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Arschlochgamer

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Der folgende Text brütet seit einiger Zeit unveröffentlicht in meinen Schubladen. Ich bin nicht unbedingt einer, der mit Freude provoziert oder nur zum Spaß aus der Deckung mit Dreck um sich wirft. Zwei Artikel bringen mich dazu, ihn nun doch aus der Dunkelheit ans Licht zu zerren. Zum einen dieser Text, der allgemein vom Kommunikationsverhalten im Netz spricht, zum anderen die wieder einmal reflexhaften Kommentare auf diesen Artikel zu Sexismus in Forza Horizon. Der Text ist keine beleidigte Reaktion auf einen Angriff auf mich, sondern Bestandsaufnahme einer Frustration, die Anatomie eines Problems.

Beleidigungen, vor allem solche mit Rundumschlag-Anspruch, sind selten eine Lösung.

Manchmal muss man aber Klartext reden.

Der Arschlochgamer ist vieles, aber eines nicht: schüchtern. In einem Medium, das exklusiv seiner Wunschbefriedigung zu dienen hat, hat er eine klare Meinung, und die äußert er, in Foren, Kommentaren und auf Youtube, in lautem, aggressiven Ton, der sich an der anonymen lulz-Kultur des konstanten Mobbing-Lifestyles à la 4chan orientiert.

Der Arschlochgamer ist ein Experte, mehr noch: ein richtiger Experte, der sein Selbstbewusstsein durch die absolute Fülle seines Wissens nährt. Wer selbst - oder besonders - in Details weniger weiß, verdient Spott und Verachtung und hat mit seiner egal wie kleinen Unwissenheit bewiesen, dass er besser die Fresse halten solle, weil Fachwissen alles ist.

Der Arschlochgamer verachtet deshalb auch die Games-Presse, die seiner Meinung nach weniger Fachwissen als er besitzt und außerdem garantiert von der Branche gekauft ist. Umso höher schätzt er die Fachdiskussionen in jenen Foren, in denen er selbst Poweruser ist, wo man sich also besser nicht mit ihm anlegt.

Besonders allergisch reagiert der Arschlochgamer auf “Ahnungslosigkeit” und “Vorurteile”, wenn sein Medium kritisiert wird. Das real vielleicht oft erfahrene Stigma, Gamer zu sein, trägt er mit aggressivem Trotz: Wenn Noobs, das heißt alle, die weniger Experte sind als er selber, ihre Meinung zu Gamesthemen äußern, ist diese Meinung nicht nur von Vornherein verkehrt, sondern eine Zumutung: Das Ghetto, in das sich der Arschlochgamer trotzig romantisch verstoßen sieht, ist seine Home Base, und sie verteidigt er gegen jede Öffnung - immerhin, so stellt er sich vor, hat hier er selbst das Kommando, gemeinsam mit jenen Tausenden, die diese Echokammer mit Leben erfüllen.

Dass dieses Ghetto keines mehr sein will, weil längst andere Spieler als er eine Mehrheit stellen, ist dem Arschlochgamer ein Dorn im Auge, weswegen er sich selbst und “richtige” Spiele ständig von allem abgrenzt, was seiner Ansicht nach gar nicht wirklich zum Medium dazugehört. Casual Games und Mobile Gaming sind keine “richtigen” Spiele, ebensowenig wie “Mädchenkram” oder “Kinderspiele”. Frauen haben ohnedies wenig verloren in seiner Welt des “echten Hardcore”; mit der Arroganz des Verschmähten hält er Sexismus für Teil seiner Kultur und jede Kritik daran für einen unzumutbaren Übergriff auf seine persönliche Freiheit, die von Feminazis und Weicheiern bedroht wird.

Der Arschlochgamer hat eigenen Aussagen zufolge dafür kein Problem mit Gewalt und will sie deshalb in seinen Lieblingsspielen möglichst effektvoll inszeniert sehen. Zu hinterfragen gibt es daran für ihn nichts, und jede Thematisierung dieser Gewalt wird sofort als üblicher Angriff notorischer Gameshasser interpretiert.

Der Arschlochgamer verfolgt mit Argusaugen die Games-Berichte in Breitenmedien; hier hat er Gelegenheit, sein Expertentum richtig zu demonstrieren und zugleich einen offeneren Zugang zu “seinem” Fachgebiet mit Hohn und Spott zu bedenken.

