LVL Headed

So here’s a picture of the new Star Trek film coming out…

You can find more here.

Alright Hollywood, I’m sick of this.  I’m looking at each of these people, and none of them look older than 25.  Captain Kirk looks like he’s the captain of a college swim team.  I don’t care how advanced the future’s education system is, these people look way too young to be at the helm of a starship.

And while this specific complaint has been brought about by Star Trek, don’t peg me as some kind of geek purist.  I’m not bothered that they got different actors to play in this remake of Star Trek.  I’m not really bothered by Star Trek at all, it’s the entire movie industry I’m bothered by.

I guess this is a little better than it was before.  Before, Hollywood was infamous for making movies about high schoolers starring actors in their early thirties.  I can tell that’s over because I watched Superbad, the first movie about high school that starred people who looked like they were actually still in high school.  But now we’ve got the opposite problem, young-looking actors playing the roles of older characters.  Let’s look at Superman real quick-like…

Here’s Margot Kidder as Lois Lane.  My apologies to Kidder, but she looks like she’s the appropriate age to be a Metropolis reporter.  Not old, but not rediculously young.

Here’s Kate Bosworth who acted as Lois Lane in Superman Returns (though the picture I’m using here obviously isn’t from said film).  Odd that in a film that supposedly takes place after the original Superman movie that Lois seems to have lost several years.  I do like the picture I’m using here because it looks like Bosworth’s kindergarten teacher has just flipped the book she was reading to show all the kids the illustration on the opposite page before she goes back to reading the book aloud.

Hollywood, I know you think we like looking at college-age supermodels.  And I guess that’s probably true.  But nothing pulls me out of a movie more than to see Muppet Babies cast as thirty-somethings.

There’s just too much youthful handsomeness in the movies these days.

Well, the new Bad Game Designer, No Twinkie! is up, and it features a suggestion and quote by yours truly… except he got my name wrong.  Oh well, I don’t really mind since No Twinkie is a great series of articles.  Each one delves into common design decisions that make games less fun instead of more fun.

If you’re curious, I sent in a suggestion about escort missions and waist-high impassible obstacles.  Yes, I know these are the most obvious things to gripe about when it comes to bad game design, but I just wanted to be a part of something.  Do you really want to take that away from me!?

So check the article out.  I’m gonna go get some twinkies.

I’ve got some special stuff coming up soon, so just hold on.  Just take this post as a “I’m not dead” notice.

-SKT

The above video is from Game Trailers, with the narrator explaining some of the decisions made in the new Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe game.  I haven’t been keeping up with this game that much since I’m a diehard Marvel vs Capcom 2 fan (I’ll take Wolverine vs Megaman over Superman vs Scorpion anyday), but I just found this video a little interesting and odd.

The first thing gone over in the video is the inclusion of Superman and how the developers took his powers into account when making the game.  So how did the game developers manage to balance the game while keeping the characters true to their roots?  They did it with a plot device.

I was hoping for something cool, as if the developers had locked themselves in a room for months just trying to figure out “How do we make Superman a normal fighter?”  But instead we get some excuse about how Superman is weak against Kryptonite and magic, and since Mortal Kombat takes place in a universe of sorcery, everything works out just fine on its own.  Even this plot device excuse is a little weak, seeing as how in the video Scorpion is hurting Superman just by punching him.  Does Scorpion have magic fists?  Is this explained in story mode as well?

This seems to me just another example of how awkward these two themes fit together.  If they had said something along the lines of Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe Villains, then I could see how that would work out.  Both fighters from either side would come into the battle with the same goal - total havok.  But to have the Flash fight some guy with a bicycle kick and expect us to think it’s totally rational?  Does the Flash have a fatality?

I’ll admit that Marvel vs Capcom 2 kind of has the same problem, and I’ve already stated I love that game.  But Marvel vs Capcom just goes right around the issue.  There’s no plot, no reason, just a bunch of people duking it out.  Marvel vs Capcom doesn’t try to explain itself, it just is.  Mortal Kombat vs DC Universe could try doing the same, but then the basic premise of fighting and fatalities is comprimised by DC’s do-gooders.  It’s not just in the storyline where the two mis-match, it’s in the basic theme.

Anyways, I just thought this was weird.

I’ll admit I’m nerdy enough to watch the cartoons every now and then, and I was lucky enough to catch this the other night.  It’s so spot-on.

Sorry about the title, I just couldn’t help myself.

I just found out from Wonderland today that the new MMORPG Age of Conan contains some female nudity.  I could just let this go, or I could over-analyze the hell out of it like a sophomore English-major.  I know which one I prefer.

