Because this year, ten just isn't enough slots for a "Worst Of" list...
Tuesday, December 30, 2014
Friday, December 26, 2014
Escape to The Movies: AMERICAN SNIPER
Thursday, December 25, 2014
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Escape to The Movies: THE HOBBIT: THE BATTLE OF THE FIVE ARMIES
I took a little vacation. This still came out, though.
ALSO: The two-part penultimate episode of ADVENTURES OF THE GAME OVERTHINKER is going to be the last "Mailbag" show, so head over to The Other Blog and ask your questions now!
ALSO: The two-part penultimate episode of ADVENTURES OF THE GAME OVERTHINKER is going to be the last "Mailbag" show, so head over to The Other Blog and ask your questions now!
Sunday, December 14, 2014
A Shameless Exercise in What I Grudgingly Accept is Technically "Fan-Fiction"
In case you hadn't heard, Sony Pictures wants to get their hands on the movie-rights to SUPER MARIO BROS. For what I should hope are obvious reasons, this is a terrible idea that I hope doesn't come to pass - at least not under the (of late) visionless Avi Arad or the current water-treading regime at Sony.
However! If this is some kind of indication that Nintendo is finally back to a point where they're willing to talk about licensing for Hollywood movies? I like the sound of that. It's time. Video game movies are probably the next big substrata of popular culture to mine after comics, and it's consistently depressing to see the adaptation focus being on currently-hot-but-who-can-say properties like HALO or ASSASSIN'S CREED or whatever while the actual titans of the medium sit by untouched (yes, WARCRAFT comes from storied stock, but it's still absurd that it gets to be a movie before ZELDA does.)
The one thing that disheartens me about the Sony/Mario rumor (apart from the obvious) is that the plan was apparently to make an animated franchise out of it. Sorry, no thanks. Not that I have anything against animation - quite the opposite, in fact - but more that it doesn't feel like the "event" that an authentic Mario feature deserves. Simply put: Mario has been animated, either as a sprite or as a TV cartoon, for as long as the series has existed. This is one of the biggest icons in modern popular-culture - the Mickey Mouse of video-games - he and his world deserve to "come to life" as big and extravagantly as, say, THE AVENGERS did.
I've been imagining what a live-action Mario would be like for decades - usually in-earnest in response to the somewhat perplexing idea that the property can't possibly work in live-action (and yet somehow Oz, Narnia, Wonderland, Middle Earth, Asgard etc have worked just fine?) So I figured it was time to sit down and actually type out an off-the-cuff version of how I'd pitch this project if I ever got the chance, rather than reciting pieces of it whenever the topic comes up.
This will probably be a long'un, so hit the jump for it:
Alright. So here it is. Bob "MovieBob" Chipman's hypothetical SUPER MARIO BROS. live-action movie pitch. The whole thing:
"25 WORDS OR LESS" PITCH:
"LORD OF THE RINGS meets 21 JUMP STREET. Fantasy/adventure, but with relatable wisecracking modern buddies instead of British dwarves or whatever."
ELEVATOR PITCH:
"LORD OF THE RINGS meets 21 JUMP STREET by way of GHOSTBUSTERS. Epic fantasy-adventure but instead of solemn British elves or precocious children it's two wisecracking blue-collar schmoes from Brooklyn; so it's relateable and "now." Major sequel/spin-off potential with a near-limitless merchandising upside plus massive youth, crossover and nostalgia appeal, based on a proven brand that's already more established and widely-recognized worldwide (particularly in Asian markets) than most of the Marvel/Avengers characters were prior to their movies.
STORYLINE (SHORT VERSION):
Two Italian-American brothers, plumbers from Brooklyn, are accidentally transported to a fantasy world of magic and monsters. There, they discover that their "alien" physiology imbues them with superhuman strength, speed and the ability to draw strange magical powers from "common" local plants and food. A kingdom of humanoid Mushrooms welcomes them as would-be heroes whose strength could turn the tide in their war against an encroaching army of evil creatures, while the brothers just want to find a way home. But when the Kingdom's Princess is kidnapped, it's clear that only they can undertake the dangerous rescue mission; ultimately finding their new destiny as The Super Mario Brothers!
STORYLINE (LONG VERSION):
Mario and Luigi are plumbers in Brooklyn, NY circa-1981. Fiercely loyal to one another in the fashion of archetypal working-class Italian brothers, but don't see eye to eye on much. Mario had dreamed of becoming an adventurer (think Hemmingway, Indiana Jones, Carl from UP) but put it on hold to take over the family business (with Luigi) after their father died unexpectedly. Luigi isn't a dreamer. He only ever wanted to follow his father as a plumber, resents Mario "always wanting more."
The brothers (the family's Americanized surname IS "Mario," owing to an Ellis Island foul-up of "Marionetti" that got their ancestor officially named "Mario Mario," a naming-tradition that carried on in his honor for first-borns) are called to repair a water-main break in a downtown Manhattan office, and note that seemingly every other plumber in the city seems to be doing jobs in the same area. They track the break to a rupture that leads into the sewer system, where they encounter what appears to be a huge turtle-like creature! Amid their struggle, a huge sink-hole opens, swallowing the entire city block, and the brothers (along with many others) suddenly find themselves in a crater in the Manhattan bedrock.
Luigi finds inquisitve Mario having followed the creature to a "cave" whose interior looks like some kind of ancient temple room. The creature has vanished back into a pool of water that seems to lead to a light source, and as the brothers argue about what's happening a second tremor knocks them into the pool...
They're spat-out of a huge green pipe jutting from a cliff-side into The Mushroom Kingdom (think Japanese/Brothers-Grimm Hybrid Oz, see below for details), where they encounter more hostile creatures and, in fending them off, discover their seemingly superhuman abilities and the powers they gain from the native nature (just Fire Flowers, to start - and yes, having fire-powers does make their clothing change color because magic). During this battle, one of the upright-walking, smarter creatures (see below) emerges from the pipe clutching some sort of glowing relic, and once he's out of range the other creatures blow up the pipe (much to Luigi's horror) and retreat - with one smaller creatures stealing a work-glove from Luigi's toolbelt.
A troop of Mushroom Soldiers appear (they've come to relieve the creatures of another "treasure" they were guarding - a giant green-spotted egg...) wary of the brothers. Mario decides they should go with them to try and find answers, but all Luigi wants is to find another way home. They're walked to the Castle, where they meet with Toad ("Captain of The Guards") and Toadette (the Princess' chief advisor.) Mario can't understand why Luigi doesn't at least want to know what's happening. Luigi is impatient, accusing his brother of already seeing this as "some dumb adventure" rather than a serious calamity. Their bickering stops when they're finally brought before Princess Peach, the Kingdom's leader, who (along with being beautiful) seems to calm all around her with her very aura - more like a mystic being than a monarch.
In conversation with Peach, they learn the facts of the situation: The Mushrooms and Koopas (race of humanoid turtles) have been at war for centuries, with neither side remembering who actually started the fighting but also unable to stop as the Koopas covet the Mushrooms' land and resources. Within the last generation, war has turned in the Koopas' favor via the rise of Bowser, a larger, stronger and smarter-than-average Koopa who has industrialized and militarized his people to previously-unseen levels. The only surviving member of the Royal Family, Peach seeks to defend her people but knows they can only hold out for so long. The egg the soldiers took from the Koopas is said to "belong to The Yoshis," and Toad believes that returning it to them could lead to a key alliance of forces.
The Mushrooms want the brothers to use their "magical" strength and powers (Mario and Toadette work-out that it's a matter of interdimensional physics being different) to help aid the fight, and while Mario seems open to the idea Luigi refuses - he just wants to recuperate and set out to find another "Warp Zone" (ancient inter-universe portals that Bowser's forces had been pillaging and destroying to find... something) to go home. Peach, though disappointed, agrees to let them leave. By accident, Mario witnesses Peach's otherwise zen-like calm/nurturing demeanor momentarily drop to sadness, and notices that it briefly begins to rain...
By night, a group of ShyGuys (Bowser's "ninjas," see below) slip into the palace and attempt to abduct Peach. A fight ensues (including Peach fending off several attackers using only her parasol in homage to the famous Umbrella Fight from ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA) but Peach is ultimately taken (so is the "Yoshi's" egg), seemingly spelling doom for the Kingdom.
Toad, Toadette and the other Mushrooms beg the brothers to at least help rescue The Princess - without her, they're doomed (though only Toadette seems to know why that is, and she's sworn to secrecy). Luigi is reluctant as ever, but Mario appeals to their shared sense of honor (they're rhyming catchprases: "It's an Italian thing" and "It's a Brooklyn thing") and his suspicion that Peach is possessed of a power that might help them get home. They set off to quest, with Toad additionally asking that they attempt to rescue the egg, if they can.
Peach is taken via improvised warp-zones directly to the Koopa kingdom, where she meets with Bowser and his scheming wizard/advisor Kamek ("The MagiKoopa.") Though she's a prisoner and locked in a dungeon, when allowed out to speak with Bowser she finds him to be surprisingly intelligent if unsophisticated. He doesn't share Kamek's eagerness for war and bloodshed (it's implied that Kamek is responsible for Bowser being born so large and powerful, and that he sees himself as the power behind the throne) but will conquer the Mushroom Kingdom if that's what it will take to get his people to stop wanting war and focus on the industrial self-improvement that he's worked to foster in them.
Mario and Luigi venture through the Kingdom, encountering enemies and natural-hazards. Though they work as a team, their disagreements over the situation (Mario can barely contain the fact that, yes, he's actually pretty thrilled to be questing like this, Luigi is miserable) continue to simmer. Meanwhile, back at the Castle, Toad and Toadette summon the citizenry inside to fortify and prepare for battle amid word of Bowser's forces massing at their borders.
The brothers find and ambush the Koopa caravan carrying the egg, and liberate it after a battle. Amid the fighting, though, both Luigi's rage at Mario's adventure-obsession ("You think your better than me?," basically) and Mario's view of his brother as a "coward" and "small-minded" both finally spill into the open. They nearly come to blows (old wounds, father issues, etc) but are stopped when the egg (damaged in the fighting) cracks open to reveal a bipedal baby dinosaur that calls itself Yoshi (it's growth seems highly-accelerated) and appears to understand English - even if it can only say "Yoshi."
Bowser knows that allowing Kamek to experiment on Peach to unlock the "legendary" power of her bloodline is the key to victory, but is reluctant to torture her (Kamek does not share this reticence). Apparently, the relic (a stone full of glowing, seemingly self-replenishing liquid) taken from the Warp Zone to Brooklyn may allow them another option - demonstrated when Kamek drops a Fire Flower petal into some of the liquid, causing an "opposite" Ice Flower to sprout. We also see Kamek performing magical experiments on the glove taken from Luigi in their first battle.
Mario, Luigi and Yoshi (now almost full-grown) work out that Yoshi's "people" are not far from where they are and will rally to the Mushrooms' cause if asked. The decision is made: Mario will press on to Bowser's Kingdom, Luigi will take Yoshi to his home. The brothers' apology is unspoken, as they vow to see eachother at the end one way or another.
Kamek appears to Peach without Bowser's knowledge, revealing that, as the palace was built to the giant (see below) Koopa's proportions, he's able to move about in secret via passages too small for his master. He also reveals that he knows the secret of her royal powers (her emotions, thoughts and feelings are tied to the very nature of the Mushroom Kingdom, hence her well-practiced zen calm) and has developed a machine that will forcibly draw reactions from her that can be used to cripple the Kingdom. Bowser insists that they first at least try using the relic to create a copy they can experiment on instead, but it's clear that Kamek would be happier tormenting the real thing. When he departs, Peach finally loses her composure and breaks down sobbing...
...which in turn kicks up a raging rainstorm over The Mushroom Kingdom, which Toad grimly notes can only benefit the approaching Koopa horde.
Mario's lonely journey to Bowser's Kingdom is hard-fought and arduous, and he begins to lose some of his romantic idealization of adventuring. He come to admit that Luigi has a point, and that by now he actually would like to see Brooklyn again - and that he won't take it for granted, this time...
Conversely, Luigi's journey with Yoshi (now fully-grown) takes him to a scenic region of the Kingdom that dazzles him, allowing him to see what Mario had always seen in an explorer's life. They reach The Valley of Yoshis, where (despite the somewhat hilarious language-barrier) The Yoshis agree to march to The Mushroom Kingdom and lend a hand thanks to the return of their "prince." Luigi resolves to catch up with Mario, and Yoshi goes with him.
Kamek uses the potion derived from the relic on a restrained Peach, which causes the magical "birth" of a "goth"-looking, black-dressed, purple-haired "evil Peach" ("Princess PLUM," maybe?) who shrieks and tears about the lab like an animal - frightening Peach and even Bowser as Kamek tries to force her into the emotion-manipulating machine... which fails to work. The relic didn't copy her gift. Kamek magically blasts the clone into vapor (which he collects in a bottle), and gleefully informs Bowser that they've now no choice but to use the procedure on the real Peach. Peach pleads against this, but Bowser is unmoved (though he's not above angrily reminding Kamek to know his place - and that he's NOT the "puppet master" he fancies himself, even if he did "create" his King.)
Rain continues at the Mushroom Castle, where long-range archers have already felled a series of Koopa Army advance scouts. Toadette can only console Toad that she "hasn't felt an earthquake... yet."
