Life on Mars

Simply the Test

2009-08-25T11:06:00.001-07:00

Another day, another 2.0 site. This one has the fun benefit of spamming every single 2.0 site that came before it. Honestly, I don't know what this is going to look like across my various accounts... hence the test. However, one thing is certain: I'm apparently enough of a sucker to jump on yet another 2.0 bandwagon.

Posted via email from mars' posterous

On Correlation, Inverse and Otherwise

2009-04-17T00:43:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty sure I spent more effort on the title than anything else in this post. Figured you deserved fair warning...

When things get busier at work I end up having less time to get my thoughts down on paper. In a cruel twist, those times are when I usually have the most thoughts rattling around my head that might come close to being blog worthy. I have no idea why this internal standard exists... other than to save me from deleting this blog later once it's full of sandwich related posts. And I don't mean the cool kind of sandwich related posts.

I think my new rule is to put something on twitter every time I'm playing a game (especially if it's a new to me game). At least then I'll be microblogging.... ugh, just typing that word made me die a little inside. Stupid 2.0.

Games of 08 : The Neglected

2009-01-09T19:20:00.000-08:00

Nope, not "The Ugly". These are the big games I never got around to last year. They're top of the list for the next couple of months. Hopefully the industry can cooperate by not releasing a ton of games worth playing for a while. I've presented them in roughly the order I plan to attack them.

Prince of Persia - I've watched it being played, and I've run through some bits for myself, but it deserves to be played as a complete experience. I'm a little wary since it seems that someone on the PoP team hasn't learned that quick-time events still suck as much as they did when they were first spawned from the depths of hell. We shall see.

Tomb Raider Underworld - It's really odd that this is still sitting on my shelf mostly unplayed. I'm such a fanboy for this series, but it came at an odd time with other game releases. It's also not a "pick up and play for 30 minutes" game... more of a "let it consume your entire weekend" game. Once I have a good clear weekend, it shall be consumed.

Metal Gear Solid 4 - I played some of 2 & 3. Never understood what the big deal was, but it came with my PS3 so I might as well give it a play or two.

Dead Space - I've played this for about 30 minutes and found the gameplay really interesting. It's also damned creepy, so I'll get back to it eventually.

Gears of War 2 - This one was easy to put off, because I know exactly what to expect... more of the same. That's not necessarily bad, but that doesn't make it a release day play for me.

Games of 08 : The Bad

2009-01-07T19:39:00.000-08:00

Now that I've covered the good, it's time to deal with the bad. These aren't the worst games I played last year, rather they represent the most disappointing experiences of the year.

LittleBigPlanet

Swing and a miss for the PS3. After playing with a friend's beta copy, I was excited to get the game on release. Slushy controls combined with hit or miss level design really left a lot to be desired from this charming little game. The online side didn't really give it legs beyond the story mode. It's only good for getting youtube videos of cool levels. Such wasted potential.

Left 4 Dead

This one made plenty of the "Best of" lists. I will never understand why. Okay, I can shoot hordes of zombies. Been there, done that. Okay, so I can do it with three friends with some interesting co-op mechanics. Better, but still not the mind blowing experience I keep reading about in the gaming press. Maybe I'm just a snob, spoiled by the likes of TF2, but I'm not impressed by a mindless shooter mod.

The Force Unleashed

Why do I keep getting my hopes up for Star Wars? It's a game about being a bad ass dark jedi, what could go wrong? Apparently everything. Okay, so the story beat out a few of the movies, but the gameplay to get there is just boring. Oh, but an overly complex RPG-esqe point/skill/combo system should liven it up, right? Wrong. Fail.

Dishonorable Mentions:

Need for Speed Undercover - I was hoping for a comeback. At least I have Burnout.

Grand Theft Auto IV - More of the same. Sure it's bigger and prettier. Doesn't make it great or even that engaging.

Games of 08 : The Good

2009-01-05T20:37:00.000-08:00

All the cool ~~kids~~ bloggers have already done their bests and worsts of 08 with the coming of the new year. Better late than never I suppose. Here's the few games I found to be more enjoyable than the rest.

