Over the last three weeks I've been making various changes to my personal contract, as the need has warranted. Various things, like needing to make a doctor's appointment, have made me experiment with ways to move requirements around to make room. Taking up judo turned out to complicate things a bit, because all told it takes four hours out of my day. Some days have seen me skip it, and others have involved late nights catching up. (Another complicating factor has been my inability to get out of bed as early as I should.) I've had to account for the couple of nights when, for one reason or another, it just wasn't a good idea to stay up as late as it would take to finish everything. I made a lot of changes, sometimes several times in the same day as I thought of better ways to implement what I had in mind. My desk contains a decent stack of the different versions I've printed out and signed.
All that said, I consider this contract a success. It's given my days structure and forced me to be productive most days to a degree that I used to be pleased with achieving once a week. It's kept me from going stir-crazy. I've managed to keep to the essential rule, that I would amend it and sign a new copy rather than violating it, and that has kept me from blowing the contract off. Even if I meant to lighten the load a bit, having to sit down and write out what I intended kept me from taking the sort of advantage that I would regret later.
Today I made the biggest change to the contract, and cleaned up and streamlines the other provisions along the way. The main change was to make room for judo by removing two hours of work from the days when I practice, and adding an hour to my Saturday requirement. I cleaned up the language concerning holidays and days when I missed my quota. If the exact language is of interest to you, here it is:
Other than that, not much to report.
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
Sequel Syndrome
I'm admittedly late to the game with this, but there's something baffling to me about movie sequels. I just watched Ip Man 2 and, while I don't want to run that movie down too much, it got me thinking about this again.
I call it a syndrome, first, because "sequelitis" is taken. TV Tropes offers a wide but not comprehensive list of symptoms and occurrences. Second, I call it a syndrome because I, at least, can't pin down a single cause. (Perhaps, like many modern diseases, the underlying pathogen is confirmation bias.) Sometimes a sequel's just worse. Sometimes there's someone or something you can blame, but not always.
So, I liked Ip Man a lot. The story has some parts that you can only accept because it's a kung-fu movie, and other parts that are just absurd. It is, at heart, the story of a man who overcomes adversity by boldly being able to. Still, there were some genuinely subversive moments that made it good to watch even when nobody was punching anyone.
I only heard about Ip Man, though, because of a glowing review I read of Ip Man 2 in Seattle Weekly. The sequel's score stands well above the original's on Rotten Tomatoes, so I was quite excited about 2 after seeing 1.
Girlfriend caught it before I did, but Ip Man 2 is basically Rocky IV. (Actually I think if Sylvester Stallone had thought to go to Sammo Hung for his fight choreography from Rocky II on, the world would be a substantially better place.) It also occurred to me belatedly that the original audience wouldn't have identified at all with the white antagonist, making the movie possibly less morally complex than it had even seemed at first. I am actually aware of nothing that Ip Man 2 does better than its antecessor, which is why it's so weird to me that the critics should prefer it. Is there something wrong with movie critics? (I notice that RT's audience ratings line up better with my own opinion, which lends itself to that theory.)
Anyway, Ip Man 2 has the same writer and the same director as Ip Man, as well as rather too much of the original cast. As a writer (finger quotes optional), I'm inclined to say it lands at the feet of the writer, but I can't say what constraints he, or anyone else, was working under.
It might be useful to look at some other sequels that suffer from similar symptoms. Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man, and Casino Royale all recently yielded inferior sequels. The first two changed writers, and the last one changed directors. Yet they all seemed to fall flat on so many levels, including what just looked like lazier editing from the returning directors and lazier scripts from the returning writers. Were they bored?
(I'm also of the opinion that the whole problem starts with The Godfather Part II, but if you think that that one was better than the original I won't fight you over it.)
Thankfully there have also been some recent exceptions. Carriers, if you will. Spider-Man and Batman Begins both had sequels that were actually better. Spider-Man changed writers completely, but Batman kept the same writers and added Jonathan Nolan to the mix (and I'd be surprised if he didn't have any influence on the first one). However it was done, neither one of them slackened off.
(On a side note, The Dark Knight Rises apparently has the same writing team as The Dark Knight, which, according to the evidence examined so far, suggests that... nothing.)
There's one common thread among all of these. It's subjective, but we're talking about art, so, yeah. A sequel basically has to have a new character, since a good original takes its cast to the natural result of their interactions.
The new character has to be strong enough to change the dynamic of the movie. Otherwise you just end up with your sequel's protagonists retreading the same arcs they went through last time. See Quantum of Solace, in which James Bond relives the last five minutes of Casino Royale, chasing down a bad guy who's so inert that the big reveal about his evil scheme doesn't make 007 bat an eyelash. See The Godfather Part II, whose most interesting character is dead before the movie starts, and whose present-day storyline unfolds pretty much exactly the way the end of the first movie implied it would.
On the other hand, need I go into a long explanation of the significance of the Joker in The Dark Knight? Or, take the progenitor of superior sequels, Terminator 2. The important new character in that movie actually isn't the T-1000 or John Connor; it's the original Terminator, back but with a completely new set of motivations.
