On Internet Arguments, Feminism, and GamerGate

I've been having a pretty interesting discussion about criticism, feminism, and videogames on Youtube, and I felt a need to preserve it, so I'm copying the conversation here. What I find interesting about this conversation is that as it has gone on, the anger and immediacy of the conversation has worn off, and we've managed to find some common ground.

I haven't written much about feminism or representation in videogames here, but it is a subject that is close to my heart. At least part of my posting of this was prompted by FilmCritHulk's excellent and amazingly empathetic essay here: http://badassdigest.com/2014/10/27/film-crit-hulk-smash-on-despair-gamergate-and-quitting-the-hulk/ . I want to try to bring to bear some of his calm demeanor in my own discussions -- especially around touchy subjects like GamerGate and feminism. I have these kinds of conversations all the time, so I felt the need to time-capsule this one up as an example. This is not an example of someone winning an internet argument. This is not me bragging about how good I am at arguing on the internet. This is just an example of two people managing to reach some amount of common ground.

This conversation is in response to the ExtraCredits & IdeaChannel collab video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7lPUlN0dnKk

Fair warning: this is a really long internet argument that turns into a really long internet discussion.

On Definitions of a "Game"

I recently responded to a Cynical Brit video about Glitchhikers and "what it is to be a game". The post is a little long (I am given to a certain amount of pedantry), but you can read it after the jump.

 tl;dr: Brit thinks "games" need a failure state; I didn't agree. More after the jump.

Ludum Dare 29: 72 Hour Jam Game: The Fields

The above video has a breakdown of game design and technical art decisions made while making my latest jam game "The Fields". Hit the jump for a link where you can play the game, a quick synopsis of the game, bunch of links about shaders and graphics programming.

On Digital Nativity and Appearance on IdeaChannel

I'm beginning to think that my ideas and comments are becoming more relevant as I age. This bodes well for the future :)

Anyway this time it's a comment I made on the Idea Channel episode on "Digital Nativity"



Hit the jump for more...

"Address the Sess" Appearance

I like Adam Sessler, I think he's a pretty smart dude. Even when he was stuck in the pits of G4 and X-Play, he brought a more literary voice to games journalism. He was one of the few people who would compare a new videogame to a book as often as he would compare it to a movie. Anyway, he found his way to Revision3 Games on youtube, and it's a much better home for him, as he's allowed to go into more depth in his opinions.

I had the luck to have my question chosen as the final question of a pretty good episode of Address the Sess which was focussed on GTA 5. My question (which maxed out the character limit) was this:

" NPR: Marketplace raised a question a couple days ago about what piece of media is going to represent this financial event the way that Grapes of Wrath or It's a Wonderful Life did before. Is it GTA 5? "



Anyway, I can't wait until I get a chance to check out GTA 5 myself. I've been combing youtube recently for slow motion footage of the explosion effect so that I can break it down for a Particle Effect tutorial, but I am noticing a surprising lack of slow-motion explosions. Hmm. Anyway, keep an eye out for that tutorial.

Overthinking Videogames 002: Bioshock Infinite

Bioshock: Infinite

I just finished Bioshock a couple hours before starting this post. As a sort of testament to the quality of this game; it made me break my silence on blogger. If you haven’t played it, go fix that. I intend to talk about the game without regard for the spoilers it may contain or imply.

Seriously, if you haven’t played yet, go do that instead. This is not a game to be experienced through synopsis. After that, hit the jump to read more...

12:12:12:12:12:12

Welcome to the last repetitive date in standard calendar notation any of us are likely to see:

12/12/12 12:12:12
or written another way
December 12, 2012 at 12:12pm and 12 seconds

You know, twelve is a pretty cool number. It has a great platonic solid, the dodecahedron, which many of us will recognize as the die we accidentally pick up when we meant to grab a d20.

