Something very interesting has happened to me over the last, say, 3 years. All my life I’ve been an avid film buff–I even went to film school, and genuinely intended on making film direction the sole focus of my life…but that desire has largely left me entirely. I still like the medium of film, and maybe I’ll get back into making Smosh-esque skits like I did in high school, but in the last few years films have just become boring. Every now and then I get excited about a movie like the Hunger Games, but in that case the delivery mechanism is irrelevant to my appreciation of the story–or the gameplay implications of the story.

Although I will grant you that I was quite impressed with the direction, and editing of the Hunger Games. I guess there is still a part of me that gets off on that.

But I cannot deny that, on the whole, I just cannot generate an interest in film anymore. The longform of television still holds some favor with me, but even then I often find myself giving up on shows I (think I) like after only a few episodes. I just don’t care.

Meanwhile, my interest in games has grown more and more potent. I’ve always been interested in games, and interactivity in general–before film I studied web development–but it’s only been recently (3/22 years) that I’ve replaced films with games. I used to hold them as seperate entities, for different moods I was in…but now I would say 99% of the time I would rather play a game than do anything else.

Why though? What do I get from games that I don’t get from films? You could argue that it’s just completely random…but I don’t think that’s intellectually honest.

No: the difference is that I am significantly more narcissistic than I was before.

Hah! I don’t mean that in the way you might think! When I examine my life I can see that the last few years I’ve become a lot less interested in socializing, and much more interested in “producing.” The period of my life when I was most interested in film was also the period of my life where I had much more of an interest in hanging out with friends. I spent a lot of time going to parties, and a lot of time gossiping; I had a huge interest in other people, and their lives. I was also generally more passive; arguing less, doing less. I was going to school preparing to do things.

Well now I do do things. The last few years of college I became much more involved with student politics, and created all kinds of personal projects. I stopped gossiping, for the most part, and stopped “hanging out” in favor of doing some kind of activity (a lot of these projects involved my friends in some way).

This point has been beaten to death, but in video games you are participating. I think it makes sense that as I became more and more interested in “life” I became more interested in entertaining myself with something that excited my mind the same way as the exciting work I was doing.

The funny thing is, that’s the exact opposite of what people often say is wrong with gamers: that they’re disengaged from life. Is it possible that someone’s interest in the medium is actually directly related to their interest in “the world?” I think this could be true.

You can gain a lot of insight into yourself when you examine your relationship to entertainment. I’d love to hear a rebuttal from someone who’s more of a film buff.

Controversial to be sure, but anyone who knows me knows that I actually have a fairly morbid aesthetic; one of my favorite aspects of the Mass Effect franchise is its occasional descent into darkness (the volus’ story on Noveria is a great example of what I’m talking about). I don’t consider myself a dark, brooding person…I just tend to get into macabre media. You pitch a story that involves 24 children fighting to the death and I’m sold; allow me to point you to my collector’s edition copy of Battle Royale.

As I left the theatre I immediately began to deconstruct its possible game mechanics (I do this with most things). I warn you: I’m going to be speaking frankly about the film from here on out; if you’re trying to avoid spoilers it would be best to come back after you’ve seen the movie.

Okay so there are a number of ways you could approach the Hunger Games as a designer, but there are really two things that stand out to me.

The first, and least interesting, is a deathmatch style multiplayer game. I actually think permadeath is a largely underutilized mechanic (for understandable reasons), but it would be perfect here. I think the best way to approach the mood of the Hunger Games themselves would be to use a control scheme similar to Dark Souls, with the kinds of maps you find in Battlefield games; large, open, and brutal are the kinds of words I’d use to describe that scenario. If there was a way to mod Dark Souls I think there could be a lot of meat here.

But I think a far more interesting proposition would be including something like the Hunger Games into a persistant world like an MMO or even a MUD. This is because what fascinates me most about the Hunger Games is not the games themselves but how they affect society. The unrelenting fear of the games looming over the districts is what fascinates me, along with the process of the tributes trying to impress the public and the fact that only one of them ultimately survives.