Der Arschlochgamer sieht sich selbst und seine Definition als den unwandelbaren Kern des Gamings; er spielt nicht nur, sondern er ist stolz, sich als “Gamer” zu bezeichnen, er erhebt sein Unterhaltungskonsumgut der Wahl zum Lifestyle, mehr noch; zur Philosophie. Mit der Überzeugung des wahren Ultras pflegt er einen Elitenkult, der sich in Achievements und globalen Rankings mit seinem Verständnis vom Spiel als Wettkampf und Krücke seines Egos verbindet. Nur der Arschlochgamer selbst und seine Arschlochgamerfreunde sind wahre Gamer; wie im Fußball die Ultras sich als die einzig wahren Fans bezeichnen, darf sich nur der “wahre Gamer” als Experte überhaupt ein Urteil erlauben.

Der Arschlochgamer hat ein langes Gedächtnis, und niemals vergisst er Beleidigungen seines Egos, etwa die himmelschreiend spackige Entscheidung einer Zeitschrift, ein nach Abflauen der Release-Hysterie, die er sonst gerne mitpflegt, sich als mittelmäßig herausstellendes Spiel falsch bewertet zu haben. Damals, 1999.

Ein Medium mit solchen Fans braucht keine Feinde

Der Arschlochgamer bewacht die Grenzen des Spiels; an ihm muss jeder vorbei, der zum Thema Games etwas zu sagen hat, seinem Expertenwissen, seiner aggressiven Weltsicht und seinem lauten Getrolle muss sich jeder stellen, der sich für sein Medium interessiert. Zugleich ist der Arschlochgamer für viele, die dem Medium fernstehen, der ultimative Beweis für deren Vorurteil: Der Arschlochgamer IST für viele Nichtspieler der Gamer schlechthin - laut, technikfixiert, pubertär. Ein Medium mit solchen Fans braucht keine Feinde.

Der Arschlochgamer ist somit ein Problem. Er ist ein störrisches Hindernis auf dem Weg zu einer Anerkennung seines Mediums, die er aber ohnedies nicht anstrebt. Da der Arschlochgamer aber leider von Teilen der Gamesindustrie als bedeutender Teil der Zielgruppe missverstanden und überinterpretiert wird, von Werbung, PR und Analysten als bedeutsames Publikum akzeptiert und wegen seines aggressiven Mobilisierungspotenzials auch gefürchtet wird, bleiben große Teile des Mainstreams sicher im fest bewachten Ghetto, in dem sich der Arschlochgamer wohl fühlt.

Außerhalb ist die Luft besser.

Vielleicht sollte man den Arschlochgamer bedauern; wahrscheinlicher sollte man aber sich selbst bedauern, mit ihm als Rezipient eines Massenmediums automatisch gleichgesetzt zu werden.

Ganz sicher sollte man ihm aber die angemaßte Deutungshoheit streitig machen und so lange andere Diskurse betreiben, bis, irgendwann einmal, sein Kläffen erlahmt.

Das Medium hätte es verdient. Und die Millionen anderer Spieler und Spielerinnen noch mehr.

Verfasst von rainer sigl am 23. November 2012 - 10:45

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Gaming Made Me: Fallout 2

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American Dreams

By RPS on November 23rd, 2012 at 6:00 pm.

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Talented RPS writer chum Patricia Hernandez asked us if she could write about the influence of RPG-classic Fallout 2 on her life. We agreed, and what she came back with was a stark personal tale of how videogame fantasy can inspire interest, provoke thought, and ultimately change how we see the world.

One of my most vivid memories of elementary school involves playing hooky after recess with a few other kids–two boys and one girl.

At some point, our grade decided that the boys with us are attractive–that we should, in our urgent attempts to play house, “want” them. The girl, in her unfettered giggles and whispers, tells me as much anyway.

I laugh too, but it’s a nervous laugh–we shouldn’t be there. The girl grabs my hand to make sure I don’t go anywhere, and this calms me a little.

“I’ll show you mine if you show me yours,” one of the boys smirks.

I don’t know what this means. Not that it matters–it’s not like we understand romance or attraction. Some of us don’t even know how to tie our shoes yet, but still think we know how love is “supposed” to work. So, unflinchingly I say:

“Okay.”

I watch him start to unfasten his pants, but before he can finish unzipping, I jet. I pull the girl with me, running into the women’s bathroom.

“What’s wrong with you?,” she angrily asks me. I don’t say anything. “And why won’t you let go of my hand?” This question disarms me in a way I don’t understand yet. I feel a panic setting in. It’s the same one that rears its head whenever the adults ask me why I don’t like dresses, why I only play with the boys, why I’m so unladylike. I toss her hand away and start running again.

Fast forward to my being twelve, maybe thirteen. I am locked in the bathroom, holding my knees. My mother is outside, holding a belt while she screams at me.

I look at the bra on the floor and am overtaken with a sense of humiliation at the mere thought of putting it on. Not being used to them yet, bras feel suffocating, always present. The boys at school have started treating me differently even though they are my only friends, even though I try to erase our differences by wearing baggy clothes. Putting a bra on feels like cementing that boy-girl divide that started happening the year prior.