On the other other hand, there's the sequels whose new characters are just weird and annoying. Not to name names.
And while the quality of the new characters is more of an indicator of overall quality, it's not perfect, and it still looks like another symptom, rather than a definitive cause.
Nor can we just say that a franchise/character/premise has run out of good ideas. Iron Man 2, Ip Man 2*, and Spider-Man 3 (sigh) both suffer from an overabundance of plots. What they needed was to be pared down so that subplots would have room to grow naturally, instead of being crowded out by competing real plots.
I could go on like this but I think my thesis is still that the cause is still unknown. Study must continue, though, for only then do we stand a chance of finding a cure.
* I feel the need to point out that Ip Man, unlike the other entries in this list, is a person's actual name. While I admit to comic book heroes being overrepresented in this post, he is just a real person with a name that's a bit unfortunate to Anglophones.
I call it a syndrome, first, because "sequelitis" is taken. TV Tropes offers a wide but not comprehensive list of symptoms and occurrences. Second, I call it a syndrome because I, at least, can't pin down a single cause. (Perhaps, like many modern diseases, the underlying pathogen is confirmation bias.) Sometimes a sequel's just worse. Sometimes there's someone or something you can blame, but not always.
So, I liked Ip Man a lot. The story has some parts that you can only accept because it's a kung-fu movie, and other parts that are just absurd. It is, at heart, the story of a man who overcomes adversity by boldly being able to. Still, there were some genuinely subversive moments that made it good to watch even when nobody was punching anyone.
I only heard about Ip Man, though, because of a glowing review I read of Ip Man 2 in Seattle Weekly. The sequel's score stands well above the original's on Rotten Tomatoes, so I was quite excited about 2 after seeing 1.
Girlfriend caught it before I did, but Ip Man 2 is basically Rocky IV. (Actually I think if Sylvester Stallone had thought to go to Sammo Hung for his fight choreography from Rocky II on, the world would be a substantially better place.) It also occurred to me belatedly that the original audience wouldn't have identified at all with the white antagonist, making the movie possibly less morally complex than it had even seemed at first. I am actually aware of nothing that Ip Man 2 does better than its antecessor, which is why it's so weird to me that the critics should prefer it. Is there something wrong with movie critics? (I notice that RT's audience ratings line up better with my own opinion, which lends itself to that theory.)
Anyway, Ip Man 2 has the same writer and the same director as Ip Man, as well as rather too much of the original cast. As a writer (finger quotes optional), I'm inclined to say it lands at the feet of the writer, but I can't say what constraints he, or anyone else, was working under.
It might be useful to look at some other sequels that suffer from similar symptoms. Sherlock Holmes, Iron Man, and Casino Royale all recently yielded inferior sequels. The first two changed writers, and the last one changed directors. Yet they all seemed to fall flat on so many levels, including what just looked like lazier editing from the returning directors and lazier scripts from the returning writers. Were they bored?
(I'm also of the opinion that the whole problem starts with The Godfather Part II, but if you think that that one was better than the original I won't fight you over it.)
Thankfully there have also been some recent exceptions. Carriers, if you will. Spider-Man and Batman Begins both had sequels that were actually better. Spider-Man changed writers completely, but Batman kept the same writers and added Jonathan Nolan to the mix (and I'd be surprised if he didn't have any influence on the first one). However it was done, neither one of them slackened off.
(On a side note, The Dark Knight Rises apparently has the same writing team as The Dark Knight, which, according to the evidence examined so far, suggests that... nothing.)
There's one common thread among all of these. It's subjective, but we're talking about art, so, yeah. A sequel basically has to have a new character, since a good original takes its cast to the natural result of their interactions.
The new character has to be strong enough to change the dynamic of the movie. Otherwise you just end up with your sequel's protagonists retreading the same arcs they went through last time. See Quantum of Solace, in which James Bond relives the last five minutes of Casino Royale, chasing down a bad guy who's so inert that the big reveal about his evil scheme doesn't make 007 bat an eyelash. See The Godfather Part II, whose most interesting character is dead before the movie starts, and whose present-day storyline unfolds pretty much exactly the way the end of the first movie implied it would.
On the other hand, need I go into a long explanation of the significance of the Joker in The Dark Knight? Or, take the progenitor of superior sequels, Terminator 2. The important new character in that movie actually isn't the T-1000 or John Connor; it's the original Terminator, back but with a completely new set of motivations.
On the other other hand, there's the sequels whose new characters are just weird and annoying. Not to name names.
And while the quality of the new characters is more of an indicator of overall quality, it's not perfect, and it still looks like another symptom, rather than a definitive cause.
Nor can we just say that a franchise/character/premise has run out of good ideas. Iron Man 2, Ip Man 2*, and Spider-Man 3 (sigh) both suffer from an overabundance of plots. What they needed was to be pared down so that subplots would have room to grow naturally, instead of being crowded out by competing real plots.
I could go on like this but I think my thesis is still that the cause is still unknown. Study must continue, though, for only then do we stand a chance of finding a cure.
