The Bus

I'm not up on the career of Paul Kirchner. What I know is that he is a heck of an artist, and that he did some things with Heavy Metal magazine, one of which was a monthly feature simply titled "The Bus." You can and should read it here. It is brilliant, bizarre and wonderful.

Dreams of the Dead vol 1

My good friends Clayton and Cat just put out a short horror anthology ebook with a cool lovecraftian/fairytale feel and delightfully creepy illustrations. Hopefully it will be the first of many collaborations so go check it out or take a look at some of Cat's work on deviantart.

~GoOo NoOwWw!!!~

Golden Age

Wow, I've been a longtime fan of the boardgame reviewers at Shut Up & Sit Down, but Quinns really hit it out of the park with this talk reaching out to non-boardgamers and he nicely sums up many of the things I love about the hobby. The only thing I'll add is to stress that Descent and Twilight Imperium are the exception; most modern boardgames play within a reasonable time frame and in fact require much less of a time commitment than most modern videogames.

Man of Stale

I'm generally not a stickler for movie logic. Generally I think it's more important that a movie hang together thematically and emotionally, and if telling a good story results in some plot-holes then so be it. But I thought Man of Steel was, while reasonably entertaining and well put together, a little bland and unengaging, so I'm going to go ahead and explain why I'm fairly convinced that the central plot actually makes no sense. (**Major spoilers ahead obviously**)

One aspect that differentiates this film from previous tellings of Superman's origin is that a great deal of time is spent on Krypton before Jor-El fires his son into space. General Zod also realizes that the planet will be destroyed and is staging a military coup that involves chasing Jor-El around on pterodactylesque things. This whole escapade adds a much needed breath of fresh air, but why is Zod after Jor-El you ask?

You see in this continuity Kryptonians have long ago taken to genetically engineering all of their offspring to fulfill specific societal roles. Zod and his friends are designed to protect Krypton at all costs, and he's of the ideological position that certain other genetic lines should be discontinued when they find a new home. Jor-El's very unhappy with all this genetic engineering stuff (and in fact his own son is secretly the first child in centuries created through some good ol' fashion Kryptonian lovin'), so he refuses to work with Zod and instead steals "The Codec," an artifact that houses all the data for future generations of Kryptonian test-tube babies, and inexplicably destroys it by encoding the information onto his sons "cells" before sending him off to Earth to start a new beginning.

Jor-El's strategy raises several questions. Seeing as it can be safely assumed that humans do not possess the means to create a new generation of Kryptonians using the Codec (assuming they would want to), it's puzzling that Jor-El seems to think that sending his son off with it will somehow lead to a new beginning for their race. But even if Superman somehow obtained the means to utilize this Codec, all that it would let him do is create a bunch of genetically designed Kryptonians that Jor-El is seemingly against to begin with. Indeed when Superman discovers a hologram of his father's consciousness on Earth, Jor-El gives no indication that he wants Superman to create more Kryptonians, and he certainly doesn't mention that "by the way, you have a bunch of data written on your cells that is the last genetic record of your people!"

Which raises the question: why did Jor-El go to all the trouble of stealing the Codex in the first place? If he merely didn't want Zod to have it (and just felt like dooming his entire race), would it not have been a lot easier to simply destroy the Codec? And if he only wanted Superman to have the Codec (for whatever inexpiable reason) presumably Kryptonian technology is advanced enough to maybe have a copy-paste feature that could avoid destroying the original (and likely his species' only chance at salvation)? It would seem that if Zod was engineered to protect Krypton at any cost, Jor-El must have been engineered to provide the villains with a MacGuffin at any cost.

But the madness certainly doesn't end there. After Zod and his pals show up on Earth, they discover that the Codec is written on Superman's cells and that they must capture him dead or alive to retrieve it, despite the fact that they make this discovery after having taken a sample of his blood! Or do you need all of his cells?! One might assume that a hidden message would want to be written in someone's DNA or something, seeing as cells have a habit of dying and replacing themselves. The only conclusion I can come to is that perhaps Kryptonian cells do not die and that Superman has retained each individual cell that the Codec was written on when he was a baby. Perhaps when he decided to (somehow) shave he was unknowingly committing genocide!