Mirror's Edge

It's just amazing. A truly risky and innovative endeavor. The DICE team deserves nothing but praise for this game. The simple experience of running around the world is incredible. After playing it through, I was really irritated by much of the mixed press surrounding the game. It's not perfect, but the issues people nit-picked on were really overblown. As far as I'm concerned, this was the Portal of 08.

Fallout 3

I didn't play any of the previous Fallout games, and I loved Oblivion. So, it seems like this game was built for me. However, it went beyond the simple "Oblivion with Guns" label. The post-apocalyptic DC world was brought to life beautifully. The experience was less about the gameplay and more about existing in that world. It's rare for a game to pull you in so completely. Truly epic.

Burnout Paradise

I'm a racing game nut, and Burnout was king this year. Not only was the initial offering awesome, but the continued support really gave the game some legs. It's still my go to racer, and it's been out for a while now. Some people didn't go for it, but this game does open worlds the right way. Total freedom and tons to do. Pure and simple fun.

Honorable Mentions:

Fable 2 - This game delivers. A RPG that strikes the right balance between simplicity and depth.

Castle Crashers - The gameplay is spot on for an multiplayer arcade blast.

Boom Blox - The only reason I turned on the Wii this year. Yeah, I went there.

Holiday Weekly

2008-12-26T17:16:00.000-08:00

Being home for the holidays has kept me offline for much of the week. I've been able to hang out with the old high school gang, which is always a good time. We did a one shot d20 modern game that involved fun stuff like 2-rounding a dragon. Epic.

Getting a dose of the tabletop stuff got me fired up to get some gaming going with the new year. I want to try out 4th edition, so I've started building the world for the game. World building has to be one of my favorite parts of DMing. Instead of starting from scratch, I'm revising the world I ran in college to hopefully stand up to the new rules and another long campaign.

On the electronic side of gaming, I've been pathetically attempting to dual box my hordies in WoW. Even after coercing my mom's mac mini into running wrath, that little GMA950 in there isn't too keen on running it well. Besides, I only have one multi-button mouse in the whole house. Command clicking is not an easy way to play that game.

I get back home (as in Cali) early next week. I'll be looking forward to starting the new Prince of Persia, along with putting some time into Tabula Rasa. I'm ready to have a full week of downtime before work picks back up on the 4th.

Happy holidays!

A Weekly Thing

2008-12-19T20:23:00.000-08:00

Taking a cue from other blogs I frequent, I'm adding a bit of structure to my blog. Hopefully, this will get me writing more regularly. But, I've fooled myself before...

Anyway... The plan for Fridays is a quick weekly review of bits I found interesting and maybe a preview for what I'm playing (or otherwise doing) over the weekend. Yes, more crap about games. It's what I do.

I finally finished Fallout 3. Well, I finished the main story and a decent chunk of the side quests. I went through as the good guy, so I'll have to play it the other way at some point. I'll record my thoughts later, but the short version is simply: that game rocked.

The Runes of Magic open beta started this week, which has been a pleasant diversion for the last couple of days. I'll have more to say later, but it was quite surprising.

Spore finally got on Steam! A bunch of other EA titles went online as part of the deal. As a huge supporter of Steam this is an awesome development. It definitely lessens the DRM issues in the public eye somewhat, even though Steam itself is a effective bit of DRM. Oh well... a topic for another time perhaps.

The soon to close Tabula Rasa went free to play a month early. This is great news since I wanted to pick it back up to get further in the game before it goes away completely. If you haven't given it a shot yet, I strongly reccomend it. TR does some interesting things both in the MMO and scifi spaces.

I'm heading home for the holidays this weekend, which sadly leaves me without console or windows for over a week. Thus, my gameplay will be limited to WoW and Starcraft during the holiday. Although, I'll probably have a d20 something session with friends. Good times!

Best Question of All Time

2008-12-15T20:29:00.000-08:00

Last week an email went around the office that stirred up quite a bit of conversation. The propmt was simply: "What is the best game of all time?"