Mario at last slips into the center of Bowser's Kingdom, just in time to hear Bowser make a proclamation to his people via magical "projection" above the Castle, that their time is at hand. The Koopa King broods over this in his throne room, and sighs as Kamek pipes up with a projection of his own: He shows The Koopas Princess Peach locked into the torture-device that is "the key to our victory!" as the Koopa soldiers and citizenry cheer her first screams... Mario flies into a rage!
At the Mushroom Castle, Toad is momentarily heartened by the news that The Yoshis are speeding to their aid... until a temor is felt. On cue, the Koopa army advances in earnest. Back in the lab, Kamek is informed that Mario is tearing the Kingdom apart and turns the torture-controls over to an underling. He takes a red crystal that had been hooked up and "siphoning" some kind of energy from Luigi's glove, fixes it into his wand, and heads for the battlefield.
Luigi and Yoshi arrive at the cliffs bordering Bowser's kingdom just in time to see Mario engaged in a one-man war against the citizenry, soldiers and creatures (jumping, brick-smashing, Fire Flower blasts, the Mario fight-scene for the ages) as he fights his way to Bowser's Castle like a man possessed. Kamek stops him (just as Luigi and Yoshi arrive to join them) and taunts both brothers with the glove and claims that he "cracked the code" of transdimensional irregularity... before blasting them with magic from the wand. The result: Their super-strength is neutralized, they're now "normal" in this world.
Pounded by rain and wracked by tremors, Toad's forces are only just barely holding back the horde at the gates (think Helm's Deep from THE TWO TOWERS.)
Mario, Luigi and Yoshi are brought before a gloating Bowser, who orders them locked in the dungeon - but not before he specifically relishes taunting Mario, "The one who's name she still clings to." In the dungeon, Mario and Luigi apologize to eachother. Mario feels out of ideas, but a changed Luigi reveals that he pocketed a wrench and that they'll "plumb their way out," gesturing to the bolts on the large thermal pipes criss-crossing the roof of the dungeon...
Peach passes out from the strain of Kamek's machine. Bowser orders him to let her be - for now. Annoyed, Kamek departs as Bowser takes his leave as well.
At Mushroom Castle, the tide turns - ever so slightly - as The Yoshis (and several other dinosaur-like species) pour onto the battlefield and make a mess of the Koopa lines, while winged Yoshis arrive for air support. Toad is encouraged, Toadette less so...
Mario and Luigi use their plumber's intuition to move among the thermal-pipes between the walls of the castle (Yoshi has "gone on ahead," apparently with specific instructions from Mario) finding their way into Kamek's lab, where they find revive a dazed but not (physically) injured Peach. They go for the wand, angling that breaking it might restore their enhanced powers... but the wizard returns, and a fight breaks out. Kamek easily fends off the all-too-human plumbers with his magic (at once point attempting to drown Mario in the cauldron of relic-potion) with Peach looking on in desperation... and then anger.
Over the Mushroom Kingdom, the rain and the tremors stop... but the sky turns red with churning clouds and "lightning" that looks more like fire. (Toad: "Is that good news?" Toadette: "I have no idea.")
Eyes blazing, Peach attacks Kamek with vengeful abandon (and smashing his wand, causing the "powers" to zap back into Mario and Luigi) hoisting him over her head and throwing him out the window - seemingly to his death.
In the bowels of the Castle, Yoshi is using Luigi's wrench to mess with various pressure valves. As he does, we see various pipes and lava-pools throughout the (thermal-powered) infrastructure boil, buckle and bend.
As the brothers look on cautiously, Peach gradually calms (intercut with the sun finally coming out over the Mushroom Castle battlefield) and the trio make ready to escape; with a minor tremor alerting them that Yoshi must have found the valves ("That thing is a born plumber!") But Peach notices that Mario still has some of the relic-potion on his mustache, and realizes that they aren't safe yet...
A deformed, monster-like duplicate of Mario bursts from the cauldron, identifying itself as "Wario." Mario sends Luigi and Peach to escape while he holds him off, and they proceed to fight - intercut with Luigi and Peach (joined by Yoshi) fleeing through the castle as the tremors increase and lava, fire and steam begin to crack through the walls. They emerge into the Throne Room... where Bowser is waiting.
At the Mushroom Castle, the good guys have turned the enemy back. Toad and Toadette appear at ease...
In the crumbling throne room, Luigi, Peach and Yoshi dodge Bowser's attacks - including his now-revealed fire-breath. Mario and Wario, still wrestling, come crashing out of a balcony and land on top of the giant brute, bouncing to the ground where the fight continues until Mario manages to kick his doppleganger into a newly-opened lava-pit.
Mario and Luigi engage the gigantic Bowser in battle, pummeling him until he lies still on the ever-unsure floor. The enemy defeated, they turn to leave with Peach and Yoshi... but Luigi looks back, noting that Bowser is "still moving." Mario nods grimly, tells Yoshi to escape with Peach. She doesn't understand why they need to "finish" Bowser - "It's an Italian thing," "It's a Brooklyn thing."
Peach, riding Yoshi, dahses out of the castle across it's stone bridge, which now extends over a rising lake of fire and lava. Mario, Luigi and Bowser circle eachother, staring one another down and ready for an opening...
...the entire front of the castle gate crumbles as the three combatants come crashing out, wailing on eachother. Mario scoops up a Bowser-sized decorative axe, brandishing it as Luigi powers-up with a Fire Flower and lures Bowser to the center of the bridge. Realizing he's trapped, Bowser wheels back around in time to see Mario smash the axe down onto the bridge... causing it to crumble under his feet and send the Koopa King spiraling down to his doom as The Brothers exchange happy nods across the gulf.
Mario, Luigi and Yoshi receive a hero's welcome at Mushroom Castle, where Peach "knights" them ("These people didn't even have a word for 'knight' until Mario brought it up!" notes Luigi). There's talk of continuing to search for a way back to Brooklyn, but it's clear that both brothers have reached an equilibrium whereby they miss home but are also excited to be heroes exploring their new world.
Epilogue: In the remnants of Bowser's Kingdom, something stirs in a lake of lava... it's Wario, somehow alive (and lava-proof?) and clawing his way up onto the rocky shore - where Kamek is waiting for him.
AESTHETIC:
Mushroom Kingdom: Big and organic. As much visual reference to the games as possible in terms of the look and feel of the Mushroom Kingdom, but not leaning on intentional artifice - think Narnia, MALEFICENT's Moors, LEGEND or the original WIZARD OF OZ, not the Burton WONDERLAND. Lean heavy on the idea of extra-active plant-life, given the presence of the Mushroom People themselves: Along with the expected Piranha Plants and Goombas (they could be evil/primitive Mushrooms, right?) and so forth, think grabby-vines, moving flowers, etc. Mushroom Kingdom should be "fantasy self-sustaining, a super-colorful/cuddly cross between fairytale medieval Europe and fuedal Japan. Even "familair" looking flora and fauna look just a little bit more cuddly/friendly (big eyes, round proportions) than they would on Earth.
Big-idea stuff like the floating mountains from AVATAR? Maybe, but in trying to recreate the "floaty brick platforms" of the games maybe think more on the lines of ancient, crumbling instrastructure - think the ruins of the elevated Roman Aquaducts by way of M.C. Escher and/or Frank Lloyd Wright (imagine a fight/chase sequence in a canyon criss-crossed with stone bridges and stairs, Mario/Luigi leaping between them and smashing up through the stone from below to knock out enemies!) Should make some practical geographic sense, i.e. no lava-world right next door to the frozen-tundra for now reason.
Bowser's Domain: The Koopas live in a "valley" created by constant volcanic activity, which they've harnessed (crudely) into a power-source. It's an "industrial" Kingdom in contrast to the Mushrooms' clean, fanciful world - damn near everything is made out of red clay bricks, wrought-iron and logs culled from ancient, massive trees. It's not exactly Mordor, though - this isn't a "blighted" place, it's the logical solution to building a working civilization in the absence of key natural resources. The exception is Bowser's Castle, which resembles a traditional medieval fortress of gray stone but built to its master's gigantic proportions (see below.)
Brooklyn: Won't be seen for too long, but should be a fairly authentic looking recreation of New York City, circa-1981.
COSTUMING/CHARACTERS:
Mario and Luigi: Should divide in appearance, same as the games - Mario shorter, slightly older, stocky; Luigi tall and lanky. They Have their traditional blue overalls and red/green shirt/hat combos, but no initials on the hats and no gloves. They keep their clothes because, like them, their Earth-origins cause them to function like armor against weapons in the new world. They also have their tool-belts, which start half-stocked with common plumbing tools but are augmented to carry gear and items.
Princess Peach: Should look as much like the games as possible in dress and hairstyle, leaning heavy on the mashup of Disney Princess grandeur and Roccoco opulence. Might be prudent to hire a Japanese "idol"-style actress, someone familiar with the serene "zen-but-with-giggles" affect often baked into the traditional characterization of Peach, but also able to drop it when appropriate.
Toad/Toadette/Mushrooms: Probably best executed via CGI or CGI-augmented children/little-people in suits. Same design as the games, with personalities similar to "adult children" like Snow White's dwarves, Oompa Loompas, Munchkins, etc. Not precisely "comic-relief," but given their proportions just them moving about doing simple tasks should be amusing.
Yoshi: Think a T-Rex, but roughly the proportions of a mid-sized horse with a vastly less "threatening" face (big eyes, round snout, etc). Personality of a very large, friendly dog (once he's grown, prior to that more like a puppy.)
CREATURES (KOOPAS ETC):
Bowser: Stands roughly 12 - 14 feet tall, difficult to discern given bulky proportions and hunched posture. Color and shape should be as close to the game as possible, with realistic reptilian textures and musculature. Walks upright, but can "sprint" on all fours like a gorilla for added speed. Sharp teeth, horns, etc but they aren't the focus - this a brawler, not a biter. Should consistently Appear tired and resigned except when in battle or angry, a brutal tyrant but a brutal tyrant who would rather his people not be so demanding of brutality or eager for tyranny.
Koopas: Humanoid turtles, similar in design to Bowser but "lesser" (human-sized, for one thingf) highlighting that he's a "freakishly" evolved superior version of them. Most should appear harmless but not particularly clean or pleasant. "Soldiers" among them wear wrought-iron armor, and fight with weapons that are all variations on hammers.
Kamek: Older-looking Koopa, wears wizard robes and a pointy hat. Eager and sadistic, in contrast to Bowser.
Troopas: The turtle-enemies from the games, here utilized as beasts of burden by Koopa soldiers. Also turtles, but walk on all fours, have yellow skin and snapping jaws - resemble overly-muscled tortoises roughly the size of a small car, capable of withdrawing wholly into their shell when attacked. Flying variation with feathered-wings in place of front arms also onhand.
Spinys: Similar looking to Troopas but with stumpier limbs and shells covered with spikes (thinner, longer and more needle-like than the ones on Bowser's shell.) Should be at least one scene partially built around them emerging from eggs, but maybe save Lakitu (the cloud guy who drops the eggs in the game) for a sequel.
Buzzy Beetles: Change in design from the games, for the sake of variety: Actual large beetles (same size as the Troopas, roughly) instead of smooth-shelled turtles.
Goombas: Same design as the game (evil mushrooms with feet and faces) but here fast-moving and jumpy. Bowser's army version of "pawns," usually the first wave into any given fight.
ShyGuys: Masks identitcal to the games (white ovals with three black circles denoting eyes and mouth) red robes more in line with Arabian/Nomadic attire, built for movement. Completely silent, never seen without masks. Carry multiple stabbing/throwing weapons (swords, knives, chains, daggers - think ninja gear) and the occasional bow and arrow combo.
Piranha Plants: Large, plump venus fly-trap creatures. Should be a background presence in any scene set in a heavily plant-covered area, at least one action beat should be set around an encounter with one or more large ones.
Wario: "Mr. Hyde" version of Mario - exaggerated features, bulgy and muscular. Sharp teeth and claw-like fingernails. Purple overalls over a yellow shirt.
...so, yeah. That's what I got. Silly? Probably. Better if I actually sat around and workshopped it? Likely. But now when people ask, "how would you do it?" There it is.
However! If this is some kind of indication that Nintendo is finally back to a point where they're willing to talk about licensing for Hollywood movies? I like the sound of that. It's time. Video game movies are probably the next big substrata of popular culture to mine after comics, and it's consistently depressing to see the adaptation focus being on currently-hot-but-who-can-say properties like HALO or ASSASSIN'S CREED or whatever while the actual titans of the medium sit by untouched (yes, WARCRAFT comes from storied stock, but it's still absurd that it gets to be a movie before ZELDA does.)
The one thing that disheartens me about the Sony/Mario rumor (apart from the obvious) is that the plan was apparently to make an animated franchise out of it. Sorry, no thanks. Not that I have anything against animation - quite the opposite, in fact - but more that it doesn't feel like the "event" that an authentic Mario feature deserves. Simply put: Mario has been animated, either as a sprite or as a TV cartoon, for as long as the series has existed. This is one of the biggest icons in modern popular-culture - the Mickey Mouse of video-games - he and his world deserve to "come to life" as big and extravagantly as, say, THE AVENGERS did.
I've been imagining what a live-action Mario would be like for decades - usually in-earnest in response to the somewhat perplexing idea that the property can't possibly work in live-action (and yet somehow Oz, Narnia, Wonderland, Middle Earth, Asgard etc have worked just fine?) So I figured it was time to sit down and actually type out an off-the-cuff version of how I'd pitch this project if I ever got the chance, rather than reciting pieces of it whenever the topic comes up.