I’ve tried to hold this moment off for a while now by wearing two or three shirts at a time so that it’s harder to make my breasts out. My mother is having none of it now. I’m getting older and it’s a new school year, so I should finally be presentable–or else.

I put the bra on. I look at myself in the mirror and feel a rage swelling as I notice how the embroidered patterns on bra through the shirt. Feeling defeated, I start to cry while I open the door.

“Was that so hard, Patricia?,” my mother laughs.

Fights like these were always followed with days if not weeks of tension. My mother diffused this one via peace offering: she picked up a box of computer games for me in a garage sale. Being that up until that point, I’d only used the computer to play educational games, she assumed that all games are educational–isn’t that what the computer is for? Learning? (Oh, dearest mother…)

This box had a lot of junk in it alongside copies of Myst and Civ II. But the game that caught my eye was Fallout 2. The premise of a post-nuclear California sounded fascinating, though baffling: how could the greatest country on Earth be destroyed, atomic bomb or no? That could never happen! It’s ridiculous! I had to play it to see what it was going on about, of course.

My family moved to this country in 1990 in an attempt to get away from poverty and civil war. My mother grew up with friends and family members who got drafted against their will, who sometimes disappeared, who would get tortured. But salvation was attainable: all she had to do was get to the United States. The myths were that you could make a living there, you could raise a family there, and the government was fair and took care of its citizens there. So she chased after the dream, and found herself on American soil by age 18.

It was all true, as far as she could tell–in comparison to the life they she led back home, America seemed like a haven. So my family adopted the language, the holidays, the attire and even the brands that Americans liked. Can’t seem like a sipota chorriada. As if putting on the right clothes and knowing the pledge of allegiance erased the fact that the country didn’t want us here in the first place! I also believed in that dream–until I played Fallout 2.

I still distinctly remember the first couple of hours of Fallout 2. Fallout 2 was the first game I picked up of my own volition, and the first game I finished on my own. It would also be one of the only games where I played as a woman–it’s one of the rare instances where, though obviously largely written for a male audience, I still felt acknowledged.

I modified one of the starting characters, Chitsa. I appreciated that she was optimized for diplomacy, though I tweaked her to have high intelligence (“like me!,” I thought) and got rid of her sex appeal perk. No, I didn’t really want to “have a way” with the opposite sex–not in the manner the game implied, anyway. Not realizing I wasn’t “supposed” to be playing this game this young, I was confused as to why I couldn’t make my character younger than 18. At least I could rename her–and to this day, that Fallout 2 character is the only character I’ve named after myself in a game.

It all seems so appropriate, now. The village my character is from is “backwards”–like, spear-holding, ritual-performing type archaic. My half “indian” family crawled out of a jungle deep in El Salvador with a machete. They’re all fervent believers of Christianity, shamanism, and strict gender roles. Most didn’t have an education past first grade, if that. So when my elder in Fallout 2 told me that the fate of the entire village rested on my shoulders, it wasn’t a tired video game cliche to me. It felt like a role I already knew, what with my family banking on the idea that I’d be the one that got an education, I’d be the one that’d go out and earn six figures (which I’d give to the family), and I’d be the one that would sponsor everyone for citizenship.

Even early on, it was obvious that Fallout 2 was full of choices–and this seemed remarkable when I felt like I barely had any in real life. In the real world I didn’t have a say in what I wore, what I did, or in the messianic responsibility my family forced on me. With men in particular, you don’t ask questions and you do as you are told, remembering to only speak when spoken to. Men work hard for the family, the argument went, and it’s the woman’s job to acquiesce to a man’s every whim. And if they cheat, hey, they’re men. It’s their need.

One of the first challenges in Fallout 2 was to prove my worth to the tribe. I was supposed to do this by making my way through an ancient temple….but then I noticed that the only thing standing between me and the village was one guy.

I didn’t realize how much resentment I held against those gender roles until I became obsessed with killing this guy standing in my way in Fallout 2. He told me that no, I had no choice but to go through the temple. And what if I didn’t want to, you bastard? Why should I listen to you? What if I put this spear through your skull? So I did that instead, and to my amusement, it worked. The rest of the game fascinated me in this way, always giving me multiple ways to pursue a problem, many of them utterly clever.

I’d leave Arroyo on my own terms, and quickly found myself in the sleepy farming town of Modoc in my search for the village-saving GECK. Here I’d meet Miria, the daughter of Grisham the butcher. Imagine my astonishment when the game gives me the option to flirt with this woman. I hovered over the option for what seemed like an eternity–prior to that very moment, I had no idea a woman could desire another woman.