* I feel the need to point out that Ip Man, unlike the other entries in this list, is a person's actual name. While I admit to comic book heroes being overrepresented in this post, he is just a real person with a name that's a bit unfortunate to Anglophones.
Saturday, January 21, 2012
You are what you eat
It's almost Saturday again, and I'm trying to think of something to post other than that nothing much has changed since the last time I posted. I've made incremental progress on a lot of things. I've been researching video games (no, really) for another article pitch, and brainstorming adventure ideas. Plugging away at Nenle and Death. At least some parts of it have gotten to where I want them.
One disappointment is that the whole 72-hour response thing I expected from Paizo turns out to be a very old estimate. Like other venues, the normal wait can apparently get into months. So, I am still waiting, and coming up with other ideas mainly as a change of pace from other sorts of writing.
I've wanted to take a page from Alexandra Duncan's book (her metaphorical one, not her real one) and make a list of my media intake over the year. Where it seems to get tricky is that I haven't finished anything since the beginning of the year. Should I add something to the list when I start it, or when I finish it? What if I stop? Also, what if people who give me presents read my blog? What if I don't get around to reading or watching or playing everything I have? That's not really a what-if at all. I think I will always have a backlog of media, as I find things interesting at a significantly faster rate than I take them in.
On further thought, I figure I might as well try it. I can always take it down if I decide it's too much trouble. So, the guideline I'm using is that if I go to it twice, or finish it, it's on the list. This is to keep things off that I pick up once and never go back to. Things (like League of Legends) that I only do once but am pretty certain I'll go back to make the list too, though I'm more lenient about video games than books or television, and if I don't get back to the media in question in a reasonable amount of time I'll take it off the list. Anyway, I'm not going to claim to be reading Pope's translation of The Odyssey because I'm far from sure I'll pick it up again. Not to speak ill of Mr. Pope, of course, but in this day and age a little bit of that sort of thing goes a long way.
Lately I've been watching The X-Files. Almost at the end of season one. Skipped the episode about the Jersey Devil because of some sort of technical issue, or possibly boredom. Girlfriend and I came to the show as a compromise. We were looking at Netflix. I wanted Star Trek: The Next Generation, and she wanted Law and Order. I think we found a pretty satisfying middle ground.
I remember coming to that show very late (it premiered when I was eight). I think David Duchovny was gone already at that point. I liked it then, so I'm generally liking the older stuff a lot. Not that it's all good. There was the bit with the sentient computer that communicated entirely in sinister computer puns. And I think that "Born Again" and "Roland" may in fact have been the same script used two weeks in a row.
I was singularly impressed with "Beyond the Sea," which, as the 13th episode, I believe would have been the series finale if things hadn't taken off. It would have been a good one if that were the case. For one thing, it turns out that I really like Brad Dourif (and by "really like" I mean that when he wants to, he terrifies me). Mostly, or largely, though, it was a meditation on evil and skepticism and desperation that completely ruined my mood in the way that good art sometimes should.
I haven't spent nearly as much time as I've wanted to playing Skyrim, which is almost certainly a good thing. My opinion, on the whole, has been going up. Just after I started complaining that the world was too safe, I started hitting monsters that scared me, and even ran away from the end of one boss fight to come back to it in a few levels. I still don't much care for anyone I've met yet though.
One disappointment is that the whole 72-hour response thing I expected from Paizo turns out to be a very old estimate. Like other venues, the normal wait can apparently get into months. So, I am still waiting, and coming up with other ideas mainly as a change of pace from other sorts of writing.
I've wanted to take a page from Alexandra Duncan's book (her metaphorical one, not her real one) and make a list of my media intake over the year. Where it seems to get tricky is that I haven't finished anything since the beginning of the year. Should I add something to the list when I start it, or when I finish it? What if I stop? Also, what if people who give me presents read my blog? What if I don't get around to reading or watching or playing everything I have? That's not really a what-if at all. I think I will always have a backlog of media, as I find things interesting at a significantly faster rate than I take them in.
On further thought, I figure I might as well try it. I can always take it down if I decide it's too much trouble. So, the guideline I'm using is that if I go to it twice, or finish it, it's on the list. This is to keep things off that I pick up once and never go back to. Things (like League of Legends) that I only do once but am pretty certain I'll go back to make the list too, though I'm more lenient about video games than books or television, and if I don't get back to the media in question in a reasonable amount of time I'll take it off the list. Anyway, I'm not going to claim to be reading Pope's translation of The Odyssey because I'm far from sure I'll pick it up again. Not to speak ill of Mr. Pope, of course, but in this day and age a little bit of that sort of thing goes a long way.
Lately I've been watching The X-Files. Almost at the end of season one. Skipped the episode about the Jersey Devil because of some sort of technical issue, or possibly boredom. Girlfriend and I came to the show as a compromise. We were looking at Netflix. I wanted Star Trek: The Next Generation, and she wanted Law and Order. I think we found a pretty satisfying middle ground.