This will probably be a long'un, so hit the jump for it:
Alright. So here it is. Bob "MovieBob" Chipman's hypothetical SUPER MARIO BROS. live-action movie pitch. The whole thing:
"25 WORDS OR LESS" PITCH:
"LORD OF THE RINGS meets 21 JUMP STREET. Fantasy/adventure, but with relatable wisecracking modern buddies instead of British dwarves or whatever."
ELEVATOR PITCH:
"LORD OF THE RINGS meets 21 JUMP STREET by way of GHOSTBUSTERS. Epic fantasy-adventure but instead of solemn British elves or precocious children it's two wisecracking blue-collar schmoes from Brooklyn; so it's relateable and "now." Major sequel/spin-off potential with a near-limitless merchandising upside plus massive youth, crossover and nostalgia appeal, based on a proven brand that's already more established and widely-recognized worldwide (particularly in Asian markets) than most of the Marvel/Avengers characters were prior to their movies.
STORYLINE (SHORT VERSION):
Two Italian-American brothers, plumbers from Brooklyn, are accidentally transported to a fantasy world of magic and monsters. There, they discover that their "alien" physiology imbues them with superhuman strength, speed and the ability to draw strange magical powers from "common" local plants and food. A kingdom of humanoid Mushrooms welcomes them as would-be heroes whose strength could turn the tide in their war against an encroaching army of evil creatures, while the brothers just want to find a way home. But when the Kingdom's Princess is kidnapped, it's clear that only they can undertake the dangerous rescue mission; ultimately finding their new destiny as The Super Mario Brothers!
STORYLINE (LONG VERSION):
Mario and Luigi are plumbers in Brooklyn, NY circa-1981. Fiercely loyal to one another in the fashion of archetypal working-class Italian brothers, but don't see eye to eye on much. Mario had dreamed of becoming an adventurer (think Hemmingway, Indiana Jones, Carl from UP) but put it on hold to take over the family business (with Luigi) after their father died unexpectedly. Luigi isn't a dreamer. He only ever wanted to follow his father as a plumber, resents Mario "always wanting more."
The brothers (the family's Americanized surname IS "Mario," owing to an Ellis Island foul-up of "Marionetti" that got their ancestor officially named "Mario Mario," a naming-tradition that carried on in his honor for first-borns) are called to repair a water-main break in a downtown Manhattan office, and note that seemingly every other plumber in the city seems to be doing jobs in the same area. They track the break to a rupture that leads into the sewer system, where they encounter what appears to be a huge turtle-like creature! Amid their struggle, a huge sink-hole opens, swallowing the entire city block, and the brothers (along with many others) suddenly find themselves in a crater in the Manhattan bedrock.
Luigi finds inquisitve Mario having followed the creature to a "cave" whose interior looks like some kind of ancient temple room. The creature has vanished back into a pool of water that seems to lead to a light source, and as the brothers argue about what's happening a second tremor knocks them into the pool...
They're spat-out of a huge green pipe jutting from a cliff-side into The Mushroom Kingdom (think Japanese/Brothers-Grimm Hybrid Oz, see below for details), where they encounter more hostile creatures and, in fending them off, discover their seemingly superhuman abilities and the powers they gain from the native nature (just Fire Flowers, to start - and yes, having fire-powers does make their clothing change color because magic). During this battle, one of the upright-walking, smarter creatures (see below) emerges from the pipe clutching some sort of glowing relic, and once he's out of range the other creatures blow up the pipe (much to Luigi's horror) and retreat - with one smaller creatures stealing a work-glove from Luigi's toolbelt.
A troop of Mushroom Soldiers appear (they've come to relieve the creatures of another "treasure" they were guarding - a giant green-spotted egg...) wary of the brothers. Mario decides they should go with them to try and find answers, but all Luigi wants is to find another way home. They're walked to the Castle, where they meet with Toad ("Captain of The Guards") and Toadette (the Princess' chief advisor.) Mario can't understand why Luigi doesn't at least want to know what's happening. Luigi is impatient, accusing his brother of already seeing this as "some dumb adventure" rather than a serious calamity. Their bickering stops when they're finally brought before Princess Peach, the Kingdom's leader, who (along with being beautiful) seems to calm all around her with her very aura - more like a mystic being than a monarch.
In conversation with Peach, they learn the facts of the situation: The Mushrooms and Koopas (race of humanoid turtles) have been at war for centuries, with neither side remembering who actually started the fighting but also unable to stop as the Koopas covet the Mushrooms' land and resources. Within the last generation, war has turned in the Koopas' favor via the rise of Bowser, a larger, stronger and smarter-than-average Koopa who has industrialized and militarized his people to previously-unseen levels. The only surviving member of the Royal Family, Peach seeks to defend her people but knows they can only hold out for so long. The egg the soldiers took from the Koopas is said to "belong to The Yoshis," and Toad believes that returning it to them could lead to a key alliance of forces.
The Mushrooms want the brothers to use their "magical" strength and powers (Mario and Toadette work-out that it's a matter of interdimensional physics being different) to help aid the fight, and while Mario seems open to the idea Luigi refuses - he just wants to recuperate and set out to find another "Warp Zone" (ancient inter-universe portals that Bowser's forces had been pillaging and destroying to find... something) to go home. Peach, though disappointed, agrees to let them leave. By accident, Mario witnesses Peach's otherwise zen-like calm/nurturing demeanor momentarily drop to sadness, and notices that it briefly begins to rain...
By night, a group of ShyGuys (Bowser's "ninjas," see below) slip into the palace and attempt to abduct Peach. A fight ensues (including Peach fending off several attackers using only her parasol in homage to the famous Umbrella Fight from ONCE UPON A TIME IN CHINA) but Peach is ultimately taken (so is the "Yoshi's" egg), seemingly spelling doom for the Kingdom.
Toad, Toadette and the other Mushrooms beg the brothers to at least help rescue The Princess - without her, they're doomed (though only Toadette seems to know why that is, and she's sworn to secrecy). Luigi is reluctant as ever, but Mario appeals to their shared sense of honor (they're rhyming catchprases: "It's an Italian thing" and "It's a Brooklyn thing") and his suspicion that Peach is possessed of a power that might help them get home. They set off to quest, with Toad additionally asking that they attempt to rescue the egg, if they can.
Peach is taken via improvised warp-zones directly to the Koopa kingdom, where she meets with Bowser and his scheming wizard/advisor Kamek ("The MagiKoopa.") Though she's a prisoner and locked in a dungeon, when allowed out to speak with Bowser she finds him to be surprisingly intelligent if unsophisticated. He doesn't share Kamek's eagerness for war and bloodshed (it's implied that Kamek is responsible for Bowser being born so large and powerful, and that he sees himself as the power behind the throne) but will conquer the Mushroom Kingdom if that's what it will take to get his people to stop wanting war and focus on the industrial self-improvement that he's worked to foster in them.
Mario and Luigi venture through the Kingdom, encountering enemies and natural-hazards. Though they work as a team, their disagreements over the situation (Mario can barely contain the fact that, yes, he's actually pretty thrilled to be questing like this, Luigi is miserable) continue to simmer. Meanwhile, back at the Castle, Toad and Toadette summon the citizenry inside to fortify and prepare for battle amid word of Bowser's forces massing at their borders.
The brothers find and ambush the Koopa caravan carrying the egg, and liberate it after a battle. Amid the fighting, though, both Luigi's rage at Mario's adventure-obsession ("You think your better than me?," basically) and Mario's view of his brother as a "coward" and "small-minded" both finally spill into the open. They nearly come to blows (old wounds, father issues, etc) but are stopped when the egg (damaged in the fighting) cracks open to reveal a bipedal baby dinosaur that calls itself Yoshi (it's growth seems highly-accelerated) and appears to understand English - even if it can only say "Yoshi."
Bowser knows that allowing Kamek to experiment on Peach to unlock the "legendary" power of her bloodline is the key to victory, but is reluctant to torture her (Kamek does not share this reticence). Apparently, the relic (a stone full of glowing, seemingly self-replenishing liquid) taken from the Warp Zone to Brooklyn may allow them another option - demonstrated when Kamek drops a Fire Flower petal into some of the liquid, causing an "opposite" Ice Flower to sprout. We also see Kamek performing magical experiments on the glove taken from Luigi in their first battle.
Mario, Luigi and Yoshi (now almost full-grown) work out that Yoshi's "people" are not far from where they are and will rally to the Mushrooms' cause if asked. The decision is made: Mario will press on to Bowser's Kingdom, Luigi will take Yoshi to his home. The brothers' apology is unspoken, as they vow to see eachother at the end one way or another.
Kamek appears to Peach without Bowser's knowledge, revealing that, as the palace was built to the giant (see below) Koopa's proportions, he's able to move about in secret via passages too small for his master. He also reveals that he knows the secret of her royal powers (her emotions, thoughts and feelings are tied to the very nature of the Mushroom Kingdom, hence her well-practiced zen calm) and has developed a machine that will forcibly draw reactions from her that can be used to cripple the Kingdom. Bowser insists that they first at least try using the relic to create a copy they can experiment on instead, but it's clear that Kamek would be happier tormenting the real thing. When he departs, Peach finally loses her composure and breaks down sobbing...
...which in turn kicks up a raging rainstorm over The Mushroom Kingdom, which Toad grimly notes can only benefit the approaching Koopa horde.
Mario's lonely journey to Bowser's Kingdom is hard-fought and arduous, and he begins to lose some of his romantic idealization of adventuring. He come to admit that Luigi has a point, and that by now he actually would like to see Brooklyn again - and that he won't take it for granted, this time...
Conversely, Luigi's journey with Yoshi (now fully-grown) takes him to a scenic region of the Kingdom that dazzles him, allowing him to see what Mario had always seen in an explorer's life. They reach The Valley of Yoshis, where (despite the somewhat hilarious language-barrier) The Yoshis agree to march to The Mushroom Kingdom and lend a hand thanks to the return of their "prince." Luigi resolves to catch up with Mario, and Yoshi goes with him.
Kamek uses the potion derived from the relic on a restrained Peach, which causes the magical "birth" of a "goth"-looking, black-dressed, purple-haired "evil Peach" ("Princess PLUM," maybe?) who shrieks and tears about the lab like an animal - frightening Peach and even Bowser as Kamek tries to force her into the emotion-manipulating machine... which fails to work. The relic didn't copy her gift. Kamek magically blasts the clone into vapor (which he collects in a bottle), and gleefully informs Bowser that they've now no choice but to use the procedure on the real Peach. Peach pleads against this, but Bowser is unmoved (though he's not above angrily reminding Kamek to know his place - and that he's NOT the "puppet master" he fancies himself, even if he did "create" his King.)
Rain continues at the Mushroom Castle, where long-range archers have already felled a series of Koopa Army advance scouts. Toadette can only console Toad that she "hasn't felt an earthquake... yet."
Mario at last slips into the center of Bowser's Kingdom, just in time to hear Bowser make a proclamation to his people via magical "projection" above the Castle, that their time is at hand. The Koopa King broods over this in his throne room, and sighs as Kamek pipes up with a projection of his own: He shows The Koopas Princess Peach locked into the torture-device that is "the key to our victory!" as the Koopa soldiers and citizenry cheer her first screams... Mario flies into a rage!
At the Mushroom Castle, Toad is momentarily heartened by the news that The Yoshis are speeding to their aid... until a temor is felt. On cue, the Koopa army advances in earnest. Back in the lab, Kamek is informed that Mario is tearing the Kingdom apart and turns the torture-controls over to an underling. He takes a red crystal that had been hooked up and "siphoning" some kind of energy from Luigi's glove, fixes it into his wand, and heads for the battlefield.
Luigi and Yoshi arrive at the cliffs bordering Bowser's kingdom just in time to see Mario engaged in a one-man war against the citizenry, soldiers and creatures (jumping, brick-smashing, Fire Flower blasts, the Mario fight-scene for the ages) as he fights his way to Bowser's Castle like a man possessed. Kamek stops him (just as Luigi and Yoshi arrive to join them) and taunts both brothers with the glove and claims that he "cracked the code" of transdimensional irregularity... before blasting them with magic from the wand. The result: Their super-strength is neutralized, they're now "normal" in this world.
Pounded by rain and wracked by tremors, Toad's forces are only just barely holding back the horde at the gates (think Helm's Deep from THE TWO TOWERS.)
Mario, Luigi and Yoshi are brought before a gloating Bowser, who orders them locked in the dungeon - but not before he specifically relishes taunting Mario, "The one who's name she still clings to." In the dungeon, Mario and Luigi apologize to eachother. Mario feels out of ideas, but a changed Luigi reveals that he pocketed a wrench and that they'll "plumb their way out," gesturing to the bolts on the large thermal pipes criss-crossing the roof of the dungeon...
Peach passes out from the strain of Kamek's machine. Bowser orders him to let her be - for now. Annoyed, Kamek departs as Bowser takes his leave as well.
At Mushroom Castle, the tide turns - ever so slightly - as The Yoshis (and several other dinosaur-like species) pour onto the battlefield and make a mess of the Koopa lines, while winged Yoshis arrive for air support. Toad is encouraged, Toadette less so...
Mario and Luigi use their plumber's intuition to move among the thermal-pipes between the walls of the castle (Yoshi has "gone on ahead," apparently with specific instructions from Mario) finding their way into Kamek's lab, where they find revive a dazed but not (physically) injured Peach. They go for the wand, angling that breaking it might restore their enhanced powers... but the wizard returns, and a fight breaks out. Kamek easily fends off the all-too-human plumbers with his magic (at once point attempting to drown Mario in the cauldron of relic-potion) with Peach looking on in desperation... and then anger.