Even in the realm of homosexuality, my family ignored women. Men could sleep with men, and I’d very occasionally heard of those “sinners.” But lesbians? Inconceivable. Looking back now, it seems absurd that this was the case when you consider the constant anxiety driving my family to police my gender as a little girl, fearing that there might be something “wrong” with me, sexuality-wise. And yet the word lesbian was never uttered–let’s not even talk about bisexuality, which to this day, I can’t seem to explain to them. So back then I had no clear understanding of what it was that they feared, just the general knowledge that I wasn’t being a “proper lady,” whatever that meant.

Picking the paramour conversation options made me feel mischievous–partially because I knew it was wrong, as far as heterosexuality was concerned, but also because I genuinely…enjoyed it. I wasn’t supposed to be enjoying this, right? Prior to talking to Miria, I spoke to her brother, Davin. I could seduce him too, but that option seemed boring. I didn’t think much of this, then.

The flirting transgression lead to the classic fade to black and all I could think was “holy crap, did they…?” When I saw my gear sprawled on the floor, my character pretty much naked, the answer to my question became clear. But then her father bursts into the room, and accused me of dishonoring his daughter. Hah, what? But she jumped me! I’m baffled as he asks me to marry Miria to set things right–as of this writing, California, the state Fallout 2 takes place in, still hasn’t legalized gay marriage. But it was an option in a game made in 1998, amazingly. In 2012, most games still don’t include gay romance options, much less gay marriage.

Going back to Miria though–what a high price to pay for what was supposed to be a quick lay, eh? So now I was stuck with a character that frankly, was kind of useless–mechanically speaking, I mean. Fallout 2 was a difficult game for me to begin with–by comparison, the modern Fallouts feel absurdly easy, like they start you off as a powerful character and the rest of the game is an adventure in becoming super duper overpowered.

What I’m saying is, staying married in Fallout 2 was no easy feat. I did it anyway. I could have divorced, I could have sold my wife off to slavers, I could have even let her die. But instead I resisted temptation and I made sure to run away from deathclaws and super mutants regularly. Survival meant cutting down on heroics. I didn’t know why it was important to me that she stayed alive no matter how much of a burden, but it was. And when she watched me slip into power armor for the first time, it felt significant. Partially because it was such fantastic, difficult-to-acquire gear, but mostly because the body of the person underneath disappeared. I wasn’t a woman. I was a force not unlike the antagonist of Fallout 2, Frank Horrigan.

During this time, I also attended a history class unlike any of the ones I’d taken before. It was a real history class, basically. The teacher was young, having the sort of punk-rock aesthetic (piercings, funny-colored hair, that sort of thing) that makes parents worry about their child’s education. You could tell that she took up teaching because she was the type of idealist that wanted to give back to the community, and to her this meant dropping truth bombs on us impressionable kids. The hope was that this real talk would allow us to go further than we might if we believed the wrong history books or believed the things said in conservative Spanish media.

So when I started asking about the United States government and their ethics, my mother was quick to blame that professor–oh, she must’ve been poisoning my mind! What my mother didn’t know was that it was good ol’ video games that were corrupting me, making me ask questions.

It was playing through a version of history where Americans drove themselves to destruction because we refused to stop relying on oil that made me wonder about this country. It was playing through a reality where we valued being a formidable war force above all else that made me worry about this country. It was playing through something where the government cared so little about its citizens that it would knowingly construct vaults with the purpose of experimentation that made me feel sick thinking about what this country was capable of. It reading about how corporations like Vault Tek got away with manipulating the populace for personal gain that made me find out that corporations sometimes have more rights than actual human beings. And so the reason all Fallout 2 felt compelling was because its version of the future wasn’t so outlandish.

The education I was receiving at the time told me how the war on terror was actually over oil, how the government had experiments on certain parts of the populace without consent in the past, and how we even had internment camps at one point. If history class taught me about the United State’s horrific past, Fallout 2 projected a possible future that scared me, made the archetypal elements of “being American” seem too gross to want to aspire to. If the Fallout franchise is incisive here, it’s because it reveals a darker side of the society it depicts, masked under the absurd hilarity of the wasteland and its denizens.

The clincher came when I learned that the civil war my family ran away from was actually funded by the United States government–that their safe haven was actually responsible for their great misfortune. But my family, so in love with the American dream, so unwilling to look past the better living conditions, didn’t believe me. How could they? America was, and always will be, the great country that gave them the opportunities their own country would never afford them. But for me, finishing Fallout 2 and seeing my hard-working mother being relegated to a lifetime of cleaning toilets (what a dream! what an honor! She wanted to be a doctor, once…) marked a crucial shift in how I saw the society I was part of.

There are things that we need to believe in–for my parents, that’s the American dream. It makes being in this country easier; there’s always a hopeful fortitude that keeps them going, especially in the face of adversity. Despite being disillusioned myself, I don’t want to take that away from them.

