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Is Time Fcuk Superflat? I don't know, both superflat and that game make my head a splode.
Has Superflat spread to the west?

Well, I guess it has...

Japanese Games

They're cool, I guess. I recently read some of Takashi Murikami’s "Little Boy" and learned quite a bit about Japanese culture and how it comes to light through Japanese movies, manga, television shows, and video games. Quite a lot of information to think about.

It's almost kind of depressing, the way that they think about the human condition. Lots of death and desperation. There's a very very bleak outlook on the future, wish just a hint of optimism.

Could this become a trend in Western cultures. I don't think so. Japan and eastern culture in general is vastly different from western society. It is likely that we will evolve our cultures into two, totally separate ways.

Notes on Convergence Culture

Chapter 3: Searching for the Origami Unicorn

So, I read the chapter, and afterwards, did a search for the Origami Unicorn... on a hunch, really, and I found Henry Jenkins's web blog.

This chapter is all about The Matrix series as an example of franchises that tell a story across multiple forms of media. Very abbreviated (because I'm unfortunately short on time), The Matrix story arc is not restricted to the films. The Wachowski Brothers went after animators, comic book writers, etc. that already had a cult following- people that they admired for their work- and didn't go after people with less experience that they could order around. As a result, people who were experienced with what they were doing were collaborating together so that each of them could create a piece of the Matrix universe through their own medium (comics, animation, video games, etc.). This drew more fans into the series, because they followed the authors and developers who were making the different parts. Each of the different developers of those different Matrix mediums all worked in tandem with the Wachowski Brothers, which made sure that the entire series followed the same continuity.

Long story short: The Matrix franchise is an ideal example of good collaborative work in the professional world.

internet flaming

Normally, I just shake my head and continue on with my life when I run across situations in which hundreds of internet plebeians hurl thousands of hateful, ill-conceived comments at someone. But now I've been assigned to comment on this stuff for homework.

When it comes to matters such as this, I pretty much always come to the conclusion that this is the internet, and this is what happens when people are allowed to hide their identity when they say things. On one hand, it's the epitome of free speech... but on the other hand, we see many people use their free speech to do stupid things, insult others, and complain about things that have no relevance to themselves, or that they know very little about. Here's the thought processes I see:

"No one knows who I am, so I'm just as qualified as anyone is."

"I can get away with it, so I don't see the problem with doing it."

"The more obnoxious I am, the more people will notice me."

"I am the customer, and I'm always right."

I don't think this is a gaming problem, I think this is an internet problem... and I think that this is an inherent, moral integrity problem among human beings. It's as the old saying goes "power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely." In short, the internet allows people to get away with saying things that would cause others to look at them in a very negative light, and deservedly so. My concern is what happens when the majority of people see and act this way so much when they aren't accountable become desensitized, and acting the same way in real life, or seeing such behavior as acceptable. I've seen it start to happen before with my friends... they're used to the ill-mannered, offensive behavior that they see online, and so they back each other when they start exhibiting the same behavior in a real life setting.

It's bad enough on the internet as it is. The harassment for some people never ends, and the only way to beat it seems to be embracing it with a "come at me, bro'" attitude. Personally, I think that in this sense, there does need to be some sort of policing going on. I don't mean for the usual bantering cases, but I do mean for the serious cases involving threats of violent crimes, viral attacks, and distribution of personal information. I feel that some of these people need a hard reminder that making a death threat against a child over the events of a game show is not only an enormous over-reaction, and a massive abuse of the freedom of speech, but also a felony.

Naw, there's nothing wrong with politics now adays...

(I couldn't find a video of the hearings themselves.)

Personally, I think congress is still full of a bunch of old, mostly white, pretty much conservative, predominantly Christian, bigots. I really think that our government is doomed as is, it's policies are lagging behind American culture in support of squelching... basically what they think of as lesser class citizens. Not to mention the fact that most of legislature is based on who can throw the most money at congress, which more often than not is companies like Monsanto and Tyson, or groups of media companies working together in favor of more censorship. Way back when the country was founded, Thomas Jefferson said that he believed that a government needs an up in arms revolution every 20 years, which make us about 150 years overdue (marking the Civil War as the last such revolution).

Anyways... as a result of congress, the entire country is slowly starting to drag behind in terms of social and cultural progressiveness. Today, we live in a progressive society, but I really don't expect the US to be called by that 50 years down the road. I'm not going to go into detail about games, because it's not just games in this argument. It's all forms of media, everything that helps to make the nation a progressive one is suffering. Sub-cultures are suffering, civil rights movements are suffering, individuality is dying, minorities are suffocated whenever possible.

Covering Your Ass

I read a thing by this guy called Yoshino called "The New Civil Rights Movement." It posed a lot of interesting points and ideas about equality and liberty. The idea behind it is that we need to move into a new age of civil rights... create a new "paradigm" of it that doesn't make minorities equal, but makes all practices, activities, and ideas the liberty of all people. It's simple and interesting concept, that the focus shouldn't be on assimilating everyone into one group, or completely diversifying everything for the purpose of equality, but that we should celebrate what we already have in common and each be and act as our own, unique person.

What's that got to do with video games, crazy person? A lot! Video games, as well as any form of media, often prove to be the driving force of creating and celebrating culture. As video games become a bigger and bigger industry, designers need to focus more and more on making them diverse when and if they can. As Extra Credits puts it, adding diversity into a game can add to its value, but not all games need to put a focus on it.

