Why So Serious? WHY NOT?
Filed under: CREATIVE, ORIGINAL-GAMER.COM, TECH, Videogames, WORDS
I’ve been writing opinion pieces, game reviews and doing voice-overs for Original-Gamer.com (and occasionally here) for a few months now, and for what its worth, I always try to play it straight. Well, except the voice-over stuff, unless its something I wrote myself, I don’t have much of a choice there. -shrug-
I play it straight because I don’t believe in pandering to the least common denominator. If gaming is an artform that is just now ‘growing up,’ as some claim, then the people that report on it are probably just a few steps behind. As I said at the end of my second article, The Numbers Game: “if we want others to take games seriously, we must take them seriously ourselves.”
But why aren’t videogames taken seriously? Is it because of their relative youth compared to other artforms such as television and film, or is it because of the immaturity of those that cover it? Granted, this is the internet, but there are very few places where videogames are covered without a wink and a snarky attitude. What the gaming press needs is the equivalent of The Wall Street Journal or Variety, but what we’re getting is Mad Magazine.
Now, I openly admit, I don’t practice what I preach: I crack jokes in my reviews and perhaps I shouldn’t ‘write myself’ into them. The latter, I do because think it is important for the reader to get a sense of where I am coming from. For better or worse, my score will be influenced by whether the game was something I was REALLY REALLY REALLY looking forward to or was just something that got tossed into my lap. I think it also helps the reader if they are made aware of my biases for or against the game coming in.
Am I impartial? Admittedly not, but let’s be honest, nobody truly is.
In any event, while I am pointing out the problem, I don’t really have a solution. The best that I can hope for is that the ‘serious guys’ get popular enough to, well, be taken seriously. Now, does everybody have to take gaming seriously? Not really, there will always be a place for the snarks and clowns, and if worse comes to worse I can always go back to joking about how much I suck at fighting games.
Feeding The Ego
It’s Tuesday morning and I am sitting at my desk just absolutely full of piss and vinegar. I was forced to go home on Monday, using up one of my few days off by the head guy in our department because I came in just a little too sick. Then, I come in today to find the hag who is our second-in-command had my old chair removed, never mind that I can’t get comfortable in the stupid new overpriced “ergonomic” chairs. To top it all off, the idiot sitting next to me keeps on harping about how I made everyone else in the office sick, never mind that he could have sent me home last week when he was in charge, and doesn’t go home himself to recover. Everyone in the office is hacking and coughing, but I have to be the one sent home.
All that combined made me feel about two-foot small, and all I wanted to do for the rest of the day was sit at my desk, fester like a mushroom until quitting time and then unload at home with some good old fashioned videogame violence or Rock Band. I fired up my laptop, put on some headphones, and turned up some Smashmouth, hoping it would drown out the constant cacophony of ringing phones, conferences and meetings that I have to work through. It almost does the job.
As I sat at my desk seething while my PC took forever-and-a-day to download a new security update, I heard a chirp from my cell phone. I picked it up, expecting to see an IM from one of my friends, but instead I saw a Twitter update. Hm, I didn’t know it did that. Neato. The tweet read: “Thanks to randomizer9 for making an ‘unofficial’ San Japan :3 commercial for us. Now featured on our YouTube page”
As I read the screen, I smiled and felt so much better. Putting something before the monkey house that is the Internet is always asking for trouble. As a budding voice-over artist, I wasn’t sure how my latest effort would be received. I have gotten very little feedback from strangers on all the podcasts, blog posts and articles I have thrown to the slippery walls of the Internet so far. Knowing that The Guys In Charge Of San Japan liked it was very encouraging, and gave me a little ego-boost when I really needed it.
I like to think that I have a small ego, but the fact of the matter is that it is still there, and it likes to be thrown a bone every so often. As a computer programmer, I am accustomed to being on the bottom of the totem pole. As odd as it sounds; I actually like it there, because that is where the fun stuff is. I read Dilbert and MyCage and joke about the people in charge just like everyone else, but being constantly stepped on does get old after awhile and I wonder if this is the “epiphany” telling me that I need to get out of Dodge.
But, you know what? That angst can wait until I fire up Borderlands tonight and pump everything that moves full of hot lead or start up Rock Band and cue up some punk songs. I’ll gladly ride this little ego-boost through the rest of my crappy workday and give it another shot tomorrow…after sending some resumes out tonight, of course!
Tweet-kus are smart fun / a quick creative brain snack / thanks furry person!
Inspiration is a curious mistress. Much like her sister Lady Luck, she plays by her own rules and can strike without warning at the most odd circumstances.
This past New Year’s Eve weekend, I went with a friend to Ikkicon in Austin. It was something to do, and if nothing else, cosplayers always make for an interesting and fun time people-watching.
