Category Archives: Zen of Video Games

THE ZEN OF VIDEO GAMES – Choices

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The simplest, smallest choice can have far-reaching effects you’ll never know about. Choosing to drive a different route to get to work one morning could condemn someone else to die several days later. It’s just another part of the unpredictability of life. You just never know.

Choice has always been an important part of video games, even as far back as Super Mario Bros. If I choose to get the hidden 1-up in the early part of the world 1-1, I’ll miss out on taking the pipe, which skips about half the level. In Chrono Trigger, you can choose to have Melchior make the Prismatic Dress, the ultimate armor for the ladies, or three less-powerful Prismatic Helms, which anyone can wear. One of my favorites, Front Mission 3, has a simple choice early on – go hang out with your friend, or stay in – that changes the way the rest of the game plays out.

But rarely did video games have choices that produce far-reaching consequences – until recently, at any rate. And even then, it seems most choices are built on a pure good/pure evil system – would you save this basket of puppies from a burning house, or watch them cook and then eat them? I’m exaggerating, but sometimes it feels that way. There’s rarely any middle ground.

Games have not yet mastered the art of choices that have no clear moral or tangible benefit/disadvantage that have very clear and lasting ramifications. The Front Mission 3 example is the closest thing I can think of, off the top of my head, and that was back in 2000.

And only lately are games experimenting with extended consequences. Mass Effect is a phenomenal science-fiction third-person-shooter-RPG hybrid with an incredible universe of characters, races, and worlds to explore. And one of its most impressive features is continuity. See, you will make thousands upon thousands of choices in Mass Effect, and not only will choices affect events later in the game, they have the capacity to affect events in later games.

In Mass Effect, you play as Commander Shepard, and how he/she looks – just as how he/she behaves, is entirely up to you, the player. Towards the end of the game, you have to choose between two human squadmates. One will go with you, and the other will split off to complete another objective. Whichever squadmate goes with you will survive….the other will die. That character will not appear in Mass Effect 2 or 3, except in flashback sequences. The character who survived will have a relatively small part in Mass Effect 2, but in Mass Effect 3, they can be fully recruited into your squad again.

Characters recruited to join you in Mass Effect 1 can open up side quests or give you bonuses in Mass Effect 2, and even Mass Effect 3. Conversations held, things you said, can come back to help or haunt Commander Shepard. And these are not small games – 20 to 60 hours of gameplay each. And they were released years apart. So, on some level, something I did years ago can have a profound effect on me today.

And that is DEFINITELY true about life.

The most recent and profound example I can think of involves a girl. The best stories always do, in my opinion. And even better (for the romantics, at least), it involves our first date.

I remember all my dates, largely because there aren’t that many to remember, but this one was special. The girl was (and is) beautiful, the restaurant was fantastic, the food was delicious, and the comedy class we went to afterwards was a great time. Easily the best date I’ve ever been on. But the salient point here – and what I’ll remember most about it, besides the eight-nippled dog-boy – don’t ask – was our conversation.

After the wine arrived, but before the meal, we were quietly talking. I don’t remember how, but somehow we started talking about our flaws. And I looked at her, and in a split-second I decided, knowing this could be a very bad idea if I wanted to woo this girl, that I was going to be completely open and honest with her about my flaws. And I told her something I hadn’t told another living soul since college. To my complete astonishment, she didn’t flee screaming from the room, but responded in kind, confessing a very personal flaw of her own.

It was a remarkable experience – here we were, our first date, and we were talking about things psychiatrists would have a hard time dragging out of us. We both agreed that this total honesty trend should continue, and as I said, the rest of our date went really well.

Though the total honesty trend did continue, and there were more dates, things did not go as hoped for between the two of us in the long run, but we were and are still good friends, though separated somewhat.

Fast forward to a few days ago. I’d discovered the problem I mentioned in my last ZOVG article, and it’s still too personal to talk about, but suffice to say that fixing the problem would be costly, and I doubted I could afford it, even with the best financing. I didn’t know what to do.

On a total whim, I scoped out the girl’s Facebook page, which I hadn’t seen in some time. There was a great picture of her with her friend that made me smile. It also made me realize I hadn’t seen her or talked to her in months.