I love the idea of a lottery that results in selected players participating in a challenge that, ultimately, results in the death of all but one of them. Permanent death possibly, although that could only happen in a game where starting over wasn’t a huge deal; a rare thing indeed.

I would love to know if any games have tried something like this. At PAX East I was part of a long discussion with James Portnow and various Extra Credits fans about the game Ultima Online, which seems (from the descriptions) like the most likely candidate for some fucked up player death lottery. My immediate assumption is that this could only truly work in a MUD–where else would you be able to find a lively community of people willing to experiment with something that took days and ultimately resulted in most players dying?

Hah! I have no idea how to finish this article. In summation: it’s fun to imagine how different aspects of things could translate to game ideas, and I should make my own MUD to try out these stupid ideas.

Now, I don’t know anything about Taylor Clark except for what is presented in this article: he’s a great writer, he is a big fan of Jonathan Blow, and he is apparently not a fan of anything else (to be fair I don’t actually know if he’s a he, but knowing the industry as I do I’m making an assumption). He goes on at length decrying every game that isn’t Braid, the Witness, or Miegakure; my feathers remained unruffled until he took a swing at Flower.

Twitter was set ablaze with responses to these perceived attacks, often with the responder naming games they thought were superior to Braid. I’m sympathetic to the outrage…but we’re all being a bit stupid.

I don’t know who Taylor Clark is, and I don’t think anyone else does either (people always cite the article by its publication, the Atlantic, when they mention the article). I’m not pointing that out to disparage him! I’m entirely convinced he’s an accomplished writer, and as I mentioned I think the article is very well written…but I assert that we don’t know him because his accomplishments are not within our circle. Case in point: this article is in the Atlantic!

As games increase in relevance, they’ll inevitably become interesting subjects to people who are not us. We know this–we want this–but the unforseen side-effect is that those people are going to write articles that don’t take in the same scope our articles would have. We’re a hugely insular community; how the hell is a traditional journalist supposed to broach the subject of “art games” to their readers when they’re expected to have played (as an example) Ico as a prerequisite? I mean, hell, would we take their opinion seriously on any subject if they don’t own all three home consoles at a minimum?

I think this is why that article didn’t piss me off the way it did (seemingly) everyone else. I think most of us approached that article, in the Atlantic, with an unrealistic expectation that the author would have the same amount of experience as Jerry Holkins.

If this medium’s going to go the places we want it to, we’re going to have to become comfortable with “uncultured” opinions. Starting now.

But how often do we think about the field of games coverage? Certainly journalism isn’t a young medium, and we have decades (if not centuries) of critical language built up to describe music, theatre, and film. Game journalists and critics have a wide net to cast.

But a lack of words isn’t the problem, just like a lack of ideas isn’t a problem for any game developer; the trick is having the right ideas, and the right words to convey those ideas to your team or your readership. If games are only just now entering their sophmoric phase, certainly game journalists are as well.

It’s pretty obvious when you look at Giant Bomb, or the Penny Arcade Report that the field has changed dramatically. The thing I’ve forgotten to mention is that game consumers have also grown up, and their expectations re: their gaming news have drastically changed. A sign of this is CBS’ recent, happy, aquisition of Giant Bomb; they obviously feel their audience is in the early stages of an exodus from GameSpot, and are hedging their bets.

There are also plenty of intellectual sites on the horizon…one of them being Arcademia, actually. I feel a slight sense of satisfaction that, a year after starting this site, it has become obvious that this is the kind of thing consumers demand right now. Although I also feel, frankly, terrified at the scale of my new competition.

I digress.

PAR bodes well for the future of games coverage. Consider a single feature of the site, the Cut. For those who don’t know: In addition to PAR’s numerous articles, they present 5 links to articles from around the web every day. While this is standard practice in the blogosphere (ugh), it’s important to note that PAR doesn’t include any of the content on their own site. They’ve openly expressed the desire for the reader to follow the link to the presented content.

In response, Patrick Klepek from Giant Bomb started a weekly feature called “Worth Reading,” where he showcases content he enjoyed to his readers in the form of an article. In this way, PAR has already begun to influence journalists for the better.

I can’t wait to see what they do next. What any of us does next.