Over the Mushroom Kingdom, the rain and the tremors stop... but the sky turns red with churning clouds and "lightning" that looks more like fire. (Toad: "Is that good news?" Toadette: "I have no idea.")
Eyes blazing, Peach attacks Kamek with vengeful abandon (and smashing his wand, causing the "powers" to zap back into Mario and Luigi) hoisting him over her head and throwing him out the window - seemingly to his death.
In the bowels of the Castle, Yoshi is using Luigi's wrench to mess with various pressure valves. As he does, we see various pipes and lava-pools throughout the (thermal-powered) infrastructure boil, buckle and bend.
As the brothers look on cautiously, Peach gradually calms (intercut with the sun finally coming out over the Mushroom Castle battlefield) and the trio make ready to escape; with a minor tremor alerting them that Yoshi must have found the valves ("That thing is a born plumber!") But Peach notices that Mario still has some of the relic-potion on his mustache, and realizes that they aren't safe yet...
A deformed, monster-like duplicate of Mario bursts from the cauldron, identifying itself as "Wario." Mario sends Luigi and Peach to escape while he holds him off, and they proceed to fight - intercut with Luigi and Peach (joined by Yoshi) fleeing through the castle as the tremors increase and lava, fire and steam begin to crack through the walls. They emerge into the Throne Room... where Bowser is waiting.
At the Mushroom Castle, the good guys have turned the enemy back. Toad and Toadette appear at ease...
In the crumbling throne room, Luigi, Peach and Yoshi dodge Bowser's attacks - including his now-revealed fire-breath. Mario and Wario, still wrestling, come crashing out of a balcony and land on top of the giant brute, bouncing to the ground where the fight continues until Mario manages to kick his doppleganger into a newly-opened lava-pit.
Mario and Luigi engage the gigantic Bowser in battle, pummeling him until he lies still on the ever-unsure floor. The enemy defeated, they turn to leave with Peach and Yoshi... but Luigi looks back, noting that Bowser is "still moving." Mario nods grimly, tells Yoshi to escape with Peach. She doesn't understand why they need to "finish" Bowser - "It's an Italian thing," "It's a Brooklyn thing."
Peach, riding Yoshi, dahses out of the castle across it's stone bridge, which now extends over a rising lake of fire and lava. Mario, Luigi and Bowser circle eachother, staring one another down and ready for an opening...
...the entire front of the castle gate crumbles as the three combatants come crashing out, wailing on eachother. Mario scoops up a Bowser-sized decorative axe, brandishing it as Luigi powers-up with a Fire Flower and lures Bowser to the center of the bridge. Realizing he's trapped, Bowser wheels back around in time to see Mario smash the axe down onto the bridge... causing it to crumble under his feet and send the Koopa King spiraling down to his doom as The Brothers exchange happy nods across the gulf.
Mario, Luigi and Yoshi receive a hero's welcome at Mushroom Castle, where Peach "knights" them ("These people didn't even have a word for 'knight' until Mario brought it up!" notes Luigi). There's talk of continuing to search for a way back to Brooklyn, but it's clear that both brothers have reached an equilibrium whereby they miss home but are also excited to be heroes exploring their new world.
Epilogue: In the remnants of Bowser's Kingdom, something stirs in a lake of lava... it's Wario, somehow alive (and lava-proof?) and clawing his way up onto the rocky shore - where Kamek is waiting for him.
AESTHETIC:
Mushroom Kingdom: Big and organic. As much visual reference to the games as possible in terms of the look and feel of the Mushroom Kingdom, but not leaning on intentional artifice - think Narnia, MALEFICENT's Moors, LEGEND or the original WIZARD OF OZ, not the Burton WONDERLAND. Lean heavy on the idea of extra-active plant-life, given the presence of the Mushroom People themselves: Along with the expected Piranha Plants and Goombas (they could be evil/primitive Mushrooms, right?) and so forth, think grabby-vines, moving flowers, etc. Mushroom Kingdom should be "fantasy self-sustaining, a super-colorful/cuddly cross between fairytale medieval Europe and fuedal Japan. Even "familair" looking flora and fauna look just a little bit more cuddly/friendly (big eyes, round proportions) than they would on Earth.
Big-idea stuff like the floating mountains from AVATAR? Maybe, but in trying to recreate the "floaty brick platforms" of the games maybe think more on the lines of ancient, crumbling instrastructure - think the ruins of the elevated Roman Aquaducts by way of M.C. Escher and/or Frank Lloyd Wright (imagine a fight/chase sequence in a canyon criss-crossed with stone bridges and stairs, Mario/Luigi leaping between them and smashing up through the stone from below to knock out enemies!) Should make some practical geographic sense, i.e. no lava-world right next door to the frozen-tundra for now reason.
Bowser's Domain: The Koopas live in a "valley" created by constant volcanic activity, which they've harnessed (crudely) into a power-source. It's an "industrial" Kingdom in contrast to the Mushrooms' clean, fanciful world - damn near everything is made out of red clay bricks, wrought-iron and logs culled from ancient, massive trees. It's not exactly Mordor, though - this isn't a "blighted" place, it's the logical solution to building a working civilization in the absence of key natural resources. The exception is Bowser's Castle, which resembles a traditional medieval fortress of gray stone but built to its master's gigantic proportions (see below.)
Brooklyn: Won't be seen for too long, but should be a fairly authentic looking recreation of New York City, circa-1981.
COSTUMING/CHARACTERS:
Mario and Luigi: Should divide in appearance, same as the games - Mario shorter, slightly older, stocky; Luigi tall and lanky. They Have their traditional blue overalls and red/green shirt/hat combos, but no initials on the hats and no gloves. They keep their clothes because, like them, their Earth-origins cause them to function like armor against weapons in the new world. They also have their tool-belts, which start half-stocked with common plumbing tools but are augmented to carry gear and items.
Princess Peach: Should look as much like the games as possible in dress and hairstyle, leaning heavy on the mashup of Disney Princess grandeur and Roccoco opulence. Might be prudent to hire a Japanese "idol"-style actress, someone familiar with the serene "zen-but-with-giggles" affect often baked into the traditional characterization of Peach, but also able to drop it when appropriate.
Toad/Toadette/Mushrooms: Probably best executed via CGI or CGI-augmented children/little-people in suits. Same design as the games, with personalities similar to "adult children" like Snow White's dwarves, Oompa Loompas, Munchkins, etc. Not precisely "comic-relief," but given their proportions just them moving about doing simple tasks should be amusing.
Yoshi: Think a T-Rex, but roughly the proportions of a mid-sized horse with a vastly less "threatening" face (big eyes, round snout, etc). Personality of a very large, friendly dog (once he's grown, prior to that more like a puppy.)
CREATURES (KOOPAS ETC):
Bowser: Stands roughly 12 - 14 feet tall, difficult to discern given bulky proportions and hunched posture. Color and shape should be as close to the game as possible, with realistic reptilian textures and musculature. Walks upright, but can "sprint" on all fours like a gorilla for added speed. Sharp teeth, horns, etc but they aren't the focus - this a brawler, not a biter. Should consistently Appear tired and resigned except when in battle or angry, a brutal tyrant but a brutal tyrant who would rather his people not be so demanding of brutality or eager for tyranny.
Koopas: Humanoid turtles, similar in design to Bowser but "lesser" (human-sized, for one thingf) highlighting that he's a "freakishly" evolved superior version of them. Most should appear harmless but not particularly clean or pleasant. "Soldiers" among them wear wrought-iron armor, and fight with weapons that are all variations on hammers.
Kamek: Older-looking Koopa, wears wizard robes and a pointy hat. Eager and sadistic, in contrast to Bowser.
Troopas: The turtle-enemies from the games, here utilized as beasts of burden by Koopa soldiers. Also turtles, but walk on all fours, have yellow skin and snapping jaws - resemble overly-muscled tortoises roughly the size of a small car, capable of withdrawing wholly into their shell when attacked. Flying variation with feathered-wings in place of front arms also onhand.
Spinys: Similar looking to Troopas but with stumpier limbs and shells covered with spikes (thinner, longer and more needle-like than the ones on Bowser's shell.) Should be at least one scene partially built around them emerging from eggs, but maybe save Lakitu (the cloud guy who drops the eggs in the game) for a sequel.
Buzzy Beetles: Change in design from the games, for the sake of variety: Actual large beetles (same size as the Troopas, roughly) instead of smooth-shelled turtles.
Goombas: Same design as the game (evil mushrooms with feet and faces) but here fast-moving and jumpy. Bowser's army version of "pawns," usually the first wave into any given fight.
ShyGuys: Masks identitcal to the games (white ovals with three black circles denoting eyes and mouth) red robes more in line with Arabian/Nomadic attire, built for movement. Completely silent, never seen without masks. Carry multiple stabbing/throwing weapons (swords, knives, chains, daggers - think ninja gear) and the occasional bow and arrow combo.
Piranha Plants: Large, plump venus fly-trap creatures. Should be a background presence in any scene set in a heavily plant-covered area, at least one action beat should be set around an encounter with one or more large ones.
Wario: "Mr. Hyde" version of Mario - exaggerated features, bulgy and muscular. Sharp teeth and claw-like fingernails. Purple overalls over a yellow shirt.
...so, yeah. That's what I got. Silly? Probably. Better if I actually sat around and workshopped it? Likely. But now when people ask, "how would you do it?" There it is.
Tuesday, December 2, 2014
Friday, November 21, 2014
What Do The People Want?
Let's not mince words: While I'm busier right now than I've ever been in terms of producing content and publishing work, you wouldn't know it to look at these blogs.
In a lot of ways, social media has replaced the personal blog as a way to get one's work out onto the web - there's no way I would've seen the growth in web presence, visibility and professional connections I've had over the last two years in the pre-Twitter era; and while I'm immensely grateful for it I do feel like something has been lost (from me and from other folks) in terms of permanence and a "hub" for interacting with fans (or with cretins who just show up to cause trouble - sometimes that's fun too.)
I'm in the process of changing that.
As you may know, the current version of the Game OverThinker - my current main "creator-owned" project - is coming to an end (a little more slowly than I had hoped, because complications spring eternal) and will be re-launched sometime in early to mid 2015 as a newer, more ambitious creation possibly entailing more than one ongoing production. But I've also come to the decision that I want to produce more independent content related to topics other than video games - that I want to establish a presence (primarily but not exclusively through YouTube and/or similar venues) where my voice is my own, top to bottom.
And that likely means establishing a site of my own.
Not "just" a blog, but a space where I can manage and catalog all of my work for ease of access, so that (for example) folks who find me via Game OverThinker can immediately and easily also find my work for The Escapist, my independent videos and articles, my social media presence, etc. I don't 100% know what form that site will take (I'll probably have to engage the services of a site-builder and/or maintainer - though this is NOT a solicitation for that job) and I'm not 100% sure how I want to run/fund it (Patreon is obviously an option, but I'm not ready to pull that trigger yet.)
BUT! Just to get some feelers out there: What would you, folks who read these blogs or follow me or my work in various spaces, like to see in such a space? I mean both in terms of content - would you like to see longer-form movie reviews? Retro-reviews? Commentaries? Game reviews? Let's plays? Vlogs? Comedy business? You tell me. I can't promise I'll do every single thing people want me to do (and I have some ideas of my own, already) but it'd be nice to see what the general mood is.
So, fire away!
In a lot of ways, social media has replaced the personal blog as a way to get one's work out onto the web - there's no way I would've seen the growth in web presence, visibility and professional connections I've had over the last two years in the pre-Twitter era; and while I'm immensely grateful for it I do feel like something has been lost (from me and from other folks) in terms of permanence and a "hub" for interacting with fans (or with cretins who just show up to cause trouble - sometimes that's fun too.)
I'm in the process of changing that.
As you may know, the current version of the Game OverThinker - my current main "creator-owned" project - is coming to an end (a little more slowly than I had hoped, because complications spring eternal) and will be re-launched sometime in early to mid 2015 as a newer, more ambitious creation possibly entailing more than one ongoing production. But I've also come to the decision that I want to produce more independent content related to topics other than video games - that I want to establish a presence (primarily but not exclusively through YouTube and/or similar venues) where my voice is my own, top to bottom.
And that likely means establishing a site of my own.
Not "just" a blog, but a space where I can manage and catalog all of my work for ease of access, so that (for example) folks who find me via Game OverThinker can immediately and easily also find my work for The Escapist, my independent videos and articles, my social media presence, etc. I don't 100% know what form that site will take (I'll probably have to engage the services of a site-builder and/or maintainer - though this is NOT a solicitation for that job) and I'm not 100% sure how I want to run/fund it (Patreon is obviously an option, but I'm not ready to pull that trigger yet.)
BUT! Just to get some feelers out there: What would you, folks who read these blogs or follow me or my work in various spaces, like to see in such a space? I mean both in terms of content - would you like to see longer-form movie reviews? Retro-reviews? Commentaries? Game reviews? Let's plays? Vlogs? Comedy business? You tell me. I can't promise I'll do every single thing people want me to do (and I have some ideas of my own, already) but it'd be nice to see what the general mood is.
So, fire away!
Friday, November 14, 2014
Friday, November 7, 2014
Escape to The Movies: BIG HERO 6
Thursday, November 6, 2014
Escape to The Movies (Early!): INTERSTELLAR
Tuesday, November 4, 2014
Friday, October 31, 2014
Escape to The Movies: OUIJA
Yeah, I know. Nobody cares. But this is what happens when your publishing schedule is bound up in "week of release" embargoes.