I sent her a text, asking how she was, and she responded enthusiastically, things were going pretty well. She asked how I was, and I remarked that things were not going so well for me. And naturally, as I should’ve known she would, she asked what was wrong.

Now, my gut instinct was to hide it – this problem is embarrassing, and she’s one of few individuals on this planet whose opinion of me actually matters – but I remembered our promise, which had become more of a tradition at this point. Total, brutal honesty, no matter what. So I told her everything in a few text messages.

Her reply told me that her father could help me with my problem. I was amazed, but excited. I would’ve been over the moon if I could’ve just saved a thousand dollars or two.

She then said he could get things fixed for FREE.

To say that I was stunned would be an understatement of the highest order. I can’t possibly explain the magnitude of my gratitude. I think I’m going to spend the rest of my life making this up to her and her father, that’s how extraordinary this is. But I realized within minutes that it would never have happened if I hadn’t made the choice to be completely honest on that first date, seven or eight months prior.

And I have been floored by this realization. Ever since then, I’ve been making choices more carefully, deliberating more thoroughly. After all, I can’t possibly know what effect my choices will have. If something as against my self-interest as telling a girl about a deeply personal flaw ON OUR FIRST DATE can have outrageously beneficial effects months later, how can I possibly gauge what effect ANYTHING I do will have on me, or anyone else?

In the end, though, I think it’s not going to change how I make my choices. Just as I do in Mass Effect, I try to choose what’s right – I think my decision to be completely honest with her so long ago came from the fact that it would’ve felt wrong not to tell her – and being completely honest with her a few days ago was because it DEFINITELY would’ve been wrong not to tell her after we’d promised to be honest.

I’m not a paragon of virtue, like my Commander Shepard. I’m not the best man I can be, not yet anyway. But I know it’s important to at least try to make the right choices – not just right for me, but for others as well.

Because you never know whose life you’ll be changing with that choice.

THE ZEN OF VIDEO GAMES – The Next Step

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No one can foretell the future. This is a part of being human. I can’t say for certain what’s coming next, even though as I type this, I’m in the middle of a very predictable workday. But the key words in that last sentence are “for certain”. I’m pretty sure I’ll keep typing this for a while. But I could have a heart attack. Or perhaps someone’ll show up ask…ing for help. Or I could spontaneously transmutate into a penis monster. Anything is literally possible.

It’s important to bear this in mind in life. A lot of things we worry about will never come to pass. The “Mayan apocalypse” is a good example. Anyone who’s bothered to read something on the subject knows it’s bunk. I’m also not worried about Skynet or zombies. But I’m willing to admit they’re all possible. Computers COULD attain intelligence on their own. Medical science COULD find a way to re-animate a corpse. And the world COULD end come December. But all of these scenarios are incredibly unlikely.

So, all anyone can offer, no matter what so-called “psychics” would tell you, is their best guess. I’m guessing the sun will rise tomorrow. I’m guessing the air will still be breathable. And I’m guessing you’re wondering what the point of all this is.

It’s intensely personal – yes, more personal than what I discussed last time. Let’s just say that I have a rather serious problem. It can be fixed, but it’ll cost way more than I can afford. Unfortunately, it’s becoming increasingly more necessary to fix, and my income’s not getting any higher. My mom’s willing to help me out, financially, so maybe this will be doable, but I can’t help but wonder what they’ll be sacrificing to help me – or if I’ll ever be able to repay them.

So, you see, what’s going to happen tomorrow is very much on my mind right now. It could get better, it could get worse. I can’t guess. I don’t know.

I read an article on the internet speculating about the next video game console generation just a few minutes ago, and it got me thinking – do we even need a new generation? Games look remarkably lifelike already – how much better can graphics get? I mean, I can kind of understand a new Wii – though the name Wii U is just as dumb as Wii was. And I even kind of understand a new Xbox – it can only read 8-gigabyte DVD’s, and that’s gotta be limiting at this point.

But why on Earth are they talking about a PS4? The PS3 is a powerhouse in almost every respect, still capable of pumping out beautiful, realistic high-definition visuals, and the blu-ray discs can hold 42 GB of data – over 5 times the space that Xbox games have to work with.