And for me, the thing I needed to believe in above all, the thing I used as a weird form of rebellion, was the idea that I was straight–that, regardless of what “signs” my family picked up and tore apart, I could prove them wrong, that I could hate such austere gender roles without being queer. Revelations can be liberating, or they can destroy everything you once knew. If they ever see the American dream for a charade–and given the economic crisis, which has gifted them unemployment and a pile of never-ending bills, I fear that they will–I don’t know what type of revelation it’ll be for my parents. But one can only pretend for so long.

__________________

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On Final Fantasy VIII

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1. Lets get the boring stuff out of the way. Final Fantasy VIII is often derided as being the worst Final Fantasy game of the PSX era. As this very whatever article on Edge puts it: “The standard line on the trio of PlayStation games is that VII is the godhead, IX the neglected gem, and VIII the red-headed stepchild.” It is generally remembered for being confusing and the system you use for powering up your characters, the Junction System, actively punishes you for using magic that you have acquired. For more of that kind of thing, and a hopeful, reassuring paragraph, click here.

Unlike those two articles up there, I’m not here to offer up vague words and then say “well, history should treat this game better!” I just want to talk about Final Fantasy 8 for a while. There’s a LP of it here if you are so inclined.

2. The point of FF8 could be summed up thusly: “Everything you love will be taken from you. Life is mere palliation.”

3. A summary of the game’s story: a band of teenage mercenaries, in an effort to save those they love, defeat an evil sorceress from the future who seeks to collapse time and bend the universe to her will.

4. Final Fantasy VIII is based around the junction system. The characters in the game “junction” Guardian Forces (GFs) to themselves. Junctioning is magical bonding–the GFs imbue certain abilities onto the characters and allow them to enhance their physical and mental attributes by pairing magic spells to them. For example, a character will take a Thunder spell and junction it to their strength attribute, making them slightly stronger and increasing physical damage.

This system, like most systems, requires initial resources to make it work; characters need the magic before they can equip it. Therefore every GF imbues an ability called “Draw” onto its junctioned partner. There are “draw points” in the world–these are glowing purple fonts of magic that burst from the ground. However, this is not the only way to get magic. The most efficient and comprehensive way to gather magic is to draw it from enemies in combat.

An example combat scenario: the party encounters an enemy. The party draws a Fire spell from the creature. One party member uses a spell to put the enemy to sleep. The party draws Fire spells for the next ten minutes.

The general response to this system is that it wastes time and encourages “gaming the system.” Time is understood as a resource. The junctioning system allows for every character to have maximum abilities in all categories if the player spends enough time collecting resources, refining items, and playing the in-game collectible card game. We will come back to this.

5. The Garden is a school that produces elite mercenaries called SeeDs. They are hired out to commit military operations all over the world. Squall and most of the main cast of Final Fantasy VIII are SeeDs, and halfway through the game everyone learns that the “real” reason that SeeDs were created is in order to curb the power of sorceresses, which are powerful magic users who occasionally become violent and oppressive political leaders.

I told you that to tell you this: the latter half of the game is spent countering the machinations of a powerful sorceress from the future. Her name is Ultimecia, and she projects herself back in time via a machine that replicates a human being with time travel powers. The flesh rots. The machine exists forever. Long live the nonflesh.

6. Remember the junctioning system? Each character can only hold a limited amount of magic. If you want to cast a Cure spell, but you have it junctioned to hit points in order to have more life, then casting that spell decreases your maximum hit point total.

You make choices. You cast the spell or you don’t. But no matter what, the enemy is going to hit you, and if you don’t cast the spell, you will lose the battle. It will be Game Over. So which is the better choice? To decrease your potential, to work against the labor you have already done, or losing in the face of staggering odds?

7. I don’t think there is any argument about the complexity of the pre-FF8 Final Fantasy games when it comes to morality: there are good guys and there are bad guys and there are very few greys in between. Final Fantasy VIII breaks with that by immediately positioning the player as complicit with the teenage mercenary trade, and the critique extends explicitly into the game via a story about “the sorceress and her knight.”

When Seifer, the rival of player-insert Squall, defects to the side of the Sorceress Edea, it is under the guise of becoming her knight. We’re introduced to the concept in snippets–the knight does the sorceresses bidding. He is her love and her weapon arm. Later in the game and further back in time (inside a parallel narrative), we see a character named Laguna playing the Knight in a cheap film recreating a classic fable that involves the knight protecting the sorceress from a fearsome (yet fake) dragon. The scene is interrupted when a real dragon shows up; as RPG rules decree, a battle ensues.

For Seifer, the dream dies when he realizes that being a knight means being a tool, a sharp wedge that gets driven between the sorceress and her goals. For Laguna, the drama is shattered when a real dragon comes into play. For both of these characters, what starts fiction-fulfillment changes into something violent and political–the Real comes crashing into them.