Assuming that retrieving Superman's body will be no trouble, Zod sets about terraforming Earth so it can be a new Krypton, which will have the unfortunate side effect of wiping out all human civilization. No particular reason it needs to be Earth though. You would think that perhaps he could choose an uninhabited planet to terraform (seeing as Earth would be de-inhabited anyway) and Superman might even help out by turning over the Codec (i.e. himself) in order to save not only the Earth but his own race as well! Presumably there would need to be something preventing Zod from simply choosing another planet since this would lead to a rather unexciting climax (or maybe Zod just really hates human for no reason), but this solution is never even proposed or mentioned by anyone.

Zod's right-hand woman named Zodalina (maybe) does tell Superman that morality has been "evolved out of" Kryptonians, which is a fantastically stupid statement for three reasons:

1) "Morality" is an evolved trait that allows us to live and work together in groups. Lack of morality is a trait of lower lifeforms (for example, slugs are total wankers).

2) Nobody with the goal of creating a perfect society populated by superior beings would ever intentionally engineer them with no morality. Psychopath Land is not even a place you want to visit. (Psychopath Land might be L.A.)

3) They clearly do have a morality. Their extremely central moral precept, which they will do anything to follow, is to protect/reestablish Krypton at any cost. That is their moral imperative. The only character in Man of Steel with no discernible morality is Jor-El.

Basic Tips for Game Designers

Good tips here for anyone who wants to start designing boardgames, or videogames for that matter (although someone stealing your videogame idea after it's released is a little more plausable).

Shadow of the Eternal Darkness

I've previously expressed my great admiration and love for Eternal Darkness: Sanity's Requiem so I was extremely excited to learn that the same team that developed the original is currently crowdfunding a freaking sequel!!!

Okay technically it's a "spiritual successor" in that they won't be able to use the same name, and it's unclear how closely they can hew to the original inanity mechanics given Nintendo's absurd patent, but there's gonna be a new Eternal Darkness guys! Holy crap!

Or at least there will be if it gets funded, so go make it happen! And while you're at it, go show Double Fine's Humble Bundle a little love too. Mantarok commands it!

Five-Point-Exploding-PR Technique

For the second year running, EA has been voted the “Worst Company in America” in a poll by the Consumerist. Is it possible that publishing bad videogames is in fact a worse sin than ruining the economy, murdering sea life or giving millions cancer?

Aside from the sample bias that people participating in online polls are more likely to play a lot of videogames than they are to own equity, swim in the Gulf or watch MTV respectively, EA's problem isn't actually an inability to publish good games. Seeing as they own half the industry's AAA developers at this point, a great many of the games they publish are in fact excellent. No, their problem is largely one of PR.

When SimCity failed to be playable by many at launch due to always-online DRM and dodgy servers, what was their immediate response? We made our game so fun that too many people just couldn't stop playing! (See, it's totally your guys' fault!)

In similar fashion, the response to the consumerist poll includes a beautifully laid out list of reasons why in fact you are stupid (and homophobic) for hating them. So enlighten us EA. Let's go through this sucker point by point:

-Point #1:
"Many continue to claim the Always-On function in SimCity is a DRM scheme. It’s not. People still want to argue about it. We can’t be any clearer – it’s not. Period."

Except that it totally is DRM. If the online features were not merely implemented to combat piracy, there would have been an offline option for the billions of people who do not have internet connections, sort of like every other SimCity game ever. (SimCity is not an MMO and never has been.) I also like how they're dubbing it the “Always-On function” since it conjures images of a product that is always ready to go when you need it rather than the complete opposite of that.

-Point #2:
"Some claim there’s no room for Origin as a competitor to Steam. 45 million registered users are proving that wrong."

You know what? I'm a registered Origin user. You know why? Because a ton of EA games require you to register and be logged into your account in order to play them (thanks to that lovely Always-On function). Do I use Origin for anything else? I suppose I gripe about it in blog posts. Admittedly that's a service Steam hasn't provided me yet.