And then, my inner computer geek kicks in. Oh, who am I kidding, my outer computer geek kicks in. And I realize that the problem might not be processing power or disc size. There are a lot more things that go into a computer that can limit it – because that’s what game systems are, computers with proprietary operating systems and unique input devices.

RAM is a problem. I didn’t know this until today, but the PS3 has just 512MB of RAM. So does the Xbox 360. My computer has 8 times as much. And that little amount of RAM means that the games can only have so much going on at once – levels can only be so big, there can only be so many enemies nearby – and the better the graphics, the worse it gets.

And there are a lot of new inventions that would benefit gaming, but can’t be implemented, for whatever reason, in current consoles. Digital distribution is huge for PC’s – as far as I’m concerned, Steam is one of the best things to happen to computer gaming in a VERY long time, but it isn’t working for consoles so much, largely due to two factors: limited hard drive space and flawed business models. Xbox Live could learn much from Steam, but even if they did, gamers could only have so many games available to play at once with the default 4 GB hard drive. Even the ‘expanded’ 320 GB hard drive is still only about a third of the size of the hard drive on my computer.

Cloud gaming is also getting bigger, though I don’t know whether it’ll have any place in the next console generation. Services like OnLive use broadband internet to run games from OnLive’s server, streaming the player’s controller inputs to the server, and streaming the video of the result of those inputs back to the player. It’s entirely possible that one or more of the big three could go this route, but I don’t think it’s too likely.

Backwards compatibility is a huge question mark right now. Gamers want it, and the big three know this, but this generation was a MASSIVE disappointment in this area. Xbox 360’s backwards compatibility was bizarrely limited for no adequately explained reason, and the PS3 removed backwards compatibility with PS2 games entirely and even PS1 emulation isn’t as good as the PS2’s. Nintendo’s the only company that didn’t spectacularly drop the ball. So, are we even going to see backward compatibility in the new generation? I have no idea, but probably not from Sony and Microsoft. God forbid they do something that benefits the consumer.

In the end, though, as I said, I cannot say with any certainty what’s to come, but I will make some predictions anyway. The new machines will purport to be bigger, better, badder, and there will be good things and bad things about them. Gaming will continue to evolve in interesting ways, and we’ll see some interesting things tried. Some will succeed, some will fail.

It’s all just a guess. Where will tomorrow lead? The only way to find out is to get there.

I’ll see you there.

THE ZEN OF VIDEO GAMES – The Cross

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[Warning: Minor spoilers for all three Max Payne games, one big Max Payne 3 spoiler, and one MAJOR Max Payne 2 spoiler ahead!]

If it hasn’t been made abundantly obvious to anyone who reads these things, I have a number of character flaws. Foremost among these being the proclivity for dropping my pants in social situations. I’ve been told, time and again, that this needs to be addressed. My response is always the same – if I didn’t drop my pants, who would ever see my penis besides me? I have a responsibility to share the beauty that is my penis with the world.

But for now, let’s put my genitalia aside, and talk about something a little more personal. As you know, this blog is all about self-exploration through the metaphor video games provide, as well as fomenting intelligent discussion, so once again, let’s get serious.

If you’ve read the previous ZOVG (love that acronym), you’ll have noticed that I had a problem with guilt – over being attracted to female nudity in a video game. Seems rather silly when I put it that way. It was a realistic-looking female, and she wasn’t a furry or anything, so if I hadn’t been attracted, I’d have to ask myself some questions about my sexual orientation.

My problem with it lay in how I instantly thought of her as a sex object and not a person. But again, she was a stripper in a strip club. This is what strippers do, they turn themselves into sex objects in order to coax more money out of stupid, lonely men. Sorry, but it’s the truth. Having said that, Mademoiselle’s strip club in Buffalo? Best BBQ wings I’ve ever had. Just sayin’.

The point I’m trying, rather poorly, to make, is that I have a tendency to give myself a hard time. I hold myself to a higher standard than I hold anyone else, and I hold myself to a higher standard than anyone else does. I’m the first person to blame myself when I screw up, and I’m the last person to forgive myself. It comes, I think, from growing up Catholic. We didn’t invent guilt, the Jews did, but we’ve pretty much gotten it down now. I’m not really Catholic anymore (I’m an agnostic, if you must know, but religion is a topic for another time), but some things obviously stuck.