Tuesday, October 28, 2014
Rebuilding
So. It's time to let fans, followers, readers etc know where things stand and are going with these blogs and my general web presence (after you check the latest update, of course)...
Firstly, if you're not already following me on Twitter, please consider doing so even if you never use the service yourself (speaking wise.) I'm not exactly what you'd call a "convert" to the power of social media, but I find Twitter to be a genuinely awesome tool. It's the immediacy of it that I like, and the way the character-limit forces me to get to the point when sharing a thought. The idea of essentially tossing a thought into a public square and having it "hang" there for others to see and respond to at their convenience suits my style, and is one of the reasons you've seen fewer small/random blog posts here - why draw out into a tedious blog what I can Tweet and reach more people more concisely?
However, blogs and personal-sites have a certain usefulness as a "hub" for making all of one's work link together - and also, as has become more necessary recently - a place to put material that (for whatever reason) is unable to find a proper home. On the other hand, as much as I tend to get stuck in my ways vis-a-vi technology, the fact is systems like Blogger, Tumblr etc are not conducive to the web presence I need (and want, frankly.)
So. Right now, the plan looks like this: At some point in the near(ish) future, this blog (and also the seperate/dedicated Game OverThinker blog) are going to either go away or go "dormant," to be replaced by a singular site that's more like, well... a SITE as opposed to a blog (though there will still be a heavy blog/newsfeed component.) My hope - and make no mistake, this is all very preliminary - is for this to be part of a new paradigm for my online presence, and can make (hypothetical) new avenues I've been looking to explore for awhile like merchandising, Patreon, etc more easily implemented (these would be, at least for now, based around projects outside of material co-produced for/with The Escapist.)
As for The Game OverThinker, I can now clarify more of what the plans are for that series going forward. For those who've been keeping track, I think I've made it quite clear that the "arc" that the series is in the midst of now is a kind of climax for the series in it's current incarnation. It will end, likely on or around it's 100th episode sometime this year or early next, time depending. It's a series I'm immensely proud of, both in terms of where it brought me and what I've been able to do with it, but the time has come to reshuffle the deck and relaunch.
What I wanted to clarify is that that many people have assumed that this means an "end" to the narrative/storyline/"sketch" aspect of the series entirely, and with things moving forward behind the scenes I can now say with some confidence that this is NOT the case, at all. What the series will move away from (at least primarily) is the presence of a constantly foward-moving narrative "arc," and into something more episodic in nature. I can't be more specific about how this "works" without giving away the ending of the current series, but suffice it to say that you can look forward to the main Game OverThinker series being predominantly focused on opinion-piece presentations (think my friend Jim Sterling's JIMQUISITION show, though not 100% on that model) with other characters like Ivan, OverThinker, RetroThinker, etc. onhand as supporting players - not quite "comic relief," but exaggerated alternative voices to break up (or bookend) the occasional drawn-out nature of my soapbox-soliloquy.
But did I say "main" series? I did. Part of the desire to relaunch Game OverThinker in this way was the realization that some of these characters, personas and voices were suited to saying certain things and performing certain functions that I wanted to make more use of but didn't necessarily want to overwhelm the series itself. So my plan (very beta at this point) is to have shorter series/vignettes specifically built around these personas that play to their strengths. More details to come on that front, but you may get a taste of things in these last few episodes of the current version.
FINALLY: As you've no dobut surmised, a lot of my time and effort recently has been taken up dealing with the same unpleasantness that's been derailing many other voices in the so-called "geek culture." And while I'll always speak up when I see/hear something wrong being done around me, I've come to the conclusion that what can be "done" about matters like these on a one-to-one social-media plane has been, well... done. Instead, I've decided to turn most of whatever percentage of my attention had been going toward such things toward something more ambitious and (hopefully) helpful: I'm going to write another book.
This new book will NOT be a follow-up to Brick-By-Brick. This will be more a work of recent historic/cultural/political analysis and commentary on the last decade of gaming-culture - specifically changes in the business, development, aesthetic and fandom of video-games and gaming over the last decade and a half, roughly beginning with the immediate cultural impacts of The Bush Era, 9-11, Iraq/Afghanistan, The Obama Era, the rise of the Tea Party, drone-paranoia, Wikileaks, Snowden, etc on this side of entertainment culture and it's manifestations today. More details to follow.
So. That's where we are moving forward. In the meantime, I'm going to get back on track with keeping this place updated with news stuff and not just my new videos. For example: Did you hear about DOCTOR STRANGE? That's a pretty big "get," innit?
-- Bob.
Firstly, if you're not already following me on Twitter, please consider doing so even if you never use the service yourself (speaking wise.) I'm not exactly what you'd call a "convert" to the power of social media, but I find Twitter to be a genuinely awesome tool. It's the immediacy of it that I like, and the way the character-limit forces me to get to the point when sharing a thought. The idea of essentially tossing a thought into a public square and having it "hang" there for others to see and respond to at their convenience suits my style, and is one of the reasons you've seen fewer small/random blog posts here - why draw out into a tedious blog what I can Tweet and reach more people more concisely?
However, blogs and personal-sites have a certain usefulness as a "hub" for making all of one's work link together - and also, as has become more necessary recently - a place to put material that (for whatever reason) is unable to find a proper home. On the other hand, as much as I tend to get stuck in my ways vis-a-vi technology, the fact is systems like Blogger, Tumblr etc are not conducive to the web presence I need (and want, frankly.)
So. Right now, the plan looks like this: At some point in the near(ish) future, this blog (and also the seperate/dedicated Game OverThinker blog) are going to either go away or go "dormant," to be replaced by a singular site that's more like, well... a SITE as opposed to a blog (though there will still be a heavy blog/newsfeed component.) My hope - and make no mistake, this is all very preliminary - is for this to be part of a new paradigm for my online presence, and can make (hypothetical) new avenues I've been looking to explore for awhile like merchandising, Patreon, etc more easily implemented (these would be, at least for now, based around projects outside of material co-produced for/with The Escapist.)
As for The Game OverThinker, I can now clarify more of what the plans are for that series going forward. For those who've been keeping track, I think I've made it quite clear that the "arc" that the series is in the midst of now is a kind of climax for the series in it's current incarnation. It will end, likely on or around it's 100th episode sometime this year or early next, time depending. It's a series I'm immensely proud of, both in terms of where it brought me and what I've been able to do with it, but the time has come to reshuffle the deck and relaunch.
What I wanted to clarify is that that many people have assumed that this means an "end" to the narrative/storyline/"sketch" aspect of the series entirely, and with things moving forward behind the scenes I can now say with some confidence that this is NOT the case, at all. What the series will move away from (at least primarily) is the presence of a constantly foward-moving narrative "arc," and into something more episodic in nature. I can't be more specific about how this "works" without giving away the ending of the current series, but suffice it to say that you can look forward to the main Game OverThinker series being predominantly focused on opinion-piece presentations (think my friend Jim Sterling's JIMQUISITION show, though not 100% on that model) with other characters like Ivan, OverThinker, RetroThinker, etc. onhand as supporting players - not quite "comic relief," but exaggerated alternative voices to break up (or bookend) the occasional drawn-out nature of my soapbox-soliloquy.
But did I say "main" series? I did. Part of the desire to relaunch Game OverThinker in this way was the realization that some of these characters, personas and voices were suited to saying certain things and performing certain functions that I wanted to make more use of but didn't necessarily want to overwhelm the series itself. So my plan (very beta at this point) is to have shorter series/vignettes specifically built around these personas that play to their strengths. More details to come on that front, but you may get a taste of things in these last few episodes of the current version.
FINALLY: As you've no dobut surmised, a lot of my time and effort recently has been taken up dealing with the same unpleasantness that's been derailing many other voices in the so-called "geek culture." And while I'll always speak up when I see/hear something wrong being done around me, I've come to the conclusion that what can be "done" about matters like these on a one-to-one social-media plane has been, well... done. Instead, I've decided to turn most of whatever percentage of my attention had been going toward such things toward something more ambitious and (hopefully) helpful: I'm going to write another book.
This new book will NOT be a follow-up to Brick-By-Brick. This will be more a work of recent historic/cultural/political analysis and commentary on the last decade of gaming-culture - specifically changes in the business, development, aesthetic and fandom of video-games and gaming over the last decade and a half, roughly beginning with the immediate cultural impacts of The Bush Era, 9-11, Iraq/Afghanistan, The Obama Era, the rise of the Tea Party, drone-paranoia, Wikileaks, Snowden, etc on this side of entertainment culture and it's manifestations today. More details to follow.
So. That's where we are moving forward. In the meantime, I'm going to get back on track with keeping this place updated with news stuff and not just my new videos. For example: Did you hear about DOCTOR STRANGE? That's a pretty big "get," innit?
-- Bob.
Thursday, October 23, 2014
Sunday, October 19, 2014
Another Long Collection of Thoughts About #GamerGate
NOTE: This was originally a piece that was intended for publication elsewhere. Length, however, became an issue (a shorter, "to the point" version is in-production). But I still wanted a "one-stop" source for my positions on the Recent Unpleasantness as a whole, because it helps make certain social-media interactions mercifully shorter.
I have a lot to say about the so-called “GamerGate” controversy, much of which I’ve already said but much of which I’d wanted the opportunity to say with more clarity. So to keep this from running too long (Spoiler Warning: I will almost certainly run too long, anyway) and losing your interest I’m going to forego the use of flowery “clever” segues between thoughts and lay this out categorically.
But if you’re impatient to get down into the comments and start debating what variety of heated-adhesive and which species of fowl would be best suited to my tarring and feathering and want the TL;DR version right-off? Fine: I think of GamerGate alternately as a joke that got infuriatingly out-of-hand and an outright campaign of hate and harassment either dense (or pretending to be dense) enough to think itself otherwise; and it’s goals (both stated and implied) are the exact opposite of the self-betterment that gaming desperately needs - and was (not accidently) right in the midst of achieving when this foolishness started. In short, I find it to be a wholly destructive thing with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
That’s the short version. If you want the long one, keep reading.
Firstly: To my “Gamer” bonafides:
I’ve been playing, following, studying and loving video games for about as long as I can remember. Some of the happiest moments of my childhood are centered around video-games. I’ve waited overnight in lines for video games. I got into stupid schoolyard fights about video games (kid, “GamerGate” ain’t nothin’ – I survived SNES vs. Genesis!) I saw The Wizard in movie theaters. I wrote a book about games. I do a silly internet show about games.
There’s an NES, an SNES, a Dreamcast, an N64, multiple variations of GameBoy/DS/3DS portables, a Wii, WiiU, Xbox360 and corresponding game collections in the room adjacent to where I write this, along with Genesis games for a clone console (which is also for running Famicom carts) and space reserved for a PS4 the next time I’ve got the money/time set aside. I’ve got Captain N: The Game Master on DVD. The whole run of the series. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, too. The first and last issues of Nintendo Power are framed on my wall. Would you like to know which currently-available breakfast cereal tastes exactly like the long-discontinued Mario/Zelda cereal from the mid-80s? Ask me. I have very strong, specific opinions about Mega Man.
So yes, I know my video games. And for a long time I was very protective of the idea of “gamer” as a cultural identity. Mostly, it was because I came up as a gamer in an era when devoted video game aficionados really did tend to be a specific subset of (then) youth-culture who were misunderstood and occasionally ostracized by the mainstream, and was smack in the midst of young-adulthood when the gaming Censorship Wars were going down – Joe Lieberman and Night Trap, Jack Thompson, that whole mess. I get the need to form “community” around shared interests and to strike a “wartime stance” when those interests (and, by implication, oneself) become a “target” of one kind or other.
But today? Sure, I can see why the “subfandoms” of gaming – your Final Fantasy acolytes, your Nintendo diehards, your master-level devotees of Pokemon, Starcraft, various fighting franchises, that one guy (or gal!) who’s still really, really into Bonk - still exist and serve a purpose… but when gaming is as mainstream and widely-spread as book-reading, movie-watching, TV-viewing and music-listening? The idea of “gamer” as a “cultural identity” honestly begins to sound a little… insipid, really. In a world where my mom and a Korean StarCraft pro are both “gamers” in as much as they both play games, there’s just no reason to still be acting like there’s a secret-handshake to get into the clubhouse (unless your “putting it back on” for a larf when attending an event like PAX.)
Especially when dicing ourselves up into “hardcore” and “casual” camps serves not the interest of “gamers” but of making it easier for the bloated, greedy Hutt’s that are EA, Activision, etc to market to us. Taking unironic “pride” in the hardcore-ness of your game-buying preferences is like being “proud” of how much money you’ve given to Coca-Cola over the years – enjoying the fruits of Capitalism doesn’t mean you need to start forming religious devotion to corporations. Or their products.
File that, because it’ll be important a moment or two from now.
Secondly: To my politics and/or philosophy:
Everything has a political dimension to it. Everything. Often implicit, sometimes also explicit, but always there – especially in places where it’s not “intended.” GamerGate has so many political dimensions (gender conflicts, class-stratification, age/generational disagreements, international unease, economics, the environment, you name it) it may as well have its own Unified Field Theory… but we’ll get to that.
I’m not an “apolitical” person. I have very strong, long thought-upon opinions about most important issues, and I vote/advocate/agitate/etc on their behalf when I feel it is necessary or I have something to contribute. What I don’t have is a particular allegiance to a specific political school of thought or “philosophy” outside of a very broad pragmatic view that broken or flawed things about a society or system should either be fixed or discarded and replaced in whatever fashion achieves the best result.