On the surface it seems simple, but that question is amazingly loaded. Even after tallying the studio results, not many people agreed with one another... I think the most popular title had a mere 4 votes. The reason this question becomes so incredibly difficult to answer seems to be because there are so many axes by which to judge a game: innovation, execution, narrative, mechanics, popularity, longevity, etc. The fact is no two people can agree on how these should be weighted when judging a game. I think that's why we saw so many good answers to the question.

Many people went to personal favorites, because one's favorite surely must have some reason for being so. Some went to those games with mass market appeal with the logic that the most widely played games must be doing something right (Tetris). Others looked at longevity, claiming that the better game will hold up regardless of age (Starcraft). Interestingly, very few games made recently (within the last 5 years) made an appearance on the list. I think this displays a clear nostalgia factor as there are certainly many top notch games from recent times.

For me, this question highlighted some of the quirks (putting it lightly) that we see in the review side of the game industry... and it certainly displays that no one can agree on the intricacies of what makes a good game. But maybe trying to boil it down to the simplicity of good and bad is a futile exercise in the first place.

Lively Bunch

2008-12-04T20:08:00.000-08:00

Gamers have been swamped with good games competing for their money and time this fall. I've been playing a lot of stuff, but haven't gotten around to writing about any of it. So, time to start clearing the backlog.

I'll start with one of the F-sequels, Fallout 3. Well, not really... I'll save judgement for when I'm done with it (ps - it's awesome). What is worth mentioning is the Windows Live service on the PC version. It was really smart to link up the PC and 360 sections of its Live service. Even though it's a single player game, I can access friends and achievements and such just like I was playing on my 360. Well played, Microsoft.

Now if we could just further bridge the gap between platforms, so I don't have to join a new social network everytime I buy a console or game. We can dream, can't we?

Blast from the Past

2008-12-03T19:43:00.000-08:00

My obsession with Starcraft progaming has started bleeding into my gameplay time. I found myself spending several hours last night enjoying the decade old game. It's astonishing how well it has held up through the years.

I've been revisiting the Zerg and Protoss campaigns since I neglected those races back in the day. I've had a lot of fun outside my Terran comfort zone, and I certainly appreciate the game more by exploring the entire experience. Maybe I'll have something more profound to say about it once I've gotten through more of it... I doubt it though.

Besides, I can't be rusty for SC2. I don't want to noob it up online.

Proof of Concept

2008-12-02T13:54:00.000-08:00

More than anything, this post is to test out the post by email functionality of this blog. I've been waiting for a good way to blog by iPhone, but google still hasn't put out an app yet. Most blog apps seem to have issues with blogger, and the first one that claims full support (BlogPress) is a pricey $10. If this email thing works out, maybe I'll actually post more frequently.

Update: Looks like blog-by-email is a no go thanks to some weird formatting issues. Maybe trying that app will be worth it after all.

Aftermath : Resistance

2008-10-27T00:43:00.000-07:00

My experience with Resistance: Fall of Man only lasted about thirty minutes before I put the controller down with little desire to pick it up again. The interesting thing is I don't think there was anything particularly wrong with the game. I was more put off by the shooter controls on the PS3.

Perhaps it's because I'm too familiar with the 360 controller, but the PS3 controller just felt awkward in a shooter. I couldn't really put my finger on it, but something about the analog sticks felt off... either their position or feel. Also, for some reason PS3 developers keep wanting to put the fire buttons on L1/R1 instead of the more trigger-like L2/R2.

The lack of a useful cover system threw me for a loop as well. Console shooters aren't required to have a cover system to be good (see CoD4), but without airtight controls, the gameplay experience without cover felt rather lackluster to me. The minute to minute experience felt like wrestling the avatar into the position I wanted rather than moving through a battlefield.

I might have been able to slog through the weak tactile experience if the fiction carrot was tempting enough... but the seemingly flat retrospective into an alternate history where aliens invade in the WWII era didn't really do it for me. I know narrative is rarely a strong point for a shooter, but there have been enough that do it well (or at least better) that it's hard to get pulled in by a relatively weak delivery of fiction.