Perhaps that’s why I identify with Max Payne so much. In the beginning of Max Payne 3, Max is heavily addicted to alcohol and painkillers. He’s obviously extremely depressed, but through the occasional line of narration, and look on his face, one can tell he blames himself for the deaths of his wife and daughter, Mona Sax, and even Detective Winterson.

A key scene occurs if you manage to find Winterson’s grave in the grave yard. In the previous game [spoilers!] Max found himself forced to choose between Mona and Winterson. With the little information he had, Max chose Mona, and shot Winterson dead. Later on, Max learns that Winterson was collaborating with that game’s main villain, but interestingly, when Max finds Winterson’s grave in Max Payne 3, Max laments that he’d made the wrong choice.

One of the most powerful scenes in Max Payne 2 comes at the beginning of the game, before you realize who he’s talking about. Max finds a corpse in the hospital morgue and confesses through narration, “I was a murderer.”

Even as far back as Max Payne 1, there’s hints that Max blames himself for the death of his wife and child. In a dream sequence, Max finds himself in the bloody bedroom where his wife died, and screams at himself “MURDERER! YOU KILLED HER!”, before charging at himself, guns blazing, and Max is forced to kill his other self. It’s all very mind-bending, but one thing is not in doubt: Max, like me, is overly hard on himself.

Granted, I’ve never had a wife and baby girl get murdered, and I’ve never been through any of the other horrific things Max has survived. In fact, in Max’s case, it’s probably more survivor’s guilt than any real character defect. I mean, he’s a moody bastard, there’s no getting around that, but there’s no real evidence that Max treating himself badly is something he did BEFORE people started dying.

Still, I can’t help but sympathize. I’ve hurt friends before. I’m going to do it again. I will cause them embarrassment, humiliation, emotional, and even possibly physical pain. And when I do, it will be soul-crushing to me, because I never intend for that to happen. My friends, my family, they’re the most important things in my life. With the sole exception of my penis.

And I know, even now, that I don’t really need to be so hard on myself. The last ZOVG, when I talked about pushing the girl into her chair? She didn’t even remember it had happened until I mentioned it. Numerous other transgressions against my loved ones? Forgotten within weeks, days, or even hours of it happening, and still, I hold myself accountable. Most people exude an acceptable amount of guilt until the incident has been forgotten, swept under the rug, as it were, and then go on. As for me, some things still haunt me today.

Again, just about everyone I know would forgive me, and for most of the big things I’ve fouled up, I have forgiven myself. But I still feel I HAVE to remember what I did, so I won’t do it again. And I fear sometimes that if I forgive, I will also forget.

Midway through Max Payne 3, the primary person Max was hired to protect gets killed. Max is about to have another night of binge drinking and self-hatred, but instead, he has a revelation. Max quits drinking that very night, and resolves to find the kidnapped girl, vowing that if he has to die to save her, he’ll die sober.

I think THAT’S the important thing, in the end. If you’re so mired in self-recrimination and doubt that you stop trying, not to go all Yoda on everybody, but THAT is why you fail. Even if I do the wrong thing, I’m going to make it up to them, and go on. Because giving up is even worse than whatever screw-up I feel bad about.

Keep on fighting, Max. I forgive you. Just don’t give up.

THE ZEN OF VIDEO GAMES – Getting A Brazilian

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[EDIT] This originally was posted with a story that, while obscured to a degree, wasn’t obscured enough, as it was possible to infer who the participants were. Those I have spoken to were kind enough to tell me to keep the article up and just rewrite the ending, but I wanted to trash the entire thing thanks to my profoundly retarded lapse in judgment of putting it up in the first place. My friend talked me into keeping it, so the ending has been changed, and this time no one could possibly know who I’m talking about – but be forewarned, it’s a lot more personal now. I feel the whole article is better this way, but I know I’m still probably being incredibly stupid. And that is a victory in my book. After all, who’s smarter? The fool who knows he’s a fool, or the fool who thinks he’s smart? [/EDIT]

I haven’t been getting anywhere trying to write the newest Save File episode. I’ve had to keep putting it off and putting it off, and worse yet, it’s my own fault. I decided to do this one in a special way, which requires me to rethink the way I write – which is turning out to be more difficult than I expected. So, instead, I thought I’d write another Zen article – and wouldn’t you know it, this one is almost as difficult to write.