I remember coming to that show very late (it premiered when I was eight). I think David Duchovny was gone already at that point. I liked it then, so I'm generally liking the older stuff a lot. Not that it's all good. There was the bit with the sentient computer that communicated entirely in sinister computer puns. And I think that "Born Again" and "Roland" may in fact have been the same script used two weeks in a row.
I was singularly impressed with "Beyond the Sea," which, as the 13th episode, I believe would have been the series finale if things hadn't taken off. It would have been a good one if that were the case. For one thing, it turns out that I really like Brad Dourif (and by "really like" I mean that when he wants to, he terrifies me). Mostly, or largely, though, it was a meditation on evil and skepticism and desperation that completely ruined my mood in the way that good art sometimes should.
I haven't spent nearly as much time as I've wanted to playing Skyrim, which is almost certainly a good thing. My opinion, on the whole, has been going up. Just after I started complaining that the world was too safe, I started hitting monsters that scared me, and even ran away from the end of one boss fight to come back to it in a few levels. I still don't much care for anyone I've met yet though.
Friday, January 13, 2012
Want/Do not want
Dipping my toes in the waters of trying to get things published, I've learned some interesting things. My first pitch to Cracked got turned down, on the basis that its appeal would be too narrow. I understood that. Someone's got to look at the bottom line. But I realized something important.
I didn't want to publish that article.
I wanted it to be published, yes. But the concept was a little weak. The research was a little thin. Without the flag of a major comedy website to fly over it, I don't think I would have been willing to put it out there with my name on it. I wanted someone to tell me it was a good idea, but in a vacuum, I wouldn't have called it a good idea myself.
It will return as an item in a broader, better article pitch.
Now, yesterday, I was having a little fun. I was doing some of my obligatory writing for the day but at the moment I wasn't feeling right to work on Nenle and Death (I got to it later). I happened upon something I knew about already: a poem called "The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den."
It's a neat little poem written in Classical (i.e. 2,000-year-old) Chinese, made up entirely of tonal variations of the sound "shi." It was whimsical and amusing, but the translations I found were clinical and not much fun to read in their own right.
Having some time on my hands and needing to write, I adapted the translations I could find into my own "translation," which was less accurate but more fun, I thought. Now, I used the word "translation" enquotedly there because I can translate Chinese like I can translate Koala, which is to say that I cannot, even a little. I took the thrust of the translations I read and gave them a rhyme and a rhythm.
The end product amused me, so I decided to post it here. First, though, I checked something. I discovered, to my surprise, that while it's written in a 2,000-year-old dialect, the poem is from the 1900s, by a linguist named Chao Yuen Ren. He was illustrating the whimsical point that simple romanization won't work for Chinese languages. The point, though, is that the poem is not in the public domain, and, much to my dismay, I can't just do whatever I want with it. So, sadly, my adaptation, which I think has the potential to get a smile out of someone, can't legally see the light of day for 15 to 40 years, depending on whose copyright laws apply. It made me sad.
This was the same day my Cracked pitch got nixed. The difference in feeling was an interesting lesson in the difference between wanting to publish, and wanting to be published.
I didn't want to publish that article.
I wanted it to be published, yes. But the concept was a little weak. The research was a little thin. Without the flag of a major comedy website to fly over it, I don't think I would have been willing to put it out there with my name on it. I wanted someone to tell me it was a good idea, but in a vacuum, I wouldn't have called it a good idea myself.
It will return as an item in a broader, better article pitch.
Now, yesterday, I was having a little fun. I was doing some of my obligatory writing for the day but at the moment I wasn't feeling right to work on Nenle and Death (I got to it later). I happened upon something I knew about already: a poem called "The Lion-Eating Poet in the Stone Den."
It's a neat little poem written in Classical (i.e. 2,000-year-old) Chinese, made up entirely of tonal variations of the sound "shi." It was whimsical and amusing, but the translations I found were clinical and not much fun to read in their own right.
Having some time on my hands and needing to write, I adapted the translations I could find into my own "translation," which was less accurate but more fun, I thought. Now, I used the word "translation" enquotedly there because I can translate Chinese like I can translate Koala, which is to say that I cannot, even a little. I took the thrust of the translations I read and gave them a rhyme and a rhythm.
The end product amused me, so I decided to post it here. First, though, I checked something. I discovered, to my surprise, that while it's written in a 2,000-year-old dialect, the poem is from the 1900s, by a linguist named Chao Yuen Ren. He was illustrating the whimsical point that simple romanization won't work for Chinese languages. The point, though, is that the poem is not in the public domain, and, much to my dismay, I can't just do whatever I want with it. So, sadly, my adaptation, which I think has the potential to get a smile out of someone, can't legally see the light of day for 15 to 40 years, depending on whose copyright laws apply. It made me sad.
This was the same day my Cracked pitch got nixed. The difference in feeling was an interesting lesson in the difference between wanting to publish, and wanting to be published.
Wednesday, January 11, 2012
Other people
Yesterday and today I went ahead and did some things. Not that I hadn't been doing anything before. The contact, for example, is definitely a thing. What I mean is that I've taken some steps that involve other people. As many of you know, other people and I do not always get along, and initiating contact with other people almost always makes me incredibly nervous. This is often what holds me back at the 90% mark.
