Seriously, Who Comes Up With These Things?

So if you haven't heard there's a new browser-based free-to-play (at the start) game called Miss Bimbo. The game revolves around creating a virtual "bimbo" that the player has to purchase food and accessories for, maintaining a certain weight and height in order to be "the most popular bimbo". The game is marketed to young girls (tweens) and has gotten a large amount of press, particularly for the option to have plastic surgery and breast enhancement within the game.

Here's The Guardian's take on it.

Feministing's (The most professional "extreme" feminist site I've come across) article. You have to scroll down to find it since they don't let you link directly to their articles.

And last, but not least, Leigh Alexander's via GameSetWatch take on it. I especially appreciate the comparison with GTA that occurs towards the end of the article (girls aren't the only ones who face unrealistic expectations).

Honestly, I agree with each of these articles, and while I believe that Leigh Alexander's take to be the most "adult", I'm not sure if I would let my daughter play this game. Perhaps if it had taken a sarcastic approach, helping girls realize how absurd their ideas of what the world expects them to look like really are, then this wouldn't bug me. But as it stand, a game where being the biggest bimbo is a good thing just seems rotten to the core to me.

I Got To Work On My Module!

Egads! Time really snuck up on me today, though I kind of expected it to, what with starting a new game (Zelda: Twilight Princess - really been meaning to play this game just because I've heard so little about it, Michael Abbot's "The Brainy Gamer" recent discussions on the Zelda series (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3) solidified my resolve) and finally getting to work on my module.

I've decided for my module that rather than going through and creating options for every character archetype in each of the dialogues, I would instead have a sort of personality quiz at the start of the module which would determine the "path" that your character will follow. Unfortunately this meant that I had to spend the better part of the day coming up with the questions, coming up with answers, and creating a matrix of all of the possible permutations and deciding what each one should mean.

Still, I finally got to work on my module again!

Additional random link: Study finds that sleep-deprived women are grumpier than similarly deprived men. Personally I wonder whether the women become grumpier from being sleep-deprived, or if they become sleep-deprived because they're grumpy.

P.S. Attended Sakuracon dressed as the Moonlight Knight (roommate went as Tuxedo Mask). I'll post pictures and impressions when I get around to it, which hopefully means this week if homework isn't too demanding and I don't forget.

My Brain Feels Like Runny Egg-Yolk

I just watched Kings of Power 4 Billion % and it absolutely destroyed my mind. I do not recommend this movie if you are: squeamish, a non-gamer, dislike atonal music, or have any sort of problems with epilepsy.

For everyone else, go and watch it so you can discuss how absurdly ridiculous and positively disturbing of a movie it is.

If you really want to know why this post is so short, just watch the movie and you'll know.

How Did I Not Realize This

Lately I've been noticing small little details in games a lot more; little things like how a character's eyes will follow objects that they can interact with, or idle animations have caught my eye more and more. I think I'm starting to realize how little, in games at least, the big picture matters if these little things are ignored.

It really shouldn't surprise me; I've known for quite a while that Shigeru Miyamoto will have a special garden-esque area created for his Mario games where he can just run around and see how things feel, make sure that jumping on a goomba feels appropriately squishy and springy. Yet it wasn't until now that I truly understood how important for a game it was to get this, "tactile" feeling. If a game doesn't respond the right way, doesn't feel right, or looks odd, I lose interest.

It reminds me a lot of the "uncanny valley" problem that digital artists are running into when trying to model faces. Things look similar enough that you notice the lack of details and it makes it look "off". The same thing happens in games when a character doesn't look at who he's addressing, or when the controls don't match what's happening on the screen; you can't quite describe what's wrong, but you know that it is."

Now that I think about it, I can't come up with a video game that I like that has this kind of problem, where things don't feel right. Even Chaos Legion, a game that in all respects classifies as "mediocre", everything still feels right.

The devil really must be in the details.