I think it’s pretty sensible, on a corporate level, to put nudity in an MMORPG.  After all, your main audience isn’t people with disposable income, but with reliable income who can shell out the bucks month after month to kill rats.  There’s a good chance then that most of your available market is going to at least be old enough to enjoy Titanic without their parents shoving a pillow in their face during the drawing scene.

But what will the consequences be of introducing nudity in such a casual way in a game like this?  There’s the chance that it was put in to drum up sales… no, scratch that, it’s pretty damn certain that it was put in to drum up sales, but still, is this just another BMX XXX?  Or is it a chance to introduce sexuality and adult situations into games more subtly?

Breasts themselves aren’t sexual organs, it’s our culture that turns them into something sexual.  In other MMORPGs, the issue is skirted with magical skin-grafted underwear that’s stuck on every character model.  By including breasts in a non-sexual situation, just as an obvious part of the body, the game could work towards de-sexualizing them.  There’s a message in society that breasts are dirty and should be kept covered and secret.  A game like this that provides nudity simply in the context of getting dressed normalizes it, makes it just part of the body.

But then we get to the questions that arise from MMORPGs and the stereotypical audience.  Can this nudity be normalized in the context of a social game in which many, if not most, of the players will be men raised in a patriarchal society?  Surely there’ll be a few players running around topless as a source of humor or entertainment.  And women have traditionally been marginalized in MMORPG environments.

Then there’s cybersex, but that turns the game into something more like the real life. I said that breasts aren’t sexual organs, but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be sexual or shouldn’t be. As this game is played, there will be those looking to use the system for their own games, for things like cybersex, and there will be those looking to play within the system, in other words, to kill rats. These parties usually don’t intersect, and I think this might create a useful schism in the game. Players who want to use nudity as a tool for their own games will do so, and players who want to play the game as it’s set will avoid it. This way, the nudity in Age of Conan becomes sexualized when players are looking for a sexual situation, and non-sexualized when they’re questing.

But of course, everything I said in the last paragraph could be negated depending on the attitude that the players take to the inclusion of female above-waist nudity in the game.  And that’s likely to be pretty sucky.

In the end, this is where I think games need to go (and I think so does Daniel Floyd). However, the topic has to be tackled gently. These open-world games allow the inclusion of nudity and sexuality, but in a way that isn’t necessary to the game. It makes it an option to the player, without creating specific goals. It turns it into ambiance, and not necessarily a mechanic.

As for Age of Conan, I’m not exactly sure, because I don’t know that much about the game. I don’t know how much control players have over how they look in the game, and I think that would be very important as well. I think if someone has the option to go topless, they should also have the option to be obese, or muscular, or any other body-type that exists. Limiting body types is a way to make certain body types more acceptable than others.

And that’s about all I have to say about that.

Boobs.

The first Pong machine was set up in a bar.  Flash forward a decade or two, and there’s a war being fought in Washington which rests on the general assumption that Video Games are children’s toys.

Actually, I’m sorry for that.  I don’t mean to be too political here, and I’m not yet about to start my rant on games legislation.  Instead, I want to focus on the divide between Games and the mainstream, how it’s weakening, and how that may or may not “help” games in general.

First, let’s talk about modern games.  The hardcore.  What’s special about God of War, or Beyond Good and Evil?  Comparisons are often made between the gaming industry and the film industry, mostly in predicted profits.  And while games are beginning to share much of the visual flare of the Hollywood movie, one consumes a game much differently than they would a movie.  The game is interactive, it demands user participation.  It also takes time, something around 30 to 40 hours a game.  Games aren’t like movies, they’re like books.  In the same way that we can’t just pick up War and Peace, read a few pages, and be done with it, modern video games demand that we make time for them.  Starting a game of Ico is a commitment to sit with the controller in hand for a significant period of time.

Then there’s the casual.  These are games which are designed to be quick and disposable.  Now, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying casual games are bad.  They’re just different.  One doesn’t plan to play Tetris for seven hours, it just happens.  And then, when you realize you have something else to do, you just turn it off.  There’s no need to save, you weren’t really working up to anything.

Many would say the difference between Hardcore and Casual games lay in the rules, and while I won’t dispute it, I’m not so sure.  I think the big difference is narrative.  In my personal opinion, you could boil down Metal Gear Solid by taking away all the com-link stuff and the cut-scenes, and you’d have a perfectly playable casual game.  Actually, I guess that’s what Metal Gear Solid: The VR Missions was.  After all, most of Metal Gear was the narrative.  Take that away and you’ve just got running and shooting.

It’s narrative in games which demand more participation from the player.  It’s easy to stop playing Tetris at any time, but Final Fantasy VII is a bit harder because the player is still working for their reward, the end of the story.  Once again, boil Final Fantasy down to a purely abstract game of statistics and management, and it becomes something you can just turn on and off whenever.

I’ll finish with my controversial statements with my next post.