You've seen it. I've seen it. You've probably done it. I know I have.
A lot of people, when playing video games, pick the opposite sex/gender of what they are in real life. In some circles, this is known as "cross playing" (not to be confused with cosplaying, although cosplay can cross gender boundaries as well). The old excuse that gets trotted out when the question of why this is comes up is basically to ask "what kind of butt would you rather stare at for X hours?"
That's one answer, and likely accounts for some of the cases, but not all. Thinking about it, and why I did it, gave me a few alternate answers. Some may not like them, but they are there.
First, let's look at the whole "staring at the butt" thing. In actuality, most games offer very little, if any, body type customization. Male characters have one body type, female characters have another body type, the end. While ostensibly this saves on time creating different character models, it makes the choice basically binary.
And the thing about binary choices is that you can pick against the model you dislike, instead of the model you like. For example, in RPGs like Dragon Age, all male characters look like they've been hitting the gym...and then hitting some steroids on top of that. Which doesn't make sense if you're trying to play a bookworm mage who spent their entire life cooped up in a tower. I'd love to see statistics on how many people actually played male mages in the first game, given that. While it makes sense for certain character types...if I'm not playing those types, why would I pick something that doesn't fit, roleplay wise?
Granted, it's not any better giving female characters a model that looks like...well, a model. The sexism, born out of limited design space, cuts both ways here, despite what some people might say. But the binary choice is still there. And girls/women playing games like that may well not like having their avatar given doll-like perfect features. I can't say for sure, being a man, but it doesn't sound unreasonable to me.
However, the differences between male characters and female characters can be more different than just appearances. Mechanically, there's no guarantee that the sexes are equally balanced in terms of gameplay, and quite a few games offer special bonuses to one or the other. Video gaming will always have people who want to maximize their character's potential, and thus they will pick the "superior" gender, even if it's only better by a small amount. It could even be something as simple as more customization options (I'm looking at you, Pokémon X/Y).
And it can extend to the story and setting, as well. Skyrim, for example, has a number of NPCs with different comments depending on whether your character is male or female. This colors the player's perception of the game world, meaning that symbolically you can favor one gender over the other. Playing Fallout: New Vegas and going up against Caesar's Legion, with their whole treating women as cattle thing, is so much more satisfying if you're playing as a woman. (Trust me, I've been there, done that.) Again, the reverse could be true, although I can't think of any examples right now. (Which may say something about the games out there.)
Finally, it could just be for fun. Everyone loves fun, right? Sometimes, putting yourself in a different set of shoes is entertaining. I doubt anyone could seriously argue with that. (Please don't take that as an invitation to try.)
All of these things, put together, add up to men choosing to play female characters, and sometimes, women choosing to play male ones. And hey, that's fine. Whatever floats your boat, so to speak. Now, if you excuse me, I'm going back to playing some Warlords Battlecry III. (I currently have two characters, one a male minotaur chieftain, the other an Knighthood-aligned priestess.)
Sunday, August 28, 2016
Monday, August 15, 2016
The fall of Amalur
Well, Curt Schilling announced his plans for a political career, with the long term goal of aiming for U.S. President for 2024.
With an opening like that, I've no doubt confused people, since commenting on politics is not what this blog claims to be about. And it's not, but Curt Schilling himself played a major role in one of the biggest video game fiascos of all time, one that, once you learn about it, may make you think twice about voting for him. Ladies, gentlemen, and others, I give you the sad saga of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
.
To start with, let's take a look at the small state of Rhode Island. Rhode Island had not historically had a very healthy state economy (currently ranked 45th out of the 50 states). It stands to reason that with such a weak economy, the state government was desperate to create jobs. Which, unfortunately, is what led to this mess.
Following his baseball career, Schilling sought to break into the video games industry. He started a business in Massachusetts called Green Monster Games, which he would later claim was not named after the famous wall in Fenway Park. (I personally do not buy that.) After a while, it was rebranded as 38 Studios, which was based on Schilling's baseball uniform number.
38 Studios had two projects in the works. One was a planned MMO going under the project name of Copernicus. The second was a single player action RPG, not too dissimilar from Elder Scrolls games like Oblivion. However, partway through development, they chose to retool the single-player RPG to be a tie-in to the MMO. Thus Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning came to be.
