Results of Ruminations

I recognize the fact that I haven't been blogging much, of late. The reason is 99% the fact that the school year started and 1% the fact that few read the blog in the first place—at least, those that read it don't comment much. I also suspect that the topic of the blog keeps most casual readers at bay, which adds up to 100% of the reason I haven't blogged in months being my own fault. Still, I have to express something that I had not anticipated feeling in such great quantities today: relief. We just got back from the OBGYN office for the 20 week ultrasound, and I hadn't realized how afraid I was of what was going to happen in that dimly lit room. For the last 18 to 20 weeks, I have been outwardly casual but inwardly fretful that there would be something wrong with the fetus—particularly its heart. People would ask which I'd prefer, a boy or a girl. My response was honest: I only want a baby with all of its organs. I couldn't care less about the gender. Well, th...

Because my baby is cute, and he'll soon be a big brother, I thought I'd do as a reader suggested and post some more pictures of the family. And... And... He's so cute. And probably insane.

I don't really use this blog as a chance to sound off on my political views. They are independent, mercurial, and complex. I'd rather save my blog for my video game thoughts, which are independent, mercurial, and complex—but a bit more apolitical. Still, as an educator in this fine Red State (not communist, mind you, despite what those within the state might think) of Utah, I have to sound off on the absolute absurdity that is being perpetuated as parents myopically threaten to pull their students from schools if said schools allow the President's speech to students on education to be broadcast during the school day. As one blogger noted: "Make this a Stay Home Tuesday, for the sake of Education. Talk about ironic." So that's irony number one: In order to educate children on how to be civil, understanding, well-rounded students—in short, to learn about others—some students will be denied an opportunity to learn what their current President has to say about edu...

There is great difficulty when approaching the Everyman that is supposed to be Solid Snake. His appearance in subsequent games--most canonical, some not ( Super Smash Brothers Melee and the Ac!d games come to mind)--has slowly, almost reluctantly revealed the explosive past and personality of a character who was originally designed to be more transparent. Hideo Kojima explains in an interview: "When I created the main character [Snake], I knew he is essentially the player...I wanted the character to be vague. That way, players will project their own personalities onto the character, and form a stronger connection with Snake." This technique is not unique to games, yet the tropes of transparent characters rarely see such success. Few narratives can readily rely on a blank Everyman, though some do ( Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest example). The result is perhaps crucial to Snake as an avatar. That isn't to say the character doesn't have personality or a past. The tr...

NOTE: As always, there's a standing spoiler alert for any game I discuss on this blog. Here, I will be talking about Metal Gear Solid for the first PlayStation. Most of the discussion will focus on and spoil only that storyline, but because the five games that comprise the saga (as of this writing, with MGS: Portable Ops taking a necessary place) are linked, it's important to know that some things may get spoiled if you haven't played everything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Liquid In a certain sense, Metal Gear Solid is Liquid's game. Ever one to want to emulate the Patriots--albeit a type of radical, hate-twisted emulation, similar to the one that he has for Big Boss--Liquid takes it upon himself to manipulate, control, and twist Snake's progress. If anyone controls Snake, it should be Liquid, not the gamer. The controller in the hands of the audience is happenstance, for the entire ballet of Shadow Moses is...

A full week earlier than my revised deadline allowed for, I met my goal of 100k words in Tales ! Cue the happy dance. The official word count is 102,709, which again is just the raw stuff. I have some chapters and scenes that I've written that count toward that goal, but ultimately I have or will delete them from the first edit copy that I will print out. Things are finally moving in a positive way, in terms of what I want to have happen, so it's possible that I'll be able to knock this thing out in the next seven to ten writing days. I don't know if that's realistic or not; the total word count would probably only be 120k-ish if I finished it that soon, but it seems like what I wanted all along from this book is right around the corner. It's exciting to be close to a feasible end, though the rewrite on this would/will be brutal. Whole swaths of the story need to be omitted, with new content created. But, as I learned with Words of the Silenced , it's much e...

Update time: Press Start has been getting fewer comments on my blog, which is only significant in that there are so few comments in the first place, so the disparity seems bigger than it actually is. I've been exploring Kotaku to get a bit of a pulse on what other gamers think, and though the site does a good job of making most of the comments worthwhile (instead of typical fanboy flame), it doesn't explore things the way I'm trying to do in the essays. This isn't a bad thing, necessarily, but it's something I've noticed. In terms of actual content, I've broken the 20k mark on the essays. Currently, the grand total for it is 21,382 words. I haven't received much feedback on my writing style for the essays, which is kind of a surprise. I thought that the language was a little more obtuse than I generally write. This stems from an attempt to be theoretical (so the verbiage is natural in that form), but also in trying to imbue more significance to what I...

NOTE: This one is best read as a follow up to the one about violence and the one about the next level of gaming. I am, admittedly, rather disappointed in this particular essay, but I want to see what others think before I scrap it entirely. Particularly the end—it smacks of being too preachy. You tell me. Also, there is a footnote. Just FYI. Death of the Avatar Roland Barthes in 'Death of the Author': “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (Image, Music, Text, 1977). Replace 'writing' with 'gaming', and we have a new instance of death within video games--indeed, may very well be the only death within video games that matters. “[Gaming] is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body [gaming].” Much has been said about t...