Let me preface this article with a statement: I am a griefer. I have incinerated bits and bytes worth millions of interchangeable video game currency units, right before their owners tear-filled eyes. I have set up metaphorical tents and cookfires over the corpses of my enemies. I have fired weapons capable of destroying planets at the fleeing escape pods of people just like you, and I’ve done all this with no real excuse other than because I could.

Having said that though, I’m not sorry at all. Nor do I consider myself a particularly mean or otherwise horrible person. Since by this point you probably do consider me all of those nasty things I said above, let me explain.

Griefing can help people.

And I mean beyond the obvious self-serving way where it provides EXP or gold or credits or items or plain old fashioned cruel joy to the griefer. More specifically what I mean is: being griefed can help people.

Woah, what? Let’s read that again.

Being griefed can help people.

I know it’s hard to get your mind around it, but it is what I honestly believe. For example, lets start with what I said back in that first paragraph: I grief because I can. What does that mean? It means that, somehow, though chance or (more likely) through different choices that we’ve both made in whatever online game we’re playing, circumstances have occured in which I can not merely “beat” you but actually cause you some sort of harm to the greatest extent that interacting purely through the medium of an internet game allows.

I can grief you because you’re bad at this. This is helpful, because assuming you don’t quit in a huff or write a 2000-word essay on exactly how whichever tactic, skill or weapon I used was quite clearly “bullshit cheating” you are going to take whatever action you can to prevent yourself from being griefed in the same way again. On a broader scale, every time you get upset, really upset about a game you also get just a little bit closer to realising how silly that is and choosing to instead not be.

As odd as it might seem, I was a big fan of the previous Star Wars MMO, the critically panned Star Wars Galaxies. I should clarify though that the last time I played was sometime in 2005 or so; I was only a fan of the version of Star Wars Galaxies that existed before a patch called the “New Game Experience.”

I’ll try and summarize my history with the game. I bought SWG on boxing day the year it came out. I was 13 and while I wouldn’t say I was a bigger Star Wars fan than I am now I was definitely more intense about it. I waited for boxing day so I could buy the game, the strategy guide, and as many timecards as I could for as good a deal as possible (which was necessary considering how little money I had at the time).

I got home and played the game immediately, and I think my first session was upwards of 12 hours. I recall that I sat at the character creation screen and read through the strategy guide to make sure I didn’t fuck up my upcoming amazing Star Wars experience.

The character I created really reveals a lot about me: my character was a human male named “Ark Rendar,” sharing the last name of an obscure Star Wars character named Dash Rendar from the N64 game “Shadows of the Empire” (my favorite Star Wars game at the time). I imagined that he was Dash’s younger brother, and even designed his facial features to look like a younger, less grisled Dash. For his profession I chose medic, because that was a profession that wasn’t really explored in the movies, and for his homeworld I selected Corellia purely so I could join the Empire and give him a Corellian bloodstripe (the red stripe that Han Solo had on his trousers in A New Hope). Keep in mind there is nothing stopping you from putting a red stripe on your pants if you’re not from Corellia…but it wouldn’t be authentic.

I played that character in that game for 3 years, from age 13 to 16, from 2002 to 2005. It was a turbulant time for me for a number of reasons, in addition to the difficulties inherent to being that age, but SWG was my constant companion. For those years I really felt a connection to the Star Wars universe that deeply affected me (keep in mind that I was playing this game while the prequel trilogy was being released). I would have continued playing that game till the end if it hadn’t been for the NGE.

Bioware made the decision at some point during their design process for ME2 to drastically depart from the combat system of the first game, keeping little apart from the ability to duck behind cover and recharge your shields. Now, I’m not saying it was a bad decision (obviously it was in fact quite a good one, as thousands of people will tell you if you care to delve into the internet forums where such things are discussed) but rather that I, personally, don’t like it. Or rather, I suppose, that I don’t like it as much.