Schilling did not hold back in terms of the development of Amalur, bringing in several luminaries. Author R. A. Salvatore (of Drizzt Do'urden fame) was called on to craft the backstory of the setting (originally for the MMO, but this got carried over to Amalur), while Todd McFarlane (Spawn) contributing to the art. Obviously, bringing in these people cost money, quite a lot of it.
In order to raise money, Schilling approached the state government of Rhode Island. They worked out a deal; 38 Studios would relocate to Rhode Island, and in turn the state would grant the company a massive loan to help fund the game. In turn this would help create several hundred jobs in the state of Rhode Island.
What happened next is where things get murky, and I wish I could track down more precise info on the fiasco. In February 2012, the game was released, to mostly positive reviews. For the release, even more big names were brought in for promotion, including people like Felicia Day. It apparently worked, as the game sold over three hundred thousand copies in them month following release, and Schilling later claimed that after three months, well over a million copies sold.
However, 38 Studios defaulted on one of the payments for the loan. While they were eventually able to pay, apparently they did so by skipping payroll that week. At that point, several company executives bailed, and a few months later 38 Studios filed for bankruptcy. The governor of Rhode Island went on to claim that for the game to break-even, it would have to sell over three million units, and that Amalur was a "failure".
Criminal investigations were launched, but ultimately failed to find evidence of wrong-doing. The IP reverted to the control of Rhode Island, who own it to this day. They also filed a civil lawsuit, which is still ongoing as well. It will likely be a few more years before the full fallout of all this is finally settled.
While the exact details behind the finances have not been released, it's not hard to guess at what happened. On its own, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning probably was reasonably profitable - selling over a million units in three months is something that would look good for all but the most exorbitantly expensive AAA titles. Even after the IP reverted to Rhode Island, it came out they were still making some money off the game; not a huge amount, but it was something.
However, there was also the Copernicus project - and that is probably where the problem was. An MMO is a much more expansive and complex project than a single-player game, after all. Thus, development costs would have been significantly higher - and even with the sales of Amalur, they couldn't continue development. 38 Studios, along with Curt Schilling, had simply bit off more than they can chew, running both projects simultaneously.
The accounts of the whole thing that I've seen tend towards being a little overly vindictive of Schilling. And while there are probably a number of valid reasons to detest the man - which I'm not going into, because we're still not here to talk politics - blaming him for being over-ambitious about making video games is pointless. There have been worse mistakes in the industry, by people who have been involved it far longer. (Don't get me started on Peter Molyneux.)
It's a shame, but if you really feel bad about it...just buy a copy of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, for yourself or for a friend. Rhode Island will at least get something out of it.
With an opening like that, I've no doubt confused people, since commenting on politics is not what this blog claims to be about. And it's not, but Curt Schilling himself played a major role in one of the biggest video game fiascos of all time, one that, once you learn about it, may make you think twice about voting for him. Ladies, gentlemen, and others, I give you the sad saga of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning.
.
To start with, let's take a look at the small state of Rhode Island. Rhode Island had not historically had a very healthy state economy (currently ranked 45th out of the 50 states). It stands to reason that with such a weak economy, the state government was desperate to create jobs. Which, unfortunately, is what led to this mess.
Following his baseball career, Schilling sought to break into the video games industry. He started a business in Massachusetts called Green Monster Games, which he would later claim was not named after the famous wall in Fenway Park. (I personally do not buy that.) After a while, it was rebranded as 38 Studios, which was based on Schilling's baseball uniform number.
38 Studios had two projects in the works. One was a planned MMO going under the project name of Copernicus. The second was a single player action RPG, not too dissimilar from Elder Scrolls games like Oblivion. However, partway through development, they chose to retool the single-player RPG to be a tie-in to the MMO. Thus Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning came to be.
Schilling did not hold back in terms of the development of Amalur, bringing in several luminaries. Author R. A. Salvatore (of Drizzt Do'urden fame) was called on to craft the backstory of the setting (originally for the MMO, but this got carried over to Amalur), while Todd McFarlane (Spawn) contributing to the art. Obviously, bringing in these people cost money, quite a lot of it.