I wanted to throw something up here that is not video game essay related, for all of those peeps who take a gander at my blog every once in a great while. So I'm tucking in some pictures of Peter at the zoo, where we went after he had a visit with his cardiologist this May/June (I can't remember). It was a pleasant day, and it was also hopeful since Peter's next surgery won't be performed until next summer. Here he is, cheesing it at the camera whilst at PCMC. If you look closely, you can see his 'zipper'—the scars his chest bears for allowing him to live. Oh, real fast, here's a poem by Robert Frost that almost makes me cry every time I read it (relating to Peter): A Question A voice said, Look me in the stars And tell me truly, men of earth, If all the soul-and-body scars Were not too much to pay for birth. Here's a shot at the zoo. He's enthusiastic! You'll notice the excellent shirt, reminding you that I like video games. In case my blog coul...

There's a gap, somewhere, as necessary as a space between words, yet perplexing all the same. Video games are unique in many ways, but the most important here is the unreality of the experience, connected via a tiny umbilical cord (now wireless) streaming from the participant to the spectacle. This is not 'naïve realism' versus 'representative realism' or any other philosophical thought experiment. Instead, this is the real experiment of what can constitute definitions of reality, but placed inside of a virtual realm. The game is flat, despite having 3D graphics (or the redundant title of 'stereoscopic vision' being added to give the illusion of dimensional depth to games). The game is silent, despite having 7.1 Dolby Digital sound pumping through the speakers. The game is independent, despite being a console attached to a wall attached to a TV attached to a gamer. Perhaps in a quasi-Buddhist way, we could ask, “If no one is around to play the game, is it...

Games As Narrative or Play? Narratology versus ludology, an old question in a new medium of theory, has become stale and stalemate. Wark plays on this in Gamer Theory (67): But where gamer theory gets stuck is in the tension between thinking games through the forms of the past and the desire to found a--somewhat hasty--claim to a new 'field' or 'topic' of scholarship around some 'new media.' Is the game about story or play? Is the authoritative method 'narratology' or 'ludology'? Questions too ill-framed to answer. Theory cannot answer the question of which is better; the medium, though new, is touching upon a long-held understanding of both concepts. We have never been without play. We have never been without story. The melding of the two is not new, nor is it novel. For fear of sounding tautological: What it is, it is. The game rests on three pillars, as Stephen Dinehart explains. In his article " Dramatic Play ," he explores the thr...

I just tried out Safari on the PC. Hated every second of it. Didn't work at all like I wanted it to, despite the options claiming that it would. So I ditched it and tried Google Chrome. It's okay. I like the start page, but I was having issues with it going back a page when I pressed the arrow keys, so I went back to Firefox. This is version 3.5, yet the spell checker still can't handle being on in a field for longer than thirty seconds. * Sigh. * I can never win. On the plus side, Firefox has Xmarks AND Cooliris, two very useful little addons. The first one allows me to sync my bookmarks to any other Firefox—and Xmarks—enabled browser, regardless of the computer (useful when I get a new laptop from the school!) and the other allows me to look at images in a more streamlined, slick manner. So, I guess I'm content. I guess.

June's done. We're celebrating the nation's independence tomorrow (Happy birthday, America!), and things are moving along in my writing life. Peter is doing well (the potty training hasn't gone over very well, unfortunately), Gayle is spending a lot of time relaxing and painting murals, and all in all we're very content. I look forward to the school year somewhat reluctantly—I love my job, but I love my summers, too. It's hard to say that I'm ready to go back. We'll see how I feel in a month. Writing Update So here's the scoop for my current projects: Words of the Silenced : I have been doing heavy rewriting (expected, pleasant, but time consuming) in version 2.0 (how do you decide what gives it a new number, anyway?) and am really enjoying the way the story is flowing now. It makes more sense, and just seems better. The downside is that I should be at least a dozen chapters through by this point, yet I'm only finished with chapter 9. I can see ...

NOTE: This is a long one. It's also a lot more theoretical than conversational. If you have a question, please feel free to post so that I can try to be more clear. There is little debate on what the greatest debate is when it comes to video games: Does the imaginary violence of the game translate into violent behavior in the real world? It seems to be very much a 'depends on your point of view' type of argument. Not only does it depend on one's point of view, but also the particular study itself, what it focuses on, and how well it's managed. It is also important to note the rhetorical tricks of the debate*, since most of the data are coming from second or third sources. But I am no statistician, so numbers do nothing to help me to understand the issue. In fact, numbers about this argument are superfluous, since the entire point of gaming (whether the gamer/designer/critic is aware of it or not) is the individual as the ideal. Let's look at violence, then, shal...

I see this kind of thinking from my students quite a bit. If it weren't true, it wouldn't be funny. The funny thing is, this is true—which is actually kind of sad. Thanks to The Onion for this. I wouldn't recommend viewing too many of their shirts, as not all are that worthwhile. Though I like this one... and this one... Funny.

I finished it! After three weeks, I finally managed to finish Simulation and Simulacra. It's 165 pages......and, as the pictures reveal, I spent some time trying to wade through it. The colored tabs represent different ideas and quotes that I found worthwhile, a lot of which will end up in Press Start . I'm pretty excited. Oh! My thumb is visible! Go thumb!

NOTE: If you haven't played the most recent Prince of Persia games, please be aware that I will not tell you when spoilers erupt from the essay below. This blog post is full of them. Also, the formatting in this blog is different from how I actually wrote it. Don't worry about the lack of italics or bold or whatever. It just doesn't matter enough for me to change it. Also, there is a footnote at the end of the essay, but it is not hyperlinked. Chalk it up to laziness. Blast From the Past I have a distinct memory of my first experience with Prince of Persia. It was the original Apple II game from 1989, developed by Jordan Mechner. In it, the gamer controls the dynamic hero through a set of fiendishly difficult traps in an attempt to save the princess. Standard fare, by all counts. My memories are a bit blurry, in part because I was still very young. I don't think the game was new when I was first exposed to it, but even then I can't be sure. I do remember this: I was...