Day In Summary

Why there isn't a real post today:

8:30 A.M. - Wake up and start studying for exam at 12:30
9:20 A.M. - Go to class to find out it's been canceled
9:30 A.M. - More studying
12:20 P.M. - Head to exam
1:50 P.M. - Have lunch and start doing homework
3:00 P.M. - Start writing post
3:15 P.M. - Find this and this online by the same guy who did this (warning do not watch unless you are prepared for absurd action sequences involving sexy video game girls)
3:30 P.M. - All previous thoughts rendered useless
8:00 P.M. - Go shoot down terrible short stories
9:00 P.M. - Ah fuck I'm going to be writing this at 1 again aren't I?

There's a lot more in between, but those movies really destroyed any coherent thought I had for the rest of the day. Honestly, I'm just glad I saw them after my exam.

Why Can I Never Write These During The Day?

Back from my break and boy do I feel rested and relaxed, and by that I mean I feel stressed about my test for tomorrow and I'm writing this post at one o'clock in the morning. In all seriousness, this break did me a world of good. The break relaxed and recharged me, and I got a lot of good advice and ideas for my future. However, one thing I noticed over the break, which was especially apparent at the Chuck panel at Paley Fest (more on that tomorrow), was how foreign gaming culture and it's references are to most people. I've been thinking a lot about this idea lately, so expect a few more posts in the next couple of days.

Until tomorrow, good night.

Taking A Break

I'm taking a brief hiatus for Spring Break to recharge my batteries, as I'm barely able to write this post. Basically last week all of the UPS campus "hit the wall" in a general fashion and it's become a common to see students curled up on benches or next to piles of books sleeping. I'll be back posting by next Monday, until then have a fun weekend!

I'm Not Even Sorry

Homework and Balloon Invasion means no post for tonight.

Poetry?

So I randomly came up with this poem while trying to write a sonnet for my poetry class:

He beats me up,
Puts me down,
Picks me up,
Then makes me frown.

He makes me laugh,
Makes me cry,
Gives me half,
Then makes me want to die.

He's my hero,
My greatest foe,
I'm nothing but a zero,
Compared to my big bro.

I'm not exactly sure why I've been thinking about my brother lately, but this is the result. Also, I'm not done talking about yesterday's subject and plan to continue discussing it when I have the time to give it a proper treatment.

P.S. 4 days until brawl.

One Foot Forward...

And another step back. I always find it funny that when women aren't allowed to do something or go somewhere, it's sexist, but when it happens to a man it becomes progress.

As a man, over the course of my life I have been asked to think of things from a woman's point of view more times than I can count. "Imagine yourself as a woman in 13 century France," "imagine yourself as a woman in Victorian England." Never have I been in a class where we were asked, "Imagine yourself as a large, sweaty viking in 7th century Sweden." While there are exceptions to this, in my experience, this one-sided way of thinking and being taught has led to surprisingly large lack of knowledge about men and the male experience in women today.

Don't believe me? Last year in my Literature By Women class, I and the two other males in the class had to explain to the entire class (of 34) the concept of "urinals". Perhaps my favorite quote comes from a shy girl who timidly raised her hand and asked, "So it's like a trough?" I then proceeded to tell her that troughs are in fact used in many restrooms, particular at sports arenas. This is in no way the only case of a lack of knowledge about the male experience I have encountered in my time at UPS. It is, in fact, bad enough that I have been working on a lecture on manliness as a concept, as of the the women I have polled on this campus, none of them have understood it.

I don't have any more time to talk today, but I'll be back tomorrow to continue this subject. If you're really good and leave some comments I may even have a teaser of my lecture on manliness. Also I apologize for the shittiness of these past two posts, I haven't had the time to write posts that I normally enjoy, which allows for things like proofreading.

P.S. 5 days until brawl.

Let Me Count The Ways...

Today I realized just why I love Threads of Fate as much as I do. For those unfamiliar, Threads of Fate is a PS1 action RPG with two playable characters that each have their own intertwining storylines. With that out of the way, there are three reasons I love Threads of Fate.

First off is the music, which is of production values high enough that it takes you aback at first. Honestly, the music is so well done it seems almost jarring against the PS1-era polygonal graphics.

Second is the brisk pace at which the game moves; even accomplishing all of the side quests you can get through the game in a couple of sittings.