I respect the academic study of philosophy and the idea of esoteric/hypothetical debate over this or that point, but in the real world results generally matter (and have more lasting impact) than animating schools of thought. ”So do the ends justify the means?” Well, that depends on which ends and means we’re talking about on a case-by-case basis. For me, adhering with any rigidity to political “philosophy” or “ideology” is like being a carpenter who shows up to build a house but declares he will use only a hammer – no saw, no screwdriver, no wrench, no drill, just a hammer - because he is a “Devout Hammerist.” Sounds ridiculous, right?
So when I see something broken/flawed in society and am looking at solutions to fix/improve it, I could care less whether a solution is philosophically Capitalist, Socialist, Objectivist, right-wing, left-wing, Libertarian, Authoritarian, whatever - all I want to know is if it will work and what will the immediate effects be. Beyond that? There’s an imperfect world to keep improving and a better tomorrow to get to, and I’m for using every tool in the damn box (and inventing some new ones, when necessary) to get there. Fortune, after all, favors the bold.
So, then, to GamerGate.
What it is:
This is already feeling long, so I’m not going to mince words: Pretending that GamerGate did not originate as a slew of woman-hating (in the guise of being against “Social Justice Warriors,” of course) creeps gleefully and viciously attacking a female game developer (whom they already hated because they felt her game didn’t “deserve” a place in the Sacred Holy Temple of Steam) who then propped-up a façade of having done so “only” because of some noble commitment to fighting various other concerns (some legit, some only legit-sounding) that so-called “gamer-culture” had about game journalism to pad out their ranks and feign legitimacy doesn’t make it not so.
Furthermore, even if one were to consider the (demonstrably false) premise that “GamerGate” has grown in such a way that it’s problematic origin-point is no longer relevant enough to hold against it… well, it just doesn’t hold up. Setting aside the fact that real-life doesn’t run on some kind of weighted “morality points” scale whereby filling up your blue “good works” meter lowers/negates the red “evil deeds” meter; the “movement’s” actions hence reveal that it has remained very-much “on topic” from where it was at the beginning.
No one disputes that ethical issues plague journalism in the ever-shifting digital age, consumer journalism especially and games journalism in particular. But not only does “GamerGate” not seem particularly interested in many of the medium’s most prominent longstanding ethical concerns like stage-managed preview-events, lavishly-ornamented “review copies” or aggressively favorites-playing public-relations operatives (at least to any meaningful/visible extent); it often doesn’t seem to see them as a big deal at all.
Instead, GamerGate’s dragons to be slayed have all seemed to come from a small, specific set of niches: Mostly women (and/or male allies) aligned with “feminist” or “social justice” causes (racial/gender diversity, LGBTQ issues, etc) in either the journalism or independent game-development spheres; with the intensity of the attacks being largely dictated by a target’s popularity or visibility. The attacks (like all such attacks) come with a tiny fig-leaf of quasi-reasonable justification – initially the idea that certain games and developers were being given an unfair spotlight because they were on friendly-terms or ideologically-aligned with this or that journalist; or that in a worst-case-scenario were gaining dishonestly-positive review scores for the same reasons – that has by now spiraled out into laughably-elaborate conspiracy theories that by now involve (hilariously so) DARPA. At this rate I fully expect anti-fluoridation paranoia, anti-vaccination panic and David Icke’s ”Reptoid Hyptothesis” to become accepted-fact among GamerGate any day now.
Meanwhile, the pernicious (and exceptionally visible!) ways in which the corporate overlords of mainstream game-development can be observed to bend and warp ethics around the press (and vice-versa, in many cases) in order to control the narrative around their products appears to be something GamerGate regards as the industry functioning, well… functionally. That’s not to say that nobody who’s ever so much as clicked the “favorite” star on a Gate-hashtagged Tweet feels strongly about or has spoken out on these issues, but they certainly have not generated the organized, pre-planned “Operations” (complete with embarrassingly-hyperbolic co-opted military rhetoric) that were apparently warranted when it came to punishing Gamasutra for Employing a woman who said something ‘Gaters didn’t like.
In this way, GamerGate reveals itself to be fundamentally a reactionary movement, if not wholly a “conservative” one; not simply opposed to progressive voices in the games media because of what they have to say or which games they choose to say it about because of ideological disagreement (though that’s certainly a common enough thread as well) but because they threaten The Status Quo: Sure, EA isn’t exactly a “hero” to GamerGaters, but their sketchy behaviors are a “necessary evil” part of The Machine that keeps the flow of big, shiny, 60fps, multiplayer-focused, achievement-packed AAA blockbusters that defines so-called “hardcore gaming” coming. ‘Gate’s “core” variety of gamer hasn’t simply hitched their very identity to gaming, but to gaming as it exists right now as an ideal.
Whereas the “SJWs,” on the other hand, not only have less-than-flattering things to say about some of gaming’s biggest sacred cows, their perceived increased prominence (in terms of press coverage, at least) means that they could change the medium in some way. And it doesn’t seem to matter if that change comes in the form of developers listening to criticism about “problematic” issues and choosing to revise their presentations (which GamerGate claims to see as tantamount to “censorship”), or more games that don’t fit the “hardcore gamer” model finding success, or the demographics of game-consumers itself moving away from the absolute-dominance of 18-35 year-old males: Change is bad. The status quo must be maintained.
This helps to explain (in part) why the only remotely positive “real” press attention GamerGate has earned has come from minor-league players in the American conservative political sphere; mainly Breitbart.com’s Milo Yiannopolous (though he didn’t used to feel that way…) and American Enterprise Institute fellow Christina Hoff Sommers – a self-described feminist whose career consists almost exclusively of projecting nefarious motives onto the modern movement. GamerGate may or may not see itself as “right-wing” movement, but in framing feminism and social-justice as change-agents set to “corrupt” a functioning status-quo it aligns nicely with the general through-line of American cultural-conservatism – its “face” may be ”Vivian James,” but its soul is very much Sarah Palin.
”But I’m part of GamerGate and I’m NOT a…”
This is probably the most difficult part of all this.
GamerGate has been built (and yes, it was built – this is not an organic movement, it just wants to look like one) around a “playbook” of 21st Century activism so broadly-applied that you can find its mirror in everything from the Tea Party (right-wing) and Occupy Wall Street (left-wing) to Re-Take Mass Effect (enviable surplus of free time): A small core with very specific concerns/goals nudging the movements of much larger “outer shell” of seemingly-diverse concerns lured into the collective by appeal to personal causes (”Mom said you can’t play GTAV? Our hashtag includes that – welcome aboard!”)
So while a majority of GamerGate is almost certainly not “represented” by the outright-sociopaths directing “gamified” online harassment campaigns that drive outspoken female devs out of their homes “for the lulz” or the agenda-driven opportunists aiming at the same targets but for political reasons… those toxic, entirely-destructive forces are very much in the driver’s seat and thus the “movement’s” goals have remained toxic and entirely-destructive – as they were designed to. And if you “joined” GamerGate because of sincere (however misguided in my opinion) corners about journalistic ethics or “censorship,” you need to understand (or at least consider the possibility) that your sincerity is being used as both shield (irony!) and cudgel for ugly goals that you likely didn’t “sign up” for.
People don’t like to hear that. Everyone likes to think of themselves as autonomous and self-aware, at least to the degree where they can’t be manipulated into something they didn’t want to do or wouldn’t have done otherwise. It’s natural to feel defensive (”You callin’ me a sheep or something???”) but it happens to the best of us; sometimes in big ways like supporting a cause or voting for a candidate, sometimes in small ways like decided to buy one soft-drink over another.
What’s important is being able to acknowledge when it’s happened and take corrective measures if you find them necessary. At this point, I’m think it’s reasonable for even staunchly anti-GamerGate persons like myself to accept as possible the idea that a good number of people with legitimate concerns about the games industry and game journalism ethics who would not otherwise have become… “animated” about those concerns exist within GamerGate and would be well worth listening to and taking seriously apart from the white noise of the thoroughly-discredited “movement.” However! The first step toward being listened to/taken seriously for such folks would be to separate themselves from the true-believer ‘Gaters: You are not using GamerGate as a megaphone for your concerns – GamerGate is using your concerns as a silencer for its hate and harassment.
About “Corruption.”
…but let’s talk about what some of those concerns were.
Again, make no mistake: It is crystal clear that the attacks against Zoe Quinn that “birthed” GamerGate were about a devoutly-hateful subset of gamers believing that they had finally found A.) An opening to “take down” an outspoken developer they already despised that B.) could then be expanded to take down similar people and viewpoints within gaming culture. This cannot (and should not) ever be removed from any discussion on the subject.
But the sick genius of harassment campaigns like this is that the issues and concerns the progenitors feigned interest in actually are real issues and concerns. The gaming press growing bigger and more professional while also retaining a semblance of the close relations with its corporate subjects more befitting the fan/enthusiast press much of it grew out of raises a lot of problematic issues, particularly given the shameless willingness of some publishers to push the envelope on that particular codependent power-imbalance. The lack of unifying ethical guidelines (or genuine adherence to the same) is a worthwhile thing to question.
Above all else, the idea that journalism – even of something ultimately “trivial” like playthings (at the end of the day, folks, yes… we are talking about electronic toys here) – might be offering misleading or dishonest information to its readers/viewers in exchange for gifts or favors is about as fundamental a concern as one can have about the press. Any press.
Here’s where I stand: What used to be called “payola,” i.e. someone handing a critic an envelope full of money in the understanding that a positive review will be coming in exchange, is completely wrong and unethical on every conceivable level. No serious-minded person disagrees with this.
Everything else, though? Not nearly as clear cut.
On the one hand, game (and film, for that matter) companies sending out review copies of their products with lavish “garnishes” is gauche, and everyone knows what the intent of doing so is even if “being friendly” to a journalist isn’t (and shouldn’t be) illegal. On the other hand… since it’s also not “required” that journalists get the early access they often need to do their jobs, it’s also not feasible to start dictating terms to publicists for most outlets. All any journalist can be expected to do is disclose and be open about the circumstances of access, and for readers to cultivate a cache of trusted critics/reviewers; and to consider that while a devoted fan for whom games are a favorite hobby or a blogger/YouTuber just starting out a fancy resin bust of an orc might conceivably be something ”sooooo cool!” you’d go “easy” on a flawed game in (unasked for, I stress) appreciation for… that’s unlikely to be true for a professional who knows their credibility is one of the main things keeping a roof over their heads.
As to friendships/relationships between press and subjects? That’s been thorny for as long as there has been such a thing as journalism; and as much as I hate the phrase “There are no easy answers…” in this case, it’s true.
This is a place where I can only assume I’ll be breaking ranks with some colleagues: I think that the “ethics panic” in the early days of GamerGate may have nudged some areas of games journalism to take too hard of a line on inter-industry friendships. And while doing so is within the rights of publishers and individual journos… I think it does more harm than good.
I am a great lover of video games (see above); but as a critic/journalist I live more in the world of film. And in that world, the idea that the press would be walled-off from filmmakers on a personal level is regarded as absurd – and for good reason. Whereas major studios can spend billions to get the word out about their blockbusters, smaller and independent films rely on journalists who develop particular fondness for certain films and filmmakers as a big part of their quest for eyeballs. To put it bluntly: One of the main reasons you’ve heard of (now) major filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Kevin Smith and (more recently) James Gunn is because they formed either fan-to-fan connections or outright friendships with critics and (recently) movie-bloggers who became (uncoerced) “advocates” for these then-upstarts and their work.
I happen to think it would be a huge mistake to restrict the potential of such relationships to yield similar results for gaming in the name of some hypothetical inoculation against accusations of “bias” later on. While I absolutely support critics who remove themselves from reviewing their friends’ work voluntarily out of personal policy or concern about the appearance of impropriety (and have done so myself – my casual acquaintance with some of the principals involved is mainly why you didn’t see me review The Angry Video Game Nerd Movie yet) well…
…honestly? The possibility that being friends (obviously romantic/sexual relationships are another matter entirely) with a developer might lead a journalist to be more “forgiving” of this or that flaw in some egregiously inappropriate way (oh lord, now I have to talk about freaking review scores…) is so miniscule (in multiple senses) as to be barely worth a thought next to the possibility that two people who love games – one an amateur critic, the other an aspiring developer – might “hit it off” at a gaming con and keep in touch over the years until one day the now-established critic looks into an indie game because they recognize their friends’ name in the credits and that’s how a great title that might’ve been overlooked otherwise becomes the next Minecraft.
Yes, “objectivity” is important. Obviously. But despite gamer culture’s (geek culture as a whole, really) tendency to assume that everything worth expressing about a work can be so expressed as a numerical equation… it’s just not the case. And no ill result of “bias” is worth sapping emotional connection, humanity or heart out of games journalism - whether it’s in the form of reducing all reviews to “objective” number scores with no aesthetic/emotive component or putting harsh restrictions on friend-making.
But what about “collusion?”
This is the big one, right? The one place where GamerGate’s feigned concerns for “journalistic integrity” (a joke when they treat this walking embarassment as the model modern journalist) and it’s actual concerns that the “wrong” people and viewpoints might “take over” their hobby. Is there “collusion” among gaming journalists and gaming academics of similar ideological stripes to “push” certain themes to the forefront and nudge the culture in a certain direction – and, if so, is that a problem?
I can’t really speak to the first question, since though I work for a gaming-centric site I’m primarily a film critic and my video-game show is… well, a bit silly. So I don’t generally get invited to those types of parties, suffice it to say. But I have a hard time believing the Illuminati-level type of conspiring people have imagined going on therein (seriously guys… DARPA!?)