In fact, while I loved both games and am in no way trying to say that the second one was bad, I didn’t like the departure from a semi-complicated RPG gameplay mechanic scheme as a whole. Maybe it’s my natural power-gaming tendencies to search out the best (or best for me) combination of skills and items, but I really enjoyed the sense of progression I got from getting new marks and models of armor and weapons and shifting around my ammunition, armor and weapon modifications. I also enjoyed manually placing skill points to create the best team of alien super-agents I could — or rather, to create a few glorified scientists who could barely aim their pistols and a few unstoppable juggernaughts of ridiculous corrosive ammunition-packing might.

I also enjoyed the feeling of never having to conserve ammunition. Not many things are more frustrating than running out of “heat clips” for your weapon of choice midway through beating the human-genetic-material feces out of what is basically a cross between the T-1000 and uh… something big. Especially when two years prior in the same game world, everyone was running around with nonreplaceable heat sinks which, by the way, assuming you know how to vent your weapon properly actually allowed you a higher rate of fire than the new disposable heat clips do. That’s significant, because rate of fire was the only in-canon reason given for the switch to the new weapons design paradigm.

If you’re visiting this site you probably agree with James Portnow’s assertion that games are an artistic medium; I’d even go so far as to say you intensely agree, as I do. We’ve played the Braids, Portals, and Deus Exs that the mainstream media isn’t capable of understanding beyond the threat they allegedly pose to the children of America. We’ve experienced the uncommunicable essence of what makes games what they are and we know, intimately, that what they contribute to our lives cannot be found anywhere else. We’re sold.

But we need to step back for a second: accepting games as an artform opens up a lot of other questions that are going to need to be addressed at some point, even if only briefly.

We share a lot in common, conceptually, with comics. That’s a medium that’s been pushing for artistic acknowledgement much longer than us and has experienced even greater levels of controversy. But I want you to think about this for a second: comics as a medium have much less diversity in their craft compared to games. I should clarify that I’m a comics fan myself and am in no way saying they are inferior to games nor any of the other negative connotations of that previous statement; I literally just mean that if you were to look at every conceivable example of what could be defined as “comic” it would be much clearer than the question of what is and isn’t considered a videogame.

For the public to acknowledge that comics are a true artform unto themselves they would have to accept that visual art and the written word — two already established artforms — become another artform when they are combined. The frustrating thing for people like Scott McCloud is how trivial this distinction would be compared to how ridiculous art critics seem to think it is.

Accepting comics as a true artform wouldn’t involve anything other than the notion that two artforms combined make another. That is the only thing they require to be invited to the party.

But what about videogames? Well that’s where we hit the crux of this article.

I’ve been playing games as long as I remember. My earliest memory is literally playing some SNES game when I was 3 (no idea what the game was). When Peter Jackson talks about King Kong, or Prince talks about Jimmy Hendrix, I hear the kind of sentiment I feel towards A Link to the Past. I love games.

That love for games carried me through elementary school, high school, college, and the founding of my own gaming site. I’m looking forward to the release of the next console generation the same way I anticipated the Xbox 360, the PS2, and the N64. My life is not only fulfilled by video games, it is practically defined by games.

And just like games have defined my life, game journalism has defined my life. Nintendo Power, EGM, GameSpot, Giant Bomb hold as much reverence as games for me…possibly more so, if we’re being honest. But it was the discovery of Extra Credits that galvanized my passion for games in a way I never understood before. The weekly, minimalist cartoon produced by Daniel Floyd, Allison Theus, and James Portnow was the first time I’d ever seen someone address the intellectual concerns within the industry. One year later I made my own website to try and explore those themes myself.

And 7 months after making Arcademia I was at PAX with a press badge around my neck, interviewing James Portnow. After we stopped recording we talked briefly about what I hoped Arcademia could be, and he was enthusiastic; more than that, he was thrilled. I don’t mean to be weird, but hearing his praise is one of the best things I’ve ever experienced. Making websites is difficult, and his positivity validated (and continues to validate) my work in a way nothing else really could.

4 months after PAX and those interviews are finally ready to be uploaded. People are beginning to see those interviews and are consequently beginning to check out the site and subscribe to the channel. I’ve got tons of interviews I still need to edit and upload, and several weeks worth of articles that are scheduled to go live over the next several weeks. It really feels like anything could happen in 2012. Maybe I’ll even be able to attend E3 for the first time.