I am agreeably sore today because last night I visited the College Park Judo Club, which I had been meaning to do since I got here. It's a big club, but I got a good impression of the sensei I met and the other new guy I worked with. I swallowed my pride (because the number of years I've studied and the number of things I know more belie my skill level than attest to it) and went through the beginner paces (which I was herded into when the class started, everyone scattered to do different things, and I ended up slightly bewildered). I think I'm discovering that wherever you go to train, its a good idea to go through the beginner lesson, because everywhere has a slightly different take on the fundamentals. I didn't need to be shown how to fall, inasmuch as I definitely knew enough not to break my neck, but I got in more falling practice than I've ever done at a stretch, maybe (but likely not) excepting my first day at Fudoshin Dojo as a 12-year-old white belt. I got some pointers I hadn't heard before, so I'm glad I did it. Same with grappling and throws, when we got to those. Actually, about half the beginner batch of judo throws are new to me, or ones I could never get the hang of.
Anyway, that was last night. Today I prodded an editor or two at Cracked, because my got lost in the shuffle. (I'm not being kind to myself there. There actually was a shuffle--a huge batch of posts got moved above it on the submission forum all at once. I expect the article to get turned down,* but it looks like so far it just got missed.)
I also finally submitted my first pitch for a Pathfinder adventure to Paizo. So, we'll see how that turns out, too.
One thing that's neat about these two venues is that the operate on internet time. I actually expect feedback this or early next week on both pitches. I think the days of articles sitting on editors' desks for 60+ days are coming to an end.
Oh, I almost forgot. This will probably be the post up when I hit my 1,000th pageview. I think I've already commented on how that's cool, but also a very small number on the internet. Oh well. It can only go up.
*I rewrote that phrase after I looked at it. It originally read, "I expect to get turned down." It occurred to me that I should remember that it's my pitches, not me, getting judged.
I am agreeably sore today because last night I visited the College Park Judo Club, which I had been meaning to do since I got here. It's a big club, but I got a good impression of the sensei I met and the other new guy I worked with. I swallowed my pride (because the number of years I've studied and the number of things I know more belie my skill level than attest to it) and went through the beginner paces (which I was herded into when the class started, everyone scattered to do different things, and I ended up slightly bewildered). I think I'm discovering that wherever you go to train, its a good idea to go through the beginner lesson, because everywhere has a slightly different take on the fundamentals. I didn't need to be shown how to fall, inasmuch as I definitely knew enough not to break my neck, but I got in more falling practice than I've ever done at a stretch, maybe (but likely not) excepting my first day at Fudoshin Dojo as a 12-year-old white belt. I got some pointers I hadn't heard before, so I'm glad I did it. Same with grappling and throws, when we got to those. Actually, about half the beginner batch of judo throws are new to me, or ones I could never get the hang of.
Anyway, that was last night. Today I prodded an editor or two at Cracked, because my got lost in the shuffle. (I'm not being kind to myself there. There actually was a shuffle--a huge batch of posts got moved above it on the submission forum all at once. I expect the article to get turned down,* but it looks like so far it just got missed.)
I also finally submitted my first pitch for a Pathfinder adventure to Paizo. So, we'll see how that turns out, too.
One thing that's neat about these two venues is that the operate on internet time. I actually expect feedback this or early next week on both pitches. I think the days of articles sitting on editors' desks for 60+ days are coming to an end.
Oh, I almost forgot. This will probably be the post up when I hit my 1,000th pageview. I think I've already commented on how that's cool, but also a very small number on the internet. Oh well. It can only go up.
*I rewrote that phrase after I looked at it. It originally read, "I expect to get turned down." It occurred to me that I should remember that it's my pitches, not me, getting judged.
Friday, January 6, 2012
Skyrim as actualization tool, Skyrim as game
Skyrim has come to occupy an interesting place in the reward centers of my brain. If you've read the contract I put in my last post, you'll see that I'm not playing video games until I get a certain amount of work done. I've been holding to that, so every time I actually get to fire up the Xbox 360 is a declaration of victory, of sorts: that I have imposed a certain amount of order and productivity on another day, in spite of being accountable to no one but myself for how I spend my time. It's hard to overstate the significance of that. When I was unemployed in 2006 and 2007, the task of managing my own time (and my depressing failure to do so) crushed me beyond any hope of productivity. That period has grown to monstrous proportions in my mind. (It's worth remembering that I had more than being unemployed to be upset about at that point of my life.) I need to remind myself occasionally that it was really only two periods adding up to less than five months.
I say this in part to explain that another element of my victory consists of how little Skyrim I've played since Christmas. I could very easily have completed the game by now and be feeling very bad about myself. But I have played enough that I feel like I can talk about it.
While researching for an article on Dwarf Fortress, actually, I stumbled on this neat blog post. It reminds me of some speculation I did back in college about story in video games but haven't done nearly enough of lately. The upshot of the post is this, and what I've played so far bears it out: Skyrim could do without a main plot, and overarching plots are becoming a vestigial feature--even a detriment--of open-world games. The future is one of player-defined objectives.
