gamegirladvance

A Hard Rain's A-Gonna Fall

I finally sat down and played through one entire round of Heavy Rain, nearly uninterrupted, yesterday. It took me about ten hours. An unruly piece of my brain kept humming that beautiful Bob Dylan song: "Oh where have you been, my blue-eyed son? And where have you been, my darling young one?" Seemed a good soundtrack for this dark and perilous emotional journey springing from the tradition of the modern noir crime film. 

The mood of the game is probably what affected me most. The constant rainfall, the darkness of the skies, the way the characters shivered as they walked through a wet night, all made me feel soaked through with rain and depression. The sound is so well-done in the game that it felt like it was raining in my living room as I played -- raindrops were landing on pavement at my elbow. The game perfects the atmosphere at every level.

In terms of narrative structure, the game strikes a precarious but successful balance between occluding information to keep the player guessing and revealing clues to the protagonists. Each of the four protagonists has pieces of the puzzle, and the player (presumably) has the power to put them all together. There were some neat moments of crossover when the player, while playing as one character, encounters the other, and then smoothly transitions to play the second character. Actually "play" is not quite the right word. It's more like the player accompanies the character and unravels both the sequence of events as well as the mysteries of personality. In that sense it reminded me of great adventure games like Dreamfall: The Longest Journey.

And I can't not point out the incredible skin textures on the models -- they look so stunningly good that it almost takes me out of the game because I'm lost in marveling at how they got freckles and stubble and skin transparency so exactly right. You see close-ups of faces during loading screens and it's astonishing. They still haven't quite solved that certain deadness in the eyes but man, they are close.

From this point on there are spoilers ahead as I'd like to discuss some concerns in a bit more detail.

The biggest issue, which is depressingly unsurprising, I suppose, is they way the only playable female character is handled. For one thing, she's almost completely non-integral to the plot. The other three male characters are investigators -- one's an FBI agent; one's an ex-cop PI; one's the father of the kidnapped child. But Madison? Well, in my playthrough I didn't find out that she was a journalist until the very end of the game. She tells Ethan that she photographs furniture and before that I found her mooning about in her apartment in her underwear (more on that later), no career in sight. 

I was looking forward to finding out more about her and I mistakenly believed, since she was so prominently featured on the box cover and in promotions for the game, that she'd be a major player. She's not. The game could easily progress without her in it at all. The game never made her motivations clear to me (except that she's got some sort of fetish for playing "guardian Angel" -- blech) and as I result I felt completely disconnected from her character and depressed that she didn't have more involvement, more of a personal character arc or a background.

 Most damningly, every major moment the character has is sexually exploitative in nature. In the introduction to her, she's forced to fight off an attempted rape. Ugh. In another, a mad scientist ties her up and attempts to stick a power drill between her legs. Double ugh. (Apparently you can avoid this but in my game, I couldn't.) In her third big scene, she "sexes it up" and dances to get the attention of a guy who has information relevant to the case. By this point, I'm just rolling my eyes. The rest of the time, she mostly plays nursemaid, tries to prevent Ethan from being caught by the police (again, why??) and tries to kiss him for no good reason. Lots of other gamers have written about the weakness of Madison's connection to the plot and the flimsiness of her motivation so I won't go too much more into that, although I definitely could, it makes me feel very ranty.

When she goes to the night club in an attempt to seduce one of the potential bad guys, she gets invited to his private room. At that point, you can hear her reservations if you listen to her thoughts: "Madison, this is the stupidest thing you've ever done!" No shit! Going alone to a known criminal's lair after you've survived a couple of rape attempts? For a guy whom you just met and who won't tell you what's going on? No thanks! I think I'll go back to taking photos of fancy furniture -- and maybe report all this to the police (although the game doesn't give you that option). So I told my Madison to be sensible and I marched her right out of the club without doing anything rash. I was really happy that the game let me do this...

...Until the very next scene, which referenced the "crazy bitch" who had almost killed the evil sleazeball! Unless some other attractive-but-dim-witted photographer also happened to encounter the fellow on the same night and somehow left Madison's fingerprints all over the crime scene, because it wasn't me. My Madison left before it got crazy. Basically the game ignored my actions and forced Madison to go through with something I thought she should never have done. So, I guess player actions matter as little as Madison's motives.  

 And that's the big hole in this game (and in other extremely narrative games): when the illusion of choice breaks down, it's better to not even have choice. Don't tell me that my actions in the game will have an impact when what you're really saying is that my actions will have an impact *as long as they fit into one narrative you've already constructed.* And please make that clear to me -- for example, if I were taking Madison out of the club without fulfilling an object that the narrative required, have Madison stop me with a re-iteration of her desire to complete the objective; or make her motivation come across so strongly to me that I can't imagine not fulfilling the objective.