While the game certainly shows off the graphical capabilities of the PS3, it unfortunately highlights the strong foundation that the 360 has in the shooter market. And when you're making a console that appeals to the core gamer, that genre is not the one in which you want to take second place.

Full of Stars

2008-10-21T00:37:00.000-07:00

Just over a week ago I was attending Blizzcon in the dimly lit and well refrigerated Anaheim Convention Center. It was a pretty good time for some obvious reasons, namely playing Starcraft 2, Diablo 3, and Wrath. However, it was awesome thanks to the unexpected joy of watching some professional Starcraft matches.

I knew the SC progaming scene was out there (in South Korea), but it wasn't something I ever sought out. Turns out Starcraft is a way more exciting spectator sport than it sounds. The game those guys play is not the same Starcraft I remember playing. It's also amazing that a decade old game actually holds up so well. Long story short, I came home from Blizzcon eager to see more.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, it's not a straightforward task to find English-commented matches. Luckily, I stumbled upon GOMTV, which broadcasts matches from it's sponsored tournaments in English. Needless to say, that's consumed some of my time this past week.

Embarassing? Maybe. Awesome? Definitely.

Achievement Unlocked: Welcome to your Doom

2008-10-16T23:54:00.000-07:00

I'm trying to write more, so I'll start hitting this with smaller stuff like this:

Adding achievements to WoW is like lacing a cigarette with heroin. Even more clever, intentional or not, is the fact that the new system doesn't seem to be fully retroactive. Thus, things I've already done must be done again in order to unlock the achievements.

I already know I have a problem when it comes to XBL achievements, so I fully expect to be running around old dungeons and zones just to get those last few precious points... which mean absolutely nothing. Well played, Blizzard.

Age of Conan : Impressions

2008-06-05T08:09:00.000-07:00

I don't know what it was that drew me to seek out AoC. Perhaps it was the generally positive response that it has been receiving. Maybe I just wanted to see for myself if it had a chance of making a dent in WoW's death grip on the MMO market. Regardless, trying to find the damn game became a quest itself. I started by hitting half a dozen stores to discover all were sold out. Interestingly, I was never the only person in the store looking for the game. Combined with the news that AoC was quickly approaching the half million mark, I figured something must be going right in this game.

So, one week of store inventory watching and a four hour install and patch session later I'm finally sitting in front of the game. I like the two-tier concept for the character generation. The top level is standard "pick your parts from presets" chargen. But, you can go one level deeper and get sliders for your face and body. Granted that still suffers from the same problems we've seen in the likes of Oblivion or Mass Effect... that being it's really hard to make something look good. I like the concept at least.

After playing for a bit, the game really doesn't strike me as an MMO (as many others have already noted). It's not great if you want to jump right onto the grief-train with all your buddies, but I found it kind of refreshing to see them at least try to make a game experience in an MMO that goes beyond mindless grinding or following raid orders in vent. It falls a little flat thanks to its preoccupation with its M rating. The dialogue options tend to be offensive with little reason, and everyone seems to be a thief, murderer, or whore. So it's a "game for boys" as a friend put it. Fine, at least they're in the right market.

The gameplay is actually growing on me. On the surface it seems like more of the same MMO button mashing... but the attack directions and combo system really make it more engaging than the click and wait auto-shoot WoW sometimes degrades into. Also, the soft(er) targeting system really works for the feel. You can hit multiple things with your standard swings based on positioning. It's such a small thing but it's huge for the experience. Pro-tip: don't hit your attack keys when running by a city guard. Turns out they don't take kindly to being stabbed in face, even if you really didn't mean it.

So, AoC is decent and I'm having fun with it. Have the stars finally aligned for someone to take down WoW? Unlikely, but Conan stands in a good position to make a dent in WoW's absurd market share... and some competition is always better than none.

Retrospective

2008-03-25T22:22:00.000-07:00

I'm breaking my strict one post per month maximum rule to reflect on a couple of realizations that struck me quite recently.