I am excited for the game that fulfills this prediction, though the cool future is always a few steps further away than it looks from here. The game worlds--at the very least the ones put together by Bethesda--are becoming rich enough for players to create their own goals. The system of receiving and completing quests feels imposed at this point. It constrains some goals by specifically defining them, and delegitimizes others by not mentioning them.
Take one quest early on. A village girl's two peevish boyfriends both ask me to deliver letters to her forged in their rival's name. This is a "quest," so it is in the official list of things I can do and remains there until I do it. I can help the first one by smearing the other, or I can help the second one by smearing the first, and those are my options. In my game, the quest remains uncompleted, and probably will remain so.
Now, if I had my own way perfectly, I would tell this girl that both of these guys are pricks. That's not an option, and I can even understand how you might not be able to walk up to a stranger and say that to them. But if that weren't an option, my next choice would be to destroy both letters and not get involved. To me, that would seem like a conclusive choice, but it wouldn't "complete" the "quest." Whatever narrative I construct for myself, there's a loss of satisfaction in seeing, in text, that the game doesn't acknowledge my decision.
So while I enjoy Skyrim, I'm constantly butting up against the boundaries of its narrative structure. I'm also finding myself comparing it--much to my surprise, unfavorably--to Fallout 3.
For many of these same reasons, I found Fallout 3 frustrating and never finished it. Comparing the two games, however, there are some places where Fallout 3 clearly wins out, and I hope maybe a lesson or two can be learned before we make the Truly Open-World Game of the Future.
First of all, there's the characters. Interesting characters are a pretty elementary thing in good storytelling. In the first three hours or so of Fallout 3 I remember meeting at least a half-dozen characters who I can still remember several years after playing. I liked Amata, I felt sorry for Butch, I worried about the Overseer, and I was sorry to leave all of them. I liked the hideous ghoul bartender Gob and the quixotic sheriff Lucas Simms. I felt bad about getting Lucas killed by Mr. Burke, who I found more than a little creepy. Conversely, in Skyrim, I'm sorry to say I don't really care about anyone I've met so far. I hope this changes.
The world of Skyrim is pretty and all, but I felt more comfortable in the depopulated Capitol Wasteland. It didn't seem so strange there that, given a little patience, I could meet every inhabitant of a large city. Skyrim has more people but it feels more like a world in miniature, with populations and distances more noticeably scaled-down. Similarly, I never thought twice about the ubiquity of bandits in what was essentially a Mad Max pastiche. In Skyrim, I have to wonder about how anyone can farm less than a five-minute walk from not one but two bandit fortresses.
All that said, I'm really looking forward to getting my allotted work done today so I can grab my ancient Nord war axe of frost and clear out another bandit stronghold. Maybe after that I'll even get back to the plot.
I say this in part to explain that another element of my victory consists of how little Skyrim I've played since Christmas. I could very easily have completed the game by now and be feeling very bad about myself. But I have played enough that I feel like I can talk about it.
While researching for an article on Dwarf Fortress, actually, I stumbled on this neat blog post. It reminds me of some speculation I did back in college about story in video games but haven't done nearly enough of lately. The upshot of the post is this, and what I've played so far bears it out: Skyrim could do without a main plot, and overarching plots are becoming a vestigial feature--even a detriment--of open-world games. The future is one of player-defined objectives.
I am excited for the game that fulfills this prediction, though the cool future is always a few steps further away than it looks from here. The game worlds--at the very least the ones put together by Bethesda--are becoming rich enough for players to create their own goals. The system of receiving and completing quests feels imposed at this point. It constrains some goals by specifically defining them, and delegitimizes others by not mentioning them.
Take one quest early on. A village girl's two peevish boyfriends both ask me to deliver letters to her forged in their rival's name. This is a "quest," so it is in the official list of things I can do and remains there until I do it. I can help the first one by smearing the other, or I can help the second one by smearing the first, and those are my options. In my game, the quest remains uncompleted, and probably will remain so.
Now, if I had my own way perfectly, I would tell this girl that both of these guys are pricks. That's not an option, and I can even understand how you might not be able to walk up to a stranger and say that to them. But if that weren't an option, my next choice would be to destroy both letters and not get involved. To me, that would seem like a conclusive choice, but it wouldn't "complete" the "quest." Whatever narrative I construct for myself, there's a loss of satisfaction in seeing, in text, that the game doesn't acknowledge my decision.
So while I enjoy Skyrim, I'm constantly butting up against the boundaries of its narrative structure. I'm also finding myself comparing it--much to my surprise, unfavorably--to Fallout 3.
For many of these same reasons, I found Fallout 3 frustrating and never finished it. Comparing the two games, however, there are some places where Fallout 3 clearly wins out, and I hope maybe a lesson or two can be learned before we make the Truly Open-World Game of the Future.