It goes back about a week. I was having no luck writing the script for the video, and I’d learned long ago that trying to force it will just make things worse, so I decided to play some Max Payne 3 instead. Max Payne 3, like its predecessors, is a remarkably well-written game for the most part, and Max spends the first half of the game in the wealthy areas of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Trendy nightclubs and high-rise penthouses. We see an almost disgusting opulence and decadence that’s only mitigated by the interesting, flawed characters and the fact that these rich people and areas are about to be riddled with bullets.

About halfway through the game, Max has to travel through the favelas, the poor part of town. Not only do we get a vastly different picture of the way things are, but Max himself becomes a victim of gang violence almost immediately. It’s a refreshing change of pace in what was already an engaging work of fiction.

With no money and no weapons, Max decides he needs to call for help. He spots what he thinks is a bar, and reasoning that they must have a phone, he heads inside, and quickly finds that it’s actually a strip club. A couple of strippers walk by, topless. And I got sexually excited to a minor degree.

But then Max spots a guy apparently having sex with one of the girls. It’s not explicit, but the way it was staged made me rethink my excitement. Max walks by some more strippers, and they’re not the perfect body female character models one ALWAYS finds in a video game strip club – one girl even appears to be in the first stage of pregnancy. And I found myself a little ashamed for my earlier excitement.

After a shootout, in which one of the strippers died, and I couldn’t honestly tell you whose bullets killed her, Max finds an American tourist who’d flown down often, and bragged about the place having “the cheapest pussy” and the slimy scumbag defended his actions by declaring “they’re legal here…I think.”

I was now VERY ashamed.

Video games rarely do this – up the sexuality, but give it a negative connotation – and I think it was absolutely genius. It wasn’t included for titillation – it was included because that’s a reality down there. It highlights the misogyny present in such a place, but more importantly, it highlighted the misogyny present in myself.

I like to think I’m not a misogynist – ask anyone who knows me, I love women. I’m not only extremely attracted to them, but I find it much easier to talk to women than men, and the closest friends I’ve ever had have been women. But one of the hardest things I’ve ever learned is that even I am capable of evil, and moreso, capable of violence against women.

For example, I once hit a woman.

Okay, “hit” is probably the wrong word, “push” is closer. She was, and still is, someone I care about, and we were having a particularly lengthy argument. We were both drunk to more or less of a degree, but that does not excuse me. She stood up, as if to put the final cap on our argument and walk off. I stood up and forcibly pushed her back into her seat.

Her shock mirrored my own, and what little I had left to say to her was weak and hardly convincing, even to me. She left, and this time I let her. We didn’t speak again for the rest of the night.

What had I done? To make matters worse, it was her place, and I knew I was too drunk to drive. As I waited to sober up, I got more and more disgusted with myself. I eventually curled myself up on her couch and cried myself to sleep.

To this day, it haunts me, and until recently, I’ve never really spoken with her about it, we both just kind of pretended it didn’t happen. People who would alleviate my guilt would tell me I didn’t hurt her, but at the end of the day, it was force. It was violence. And I have been left wondering just what else I am capable of.

My knee-jerk reaction to the bare breasts in Max Payne 3’s strip club was also misogynistic. Granted, to a smaller degree, but still, wrong is wrong. The only defense I can claim is that there are far worse people out there, but it’s a rather weak argument, no matter what the subtext. I will certainly never act like that slimy tourist scumbag – I’d sooner die.

I’m not writing this to lash myself with recriminations about my wrongdoings – that’s another article entirely. And I should mention that the girl and I have now talked about it, and reconciled – we weren’t really estranged because of it, but we haven’t been the best of friends, either. But it is important – the incident with my friend was the first time I realized that I was just as capable of hurting a woman as any other man, no matter how much I cared for them. It was a wake-up call, and one that I have tried to learn from. So I can be an even better man.

Maybe someday, I will be.

THE ZEN OF VIDEO GAMES – 8008135!!!!!!!!!!!1!