Third, and I think most important, is the fact that nothing you do in that game is useless. Killing useless monsters nets you both MP and coins that can be turned into money, which can they be used to by permanent stat upgrades. Getting hit increases your hp, and using magic does the same for your mp. Honestly, as long as you aren't just running in circles outside of combat in this game, you are accomplishing something. Tack on New Game+, which lets you keep all of your stats from before, and you have a game where even losing a boss fight has a use.

All of these features, plus interesting characters and a narrative that never reveals too much, and you have got yourself a gem of a title.

P.S. 6 Days until Brawl.

Will You Be My Player 2?

As a child I watched my brother play games from afar, always intrigued by what he was doing on the NES, but not clever enough to grasp the complexities of his favorite titles, Pirates! being perhaps his most cherished. As I grew, however, I learned how to play on my own. My skills increased greatly, but I still felt that urge to watch him at work.

As my skills increased even more, watching became less desirous; I wanted to play with my brother. Early 2-player titles like Mortal Kombat curbed that desire somewhat, but I still felt "off". It seemed odd that in order to have fun in a video game with my brother I had to play against him, which could only end with my defeat or his. Neither of these conclusions seemed best to me, and I wondered if it was possible for us both to enjoy the spoils of victory together.

It was during this period of conflict in my life when some wise soul purchased Secret of Mana for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES). Secret of Mana is an extremely unique title; it was one of the first action-rpg's, but that pales to the fact that a second or even a third player could plug in a controller and take control of one of the three protagonists, the boy, the girl, and the sprite.

Imagine if you will, that you are a little kid whose role-model is his bigger brother. Got it? Now imagine that you are this same child and someone gives you a key that takes you and your brother to a magical world where the two of you have to work together in order to become heroes and save this world.

I was in heaven.

I became so enamored with this game that I pestered my brother to play it with me every single day. My brother eventually grew disinterested in the game, and while he humored me for the most part, he played less and less as time went on. Eventually my requests to play became irritating to him, and I had to ask him in nicer and more obtuse fashions. It grew to the point where I could no longer even mention the game's title, referring to it instead as S.O.M. Finally, one day, he stopped playing the game entirely.

My brother and I still played games together, and if a game had the words "Co-op" or "2-Player" on the box we would almost always pick it up. We had fun with these games, but it was never that same kind of journey as Secret of Mana once held for me. As we grew up my brother's attention shifted away from video games, while I grew to love them more and more.

The years passed and I grew interested in Secret of Mana once again; the desire to finally beat it expanded within me. In my spare time I played, and soon enough I was rewarded with the end credits.

I was happy that I had finally beaten the game that truly inspired my love for video games, but I couldn't get over the feeling of sadness that the end had instilled in me. During the final sequences, the boy, in order to save the world, seals away all of the magic in the world, so his ally, the sprite, is forced to leave his friends forever as he is a part of that magic. The final shot of the boy and the girl overlooking the mana tree had me in tears.

My brother always played as the sprite.

I love my brother, he is one of the greatest people I have ever had the privilege of knowing. He was an amazing friend to me as I grew up, and an even better brother.

One day I hope to sit down and beat Secret of Mana with him.

Together.

Mask of the Betrayer Impressions

Well Mask of the Betrayer was a very good expansion for Neverwinter Nights 2; it fixed all of my major complaints with the NWN2, made the game significantly less buggy, and gave me more toys to play with in the toolset. As for the bad, well the story continues straight from the end of NWN2, but the narrative from that game is almost completely ignored. The best example of this is that there is an optional quest that lets you question one of your old party members from NWN2 about the fates of the rest of your companions. This party member proceeds to give you one sentence answers detailing how your friends and allies from the last game managed to survive or were horribly crushed under a pile of rubble. No interaction, no looking at some old data to see your influence levels or anything like that, just bam, your best friend from the last game's dead, time to move on.

My other complaint is that once again your companions start to feel like nothing more than combat puppets towards the end of the game. While they gave your allies a lot more dialogue and personality, it still wasn't enough, as your allies just stop having anything new to say as the game comes to a close, which is when they really should have the most to say. Another awkward thing is how much influence they gave you, I had maxed out my influence with all my party members before I was a quarter of the way through the game, which felt really odd. Is it too much to ask for a game where they just give you one or two companions that really are fleshed out, have their own motivations and can have new dialogue that keeps up with the plot?