But is it possible that games journalism and gaming academia are too ideologically similar in an “echo-chamber” sort of way? Oh, sure – I just don’t see anything “sinister” coming out of it. Annoying? Absolutely, I still get the shakes remembering that moment in time where people suddenly wanted “Ludonarrative Dissonance” to be a commonly-used term we talked about all the time. But some “progressive cabal” within gaming conspiring to nudge the medium into a decidedly different direction than it’s currently headed while simultaneously working to remake “gamer culture” in the same way? This Alex Jones nonsense? Nope, don’t see it.
Tell you a secret, though? I kind of wish I did. And by “kind of,” I mean I absolutely wish I did.
At the beginning of this piece, I outlined how much I love video games. You may have gathered that a lot of that love centers on the “retro” gaming of my formative years, and you may have assumed that this is because I am, in fact, a gigantic child. That’s probably true, but I also genuinely find that gaming (and gamers) have taken a sharp turn within the last decade so – roughly-parallel (but perhaps coincidental) to the decline of Japan as console-gaming’s driving force and the rise of the West in the same space – and become something that I increasingly don’t recognize and feel alternately bored and repulsed by.
I look at a medium where once upon a time I could walk into even an average-sized arcade and be presented the opportunity to play as men and women of many races and creeds (even ones that didn’t actually exist!) along with animals, robots and all manner of beings (ditto!) that has now devolved (in mainstream spaces) into an endless succession of the same gruff, boring Daddy Figure starring in variations on two or three genres and I think… how did we get here?
I look at a medium that once (however crudely at times) had ambitions to tell stories well beyond the expected capacity of Hollywood… but then I look at how Hollywood responded (overall) to The War on Terror with measured concern, criticism and even some outright condemnation of gung-ho militaristic zealotry, while video games response was simplistic military hardware-porn with endorsements by Oliver North (seriously!) and I think… how did we get here?
I look at a “gamer culture” that welcome me back when few did now largely seen to be circling the wagons to tell the “wrong” kind of people who may enjoy the “wrong” kind of games to just get out… how did we get here?
I look at a “gamer culture” that fought hard for the medium to be taken seriously as any other art form, but now seems in a hurry to abandon that victory if it means being culturally-critiqued… how did we get here?
I look at all that, with GamerGate as the last straw, and I think… Man, I wish there was a “progressive/feminist conspiracy” to remake games and game-culture! Because right now both of those things are in the worst shape they’ve been in since The Crash of ’83; and while I’ve had occasion to think (and indeed continue to think) that a second “crash” of this blighted mess the medium has become might be pretty damn beneficial overall… if and when it happens it’s going to be messy and painful. For a lot of people. Maybe everyone. I’d like to see anything that can be done to prevent it at least tried - and like I said at the beginning: I don’t care what “philosophy” or “ideology” a tool for fixing this problem comes from – I only care that it works.
In conclusion:
And in the end, that’s where GamerGate and I will simply never see eye to eye, even if all the doxxing and harassing and sexism and bigotry were to suddenly go away… at the end of it all, GamerGate is premised on the idea that the transformation of gaming into a more inclusive space is a bad thing. That diversity is a bad thing. That the influence of feminist and “social justice” critique are bad for the medium. That gaming becoming (as it was once before, I once again point out!) less overwhelmingly dominated by retrograde masculinity, “macho” single-mindedness, reactionary militarism and Stern Daddy Figure patriarchal power-fantasy is a bad thing.
Whereas I look at all that and all I can think is: Yes, please, more of that! More progress. More activism. More change. More voices. More diversity. More types of characters. More types of reviews. Hell, more things being written than just scored “consumer-reports” style reviews. And yes… more attention to (and from) gamers who don’t currently get counted as “gamers.” And if some (even most – though it is nowhere near most) in the gaming press are more interested in covering, talking to, seeking out and spotlighting material that can speed that transformation along? I don’t call that “corruption” – I call that media-journalism performing its highest possible function: Encouraging both the medium and the audience to grow, progress and improve.
Because while I don’t believe that gamers should ”die” (and neither did the authors of the supposed ”Gamers Are Dead” pieces and you know they didn’t and pretending you thought they did so you have one more thing to be pretend-outraged about is shamefully silly) …y’know what, folks? The notion (factual or perceived) that “real gamers” should primarily refer to one type of person – specifically the angry, entitled, reactionary, change-fearing corporate apologist type of person – because “that guy” is easier for EA etc to shovel increasingly-empty experiences at for maximum profit?
That - the notion - cannot die fast enough.
I have a lot to say about the so-called “GamerGate” controversy, much of which I’ve already said but much of which I’d wanted the opportunity to say with more clarity. So to keep this from running too long (Spoiler Warning: I will almost certainly run too long, anyway) and losing your interest I’m going to forego the use of flowery “clever” segues between thoughts and lay this out categorically.
But if you’re impatient to get down into the comments and start debating what variety of heated-adhesive and which species of fowl would be best suited to my tarring and feathering and want the TL;DR version right-off? Fine: I think of GamerGate alternately as a joke that got infuriatingly out-of-hand and an outright campaign of hate and harassment either dense (or pretending to be dense) enough to think itself otherwise; and it’s goals (both stated and implied) are the exact opposite of the self-betterment that gaming desperately needs - and was (not accidently) right in the midst of achieving when this foolishness started. In short, I find it to be a wholly destructive thing with no redeeming qualities whatsoever.
That’s the short version. If you want the long one, keep reading.
Firstly: To my “Gamer” bonafides:
I’ve been playing, following, studying and loving video games for about as long as I can remember. Some of the happiest moments of my childhood are centered around video-games. I’ve waited overnight in lines for video games. I got into stupid schoolyard fights about video games (kid, “GamerGate” ain’t nothin’ – I survived SNES vs. Genesis!) I saw The Wizard in movie theaters. I wrote a book about games. I do a silly internet show about games.
There’s an NES, an SNES, a Dreamcast, an N64, multiple variations of GameBoy/DS/3DS portables, a Wii, WiiU, Xbox360 and corresponding game collections in the room adjacent to where I write this, along with Genesis games for a clone console (which is also for running Famicom carts) and space reserved for a PS4 the next time I’ve got the money/time set aside. I’ve got Captain N: The Game Master on DVD. The whole run of the series. The Super Mario Bros. Super Show, too. The first and last issues of Nintendo Power are framed on my wall. Would you like to know which currently-available breakfast cereal tastes exactly like the long-discontinued Mario/Zelda cereal from the mid-80s? Ask me. I have very strong, specific opinions about Mega Man.
So yes, I know my video games. And for a long time I was very protective of the idea of “gamer” as a cultural identity. Mostly, it was because I came up as a gamer in an era when devoted video game aficionados really did tend to be a specific subset of (then) youth-culture who were misunderstood and occasionally ostracized by the mainstream, and was smack in the midst of young-adulthood when the gaming Censorship Wars were going down – Joe Lieberman and Night Trap, Jack Thompson, that whole mess. I get the need to form “community” around shared interests and to strike a “wartime stance” when those interests (and, by implication, oneself) become a “target” of one kind or other.
But today? Sure, I can see why the “subfandoms” of gaming – your Final Fantasy acolytes, your Nintendo diehards, your master-level devotees of Pokemon, Starcraft, various fighting franchises, that one guy (or gal!) who’s still really, really into Bonk - still exist and serve a purpose… but when gaming is as mainstream and widely-spread as book-reading, movie-watching, TV-viewing and music-listening? The idea of “gamer” as a “cultural identity” honestly begins to sound a little… insipid, really. In a world where my mom and a Korean StarCraft pro are both “gamers” in as much as they both play games, there’s just no reason to still be acting like there’s a secret-handshake to get into the clubhouse (unless your “putting it back on” for a larf when attending an event like PAX.)
Especially when dicing ourselves up into “hardcore” and “casual” camps serves not the interest of “gamers” but of making it easier for the bloated, greedy Hutt’s that are EA, Activision, etc to market to us. Taking unironic “pride” in the hardcore-ness of your game-buying preferences is like being “proud” of how much money you’ve given to Coca-Cola over the years – enjoying the fruits of Capitalism doesn’t mean you need to start forming religious devotion to corporations. Or their products.
File that, because it’ll be important a moment or two from now.
Secondly: To my politics and/or philosophy:
Everything has a political dimension to it. Everything. Often implicit, sometimes also explicit, but always there – especially in places where it’s not “intended.” GamerGate has so many political dimensions (gender conflicts, class-stratification, age/generational disagreements, international unease, economics, the environment, you name it) it may as well have its own Unified Field Theory… but we’ll get to that.
I’m not an “apolitical” person. I have very strong, long thought-upon opinions about most important issues, and I vote/advocate/agitate/etc on their behalf when I feel it is necessary or I have something to contribute. What I don’t have is a particular allegiance to a specific political school of thought or “philosophy” outside of a very broad pragmatic view that broken or flawed things about a society or system should either be fixed or discarded and replaced in whatever fashion achieves the best result.
I respect the academic study of philosophy and the idea of esoteric/hypothetical debate over this or that point, but in the real world results generally matter (and have more lasting impact) than animating schools of thought. ”So do the ends justify the means?” Well, that depends on which ends and means we’re talking about on a case-by-case basis. For me, adhering with any rigidity to political “philosophy” or “ideology” is like being a carpenter who shows up to build a house but declares he will use only a hammer – no saw, no screwdriver, no wrench, no drill, just a hammer - because he is a “Devout Hammerist.” Sounds ridiculous, right?
So when I see something broken/flawed in society and am looking at solutions to fix/improve it, I could care less whether a solution is philosophically Capitalist, Socialist, Objectivist, right-wing, left-wing, Libertarian, Authoritarian, whatever - all I want to know is if it will work and what will the immediate effects be. Beyond that? There’s an imperfect world to keep improving and a better tomorrow to get to, and I’m for using every tool in the damn box (and inventing some new ones, when necessary) to get there. Fortune, after all, favors the bold.
So, then, to GamerGate.
What it is:
This is already feeling long, so I’m not going to mince words: Pretending that GamerGate did not originate as a slew of woman-hating (in the guise of being against “Social Justice Warriors,” of course) creeps gleefully and viciously attacking a female game developer (whom they already hated because they felt her game didn’t “deserve” a place in the Sacred Holy Temple of Steam) who then propped-up a façade of having done so “only” because of some noble commitment to fighting various other concerns (some legit, some only legit-sounding) that so-called “gamer-culture” had about game journalism to pad out their ranks and feign legitimacy doesn’t make it not so.
Furthermore, even if one were to consider the (demonstrably false) premise that “GamerGate” has grown in such a way that it’s problematic origin-point is no longer relevant enough to hold against it… well, it just doesn’t hold up. Setting aside the fact that real-life doesn’t run on some kind of weighted “morality points” scale whereby filling up your blue “good works” meter lowers/negates the red “evil deeds” meter; the “movement’s” actions hence reveal that it has remained very-much “on topic” from where it was at the beginning.
No one disputes that ethical issues plague journalism in the ever-shifting digital age, consumer journalism especially and games journalism in particular. But not only does “GamerGate” not seem particularly interested in many of the medium’s most prominent longstanding ethical concerns like stage-managed preview-events, lavishly-ornamented “review copies” or aggressively favorites-playing public-relations operatives (at least to any meaningful/visible extent); it often doesn’t seem to see them as a big deal at all.
Instead, GamerGate’s dragons to be slayed have all seemed to come from a small, specific set of niches: Mostly women (and/or male allies) aligned with “feminist” or “social justice” causes (racial/gender diversity, LGBTQ issues, etc) in either the journalism or independent game-development spheres; with the intensity of the attacks being largely dictated by a target’s popularity or visibility. The attacks (like all such attacks) come with a tiny fig-leaf of quasi-reasonable justification – initially the idea that certain games and developers were being given an unfair spotlight because they were on friendly-terms or ideologically-aligned with this or that journalist; or that in a worst-case-scenario were gaining dishonestly-positive review scores for the same reasons – that has by now spiraled out into laughably-elaborate conspiracy theories that by now involve (hilariously so) DARPA. At this rate I fully expect anti-fluoridation paranoia, anti-vaccination panic and David Icke’s ”Reptoid Hyptothesis” to become accepted-fact among GamerGate any day now.
Meanwhile, the pernicious (and exceptionally visible!) ways in which the corporate overlords of mainstream game-development can be observed to bend and warp ethics around the press (and vice-versa, in many cases) in order to control the narrative around their products appears to be something GamerGate regards as the industry functioning, well… functionally. That’s not to say that nobody who’s ever so much as clicked the “favorite” star on a Gate-hashtagged Tweet feels strongly about or has spoken out on these issues, but they certainly have not generated the organized, pre-planned “Operations” (complete with embarrassingly-hyperbolic co-opted military rhetoric) that were apparently warranted when it came to punishing Gamasutra for Employing a woman who said something ‘Gaters didn’t like.
In this way, GamerGate reveals itself to be fundamentally a reactionary movement, if not wholly a “conservative” one; not simply opposed to progressive voices in the games media because of what they have to say or which games they choose to say it about because of ideological disagreement (though that’s certainly a common enough thread as well) but because they threaten The Status Quo: Sure, EA isn’t exactly a “hero” to GamerGaters, but their sketchy behaviors are a “necessary evil” part of The Machine that keeps the flow of big, shiny, 60fps, multiplayer-focused, achievement-packed AAA blockbusters that defines so-called “hardcore gaming” coming. ‘Gate’s “core” variety of gamer hasn’t simply hitched their very identity to gaming, but to gaming as it exists right now as an ideal.
