored windows streaming by. Passing the occasional jogger feels like crossing paths with another nomad in the desert. A city like San Francisco is alive-- the streets are there to be walked by me. The streets here are just for the cars to get to a house or a store. Maybe one reason I like being in the office so much is because I'm surrounded by people there.
I'm also jealous of Kojima for all the photographs of his meals:
I wish my diet were more like that. Here, I'm limited either to what I bring from the grocery store (I'm not big on cooking in the office) or what other guys in the office want to eat out or order in. My grocery stuff is either soup or peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, and restaurant food normally consists of something like fried meat with sauce and bread. But rice, fish and vegetables-- it's light, always tasty, relatively healthy, and won't weigh you down in the afternoon. It is not Texas cuisine.
Kojima also writes often about the dreams he has. I wish that I remembered dreaming more than I do. The last couple of nights I have had some dreams, but that's the exception. I don't know if I'd dreamt anything before that since I moved to Texas. If I dream, it's usually the dreams of a repressed mindstate-- images of violence, sex, taboo. The recurring dynamic is of movement contrained, and for a long time was of careening down a highway, out of control. Pair those together and the frequent image was of myself in the driver's seat of a car that's gone out of control, constrained to the point of being unable to reach the pedals or turn the wheel. These images make sense metaphorically, but the more visceral blood & sex stuff makes less sense to me. Is my id really so eager to exercise itself?
I'm going to try reading the rest of Kojima's blog entries today or this weekend. I also picked up Metal Gear Solid 2: Substance for the PC the other day at a used book store. I tried playing through it when it was first released and just couldn't make it. The complete absurdity of the plot and the extreme long-windedness of the exposition couldn't motivate me through the gameplay, sparse as it was. I hope I'll make it through this time. I think it deserves another chance.
4.08.2007
Imperiled
I went to see Grindhouse last night. It was an awesomely over-the-top experience. I laughed, I cried, I got grossed out, I left satisfied. If you want pulp, this is pulp.
Partway through the second movie, I started to get a little impatient with the image of the Woman Imperiled driving the experience so hard. There's this narrative trope of the Woman Imperiled that's been around probably as long as men have been telling stories-- in movies anyway you could find it as far back as, appropriately, the Perils of Pauline, the innocent young woman tied to the railroad tracks as the villain looks on, twisting his mustache. There's a lot of that going on in Grindhouse, whether it's young women being imperiled by zombies, sadistic husbands, mutated rapists, or a psychopath with a deadly car. The only two possible outcomes of this situation are the villain being driven away or killed, or the young woman getting shredded to bits. Either way, it's not necessarily the outcome that's important as the source of the tension itself--young, vulnerable women being placed in great bodily peril by men for the viewer's entertainment.
Is it a domination fantasy on the part of the writer or director? Is the orchestrator of this kind of story subconsciously putting himself in a position of power over women? Is it a way of lashing out, excising all his psychological frustrations with women by focusing them onto a single fictional object of his own misogyny, under his complete control? I say 'his' because I can't imagine this trope being much employed by a female storyteller. Do women get off on seeing other young vulnerable women on the verge of rape or mutilation? Maybe it's telling, or maybe not, but Tarantino himself takes on the role of the mutated rapist in Planet Terror. Yes he gets his comeuppance, but is this part of the psychological play--the flipside of the aggression towards women, the need to be perpetually rebuffed--or a narrative concession? Lord knows not all the women in the films are as lucky as the ones in this particular scene. In the end, it is the retribution against the misogynist characters that drives the films and makes them satisfying, especially so for Death Proof. But something about the Woman Imperiled as a device for exciting the audience doesn't sit right with me. It feels so cheap.
The Woman Imperiled is an important part of video game history, from Super Mario Brothers to Double Dragon, Rolling Thunder, Ico, to Resident Evil 4. In games, the player takes on the role of the one saving the young woman, as opposed to that of either an impartial observer as per film or of the villain. So, doesn't this reinforce video games as a vehicle for young male power fantasies? Power over women, the ability to save them from harm as they can't save themselves. Does this dichotomy appeal to women? Can it? The nice thing about video games is that, as I've stated so many times, the gameplay mechanics themselves are more often than not completely detached from the narrative frame. Women can enjoy Super Mario Brothers for the jumping, stomping, and fireball-shooting without even acknowledging the narrative frame, but is that fair to the female player? A female player can enjoy Double Dragon for the fighting itself, but what of when they reach the conclusion, and are rewarded with a kiss from Marion, or alternately must fight their brother for her hand? Is that any kind of pay-off? Do women benefit from the sensation of male power associated with saving Yorda or Ashley Graham from peril? To necessarily detach oneself from half the game, especially in this day and age where story elements in games, if not more integrated with the gameplay, are still much more difficult to avoid while playing, cheats the female player out of the full experience.
The whole Woman Imperiled thing is human nature put on screen, the male/female conflict telling itself through fiction, but I wonder-- does this trope do anything more than reinforce the story, or the medium itself, as 'By Men, For Men?' If there's one thing that video games as a medium need, it's to be more inclusive, not less.
3.12.2007
Texas
Greetings from Sugar Land, Texas.
I've made the move and it's my first day at TimeGate. The project I'm working on seems to have a really solid groundwork laid for us level designers, and I'm looking forward to digging into the work.
Being in Texas is a sort of culture shock deja vu. I'm from Florida before I moved to the west coast 6 years ago, and this big, flat, hot, Republican suburban sprawl is a little uncomfortably familiar. On the way in from the airport, I saw a Support the Troops yellow ribbon bumper sticker, the loop of which was replaced with a cut-out of a Christian cross, on the back of an SUV. My first day included The Cheesecake Factory for lunch and Chili's for dinner. I'm just trying to keep my head low.
I'm planning to write up my impressions from GDC soon. There's a lot of ground to cover there, and hopefully I'll start on it when I get home. But for now, I'm off to complete my first day as a level designer.