Anyway, it's always easier to be the armchair designer, of course; and games this big and complex will have these issues -- not strictly bugs, I suppose, but logic loopholes. And I do appreciate the technical achievement this game represents.

Now, let's get some real female characters written whom we can truly root for!

The Magic of Julia Child

I finally watched Julie and Julia this evening. Along with most people, I could have used a little less Julie and a lot more Julia -- Meryl Streep as the famous Julia Child is simply a joy to watch. It's not Amy Adams was bad, or that her bits of the story weren't fun, they just faded in comparison with the exuberant and luminous scenes in Paris as Julia and Paul eat, love, learn, and triumph. And to suggest that the blog deserves to be placed next to Julia's towering achievement, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, is faintly embarrassing.

But still, it's an enjoyable movie -- a love letter to Julia Child and, ultimately, to cooking real food, with passion and care and love. It made me want to make boeuf bourguignon immediately. Which I think I will do this weekend! It'll be a wonderful antidote to the weather.

 

 

 

 

When There's No Win Condition

Wow. I haven't played this yet but I'm very intrigued by the premise, in which the player plays as a homeless child in St. Petersburg in the winter.

http://www.ulitsa-dimitrova.com/

Also check out a short interview with the creator, Lea Schonfelder.

Fashion Bloggers Unite

It's totally outside my field but I'm really curious about this and would love to attend: http://the-coveted.com/blog/2011/01/10/save-the-date-evolving-influence-fashion-blogger-conference-mac-milk-studios-nyfw/

I love how fashion blogging has taken off. I love how diverse and self-confident the voices are, exploring tastes and aesthetics that are so driven by individual personality. Fashion bloggers also help bring to light the hundreds of talented local designers who don't make it to Fashion Week. It's wonderful. And many of the writers are funny, perceptive, enthusiastic, and just so entertaining to read. It's almost as if it fulfills my shopping need just to peruse some of my favorite writers. The best ones can inspire me to revisit the items I already have in my closet and find new ways to wear them.

Love, Discipline, and Education

Amy Chua is taking a lot of internet heat for her memoir, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, and I can understand why. The juicy extracts from the book (I haven't read it) make her seem like the classic type-A evil stepmother. The threats, the demands, the endless lessons, the privations... it all sounds very intense. It's sparked some debate (framed by Chua herself) about the cultural differences in Chinese-style and "Western-style" parenting.

The thing is, I knew a lot of kids raised like that, or at least, from the outside the parenting structures look very similar to the Tiger Mother Method. The kids I grew up with didn't all have Asian parents. I was certainly raised like that, by mutual agreement between my Japanese mother and my WASP American father. My sister and I were woken up at 5:30 every weekday morning so we could get in our piano and violin practice before breakfast. While one practiced, the other did math drills. Yeah, math drills, with my mother timing how quickly we did our multiplication tables and fractions and comparing them against yesterday's times. I feel sorry for my mother that in spite of her best efforts to this day I remain pretty pathetic at basic math.  

I remember once when I got an A- on a history paper and I felt pretty happy about that until my dad asked me, neutrally, "Why didn't you get an A?" This was in 5th grade.

My sister and I had private French lessons from kindergarten (my sister was 3) until we got into a private school (for my second grade) where French was part of the curriculum; when we reached junior high we also added Latin to the studies, along with computer class. My mom supervised our homework every day after school, and limited our TV time to a half-hour every day. That meant we were only allowed one show, which, for some reason, my sister and I decided should be Scooby Doo. It's an awful show, but we didn't know it at the time. During summer we went to Japan and attended summer school all summer. We also went to Japanese school on Saturdays. Studying was our primary activity.

By the time we graduated high school we had enough AP credits to basically skip a year of college. With AP scores of 5 in English, Calculus, Latin, and French, I could skip nearly all the required undergraduate classes at my university. (I think I did worse on the Biology and Physics AP exams though.) And that was typical at my high school. In fact, I was a good student but far from the best in the class. There were kids there who were taking math classes at U.C. Berkeley because advanced calculus wasn't advanced enough for their level. There were kids who had skipped a year or two so were graduating at 16 or 17. There were kids who already fluently spoke three or four languages. There were kids planning to go to conservatory to study music, who'd won national music competitions and who practiced their instruments 4 hours before school and 4 hours after. There were kids who had papers published in academic journals.  

This was all quite normal to me. I realize I had an incredibly privileged experience.