Oh right, Persona 3.

-This post is short and lazy because o the same reason as the last post. I am feeling better, so by Sunday I should be back to my perky self and ready to put some actual work into one of these posts (like proof-reading, or learning when to use paragraphs, and how not to use parenthesis every three words).

Anything Behind Me Didn't Exist

When asked how I felt today I answered, "I feel like only moving in straight lines." Clearly I am tired or sick or something, so no post tonight.

Why Do People Hate Sequels?

The Matrix, Pirates of the Caribbean, Lord of the Rings, what do these three have in common? They're all movie trilogies whose sequels (Matrix Revolutions, Dead Man's Chest, The Two Towers) received major criticism, usually to the tune of, "while good, not as revolutionary as its predecessor." These sequels, while good, were graded harsher, because they brought nothing new to the table; they didn't appear as revolutionary as the first in the series, yet they were usually technically and narratively superior (ignoring The Matrix). Basically sequels get a bad rap.

The same rule applies in video games; expansion packs and sequels never receive as high of review ratings because they don't, or should I say, cannot revolutionize the genre in the same fashion as the original. Thanks to these views sequels are a rarity, especially in the realm of RPG's. It boggles my mind why, after devoting so much time and resources to creating these vast and detailed worlds such as those that appear in the final fantasy games, and after spending hours getting the player to get to know the characters involved, that they abandon it all every single game. Of the RPG's I've played, I can only come up with three that have sequels or expansions that carry their worlds on. These three are: Final Fantasy X-2 a game nearly universally reviled for its dress-up system and sequel nature, Neverwinter Nights 2 Mask of the Betrayer an expansion that all but ignores the narrative it is expanding upon, and Shin Megami Tensei Persona 3 FES an expansion/sequel that was only recently announced to have an American release. For those who are taking score, I loved FFX-2, it filled in major gaps in FFX's narrative and allowed Yuna to develop over the two years between the games, a design decision that almost all avoid; I'm having a great time with Mask of the Betrayer right now, it fixes all of my major qualms with NWN2, though I do wish it did more with the narrative from NWN2; and Persona 3 gave me a full cathartic experience that all but eliminated my fear of death and allowed me to overcome what I have felt were some major flaws in my character. I cannot describe how happy I am that one of the RPG's that I felt has made the most significant strides in creative a cohesive narrative with the player is getting an expansion.

Also, very tired, might be a little sick, that's a huge paragraph. So to sum up:

Why the fuck are RPG developers not making more sequels!?

FFX-2 wasn't a bad game, you're just afraid of it because the color pink is in it.

I loved Persona 3.

PERSONA 3 FES COMING TO AMERICA!!!

That Is All

Dear Human Race,
Please stop looking for meaning where there is none. Enjoy things simply for what they are.

Sincerely,
Coryn Spencer Ragsdale

Art Is Art

Art and politics, according to those I study, my professors, and my peers, are an inseparable combination. According to everyone around me, art cannot continue to exist unless it performs a social function.

These people are wrong.

Art's only function is to be pretty, sound good, entertain. Art is not here to inspire revolution. It is not a painter's job to fix the inequities with society; all he has to do is make pretty pictures. To force politics, social function, onto art, be it a painting, a poem, a movie, is to kill the creative spirit in that piece. Making a political statement through art grounds your piece in a single time frame one-hundred years from now, nobody is going to care about the presidential race of '08, but works like DaVinci, Michelangelo, Monet, these will live on for centuries to come.

Art is art, that's all there is too it.

My Best Friend Dumped Me In Elementary School

I miss my best friend. I have really good friends up here in Tacoma, and really good friends down in Portland over the summer and winter school breaks, but none of them are my "best friend". I miss having someone to talk to that I could reveal any secret whatsoever and know that he would still back me up. I miss the guy that would play F-Zero for five hours with me only to put the game back in the SNES and keep going. My first, and last, best friend moved away sometime between third and fifth grade in elementary school, and it really breaks me up that I can't remember when. We still hung out and kept in touch, but as the years went by he got more and more distant, and by the end of middle school I didn't count him among my current friends anymore. Since then I've never had anybody who was close enough to really qualify for the role aside from my dog, but even he'd betray me for nothing more than a treat.