In order to raise money, Schilling approached the state government of Rhode Island. They worked out a deal; 38 Studios would relocate to Rhode Island, and in turn the state would grant the company a massive loan to help fund the game. In turn this would help create several hundred jobs in the state of Rhode Island.
What happened next is where things get murky, and I wish I could track down more precise info on the fiasco. In February 2012, the game was released, to mostly positive reviews. For the release, even more big names were brought in for promotion, including people like Felicia Day. It apparently worked, as the game sold over three hundred thousand copies in them month following release, and Schilling later claimed that after three months, well over a million copies sold.
However, 38 Studios defaulted on one of the payments for the loan. While they were eventually able to pay, apparently they did so by skipping payroll that week. At that point, several company executives bailed, and a few months later 38 Studios filed for bankruptcy. The governor of Rhode Island went on to claim that for the game to break-even, it would have to sell over three million units, and that Amalur was a "failure".
Criminal investigations were launched, but ultimately failed to find evidence of wrong-doing. The IP reverted to the control of Rhode Island, who own it to this day. They also filed a civil lawsuit, which is still ongoing as well. It will likely be a few more years before the full fallout of all this is finally settled.
While the exact details behind the finances have not been released, it's not hard to guess at what happened. On its own, Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning probably was reasonably profitable - selling over a million units in three months is something that would look good for all but the most exorbitantly expensive AAA titles. Even after the IP reverted to Rhode Island, it came out they were still making some money off the game; not a huge amount, but it was something.
However, there was also the Copernicus project - and that is probably where the problem was. An MMO is a much more expansive and complex project than a single-player game, after all. Thus, development costs would have been significantly higher - and even with the sales of Amalur, they couldn't continue development. 38 Studios, along with Curt Schilling, had simply bit off more than they can chew, running both projects simultaneously.
The accounts of the whole thing that I've seen tend towards being a little overly vindictive of Schilling. And while there are probably a number of valid reasons to detest the man - which I'm not going into, because we're still not here to talk politics - blaming him for being over-ambitious about making video games is pointless. There have been worse mistakes in the industry, by people who have been involved it far longer. (Don't get me started on Peter Molyneux.)
It's a shame, but if you really feel bad about it...just buy a copy of Kingdoms of Amalur: Reckoning, for yourself or for a friend. Rhode Island will at least get something out of it.
Sunday, August 7, 2016
The legacy of D&D, part 2
Let's talk some more about the original RPG.
In the first part, I went over a sample of the games that resulted from D&D's influence. But, as I said before, that's only half the picture. The other half is the people who jumped from playing D&D to playing video games, the players themselves. This is where it gets a bit more grim, a bit more murky, and much more controversial.
To begin with, let's rewind a bit back to the playstyle of the early player. D&D has always been to a large degree focused on violent confrontation - travel around, slay the evil monsters, collect the loot, everyone levels up, rinse, repeat. Originally, Gygax designed the earliest versions of the game to encourage caution - the point was getting the loot, and combat was to be avoided when possible through stealth and cunning.
Of course, stealth and cunning were not the approach many D&D players preferred. D&D was gradually retooled into being much more combat-heavy, which catered nicely to the players who preferred that style of gameplay. While talking and stealth had their place, combat was the primary fixture of the game, and has remained so to this day.
When many of these D&D players made the leap to being video game players (and a few designers, too), they carried that with them. It's well documented, for example, that the early id software (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake) were mostly avid D&D players - and we all know the kind of games they produced. Coupled with the fact that early technology made meaningful non-combat systems hard to implement as well, it was just easier to make combat the main form of interaction.
Since then, video games have never really shaken the importance of combat. Part of it is that so many games have done it, it's still relatively easy to implement a decent system for fighting. The other half is that dialogue has come down to picking options from a menu (to be fair, I don't see a better way of doing it unless you script every NPC with a better version of Cleverbot). Not many people like that, so here we are.
It is something the original creators, particularly Dave Arneson, were not happy with back in the day. Back in an 1988 interview, he noted was not happy with how "hack and slash" video game RPGs were, lamenting things like Ultima being outliers instead of the standard. While things have improved somewhat (mostly thanks to Bioware), I feel there's still room for RPGs and games in general to grow.