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The question of sexism in games still intrigues me. Women have been far from helpless in games for a long time now. One of Nintendo’s first icons, Samus Aran, is a woman, and she’d been the definitive example of a smart, independent, capable female in gaming until recently, when Nintendo (stupidly, I feel) handed the production of Other M to Team Ninja, a production company not exactly known for being feminists (they made Dead or Alive, a series of fighting games that introduced the term ‘jiggle physics’ into gaming vernacular).

They made Samus Aran oddly submissive and somehow less competent and independent than she’d always been. But I do not agree that she’d been lessened by her dependency on a man, Adam Malkovich. Having learned her entire backstory, I think she would’ve latched onto anyone with some permanence in her life, and Adam could’ve been Ada, and the story would’ve unfolded the exact same way.

But they did, to a minor degree, sexualize the character. And a lot of people complained that Samus had been objectified, and this highlighted a problem in the gaming industry – a LOT of its characters had been objectified from the start.

Let’s take the all-time classic example out for a spin. Lara Croft has to be THE defining example of sexualized women in video games. And yet, she became that way entirely by pure chance, when a graphic artist accidentally increased her breast dimensions by 150%, and the rest of the creative team argued to leave it that way. And the rest is history.

Ever since then the gaming industry seems almost entirely split in two. There are designers who seem to believe that female characters should have the bodies of porn stars and show them off nearly as much, see above re: Team Ninja and jiggle physics. Then there are those who are trying their best to create realistic, honest feminine portrayals without hyper-sexualization, see Alyx Vance from Half-Life 2 or Jade from Beyond Good And Evil. Or my personal favorite, Zoey from Left 4 Dead.

Is it any different or worse than Hollywood? Granted, Hollywood also relies heavily on sex appeal, but Hollywood can’t control the physical reality of the human body to the same degree that video game artists can. After all, if you want your starlet to have larger breasts, it’s much easier and cheaper to just click and drag a slider. You might be turning your intelligent, dynamic character into a plaything, but hey, think of the extra sales and try not to dwell on the loss of your soul.

And yet, even though I come down on the side of more realistic, less objectified female characters, I have found myself enticed into buying games solely because of their sex appeal. I’m slightly ashamed to admit that at one point, I even owned copies of The Guy Game and Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball, games that exist SOLELY to objectify and seemingly even ridicule women. And we still play The Guy Game from time to time, it’s still fun at parties.

And there are some games that I may not have tried if it weren’t for their overt sexualization. Fear Effect is one of my favorite games for the Playstation, and I’m not certain I would’ve bought it if the main heroine, Hana, didn’t have a rack you could balance an assault rifle on. And I’m glad I did – the game features fun stealth and gun play, intriguing puzzles, and an interesting story based on Chinese culture and folklore. Yes, this is one of those rare games that educates as you play – and more people played it because Hana could carry a dinner plate across a room without using her hands.

The sequel is even worse – for Fear Effect 2: Retro Helix, they created another character, Rain, also with the body of a porn star, and heavily suggested a lesbian relationship between herself and Hana. I’m all for more LGBT characters in gaming, but not when their only purpose is to allow your marketing to have two girls scissoring each other. And again, the game is brilliant, fun, original, and forays again into Chinese folklore, bringing aesthetics and story elements rarely seen in America. And I suspect a lot of gamers might not have played it if not for the prospect of seeing two over-sexualized busty babes going muff diving.

Did it bring more attention to games that were good enough to deserve it? Yes. But I’m worried about the kind of damage that can do in the long run. This kind of thing can create unrealistic expectations of women in younger gamers. Is there a woman on Earth with the body of a porn star, intelligence, humor, and the ability to put a bullet in my eyeball from 500 yards out? Possibly. Am I gonna meet her? Nope.

Ask any porn star: huge boobs are going to get a lot of attention. It’s just a fact of life. Will this change over the years? Maybe. But the best thing gamers can do, if we want our games to grow up, is to not buy games trying to entice us with cheap sexuality. Characters can still be sexy with realistically defined proportions – the Mass Effect series is fairly good in that regard, as well as practically anything by Valve – because their women are tough, smart, and funny, and those are sexy qualities.

Sex is a HUGE part of our adult lives, there is nothing morally wrong with having it, and it can be handled in a mature, responsible manner. As gamers we should demand it to be the same way in our games, and designers should strive to make characters that can be sexy without almost popping out of their armor-plated bikini top.