8. Guardian Forces, the very entities that make the game system work and, diegetically, allow for the characters to fight the powerful enemies of their world, destroy memory. A fractured conversation: “the GF makes its own place inside our brain”…”so if we keep relying on the GF, we won’t be able to remember a lot of things?”…”we gave up our memories in exchange for power?”

Everything has a cost. If you choose a path, you have to accept the consequences of that path.

So what do you want to do? You wanna stop using GF now? As long as we continue fighting, we’re indebted to the powers of the GF If there’s a price I have to pay for that, I’ll gladly pay for it. – [Squall]

9.

So like…this is what I wanted to say. Let’s see… Oh yeah. I understand what Rinoa’s saying. I understand, but still I’m gonna fight. I want to stay true to everything I’ve stood for. I’m sure it’s the same for everyone. That’s why I thought it’d be best if everyone knew we would have to face Matron. You’ve all heard this before. How life has infinite possibilities. I don’t believe that one bit. There weren’t many paths for me to choose. Sometimes, there would only be one. From the limited possibilities I faced, the choices I made have brought me this far. That’s why I value the path I chose… I want to hold true to the path that HAD to be taken. I know our opponent is Matron, whom we all love very much. We might lose something very important on account of the GF. But I don’t mind. It’s not like I drifted here on the tides of fate. I’m here because I chose to be here. And more importantly… We all grew up together. But due to various circumstances, we were all separated. As a kid, you couldn’t really go out on your own… There were no other paths to take… All I did was just cry. But… – [Irvine]

10. The finale of the game takes place during time compression. Ultimecia, the evil sorceress from the future, compresses all of time into one space. Everything, and everyone, both exists and does not exist at the same time. All things are contingent on their relationship to other things–the characters promise not to forget one another. After all, if they do, then they cease to exist. A belief binary operation.

Remember all of those choices that I talked about before? In a time compressed world, none of that matters. All of those choices, and their power, are rendered moot by the eternal possibility of all things occurring immanently. The block quote above where Irvine justifies his life and the way he lived it is pointless when there is no path. No one chooses; no one is forced.

You can’t change the past. I just found that out.

11. A Number of Screenshots About Choice

12. A radical reading of Final Fantasy VIII: a sorceress tries to defeat the linearity of time and free the universe from the shackles of chronology–what Irvine calls “the path.” A world without linear time is a world where all choices have occurred in all formulations. Through belief, which we are reminded over and over again as something that has real power in a time compressed world, a person could choose to live in the best of all possible worlds.

In a time compressed universe, one could truly live in the best of all possible worlds just by believing that it was possible.

A world of labor, of self-sacrifice and pain, of wasted time in protracted battles–all of that would be nonexistent. The game itself would disappear and the media object would become what it wanted to be the whole time–a film. Not only could the characters escape a world of pain and suffering and bad choices, but we could escape the spreadsheet management that is the junction system. We could just watch.

Further Reading:

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Triforce Johnson: The world's most patient gamer

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By Chris Plante on November 18, 2012 at 11:30p EST
Triforce Johnson has been first in line for new console launches eight times. This is his story.
A man named Triforce waits on a patch of sidewalk just outside the Nintendo World Store in Midtown Manhattan. Here, at midnight on November 18, the self-declared superfan will be the first to purchase the new Nintendo Wii U video game console. This is Johnson’s eighth time waiting at the front of a line, and at the age of 35, it will be his last.

I meet Triforce the day before Hurricane Sandy pulverizes the Eastern Seaboard, and three weeks before Wii U’s launch. He’s already been in line for 10 days, though he appears well rested.

Triforce has a medium build with wide eyes and tightly braided hair, which he usually tucks beneath a beanie or hood. His incessant enthusiasm affords him a certain glow. He looks young for his age. For anyone, really, who makes a habit of standing outside for long periods of time.

The first thing Triforce does when I arrive is fish his passport from a Nintendo brand messenger bag, flipping the little booklet open like a police badge. The passport — a real one; I triple checked — belongs to one Isaiah Triforce Johnson. “That is my full legal name,” he says. “I got Triforce added to my first name, because it was easier than replacing.”

Looking at the name, in legal text, my brain wrestles to calculate which displays more loyalty and fandom for one’s favorite brand: waiting outside for weeks at a time, year after year, or legally changing your name to one of the brand’s most iconic totems.

“My father calls me Triforce,” he says, adding, “if he calls me Isaiah, then I know he’s upset.”

Who is this guy?

Video

Origin of a game master
Origin of a game master

Before Triforce was Triforce, he was simply Isaiah Johnson. He wasn’t a Nintendo fan or a gamer; he was a precocious son of two Jamaican immigrants living in the Bronx. His father was a cab driver. Triforce liked analogue toys, which bored his older, technologically-inclined brother.