First of all, I've now been on the job for six months. That one was pretty startling to me as it certainly doesn't feel that long. Looking back, I really threw myself into this world, and that time just blew by me. It's not a bad thing... quite the contrary considering how much I enjoy my work, and I guess it just comes with the territory to an extent. I've really been fortunate to not only get into the game industry, but also work on an amazingly awesome game.

Which brings me to the second point. I realized that the first time I ever heard of Spore, I was sitting in CIS 300, my first game design class in college. It was the prof's lecture on his trip to GDC, and that seems so far back to me. There was a lot (nearly 3 years) of game development I did at school after that moment. As someone pointed out to me (at GDC of all places), several generations of GDIACers left Cornell with the hopes of working on Spore. I don't know if that's funny or sad or just weird. Anyway, it struck me as interesting at least.

inane is too good for this

2008-03-09T23:55:00.000-07:00

Seriously. I sat down, determined to show signs of life on the interwebs. The motivation was there... hell, I even had some things I really wanted to get down on paper... er, well whatever you'd call this.

Nothing. I must have half-written half a dozen things and ended up deleting each one. I'd just get part of the way through it, realized that even I didn't care what I was writing about anymore and trashed it. And this always came after spending the time to meticulously rework that first half to my obsessively particular satisfaction.

I'm not sure what my problem is. Not like it sits very high on the list of worst problems to have, but still. I can't even seem to write for me anymore, and that's just damn irritating.

Maybe I'll feel it better tomorrow... who knows?

Sporetastic

2008-02-13T08:55:00.004-08:00

For those who may not keep up on the day to day of the game industry, the big news of yesterday was Spore's release date: September 7th, 2008.

Gonna be a busy handful of months for me!

Ping

2007-08-23T20:30:00.000-07:00

I'm amazingly tired from 3 days on the road, but I figured I should at least show some signs of life here. For reference, driving from Dallas to San Francisco is hard. The route has lots of desolate land which is surprisingly dull to drive through. The one day stop in Vegas was a nice bonus as well.

I've got just over a week before my career starts. I don't think the whole moving out, real life, working world thing has really sunk in yet. Perhaps it's the fact that I'll be making games... or maybe it's just the tired talking.

Anyway, once I get settled I should restart my regular presence in the blogosphere (wow I hate that word). See you next week.

Stretch Goals

2007-08-12T21:30:00.000-07:00

I really need to steer this blog back towards gaming related things. Out of ten entries only one really touches on the subject that certainly makes up more than 10% of what I do. Following on the heels of my thoughts about longevity of television series, it makes sense to touch on some similar issues in the gamespace.

The obvious connection is really a problem for the entertainment industry as a whole, that being the overabundance of sequels and remakes. Let's be honest, gaming seems to be all about franchising... at least that what the publishers seem to be thinking (GTA4, Halo3, Madden382, etc). I for one happen to enjoy it when a developer takes a proven game and refines it or experiments with it. On the other hand, mindlessly churning out revisions doesn't grow the space of games much at all.

The other issue facing games is the content explosion. Games are constantly under pressure to be bigger (in size) and better (in visuals). RPGs and MMOs are the first to suffer as they require ridiculously massive worlds to be considered decent. Even the staple of games, the FPS, feels the need to expand its world. Usually this is all well-intentioned... an effort to make the games feel more realistic. The end result? We have games featuring endless hours worth of gameplay as though that's always a good thing.

I'm notorious for not finishing games... which immediately excludes me from the core gamer category. You know the type... the ones pulling their hair out to get 100% completion. They won't stop until their satisfied that they have truly completed (or defeated) the game. This type of gamer tends be be extraordinarily patient as such a feat is rarely fun as it requires much repetition of gameplay that already ceases being engaging or fun. Perhaps I'm in the minority here, but I can't help but feel like a good chunk of this superfluous content is targeting this niche of core gamers.

This begs the question, is all that content developers spend time and effort to create really getting played? It seems to me that the average gamer has to be pretty seriously compelled to sit through 40 hours of gameplay that hasn't changed since hour 5. Usually that motivation comes from story, or sometimes clever reward structures, or rarely gameplay that is purely fun by itself. Is our time really best spent on making these massive games?