Then I saw today’s episode of Extra Credits.

This is a real dilemma for me: attending E3 represents “the big leagues,” and has been a dream of mine for…I’m not even sure how long. Applying for press passes last year was a dream come true for me, and even though we were rejected it came with the suggestion that we try again in 2012, and that we’d have a much better chance.

I believe them! I have high hopes that we might be accepted as press this year, which would mean I would finally be there and, while I probably wouldn’t be invited to the press conferences, I’d be on the show floor that I’ve seen in hundreds and hundreds of videos for over a decade. I would see the WiiU in person, and who knows what else?

But…they’re right. I don’t like that the ESA is one of the few organizations supporting SOPA, and obviously the best way to show my dissatisfaction is by encouraging my favorite journalists not to attend. I don’t think Arcademia will be missed if I refuse to attend…but it would be completely hypocritical to encourage Giant Bomb to stay home and then attend myself just because it’s my “dream.” If I’m going to be completely two-faced, even on such a small matter, I should really just quit immediately. The industry doesn’t need more journalists like that.

I’m not really sure what I’m going to do. It’s a bit presumptuous of me to take a stance of any kind considering how small Arcademia is, and E3 is months away so it would hardly mean anything. At the end of the day though I am, as stupid as this sounds, a disciple of Extra Credits and I completely agree with their stance on this. E3 is a personal milestone but it’s not going anywhere, and it’s not like there aren’t other amazing events I’ll get to go to.

I dunno. I’m still not decided. I just watched that episode right now and wanted to immediately get my thoughts on paper.

Regardless of what causes this phenomenon, it’s clear that Google consistently approaches their competition from imaginative angles, usually with positive results.

Look at Google Chrome as a case study: Google decides they want to make their own browser to compete with Firefox/Explorer/etc (for whatever reason), and immediately begins deconstructing “browser tropes.” They examine everything that their competitors have taken for granted, and develop innovative ways to address old problems. Judging by it’s reception, Chrome’s gambits have successfully captured the public’s imagination.

As far as I was concerned Chrome had been a success. Google had made their mark on the browser scene, and I figured the Chromebook was a good indication of where they were planning to go with it in the future. When the Chrome app store was announced I honestly didn’t pay any attention; it seemed like an isolated incident of the “store creep” that’s been infecting most major platforms recently.

Then Bastion was released.

This got my attention immediately! What the hell? True, Chrome had games from day one of the app store with Angry Birds…but everything runs Angry Birds, it was hardly surprising that Rovio would launch into what was bound to be a popular new storefront. I follow Greg Kasavin quite closely and hadn’t heard any announcement about Supergiant working on a Chrome version of their game, and it seemed like a weird thing to do anyway considering Bastion had come out on Steam fairly recently.

So I dug a little deeper, and learned that Google had played a major role in getting Bastion onto the service, possibly even programming some of it themselves. They had specifically selected Bastion as the flagship for what their app store was capable of.

But what was it capable of? I kept looking, and found out that games developed for the Chrome app store are platform agnostic: because they run within the browser, they can run equally well on Windows, OS X, or Linux. Releasing on Chrome had eliminated the need for developing seperate versions of the game for each operating system. And even though Bastion didn’t have it at launch, Google had recently added “gamepad support” to Chrome, meaning that you could plug a game controller into your computer and play app store games that way.

Google has a history of finding innovative and unexpected ways to compete in new markets, and I think that is precisely what is happening here.

Everyone has been so distracted by EA releasing Origin that they’ve completely missed the threat that Chrome presents to Steam. At the end of the day Steam has more games and Valve has more goodwill than Origin and EA do, but you’d be hardpressed to find a more popular company than Google. What if Google has decided to compete with Valve, and set Chrome up to be a competing service to Steam? Obviously they have a long way to go before people abandon all their Steam library, but you can’t deny the exciting possibility that Chrome’s universal platform presents to developers, especially independants.

Time will tell if Chrome really is all the things it appears to be, but if I were Valve I would have my eyes on Google’s every move. As a gamer I’m just excited to see more competition.