Johnson’s first memory of a video game is of an arcade cabinet in the local grocer. “234 White Plains Road!” he shouts. The grocer’s gone, but the building’s still there. Mr. Johnson was talking to a friend from Jamaica when four-year-old Isaiah pleaded to be taken home. To distract the boy, Mr. Johnson plucked a couple of quarters from his pocket and pointed to the cabinets in the back of the store.

They were tall and glowing. Triforce spotted a Star Wars machine. He sat down, pushed in a coin and splayed his miniature fingers across the buttons. From that spot, in the way back of the grocery store, the stream of Isaiah Johnson’s life channeled in a new direction.

“First, this guy came to me and said that I was really good,” Triforce remembers, “and then my father, he said I was a real brainiac. A little genius. I think that compliment made me want to play more games. The next day my brother and I snuck out to the arcade and it was done.”

Triforce’s older brother, Nathanial, brought Triforce into a local community of game lovers called Video Land. A mysterious 9-year-old named Kevin ran the group. The boy wore a Nintendo Power Glove as if it were a royal gauntlet, and would go on to win a Nintendo-sponsored video game championship. Kevin claimed the title of Game Master, the best of the group, the Obi-Wan to Triforce’s Anakin.

Triforce Johnson

The kids fancied themselves virtual athletes, training to become the best at the sport of playing games. Their pastime wasn’t cheap. The boys would pack bags at the grocery store for tips. “One time I got a hundred dollar tip for helping an old lady to her car,” Triforce says. “I mastered so many games that weekend.”

Triforce gradually cultivated a reputation as an arcade savant. Before he turned 10, he was able to set high scores on the local Vs. Super Mario Bros. and Mercs machines. He could play through Black Tiger at the nearby pizza shop on a single quarter. “The owner was cool with it,” Triforce says. “He just asked me to come at the beginning or end of the day so other people got a chance to play.”

Pressured by their two boys, the Johnson family finally procured a Nintendo Entertainment System for the home, introducing Triforce to his destiny with classics like Mario, Metroid and, most affectingly, The Legend of Zelda, the game from which his taken name originates. (The Triforce is the precious set of triangular metals that the hero Link needs to defeat the evil Ganondorf.)

As a gamer, Triforce was beginning to divide his time into two parts. Nintendo, the console, the playful adventure: this was his passion. The arcade, the high scores, Video Land: that was like a career.

At an unplaceable point in Triforce’s early teen years, the influential Kevin left the Bronx. But beforehand, the group of arcade fans observed an unusual ceremony, a passing of the throne. Kevin bestowed the title of Game Master and the accompanying Power Glove to Triforce. The power and the burden were his now.

“It’s one of those ancient kung-fu stories,” Triforce says, “where the guy says, ‘take this glove and may the power be with you.’ Then he walks into smoke and never appears again. So as long as I love video games, as long as I’m the Game Master, I will wear this glove.”

“When I was a kid,” Triforce says, “I used to sleep with it. I was a kid thinking I’m the most powerful guy in the world.”

Triforce kept his word. Today he reserves the accessory for special gaming events. Triforce currently wears his 10th Power Glove. Previous gloves have been signed by industry luminaries like Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto, Nintendo of America president Reggie Fils-Aime, video game record keeper Walter Day and professional gamer Fatal1ty. Triforce stores the gloves in a cardboard box in his bedroom, but hopes to one day display them in a glass case.

“Can you imagine it?” he asks.

Rules of the game
Rules of the game

The next time I see Triforce is a week after Hurricane Sandy, two weeks before the Nintendo Wii U’s launch.

Triforce didn’t wait outside the Nintendo Store during the storm itself. But after two days of subway closures, he walked three hours from Crown Heights to his spot in Manhattan. What other option did he have?

“I treat it like a job,” Triforce says. “If you don’t show up for your job, you’re fired.” Playing Nintendo games is fun. Waiting for Nintendo games, I learn, is work. When he says he’s retiring, I now understand he means the words literally.

Like any job, line waiting has rules. Admittedly, I struggle to distinguish between the official rules and those he creates as de facto leader of the line.

The one rule I know to be true:

Triforce is allowed to wait outside the Nintendo Store while it is open, from 9 a.m. - 9 p.m. When the store closes, his security and well-being become the responsibility of Rockefeller Plaza’s guards, the stewards of the broader swath of private property on which he waits. The plaza’s management does not allow loitering, so Triforce must leave.

“This is the misconception everyone has,” Triforce says. “Everyone thinks I’m going to actually live on the block. That’s not happening. That doesn’t happen.”