I've become intrigued by the notion of episodic game content (currently most notable in Sam & Max and perhaps Half-Life 2 to a lesser degree). It seems to have the advantage of breaking the content into more playable chunks and also builds in some breather time to keep the gameplay from going stale in one sitting. Interestingly, it could also lead us right back to the same issue we have with television series: knowing when to quit.

Shark Jumping

2007-08-03T14:54:00.000-07:00

One of the things I've been up to this summer is consuming a ridiculous amount of television. Some of it is due to some good summer series (Psych & Burn Notice deserve mention). The rest, as I mentioned previously, is a lot of scifi I'm finding thanks to the magic of the internets. In particular I've managed to consume seven full seasons of Stargate SG-1. This struck me as odd. I rarely watch things that don't interest me, which implies that I still find the show entertaining even after 150+ episodes.

Show longevity seems like a really hard thing to maintain well. I tend to feel that most shows should have ended after the first or second seasons, even if they started out as decent shows. The funny thing is that it's all too easy for everyone involved to want these things to go too far. The networks seem to enjoy earning money, the makers no doubt like having their work continue, and even the fans don't want to see a good thing die. There's the trap... just because the last season was good doesn't mean that the show can maintain the same quality. Thus, many shows seem to end on a down turn... which really is an unfortunate thing.

Ronald Moore stated at a Cornell talk that he and some of the others working on TNG felt that seven seasons was one too many as season six represented some of their best work. I can't imagine trying to write running on creative fumes... or trying to play a character that has no more room for growth... or crafting a story once everything has already been said or done.

For me, Six Feet Under is the quintessential show that just wouldn't die. By the time I finally gave up on it, the show had completely alienated me to the point where I just didn't care what happened to the characters. The plots were stale and the characters had nowhere to go but crazy. It blows my mind that daytime soaps can survive for decades with basically the same cast of characters. I suppose that some would argue that those were never any good so it's a bad example.

Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find something that has kept me entertained for so long. I was also glad to hear that season four will mark the end of BSG, so that wonderful show can die with some dignity.

There are obvious parallels to other entertainment mediums... including games... which I think I'll touch on next time.

Livelock

2007-07-30T23:30:00.000-07:00

It's relatively late, and there doesn't seem to be much promise of sleep in my near future. Do I need to lose sleep over something? Not really, but sometimes I just get this way. It's not really serious insomnia (like I'm qualified to say that), I just can't get my mind to slow down long enough to feel tired.

The problem with this state is that it tends to be wholly unproductive. I have plenty of things I could be doing and many things that I want to be doing. However, my brain is racing in so many directions at once nothing really gets accomplished.

Now that I think about it, this state of existence almost always results in a blog post of some sort or another. I find that throwing some thoughts down onto virtual paper helps me focus and eventually tone down some of the craziness in my head. Okay, that last sentence just made me sound like a nut. Don't you just love this extremely extreme stream of consciousness writing style?

I wish I had something more interesting to say at this point. I guess I thought something would coalesce out of the random. Yet another delicious entry for the inane tag... what would I do without it?

Time Capsule

2007-07-27T10:15:00.001-07:00

I guess it makes sense to do another one of these post things. Having one a week allows me to pretend that this is a regular deal. I could probably be writing more if I wasn't a few weeks away of finally moving away from home. It's not that sissy going to college style moving away neither... this is full on, change of permanent residence, we're turning your old room into something else, don't come back because your own parents will charge you rent, for serious moving out.

The first lesson of all this? I have a ton of stuff. It's quite ridiculous and fairly surprising. Most of my time is being spent systematically categorizing all of my belongings into one of three categories: haul, ship, trash. The first two is everything that comes with me to California, everything else goes in the trash (or gets donated if applicable).

My overall operating footprint is pretty small, but apparently I haven't thrown anything away since middle school, so there's tons of junk that I have no reason to keep. It's been a very interesting experience, as I dig through piles of things I'm slowing going backwards in my own past. Quite strange really, because you don't properly appreciate how much you've changed until you start following the paper trail. I've found notes from 7th grade that make no sense but we're clearly important enough to stash away in a drawer.