But life was far from hard and I would actually describe my childhood as idyllic. As much as our parents expected from us, and they did -- it was understood that we were supposed to be the top of our class, every year -- they also never let us doubt their unconditional love and support. I was lucky enough to have a mom who didn't work for most of my childhood and she made us wonderful breakfasts -- crepes, toast, and jam -- to make up for those early morning music lessons. She welcomed us home from school with a little piece of home-made cake or a cookie and a cup of tea. She let us know we were brilliant and imaginative and wonderful and the center of her world. I really did feel, for a long time, that I could truly do anything, anything at all I set my mind to. It was a really liberating feeling. I grew into a very self-confident little kid, and then a pretty self-confident (arrogant, maybe) young adult.

My dad treated me always as an equal. He listened to my arguments and presented counter-arguments. We had some fiery disputes because he was an arch-conservative -- my early reading material consisted of The American Spectator, Commentary (a conservative Jewish publication, very erudite), the National Review, and the Economist. At twelve I probably had read more essays by William F Buckley Jr than any other eighth-grader in Berkeley, CA. Of course, I became a socialist in high school and declared myself for Marx. But I always had to prove my points and my dad wouldn't let me get away with intellectual laziness.

I think what it comes down to is respect. My parents expected a lot from us, and set up schedules that required a great deal of commitment from us. But the deal we had was that we always knew we had their love and respect. I always felt free to negotiate, as when I persuaded my parents to let us take riding lessons on Saturdays instead of going to Japanese school, or to stop piano lessons to focus on drama in high school. Nothing was set in stone. And their love was clearly manifest, all around us, every day. At least, I remember feeling it.

So I don't think Chua is right to frame this as Western versus Chinese styles. It seems to me to be more about a certain type of parent who puts academic achievement first. I grew up surrounded in that culture, and amongst my peers were black kids, asian kids, jewish kids, white european kids from europe, poor kids, and, of course, rich kids. I guess mostly pretty rich kids. That sort of education is expensive. But what tied us all together that our parents all believed passionately in the value of taking advantage of a good education and investing that in their kids. That attitude is not at odds with a loving and supportive family life and a blissful childhood. In my case, at least, I think that my parents' focus on education made my childhood happier, full of adventure and curiosity and activity.

And I still feel, oddly enough, that I can do almost anything I set my mind to. Thanks for that, Mom and Dad. 

 

Balancing Business, Creativity, and Satisfaction

Like the rest of the game development community, I've become utterly enthralled by the iPhone sim game Game Dev Story. It's got that highly addictive sim mechanic in a storyline peppered with puns, wrapped up in a theme near and dear to gamers' hearts -- running a game studio.

Aside from the cleverness of its setup, there is something more profound to understand both about this game and about game development in general. The game sets up the fundamental tension between making money and spending money and lets you play with the parameters. In that, it's not unlike game development in real life.

Most of us are in this because we love games and we want to make that awesome, ideal game we've been holding in our heads. And I believe we should pursue those ideal games, to the best of our ability; but it's a mistake to not pay attention to the business side if you want to be able to *actually* make your game instead of virtually imagine it. Interestingly enough this humble little app illustrates that balance quite neatly.

I'd urge you all to try it out but not without warning you how addictive it is~!

Failing Towards Fearlessness

I recently discovered Mark Suster's Both Sides of the Table through a post on Fred Wilson's always excellent blog and I've been devouring the content. It's really insightful and interesting. The latest post about about What Entrepreneurs Could Learn from Chamillionaire echoes the lessons that many indie devs are in the process of learning right now, lessons about self-marketing and going where your audience is, grass-roots DIY getting-the-word-out. I'd like to highlight one point, which is scary, but I think very valuable: that failure makes you confident.

If you can do it, and survive the hard times, survive to do it again, you'll never be afraid of that situation again. I've heard this time and again from my entrepreneur friends. It's so scary to face failure and its immediate consequences, which could be shuttering your company, living broke for a while, owing money, not being able to make payroll -- whatever it is, it's definitely Not Good. But what you learn out of that can't be taught in class, and maybe what's more important, anything that comes after the darkest time of your business will feel like it's not as big of a deal.

I haven't had the experience of failing in a start-up environment yet, although I've failed many times. It's still scary to contemplate but I've been broke and I've had dreams crushed and I've had to get a job after my own thing didn't work out. All those experiences have given me some confidence that I can survive, somehow.

So, if you think you're facing failure right now, try to deal with it as best you can and try to look at the other side when you will emerge having let go of some of that fear. Stronger, faster, better.

 

Ada Lovelace Day: Teachers

I've long been an admirer of the remarkable Ada Lovelace but it wasn't until three days ago that I learned she's inspired a day of blogging about women in technology. Unfortunately the fanfic that I have been composing in my mind for the last few years is not ready for publication (maybe next year?); also, I'm having trouble simply choosing ONE woman to write about since I know so many whom I admire.