But it's not that big a mistake; the two shapes, dodecahedron and icosahedron have a lot in common (also, soccer balls, but those aren't as fun). Let's look at all the cool crap that has to do with 12.

Unity 4 Finally Released

I've been waiting for this one for what seems like forever. I really enjoyed working with Unity 3 while I was at SCAD, though I never had the opportunity to use it in any of my classes. We used UDK in my Animation for Games class with professor Cookson, and I often got into arguments with him about which engine was better suited to game design students. He (correctly) made the case that Unity required too much of an understanding of programming before you could get an animated character working, while in UDK, you only need the briefest introduction to Kismet before you get to work making a character controller and animtree.

It was about then that the first E3 trailers for Unity 4 and Mecanim started showing up and we got to see the new animation system planned for the next release of Unity... 6 months later, it's finally out! I downloaded Unity 4 last night and look forward to playing around with it today. The new animation system, Mecanim, looks like it will be a lot of fun to work with. http://unity3d.com/unity/mecanim/

You can try it out for free here: http://unity3d.com/

Overthinking Videogames 001: Assassin's Creed III Developer Diary

Killing all the dudes.

Hi guys. I recently watched a trailer for the upcoming game "Assassin's Creed 3". I had heard this developer diary was about the in-game animation.  The Assassin's Creed series has always had an interesting approach to animation for locomotion, fighting, and even the ambient activities of townspeople.

Anyway, the video turned out to have very little to say on the subject... except for how totally brutal it is! Herein lies the problem: this trailer makes the game look worse as it goes on.

Hit the jump for the video and my reaction to it.

On Realism in Videogames

This is ruining everything... apparently.

Christoph Hartmann of 2k Games recently said this of videogames, “Recreating a Mission Impossible experience in gaming is easy; recreating emotions in Brokeback Mountain is going to be tough, or at least very sensitive in this country. It's limiting … Every time the technology advances, new things will open up and be created. To dramatically change the industry to where we can insert a whole range of emotions, I feel it will only happen when we reach the point that games are photorealistic”. (full interview available here)

This pissed a whole bunch of people off, but is he wrong? Hit the jump for more on that.

Overthinking Cartoons 001: Brave

I have a lot of opinions about Brave and about things surrounding Brave (particularly advertisements for it). So I may end up doing a couple posts about this, but what I want to talk about this time is how unique this movie is for a western animated movie.

On Creativity and Organization

Jonah Lehrer is a journalist who often writes about neuroscience and psychology, and he is probably the smartest person I've ever met. I listen to his contributions to Radiolab all the time. He's not infallible, but he is a multi-disciplinary thinker and he makes some compelling arguments.

I recently read a New Yorker article he wrote on the subject of creativity and professional organization. It's a fascinating read and I highly recommend it. You can find it here: http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/01/30/120130fa_fact_lehrer?currentPage=1

Hit the jump for more thoughts on it...

Anime Movies, Shows, Studios, and Animators That You Should Watch.

Some lovely You Yoshinari scenes.

While I was at SCAD, I heard a lot of opinions rendered about anime. I've talked with everyone from fellow students to my animation history professor, and I've grown a little tired of the weird place anime occupies in a lot of animation talk. Everybody seems to dig its influence. Everything from the Matrix to Transformers to Teen Titans to Avatar likes its influence. But people seem to still feel that anime is by and large an adolescent one-off from real, serious animation that’s being done at Disney or Pixar. And I’m a little tired of hearing about how awesome Hayao Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are. They do great work there, but there are dozens of other directors and studios out there that do incredible work that isn’t being dubbed by Disney, and they deserve some love too.

The list below contains my recommended viewing as well as some extra information to help you appreciate some of the uniqueness of the work. Keep in mind that this is far from a comprehensive list. The list only contains shows and movies that I have personally seen, and usually only ones that I don’t think get mentioned enough outside of otaku anime-nerd media. There are many, many, many works not listed here and you should go find them yourself after you read this.