So... in the text, Yoshino talks about "Covering." Covering is basically putting on a veil for society and others to see, to make yourself seem more like everyone else, in order to fit in. It's formed by a most basic human desire to be social. It's not necessarily good or bad, but it can be. Covering, in an of itself, is amoral. Everyone does it at some point or another. It can be good because sometimes being able to fit in is pretty important, say, if you're a spy- I'm sure there's more realistic reasons too. But it can be bad too, if say, we cover ourselves to the point that our real self doesn't ever come out; then we're leading a secret life, or force ourselves into an identity crisis- which, if you've ever had one, is actually really scary.

Naturally, this ties pretty well into the LGBTQ community, and into gender roles. We live in a society (in the US, at least) where homosexuality is viewed, for the most part, taboo, ungodly, or just wrong. Lately things are getting better, but relatively speaking, compared to straight and/or "normal" people, members of the LGBTQ community and people who naturally defy certain gender roles lead a fairly challenging life. One of the biggest "covers" is the straight(gay) cover. Video game designers can reflect that in games to represent a more realistic world, create more believable characters, and ultimately, show players a part of the world that they may not have seen otherwise. How many games so far have had a character that's gay or transgender, or even just a character that defies modern gender roles? Not a lot.

Personally, I haven't seen this in any of the games I've played, except for maybe Red Dead Redemption which I talked about in my last post, though I've heard about a few that do include that topic, and even fewer that include it as a part of the game outside of a main character's personal and romantic options. I think it's a shame how little games manage to include on this topic, especially considering its importance in modern times as we try to become a more open society.

Video games is just one industry too. If you look into movies, music, and other forms of media, the issue doesn't come up a whole lot in there either. Maybe it says more about developers and publishers that shy away from the issue, and sweep it under the rug because of how it could negatively affect their reputation.

Gender Role playing Games

How is gender portrayed in games? Stereotypical. Next question.
Examples of games where gender is handled properly. Let me think...

Red Dead Redemption takes very greatly into account the time and region that the game is set in when it comes to making the characters in the game. John Marston, the main character, is a man who is very tough, and fairly hardcore. Making a character in a modern setting and doing the same thing could be pointed at as stereotyping, but an adventurer, much less a gunslinger in the wild west requires a very tough, gritty character. Take a look at history, even female gunslingers had a very macho, tough attitude about them. But while John Marston is a big strong gunslinger, he still has some very humanizing features. He's motivated by the love of his family, and throughout the entire story-line, everything he does is for his wife and his son in the long run, and he eventually dies for them. I know that the man being the protector of the family can be a stereotype, but when as the game goes on, the back-story gets slowly explained, and very implicitly, the player sees a picture of a slightly younger John Marston struggling to make the right decision in the context of society, his peers (who happened to be outlaws), and his own personal feelings, and we see him become more of a victim of the game world rather than a character taking part in the game world. That, in and of itself, is what makes John Marston a believable male character.

Speaking of his wife and son, they themselves are two prominent examples of well developed characters. The relationship between Abigail Marston (his wife) and John is complicated, and explained in bits and pieces throughout the game. She was, presumably, a whore in (or a kidnapped rape victim that was captured by) Dutch's gang, which John used to be a part of. He had a sense of honor that led him to marry her. John's son is literate (which wasn't that common in that time and place), and distant from his father, destined to go on to college and away from the wild west atmosphere (at least until John died and he swore to avenge his father's death). Jack Marston struggles with gender roles in society in a different way, again, as revealed by implicit details and through dialogue. He struggles to prove to his father that he is a hard man like he is, because, after all, his father is a badass who took on several outlaw gangs, and the Mexican government. (It is also noteworthy that the U.S. Government is the only entity that John can't fight against. They kidnap his family and hold them hostage which spurs on the entire game. It could be an event that might make Marston feel like less of a man, since he couldn't protect his family from everyone.) What leads to this struggle is his being brought up mostly by his mother in his father's absence (oh, and a drunk good for nothing hillbilly "Uncle").

It doesn't stop there, every major character in the entire game is very multi-dimensional. But one of the best examples to talk about gender roles is Bonnie McFarlane. Bonnie is the daughter of a relatively wealthy rancher (relatively wealthy meaning his ranch was it's own town, which, again, in that day and age wasn't too uncommon). Being a woman of the west, and a ranch-hand herself, she does have a lot of that toughness to her. She's a high spirited cowgirl (cowgirl in the sense that she herded cattle, not that she was a part of the red-sash-wearing outlaw gang). But that's not all, the struggles she faces as a woman often taking on a man's role because of the stereotypes built around women in that time and region of the world. John Marston (you, the player) will make several comments about her alluding to the femininity of her gender and it's stereotypes. Bonnie's replies show us that she displays a mix of both opposing those gender roles set on her by society, and conforming to different gender roles for different reasons.

The list continues to go on. Dutch, the gang leader, runs away from a fight he knows he can't win, rather than fighting it out like a "real man" should have; he also has a love of nature. "Uncle" rejects honor and nobility in favor of self service and alcohol. A few of the Mexican Rebeldes are female, including a major character, and fight actively (with guns and bullets) against the Mexican Government. There's even a side-quest about a gay man, and another about a man who is in love (as in a romantic love with sexual connotations) with his horse.There's also a continuing list of those that conform more than not. The leader of the Mexican rebel group is a bastard and a complete womanizer. The Sheriff of Armadillo has constant 20/20 sight on his duty as an officer of the law. Landon Ricketts, a once famous gunslinger now (mostly) retired, is a hard man almost the whole way through.

So the game presents a vast array of characters of varying importance that are multi-dimensional. Even under the scope of gender roles the game excels by presenting a combination of characters that conform and/or reject different roles set on them by society. Not only do the developers do a good job with that, but they do it in a setting that is vastly different from today, which is brilliant.