I've been really lucky, knowing such talented women who haven't taken "no" for an answer or let cultural expectations get in the way of what they wanted to do. Many of you probably know them too. But I want to write about three awesome teachers I had who aren't famous; they didn't start companies; they didn't wind up on "Most Influential" lists; but they dedicated so much of their time to teaching kids math and science.

For seventh and eighth grade my math teacher was Tina Kolpakowski. She was awesome. She was a tall, lean hippie chick, 24 years old (fresh out of grad school!) who wore tie dye and listened to the Grateful Dead. She had us call her "Tina." She made me a mix tape once because she said I needed to listen to more Bob Dylan. She also took a few of us on a field trip to see the Dead perform at the Greek Theater in Berkeley.

She was just so cool and open-minded. She put me in the "advanced" math class which was a shock to me at the time since I always thought I was "bad at math." She helped me see that I really wasn't, that math was just another way of understanding the universe. She made me understand that math could be trippy and psychedelic and exciting and that you could both be a mathematician AND still love to do Tarot card readings.

In high school I had a brilliant teacher for calculus, Dr. Munro. I never knew her first name... she was always just "Dr. Munro." She was the polar opposite of Tina in many ways -- she was Scottish, reserved, of a generation that always had their hair just so, their stockings straight, their prim blouses buttoned up. She was a hard teacher -- she once threw an eraser at a student who wasn't paying attention in class -- but she was fair. I admit that I was intimidated by her, but in a way that made me admire her more. I nearly flunked her class but she did her best to prepare me for the AP exams and I'm stunned to this day that I passed with the highest possible score. I assure you, the accomplishment is not mine to claim, but belongs to Dr. Munro's tireless efforts.

Carol Stanton was the physics teacher at my high school and I think she still is. At the time I went there she was also young -- maybe 24? -- and we were her first class. I was, at the time, a moody and reluctant who had decided that physics was not really my thing. Carol pushed us to think about physics in real-world terms and understand how theory applied to life, making us do a number of experiments that required us to build things, run around the campus and measure things, and sometimes make a mess in the lab.

I remember one time when I was just not getting a concept -- I don't remember what the problem was. She sat next to me. "Ok... what's the formula?" she asked gently but persistently. Step by step she walked me through it. I felt a bit stupid then for being so recalcitrant before. If she was so willing to extend a hand, why was I so bent on rejecting it? Little by little I unwound in her class. I won't claim to have ever been a good student in physics -- I don't think I even dared to take the AP exam -- but she did dispel the fear of the unknown, of trying something new, of attempting something even if I thought I was going to fail.

Tina, Carol, and Dr. Munro, I hope you knew how much I appreciated you, even though I did a poor job of conveying that to you at the time. Thank you!

Who is The Right One? Moonstruck versus Crossing Delancey.

Perhaps because I've been spending so much time lately in lower New York and Brooklyn, I've been attracted to films set in those streets I love, and recently I watched, back-to-back, Moonstruck (1987) and Crossing Delancey (1988). I was immediately struck by both the similarities in the two films and at once, their philosophical opposition to each other in matters of the heart. (Spoilers follow, in case you haven't seen these films.)

If Edward Stalked Buffy instead of Bella

This Twilight/Buffy remix is awesome and super interesting, as Katie from Pixiepalace points out in her astute write-up.

I haven't actually seen the movie Twilight (the three girls who would have gone to see it with me all went and saw it long before I got around to it) and although I enjoyed the book for its moody, moony adolescent angst-y qualities, I admit that Bella did not strike me as the type of protagonist whom one would actually want to root for. What is Bella? As her name suggests, she only exists as an object of beauty, of desire, and a murderous desire at that. She doesn't seem to have any skills or strengths or, for that matter, interests (does she like baseball? knitting? romance novels? who knows!?!) She's just...beautiful. Like a princess in a fairytale. Why does the hero fall in love with her? She's beautiful, what other reason does he need?

Not like my dear Buffy. I am a rabid superfan of the ass-kicking ex-cheerleader, because she shows surprising depth of character and complexity under her perky blond exterior. It's clear from the way the character is written that her creator, Joss Whedon, is a feminist, by which I mean not that he necessarily subscribes to some dogma or other, but that he believes women are fundamentally equal to men, and as deserving of interesting actions and personalities in a TV show setting.

This remix video is playfully done, but it showcases the essential difference between the two approaches to the female characters. While Buffy also has a romance with a vampire (ok, with TWO vampires!), she can also hold her own, and she is as in control of the progression of that tragic romance as is her lover. She is, essentially, an equal -- different, to be sure, but a match for her supernatural boyfriend. Poor little Bella is utterly swept away by forces far beyond her control, bending to Edward's will when he, the devouring alpha male, demands. She is resolutely not his equal, and in fact, the book relishes their inequality -- it becomes the very foundation of their romance.