My big question right now is if I want to be looking for one in a girlfriend? I mean, it seems to me that this is exactly what one would want. I hung out with my best friend every single day I could and we never got bored of each others company, all of my best times were with him. To me these "best friend" qualities are what I would want in a romantic partner as well. The problem with this is that if I'm looking for a best friend, then that's only going to raise my expectations beyond their already absurd levels, which is something I'm trying to combat. I dunno, maybe I just feel that I've gone too long without a best friend, or maybe it's been too long since I saw my dog.

-Apologies for short post, I'm feeling a little down if you couldn't tell and I have a test tomorrow that I should be sleeping for.

That's So Retarded

Today was yet another eye-opening experience in what appears to be my enlightenment over the last few weeks. The event that changed my view of the world occurred while I was sitting in my nutrition class listening to the class argue for and against artificial sweeteners and artificial fats. The argument started off simple enough, with each side trading facts and studies between each other, but it soon become a bash-fest against American eating habits and consumerism, with Europe and the "Mediterranean Diet" as their lord and savior. I realized that these people, the ones who cited opinions as facts, and couldn't even stay on topic for thirty minutes were college students, just like me. The girl who was vehemently arguing against artificial sweeteners in diet sodas while she sipped from a diet soda, was a college student like me. These were not innocent boobs off the street, these, dare I say, morons, got through the same entrance exam and attending the same university as I. I then realized that my university was one of the toughest on the west coast, so the people at other colleges are more likely to be stupider, and then there were those who didn't go to college, and then those who didn't graduate from high school
, etc... In essence, I learned that the world is comprised of retards.

I wish this weren't the case. I wish that everyone was intelligent, but that's not the case and it never has been the case. There were, however, checks in place to stop idiots before. If a dumbass was too stupid to coat his tent in honey, a bear would eat him. These days there are signs, warning labels, paid professionals whose job is to keep people from harming themselves with their own retardedness, and it's only getting worse. I remember going to playgrounds and learning to not slide my hands over wood because it gave you splinters, not to jump on wet metal because you'd slip and crack your skull on the monkey bars. These days playgrounds are all plastic and retarded. Playgrounds used to have huge spires and other random elements that were perfect for the imagination, now you have cubes with holes in them. We need to stop retard-proofing the world, it's only keeping them in the gene pool longer, and it's making it worse for the rest of us.

I do not apologize for my use of the word "retard", because PC people are retarded, because everyone else knows exactly what I meant and that I wasn't slandering the mentally disabled or whatever the fuck.

Synonym For Maybe?

I think I'm in trouble. I realized today that I don't size up girls in the same fashion as my friends. While I do size-up girls, there's no doubt about that, but all of my friends seem to stop their measuring once they've determined that the girl is a possible and desirable romantic interest. I don't stop there. I test these poor women with every scale in my disposal, and I think I know why. I'm not interested in a romantic tryst, it just seems like a waste of time on everybody's part, and I'm too forward thinking for that.

No, I believe that my problem is that I'm looking for a partner, someone who I could possibly share the rest of my life with, which nobody at my age is interested in. It's a problem on two ends as well, I mean it's a problem in that I evaluate the women I meet as potential partners, and of course very few of them are going to meet that kind of standard on their own, and on the other side of the coin it shoots me in the foot in the dating scene. This "problem" is why I think I got so bored at my last date, we talked and I realized that this girl wasn't what I was looking for in any sort of long-term relationship, so I immediately turned off on her. It's funny, in a time with one-night stands, cheating boyfriends, and divorce at an all-time high, my problem is that I'm too ready to commit.

I'm not entirely sure how to tackle this problem, how to lower my entrance exams if you will. But at least I understand a bit more about myself. Perhaps the key lies in just not caring so much, letting things come as they are and to stop worrying so much. Maybe I just need to stop worrying about girls.