-Point #3:
"Some people think that free-to-play games and micro-transactions are a pox on gaming. Tens of millions more are playing and loving those games."

Tens of millions of people also love Hollywood movies, but that doesn't prove that they all need to be teal and orange.

-Point #4:
"We’ve seen mailing lists that direct people to vote for EA because they disagree with the choice of the cover athlete on Madden NFL. Yes, really… "

Initially I actually agreed with this point... until I saw the new Madden NFL cover:

Disclaimer: not actually the new Madden NFL cover.

-Point #5:
"In the past year, we have received thousands of emails and postcards protesting against EA for allowing players to create LGBT characters in our games. This week, we’re seeing posts on conservative web sites urging people to protest our LGBT policy by voting EA the Worst Company in America. That last one is particularly telling. If that’s what makes us the worst company, bring it on. Because we're not caving on that."

Thank you EA for championing equality and inclusiveness by having 99% of your games star straight white male protagonists (along with the rest of the AAA industry, sadly).

I know times are tough financially EA. I understand that it's not easy being the most hated company in America (it's quite impressive actually when you consider the competition), and I sympathize that you feel the need to take extreme measures to combat piracy, but I feel like both might be resolvable were you to show a little more humility, benevolence and good faith and perhaps, just a thought, try to include features that make your games better than the version the pirates are offering rather than worse.

Teabagging for Cthulhu

Okay so I know it's not hip to care or talk about Halo anymore, but check it:

-As a small child, I played the Macintosh game Pathways into Darkness in which you navigate an ancient ziggurat attempting to defeat a slumbering Lovecraftian god. (I thought the dead Nazi lying out front was a turtle.)

-Shortly thereafter, Bungie released the Marathon trilogy in which you play a reanimated cyborg who may or may not have memories which resemble the events of Pathways into Darkness (which also happen to be summarized in garbled form in a computer terminal). Also more Lovecraft.

-Half a decade later, Halo descends from the heavens containing countless connections to the Marathon series. For example, both games feature a company on Mars named "Misriah." (Also the Marathon logo is plastered all over everything in sight.)

-Which leads me to the inexorable conclusion that the Halo franchise is in fact part of the Cthulhu Mythos. (In fact I'm certain there's a bit about the Flood in the Necronomicon somewhere.)

This connection also melds the Halo-verse to quit a few other things including Conan the Barbarian and uncomfortable racism. (Though of course it could all just be in Tommy Westphall's imagination.)

I guess what I'm saying is, if they ever do make that Halo movie, and they cast Arnold Schwarzenegger as Master Chief, it wouldn't be out of place is all.

The Last Door Chapter 1 Review: Beyond the Veil of Crowdfunding

Good horror games have been a bit thin on the ground ever since the AAA industry apparently misplaced the recipe, but in inadequately-dark times like these one need only turn to the indie scene for delicacies like The Last Door. I've always been a big gothic horror fan, and the sensibilities of Poe and Lovecraft are put across strongly with retro-minimalist graphics that leave most of the horror to your twisted imagination.

In chapter 1 you receive a cryptic letter from an old friend and decide to pay a visit to his creepy mansion because you fear something is amiss. (Spoilers: something is amiss.)

Gameplay is standard adventure game fare. Puzzles are fairly basic and logical, but the emphasis is on mood, which is made all the more chilling by an excellent musical score that contrasts pleasingly with the otherwise retro aesthetic. The horror is more subtly chilling than panic inducing. There are a couple of jump scares, but they are deployed effectively and used as a spice rather than a crutch (to mix old and limp metaphors).

Mostly I'm posting this because I want to spread the word for selfish reasons. Currently they need about 6k in donations to make Chapter 2, and I want to find out where the story goes dagnabbit!

Gamifying Education

Someday I want to teach game design in an academic setting, so I've been doing Toastmasters to get better at public speaking and presentation. Here's video of my 10th speech, which I'll be giving again at the Calgary area contest next week.



I took the idea of reverse grading from this Extra Credits video and the baseball analogy from this excellent TED Talk. Thanks also to Iris Talbot for her coaching, support and camera.