First of all, there's the characters. Interesting characters are a pretty elementary thing in good storytelling. In the first three hours or so of Fallout 3 I remember meeting at least a half-dozen characters who I can still remember several years after playing. I liked Amata, I felt sorry for Butch, I worried about the Overseer, and I was sorry to leave all of them. I liked the hideous ghoul bartender Gob and the quixotic sheriff Lucas Simms. I felt bad about getting Lucas killed by Mr. Burke, who I found more than a little creepy. Conversely, in Skyrim, I'm sorry to say I don't really care about anyone I've met so far. I hope this changes.
The world of Skyrim is pretty and all, but I felt more comfortable in the depopulated Capitol Wasteland. It didn't seem so strange there that, given a little patience, I could meet every inhabitant of a large city. Skyrim has more people but it feels more like a world in miniature, with populations and distances more noticeably scaled-down. Similarly, I never thought twice about the ubiquity of bandits in what was essentially a Mad Max pastiche. In Skyrim, I have to wonder about how anyone can farm less than a five-minute walk from not one but two bandit fortresses.
All that said, I'm really looking forward to getting my allotted work done today so I can grab my ancient Nord war axe of frost and clear out another bandit stronghold. Maybe after that I'll even get back to the plot.
Tuesday, January 3, 2012
New year, new rules
I mentioned, back in August (wow, that long), the idea of writing and following a sort of personal contract. Well, in the spirit of the new year, I have finally done so, and today is my second day of following its terms.
Drawing it up was a bit of fun. I got to use the part of my brain that likes to read and interpret RPG rules, and that kept me from being bored to death while I proofread municipal codes for a living. I tried to craft language that was airtight, only giving me wiggle room where I was confident it was necessary and wouldn't let me wriggle out of the commitment altogether.
If you're a certain kind of curious, you can see the text of what I signed
Now, I hope that I made that button right. It should show you the text of the contract and if it does then I get to pat myself on the back for finally figuring out a somewhat reasonable way to handle spoiler text on this blog. Which opens up so many doors.
Anyway, the upshot of the contract is that on weekdays while I'm unemployed, I have to spend at least two hours a day looking for a job (or publishing opportunity, although the latter is so much more fun that I may have to amend the section to keep myself on-task). I have to spend four hours writing. I have to spend an hour reading something that isn't a glowing screen. And, finally, no dicking around until I'm done.
That last part (Section I-A-3) is a hard one to adhere to, but I think it's important. Important enough, anyway, that I didn't amend it even if I wasn't able to follow it exactly to the letter yesterday. It kept me from getting irretrievably distracted, and everything got done. It looks like I'll be able to manage it today, too. I'm more productive lately than I have been in a long time (which was definitely not the case the last time I was unemployed).
You might notice that the contract doesn't cover any period when I'm fully or partially employed. I want to work out language to cover those possibilities, but I need to figure out something that will make sense in any situation. Trying to find the perfect language for that is part of what tripped me up back in August. Right now I decided it was more important to get something down that I would work right now.
It's exciting to have a large portion of the day structured and spoken for, even if it doesn't actually bring in any money. I hope I will be able to look back on this as a period of definite progress. I'll be sending out my first pitches to Paizo and Cracked this week, and I'm making actual progress on Nenle and Death.
It's a beautiful, freezing day in Hyattsville.
Drawing it up was a bit of fun. I got to use the part of my brain that likes to read and interpret RPG rules, and that kept me from being bored to death while I proofread municipal codes for a living. I tried to craft language that was airtight, only giving me wiggle room where I was confident it was necessary and wouldn't let me wriggle out of the commitment altogether.
If you're a certain kind of curious, you can see the text of what I signed
Now, I hope that I made that button right. It should show you the text of the contract and if it does then I get to pat myself on the back for finally figuring out a somewhat reasonable way to handle spoiler text on this blog. Which opens up so many doors.
Anyway, the upshot of the contract is that on weekdays while I'm unemployed, I have to spend at least two hours a day looking for a job (or publishing opportunity, although the latter is so much more fun that I may have to amend the section to keep myself on-task). I have to spend four hours writing. I have to spend an hour reading something that isn't a glowing screen. And, finally, no dicking around until I'm done.
That last part (Section I-A-3) is a hard one to adhere to, but I think it's important. Important enough, anyway, that I didn't amend it even if I wasn't able to follow it exactly to the letter yesterday. It kept me from getting irretrievably distracted, and everything got done. It looks like I'll be able to manage it today, too. I'm more productive lately than I have been in a long time (which was definitely not the case the last time I was unemployed).
You might notice that the contract doesn't cover any period when I'm fully or partially employed. I want to work out language to cover those possibilities, but I need to figure out something that will make sense in any situation. Trying to find the perfect language for that is part of what tripped me up back in August. Right now I decided it was more important to get something down that I would work right now.
It's exciting to have a large portion of the day structured and spoken for, even if it doesn't actually bring in any money. I hope I will be able to look back on this as a period of definite progress. I'll be sending out my first pitches to Paizo and Cracked this week, and I'm making actual progress on Nenle and Death.
It's a beautiful, freezing day in Hyattsville.