I had a feeling that the flavor of odd that is usually associated with anime conventions was going to be a little extra-spicy by virtue of the con’s location, and Austin did not disappoint. As I walked around enjoying the spectacle as it lay before me, I saw something that struck me as odd.
Okay, MORE odd…
It was a person wearing a full head-to-toe red animal/critter/Pokemon-looking-thing costume with what appeared to be a fox’s head and tail. That in itself isn’t unusual, but the kicker was that this person was WALKING AROUND ON THEIR HANDS AND KNEES like an animal. It threw me for a loop; crossing into that “dangerously geeky” territory that I try to avoid like most people avoid regular geeks. Sadly, I was too transfixed by the specacle to take a picture with my cell phone camera, but I did get a picture of that person some time later, this time on two feet, as they assumed some kind of “battle pose” while facing another cosplayer in full regalia.
Now, this is just one of those events that is just DYING to be posted to Facebook. Its nice to have something unique to report besides the usual “I’m having a good/bad day” or “work sucks” or “OMG my child just did something for the first time!” stuff.
Playing with words is something I like to do, and I pondered over how to report this person’s rather successful attempt to “Keep Austin Weird.” I thought I’d borrow a meme from Fark.com and go with a 1-2-3 type of post, showing how this individual went from “Geeky” to “Super Geeky” to “Dangerously Geeky.”
I liked the words, but the format looked ordinary to me. Granted, that may be an effect of spending too much time on Fark.com, but in any event, I thought I could do better. While riding that train of thought, I got the idea of putting it into a haiku style. That is, a three-line verse with the first line containing five syllables, the next, seven and the last, five. I came up with:
bright red furry suit
walking around on all fours
what the frak is this
It was even short enough to fit into a tweet, which delighted me to no end. I then decided that it would a fun to put my postings for the rest of the week into what I call “tweet-ku” format, which adds a 160-character limit to the haiku structure. Despite my tendency to get “wordy,” I don’t think the character limit ever came up, and I only goofed up once on syllable count, so it went well.
A pleasant side effect of the exercise is that those self-imposed limits forced me think creatively in order to stay within them. At times, I struggled to keep my syllables at the correct counts, and I would find myself reading aloud while counting syllables on my fingers. Luckily, I would usually be inside at the time, or in the presence of other like-minded geeks who didn’t ask me why I was counting on my fingers.
Stretching that creative muscle helped me to finish other things, and I think I might be onto something. I may take to writing tweet-kus whenever my muse is tired of the drudgery of my nine-to-five and needs a quick snack to get it going.
Needless to say, that won’t take long!
Artists Are Jer…um, I Mean, Interesting People!
I’ve never been in any “leadership positions” in any of my jobs thus far, save for the occasional minion or two that got tossed my way. Thus, being “in charge” (big finger quotes there, I’m just the writer) of our first project at First Storm Manga is a new experience for me.
One thing I learned quickly is that artists are a lot like programmers. We are touchy-feel-y people, prone to being easily distracted, and believe that we are special because what we can do something that not anybody can.
Oh yeah, we can also be jerks…especially that jerky-jerk AUSTIN!
In the workplace, programmer ire is generally directed at management (for example, Dilbert). I am rapidly learning that artist ire tends to be directed at writers such as myself. It also doesn’t help that I am out-numbered.
I am the only person at First Storm Manga (so far!) that does not draw, I could call myself a “pure writer” with an exaggerated air of self-importance if I wanted to sound like an arrogant jerk. I was puzzled for awhile as to why I was getting all the writer-hate from the other guys. Actually, “writer-hate” is a bit strong, it was actually more like “treat the writer like a red-headed stepchild.”
After awhile, though, I figured it out: when doing a manga (or comic), the art is done first, and then the words are slapped on top of it. Thus, the more words I come up with, the more the art is covered up! So, yeah, I guess they have a point. I suppose the occasional barb or two is a small price to pay for seeing a “pure writer’s” story come to life in pictures, though. *smug*
They’re still jerks, though.
San Japanic!
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Our first First Storm Manga project is a commission: we have been ‘hired’ to create a short manga (a Japanese-style comic book) to promote the San Japan 2.x Japanese Culture and Anime convention. The manga is supposed to feature the convention’s four mascot characters: a bat named Dios (like most folks, I was all, wait, that means “God” in Spanish! I presume its something different in Japanese) a longhorn named Suzaku, an armadillo named Hinode, and a girl named Sana.
The story will consist of all four characters encountering some kind of (hopefully) funny situation as they voyage to the convention. I am the storywriter/editor (because I can’t draw) and we have three different artists working on the project. Its lots of fun working with them, and I think it will come together quite nicely when its all said and done. Click the picture above for the full image, and stay tuned!