Whereas the “SJWs,” on the other hand, not only have less-than-flattering things to say about some of gaming’s biggest sacred cows, their perceived increased prominence (in terms of press coverage, at least) means that they could change the medium in some way. And it doesn’t seem to matter if that change comes in the form of developers listening to criticism about “problematic” issues and choosing to revise their presentations (which GamerGate claims to see as tantamount to “censorship”), or more games that don’t fit the “hardcore gamer” model finding success, or the demographics of game-consumers itself moving away from the absolute-dominance of 18-35 year-old males: Change is bad. The status quo must be maintained.
This helps to explain (in part) why the only remotely positive “real” press attention GamerGate has earned has come from minor-league players in the American conservative political sphere; mainly Breitbart.com’s Milo Yiannopolous (though he didn’t used to feel that way…) and American Enterprise Institute fellow Christina Hoff Sommers – a self-described feminist whose career consists almost exclusively of projecting nefarious motives onto the modern movement. GamerGate may or may not see itself as “right-wing” movement, but in framing feminism and social-justice as change-agents set to “corrupt” a functioning status-quo it aligns nicely with the general through-line of American cultural-conservatism – its “face” may be ”Vivian James,” but its soul is very much Sarah Palin.
”But I’m part of GamerGate and I’m NOT a…”
This is probably the most difficult part of all this.
GamerGate has been built (and yes, it was built – this is not an organic movement, it just wants to look like one) around a “playbook” of 21st Century activism so broadly-applied that you can find its mirror in everything from the Tea Party (right-wing) and Occupy Wall Street (left-wing) to Re-Take Mass Effect (enviable surplus of free time): A small core with very specific concerns/goals nudging the movements of much larger “outer shell” of seemingly-diverse concerns lured into the collective by appeal to personal causes (”Mom said you can’t play GTAV? Our hashtag includes that – welcome aboard!”)
So while a majority of GamerGate is almost certainly not “represented” by the outright-sociopaths directing “gamified” online harassment campaigns that drive outspoken female devs out of their homes “for the lulz” or the agenda-driven opportunists aiming at the same targets but for political reasons… those toxic, entirely-destructive forces are very much in the driver’s seat and thus the “movement’s” goals have remained toxic and entirely-destructive – as they were designed to. And if you “joined” GamerGate because of sincere (however misguided in my opinion) corners about journalistic ethics or “censorship,” you need to understand (or at least consider the possibility) that your sincerity is being used as both shield (irony!) and cudgel for ugly goals that you likely didn’t “sign up” for.
People don’t like to hear that. Everyone likes to think of themselves as autonomous and self-aware, at least to the degree where they can’t be manipulated into something they didn’t want to do or wouldn’t have done otherwise. It’s natural to feel defensive (”You callin’ me a sheep or something???”) but it happens to the best of us; sometimes in big ways like supporting a cause or voting for a candidate, sometimes in small ways like decided to buy one soft-drink over another.
What’s important is being able to acknowledge when it’s happened and take corrective measures if you find them necessary. At this point, I’m think it’s reasonable for even staunchly anti-GamerGate persons like myself to accept as possible the idea that a good number of people with legitimate concerns about the games industry and game journalism ethics who would not otherwise have become… “animated” about those concerns exist within GamerGate and would be well worth listening to and taking seriously apart from the white noise of the thoroughly-discredited “movement.” However! The first step toward being listened to/taken seriously for such folks would be to separate themselves from the true-believer ‘Gaters: You are not using GamerGate as a megaphone for your concerns – GamerGate is using your concerns as a silencer for its hate and harassment.
About “Corruption.”
…but let’s talk about what some of those concerns were.
Again, make no mistake: It is crystal clear that the attacks against Zoe Quinn that “birthed” GamerGate were about a devoutly-hateful subset of gamers believing that they had finally found A.) An opening to “take down” an outspoken developer they already despised that B.) could then be expanded to take down similar people and viewpoints within gaming culture. This cannot (and should not) ever be removed from any discussion on the subject.
But the sick genius of harassment campaigns like this is that the issues and concerns the progenitors feigned interest in actually are real issues and concerns. The gaming press growing bigger and more professional while also retaining a semblance of the close relations with its corporate subjects more befitting the fan/enthusiast press much of it grew out of raises a lot of problematic issues, particularly given the shameless willingness of some publishers to push the envelope on that particular codependent power-imbalance. The lack of unifying ethical guidelines (or genuine adherence to the same) is a worthwhile thing to question.
Above all else, the idea that journalism – even of something ultimately “trivial” like playthings (at the end of the day, folks, yes… we are talking about electronic toys here) – might be offering misleading or dishonest information to its readers/viewers in exchange for gifts or favors is about as fundamental a concern as one can have about the press. Any press.
Here’s where I stand: What used to be called “payola,” i.e. someone handing a critic an envelope full of money in the understanding that a positive review will be coming in exchange, is completely wrong and unethical on every conceivable level. No serious-minded person disagrees with this.
Everything else, though? Not nearly as clear cut.
On the one hand, game (and film, for that matter) companies sending out review copies of their products with lavish “garnishes” is gauche, and everyone knows what the intent of doing so is even if “being friendly” to a journalist isn’t (and shouldn’t be) illegal. On the other hand… since it’s also not “required” that journalists get the early access they often need to do their jobs, it’s also not feasible to start dictating terms to publicists for most outlets. All any journalist can be expected to do is disclose and be open about the circumstances of access, and for readers to cultivate a cache of trusted critics/reviewers; and to consider that while a devoted fan for whom games are a favorite hobby or a blogger/YouTuber just starting out a fancy resin bust of an orc might conceivably be something ”sooooo cool!” you’d go “easy” on a flawed game in (unasked for, I stress) appreciation for… that’s unlikely to be true for a professional who knows their credibility is one of the main things keeping a roof over their heads.
As to friendships/relationships between press and subjects? That’s been thorny for as long as there has been such a thing as journalism; and as much as I hate the phrase “There are no easy answers…” in this case, it’s true.
This is a place where I can only assume I’ll be breaking ranks with some colleagues: I think that the “ethics panic” in the early days of GamerGate may have nudged some areas of games journalism to take too hard of a line on inter-industry friendships. And while doing so is within the rights of publishers and individual journos… I think it does more harm than good.
I am a great lover of video games (see above); but as a critic/journalist I live more in the world of film. And in that world, the idea that the press would be walled-off from filmmakers on a personal level is regarded as absurd – and for good reason. Whereas major studios can spend billions to get the word out about their blockbusters, smaller and independent films rely on journalists who develop particular fondness for certain films and filmmakers as a big part of their quest for eyeballs. To put it bluntly: One of the main reasons you’ve heard of (now) major filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino, Peter Jackson, Sam Raimi, Kevin Smith and (more recently) James Gunn is because they formed either fan-to-fan connections or outright friendships with critics and (recently) movie-bloggers who became (uncoerced) “advocates” for these then-upstarts and their work.
I happen to think it would be a huge mistake to restrict the potential of such relationships to yield similar results for gaming in the name of some hypothetical inoculation against accusations of “bias” later on. While I absolutely support critics who remove themselves from reviewing their friends’ work voluntarily out of personal policy or concern about the appearance of impropriety (and have done so myself – my casual acquaintance with some of the principals involved is mainly why you didn’t see me review The Angry Video Game Nerd Movie yet) well…
…honestly? The possibility that being friends (obviously romantic/sexual relationships are another matter entirely) with a developer might lead a journalist to be more “forgiving” of this or that flaw in some egregiously inappropriate way (oh lord, now I have to talk about freaking review scores…) is so miniscule (in multiple senses) as to be barely worth a thought next to the possibility that two people who love games – one an amateur critic, the other an aspiring developer – might “hit it off” at a gaming con and keep in touch over the years until one day the now-established critic looks into an indie game because they recognize their friends’ name in the credits and that’s how a great title that might’ve been overlooked otherwise becomes the next Minecraft.
Yes, “objectivity” is important. Obviously. But despite gamer culture’s (geek culture as a whole, really) tendency to assume that everything worth expressing about a work can be so expressed as a numerical equation… it’s just not the case. And no ill result of “bias” is worth sapping emotional connection, humanity or heart out of games journalism - whether it’s in the form of reducing all reviews to “objective” number scores with no aesthetic/emotive component or putting harsh restrictions on friend-making.
But what about “collusion?”
This is the big one, right? The one place where GamerGate’s feigned concerns for “journalistic integrity” (a joke when they treat this walking embarassment as the model modern journalist) and it’s actual concerns that the “wrong” people and viewpoints might “take over” their hobby. Is there “collusion” among gaming journalists and gaming academics of similar ideological stripes to “push” certain themes to the forefront and nudge the culture in a certain direction – and, if so, is that a problem?
I can’t really speak to the first question, since though I work for a gaming-centric site I’m primarily a film critic and my video-game show is… well, a bit silly. So I don’t generally get invited to those types of parties, suffice it to say. But I have a hard time believing the Illuminati-level type of conspiring people have imagined going on therein (seriously guys… DARPA!?)
But is it possible that games journalism and gaming academia are too ideologically similar in an “echo-chamber” sort of way? Oh, sure – I just don’t see anything “sinister” coming out of it. Annoying? Absolutely, I still get the shakes remembering that moment in time where people suddenly wanted “Ludonarrative Dissonance” to be a commonly-used term we talked about all the time. But some “progressive cabal” within gaming conspiring to nudge the medium into a decidedly different direction than it’s currently headed while simultaneously working to remake “gamer culture” in the same way? This Alex Jones nonsense? Nope, don’t see it.
Tell you a secret, though? I kind of wish I did. And by “kind of,” I mean I absolutely wish I did.
At the beginning of this piece, I outlined how much I love video games. You may have gathered that a lot of that love centers on the “retro” gaming of my formative years, and you may have assumed that this is because I am, in fact, a gigantic child. That’s probably true, but I also genuinely find that gaming (and gamers) have taken a sharp turn within the last decade so – roughly-parallel (but perhaps coincidental) to the decline of Japan as console-gaming’s driving force and the rise of the West in the same space – and become something that I increasingly don’t recognize and feel alternately bored and repulsed by.
I look at a medium where once upon a time I could walk into even an average-sized arcade and be presented the opportunity to play as men and women of many races and creeds (even ones that didn’t actually exist!) along with animals, robots and all manner of beings (ditto!) that has now devolved (in mainstream spaces) into an endless succession of the same gruff, boring Daddy Figure starring in variations on two or three genres and I think… how did we get here?
I look at a medium that once (however crudely at times) had ambitions to tell stories well beyond the expected capacity of Hollywood… but then I look at how Hollywood responded (overall) to The War on Terror with measured concern, criticism and even some outright condemnation of gung-ho militaristic zealotry, while video games response was simplistic military hardware-porn with endorsements by Oliver North (seriously!) and I think… how did we get here?
I look at a “gamer culture” that welcome me back when few did now largely seen to be circling the wagons to tell the “wrong” kind of people who may enjoy the “wrong” kind of games to just get out… how did we get here?
I look at a “gamer culture” that fought hard for the medium to be taken seriously as any other art form, but now seems in a hurry to abandon that victory if it means being culturally-critiqued… how did we get here?
I look at all that, with GamerGate as the last straw, and I think… Man, I wish there was a “progressive/feminist conspiracy” to remake games and game-culture! Because right now both of those things are in the worst shape they’ve been in since The Crash of ’83; and while I’ve had occasion to think (and indeed continue to think) that a second “crash” of this blighted mess the medium has become might be pretty damn beneficial overall… if and when it happens it’s going to be messy and painful. For a lot of people. Maybe everyone. I’d like to see anything that can be done to prevent it at least tried - and like I said at the beginning: I don’t care what “philosophy” or “ideology” a tool for fixing this problem comes from – I only care that it works.
In conclusion:
And in the end, that’s where GamerGate and I will simply never see eye to eye, even if all the doxxing and harassing and sexism and bigotry were to suddenly go away… at the end of it all, GamerGate is premised on the idea that the transformation of gaming into a more inclusive space is a bad thing. That diversity is a bad thing. That the influence of feminist and “social justice” critique are bad for the medium. That gaming becoming (as it was once before, I once again point out!) less overwhelmingly dominated by retrograde masculinity, “macho” single-mindedness, reactionary militarism and Stern Daddy Figure patriarchal power-fantasy is a bad thing.
Whereas I look at all that and all I can think is: Yes, please, more of that! More progress. More activism. More change. More voices. More diversity. More types of characters. More types of reviews. Hell, more things being written than just scored “consumer-reports” style reviews. And yes… more attention to (and from) gamers who don’t currently get counted as “gamers.” And if some (even most – though it is nowhere near most) in the gaming press are more interested in covering, talking to, seeking out and spotlighting material that can speed that transformation along? I don’t call that “corruption” – I call that media-journalism performing its highest possible function: Encouraging both the medium and the audience to grow, progress and improve.
Because while I don’t believe that gamers should ”die” (and neither did the authors of the supposed ”Gamers Are Dead” pieces and you know they didn’t and pretending you thought they did so you have one more thing to be pretend-outraged about is shamefully silly) …y’know what, folks? The notion (factual or perceived) that “real gamers” should primarily refer to one type of person – specifically the angry, entitled, reactionary, change-fearing corporate apologist type of person – because “that guy” is easier for EA etc to shovel increasingly-empty experiences at for maximum profit?
That - the notion - cannot die fast enough.