Culturally, early D&D gamers brought over their views on playing their game to video games. At the time, D&D was still at the tail end of a decade-long fight against moral outrage, with people claiming the game was satanic or harmful to minors. Thus, when people like Jack Thompson launched crusades against the more extreme cases of video game violence like Doom and Mortal Kombat, it did not go over well.
On one hand, this was just what gaming needed, in order to establish itself as being something that could appeal to everyone, not just "toys" for children. However, this also instilled a resistance to "outside" pressure, something that has made it a lot harder to address real problems in gaming culture, like social equality. (Although may people mistake the nature of the problem - it's something I'll have to cover in a later blog post.)
Overall, Gygax and Arneson would likely have mixed feelings if they could see where video gaming was today as a result of their creation. It's not like they intended for any of this to happen. All they wanted to do was give a more personal touch to tabletop strategy games, which had existed for decades before they came along. They did succeed - but no one could predict the technology that took their ideas and put them on a screen, or the people who were willing to sit down in front of that screen.
Either way, for better or for worse, here we are. So let's look forward to the next step. Just remember that, directly or indirectly, odds are it will trace back to two guys who reinvented gaming.
In the first part, I went over a sample of the games that resulted from D&D's influence. But, as I said before, that's only half the picture. The other half is the people who jumped from playing D&D to playing video games, the players themselves. This is where it gets a bit more grim, a bit more murky, and much more controversial.
To begin with, let's rewind a bit back to the playstyle of the early player. D&D has always been to a large degree focused on violent confrontation - travel around, slay the evil monsters, collect the loot, everyone levels up, rinse, repeat. Originally, Gygax designed the earliest versions of the game to encourage caution - the point was getting the loot, and combat was to be avoided when possible through stealth and cunning.
Of course, stealth and cunning were not the approach many D&D players preferred. D&D was gradually retooled into being much more combat-heavy, which catered nicely to the players who preferred that style of gameplay. While talking and stealth had their place, combat was the primary fixture of the game, and has remained so to this day.
When many of these D&D players made the leap to being video game players (and a few designers, too), they carried that with them. It's well documented, for example, that the early id software (Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Quake) were mostly avid D&D players - and we all know the kind of games they produced. Coupled with the fact that early technology made meaningful non-combat systems hard to implement as well, it was just easier to make combat the main form of interaction.
Since then, video games have never really shaken the importance of combat. Part of it is that so many games have done it, it's still relatively easy to implement a decent system for fighting. The other half is that dialogue has come down to picking options from a menu (to be fair, I don't see a better way of doing it unless you script every NPC with a better version of Cleverbot). Not many people like that, so here we are.
It is something the original creators, particularly Dave Arneson, were not happy with back in the day. Back in an 1988 interview, he noted was not happy with how "hack and slash" video game RPGs were, lamenting things like Ultima being outliers instead of the standard. While things have improved somewhat (mostly thanks to Bioware), I feel there's still room for RPGs and games in general to grow.
Culturally, early D&D gamers brought over their views on playing their game to video games. At the time, D&D was still at the tail end of a decade-long fight against moral outrage, with people claiming the game was satanic or harmful to minors. Thus, when people like Jack Thompson launched crusades against the more extreme cases of video game violence like Doom and Mortal Kombat, it did not go over well.
On one hand, this was just what gaming needed, in order to establish itself as being something that could appeal to everyone, not just "toys" for children. However, this also instilled a resistance to "outside" pressure, something that has made it a lot harder to address real problems in gaming culture, like social equality. (Although may people mistake the nature of the problem - it's something I'll have to cover in a later blog post.)
Overall, Gygax and Arneson would likely have mixed feelings if they could see where video gaming was today as a result of their creation. It's not like they intended for any of this to happen. All they wanted to do was give a more personal touch to tabletop strategy games, which had existed for decades before they came along. They did succeed - but no one could predict the technology that took their ideas and put them on a screen, or the people who were willing to sit down in front of that screen.
Either way, for better or for worse, here we are. So let's look forward to the next step. Just remember that, directly or indirectly, odds are it will trace back to two guys who reinvented gaming.
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