Monday, January 2, 2012
It's not who you don't know, it's what you don't know
In my last post I made some mention of the Ocean Marketing debacle that unfolded like live theater over the week after Christmas. If this is new to you, a quick search will set you straight. The Examiner had the most complete play-by-play I could find. (Scroll down 2/3 of the page to "Original Article" to start at the beginning.) You can also see how it all started on Penny Arcade.
The phrase "a tragedy without a hero" came to my mind in reference to the affair, so I Googled it to see where that phrase has come up before. Thanks to one Waldo F. McNeir, the first few hits are in reference to Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar. A parallel or two come to mind. Entertaining as it was, the story of Ocean Marketing did have some resemblance to a group stabbing.
To recap: Paul Christoforo was in charge of distributing a product, and revealed himself over the course of an e-mail conversation with a customer to be a rude, petty, egomaniacal idiot. This was put out on the internet, at a moment when a large number of people had more free time than normal (and, I might hypothesize, some holiday frustrations to vent). The result was an information-age combination of the pillory and the Roman Colosseum. The internet ate Mr. Christoforo alive.
I come to bury Paul Christoforo, not to flame him. Did he deserve what happened? As it became clear that the man's name would be thoroughly demolished within a week, I found myself wondering that quite a lot. Clearly Mr. Christoforo has certain glaring personality flaws which make him unfit for any position which gives him even the illusion of power over other human beings. He had that position, though, and we can presume it was his livelihood. Is it possible to not deserve to lose something that you had no business having in the first place? What are the ethics of training the internet's Disproportionate Response Beam on someone? Is there a lesson to be learned here, and does anyone have the self-awareness to learn it?
What fascinated me about the story was the gradually developing portrait of Mr. Christoforo as a man with a seriously flawed worldview. He is apparently obsessed with contacts and status. When he wanted to make himself out to be a big man, he fabricated contacts for himself. When Mike Krahulik laid him low, he imagined that Krahulik had formidable contacts.
Christoforo's interview with MSNBC is particularly illuminating of this pathology. Here's what I consider the crown jewel of the interview: "Ultimately, if I was able to control the customer, it never would have happened. I've dealt with thousands and thousands of customers with similar complaints, they were all asking the same question. When is it big enough that it hits the news? When it hits Penny Arcade, when it hits a guy who has the biggest affiliations in the industry." "You never know who knows who," he says later, "and lesson learned." See above re: self-awareness. Mike Krahulik's big affiliation is with the internet, not the Freemasons. "Customer Dave" didn't have any special strings to pull either. He just sent an email to somebody he had never met.
Personal contacts will always count for something, but easier, freer communication is eroding their power. The smoke-filled rooms where men of consequence used to chortle and plot look more and more like bunkers where they hide from the organic, chaotic powers at work in the larger world.
At least, I hope it's that way.
The phrase "a tragedy without a hero" came to my mind in reference to the affair, so I Googled it to see where that phrase has come up before. Thanks to one Waldo F. McNeir, the first few hits are in reference to Shakespeare's Julius Ceasar. A parallel or two come to mind. Entertaining as it was, the story of Ocean Marketing did have some resemblance to a group stabbing.
To recap: Paul Christoforo was in charge of distributing a product, and revealed himself over the course of an e-mail conversation with a customer to be a rude, petty, egomaniacal idiot. This was put out on the internet, at a moment when a large number of people had more free time than normal (and, I might hypothesize, some holiday frustrations to vent). The result was an information-age combination of the pillory and the Roman Colosseum. The internet ate Mr. Christoforo alive.
I come to bury Paul Christoforo, not to flame him. Did he deserve what happened? As it became clear that the man's name would be thoroughly demolished within a week, I found myself wondering that quite a lot. Clearly Mr. Christoforo has certain glaring personality flaws which make him unfit for any position which gives him even the illusion of power over other human beings. He had that position, though, and we can presume it was his livelihood. Is it possible to not deserve to lose something that you had no business having in the first place? What are the ethics of training the internet's Disproportionate Response Beam on someone? Is there a lesson to be learned here, and does anyone have the self-awareness to learn it?
What fascinated me about the story was the gradually developing portrait of Mr. Christoforo as a man with a seriously flawed worldview. He is apparently obsessed with contacts and status. When he wanted to make himself out to be a big man, he fabricated contacts for himself. When Mike Krahulik laid him low, he imagined that Krahulik had formidable contacts.
Christoforo's interview with MSNBC is particularly illuminating of this pathology. Here's what I consider the crown jewel of the interview: "Ultimately, if I was able to control the customer, it never would have happened. I've dealt with thousands and thousands of customers with similar complaints, they were all asking the same question. When is it big enough that it hits the news? When it hits Penny Arcade, when it hits a guy who has the biggest affiliations in the industry." "You never know who knows who," he says later, "and lesson learned." See above re: self-awareness. Mike Krahulik's big affiliation is with the internet, not the Freemasons. "Customer Dave" didn't have any special strings to pull either. He just sent an email to somebody he had never met.
Personal contacts will always count for something, but easier, freer communication is eroding their power. The smoke-filled rooms where men of consequence used to chortle and plot look more and more like bunkers where they hide from the organic, chaotic powers at work in the larger world.
At least, I hope it's that way.
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