The whole process has been surprisingly emotional. As things resurface from the depths of my room, memories both good and bad come along with them. Then, more often than not, the physical remnants get purged from my existence. That can be a good feeling as it reminds me how much I've grown over the past decade. On the other hand, it can be a reminder of good times long past, spent with friends that were once close... our interactions now limited to the occasional email or phone call or the even more rare reunion-like gathering.

More than anything it shows me how important relics are to the process of keeping one's history. They act like pointers into a memory that's generally hard to freely access. It makes me want to keep a camera on my person at all times, in hopes of not missing or forgetting something potentially important. It may not be a life recorder, but it's a start.

Shocking

2007-07-20T16:15:00.000-07:00

Shock of Pleasure

Do yourself a favor and check this group out. They're a Dallas area group that got plugged on the radio this week. They probably aren't everyone's thing (they call their style "electro-lounge"), but I've had the songs on repeat all day. They've got an EP of four songs (plus a remix) out on iTunes. Definitely the best five bucks I've spent in quite some time.

Now I've just got to find a way to see them live before I leave town.

Nature of Human

2007-07-19T12:36:00.000-07:00

I've been watching quite a bit of television series scifi recently. I've watched three seasons of DS9, four of SG1, and one of Atlantis. This doesn't count my re-watching of TNG, Voyager, and Firefly. Oh, and let's not forget the wonderful show that is BSG. This all leads me to believe, without a doubt, that I have a problem. (And no, that problem is not a lack of B5 or Fascape or Doctor Who or whatever.)

Regardless, when you watch lots of programming in the same vein, you can't help but notice the patterns... start comparing and contrasting... it's what we do. The one thing that I'm stating to find irritating is the general portrayal of humanity presented in these futures. There are plenty of examples (or so it seems) of us, as a species being one of two extremes. Either we're intergalactic do-gooders, or we're arrogant, corrupt, meddlesome beings.

The former is the essence of the Roddenberry vision that permeates much of Star Trek. It's easy to see why this has infected much of scifi, certainly on television. The glorious human race with it's high-minded directives and whatnot swoop in to save the day time and time again. Anyone who shows hints of bias or lesser thinking is either an alien or someone to be despised as the villain of the episode. While I'm all for an optimistic outlook, sometimes it's taken so far that it makes the actions of the characters just seem so unbelievable... and that's where you see the heavy hand of the writers trying oh so desperately to make a point.

Now, the latter tends to make for some interesting shows, but in the end it feels like the same thing in the opposite direction. The whole Firefly world is a corrupt one, and nearly every series has the episode where humans try to play god or whatever. Mankind tries to force their values down everyone else throats... like all the freaking time it seems. Okay, we get it... we're flawed creatures... and we've got tons to learn. I don't think we need a human population of pure evil to drive the point home.

I guess what I'm getting at is that the subtlety just isn't there. I don't know why I'm surprised, because that tends to be how science fiction is written. Extrapolation and exaggeration are par for the course in scifi. It all comes down to those two little words: "what if?". It just feels like the TV writers like to scrawl those words on a bat and beat us all senseless with it.

Also, the whole simple good versus evil bit works so much better in pure fantasy where the suspension of disbelief is in full effect. I feel that scifi has to at least feel remotely feasible, otherwise some of that "hey, what if this happened at some point?" message gets lost... or at the very least muddled. Maybe that's why I've found BSG very compelling: it's tries to be realistic and its overflowing with moral ambiguity and grey areas.

Oh, which reminds me... why does the military feature so prominently in a lot of science fiction? I suspect it has something to do with the fact that action sells and the military brings the action. Regardless, it seems oddly prevalent.

I guess I should follow this whole thing up with a giant [citation needed]. I do have some choice episodes and trends in mind when I talk about this. I just wanted to avoid this becoming a ten page paper (I'd do it too). It's obviously flavored by my admittedly limited expose and probably focuses too intently on American TV scifi. Oh well... yall can deal.