Triforce maintains that the following additional rules are official, and they probably are, in the sense that someone with authority is unlikely to bother refuting them.

1. To maintain his spot at the front of the line, Triforce must be in front of the Nintendo Store from before it opens until after it closes. Friends and a handful of security guards are allowed to protect the spot for him during the occasional meal or break.

2. As first person in line, Triforce holds the first four to five slots. Triforce says, “The Nintendo people will ask who the first person on line is. Then they’ll ask me who is second. And I’ll say who is three, four and five and so on.”

Triforce assures me he doesn’t pervert the power, but he will use it to settle disputes and in-fighting on the line. The first 10 guys in line, Triforce says, come to a truce so everyone can get at least five hours away each day. With great power comes great responsibility, but everyone needs a bathroom break.
“This is the misconception everyone has,” Triforce says. “Everyone thinks I’m going to actually live on the block. That’s not happening. That doesn’t happen.”
3. In inclement weather, Triforce can huddle beneath the awning 30 feet down the block. When I visit Triforce later that week, during a Nor’easter, I find him like a popsicle, a shivering, rigid man being pelted by a wintery mix of snow, ice and the gnarly frozen dust that kicks up off the streets in Midtown Manhattan. A blanket given to him by Nintendo at the Nintendo 3DS launch does a pathetic job of fending off the elements. “I only stand under the awning when it’s really bad,” the popsicle says.

All work, all play
All work, all play

It took time for Isaiah Johnson to become Triforce.

After graduating from Marist College, he worked for Danka Office Imagine. From there, he transitioned to Xerox. Then he worked in the mailroom of Goldman Sachs. “It was good pay,” he says, “but it wasn’t for me. They said, ‘Hey man, do this for five years, and we’ll get a position for you.’ I’m not waiting five years. I want a career I’m going to be happy with now. If you accept a nine-to-five and you’re able to do better, then you’re a sucker.”

Triforce jumped from Goldman Sachs for a job at the GameStop on 34th St. He got the job in 1999 after pushing Nintendo 64 titles — “I wasn’t even working there yet.” As he recalls it, the store manager took his bag and told Triforce to sell a few copies as if he were an employee. Impressed, he gave the Game Master a job.

He’s been hustling in the industry ever since, taking jobs at game shops and the Nintendo Store. He works when he has to pay the bills, never staying one place for too long.

The one consistent job of his adult life has been Empire Arcadia, a sort of follow up to Video Land, a collective of video game players who compete at international gaming tournaments for cash prizes. He has the novelty checks to prove it, along with two episodes of an ill-fated MTV series that followed the group’s happenings.

Despite the occasional splash of fame, and having the world record for most video game world records, the company is yet to strike it rich. One of its star players, Justin Wong, a Street Fighter champion, left for bigger cash prizes and a ritzier team.

Triforce hopes to stabilize the company, to make it a legit business. It currently operates out of his apartment.

Home turf
Home turf

Gods’ Arc is as muggy as a locker room, but it’s better than the alternative; the snowstorm is pounding outside.

Over the past couple years, the two-bedroom apartment, tucked inside the Brooklyn neighborhood of Crown Heights, has been transformed into a dojo for competitive video gamers. The sweet tang of hookah can be smelled from the front door, making it difficult to place its source within the building. Doesn’t matter: Even without recreational drugs, a visit to Gods’ Arc is hallucinatory.

The name Gods’ Arc is short for Arcade of the Gods — Triforce is quick to diminish the religious connotations. To enter the Arc, a visitor must walk a 20-odd-foot hallway, lined on both sides with signed posters of arcade legends like Billy Mitchell, Walter Day, Todd Rogers, Jonathan Wendel and Tony Temple. At the very end is a poster of Triforce himself.

“These are the gods of video games,” Triforce shouts. “The protectors of gamer culture.”

The hallway opens to a spare living space, no more than 10 by 15 feet. This is no living room. Where you’d expect a sofa towers a wall of trophies and plaques honoring the accomplishment of Triforce and his friends, members of the Empire Arcadia gaming collective. Every wall holds novelty checks or certificates from tournaments. In bold font is the amount of prize money won. $100. $500. $5,000.

Instead of an entertainment center, the group has rigged four small LED televisions along one wall and five old-school CRTVs along the other, creating a 90-degree angle of glowing entertainment. Between the screens are nearly every console conceivable, small piles of deli sandwich wrappers, a futon and a crinkled mattress, where two trainees sleep.

We arrive at night to the sounds of Super Street Fighter 4, a cacophony of digital groans and yelps paired with the rapid analogue taps on an arcade pad. One player, a young man who goes by the name Lincoln, is practicing a new combo, while his colleague, Sanford, plays hypeman.

560 hit points. Then 590. Then 610. “Holy shit, don’t get greedy now,” shouts the hypeman.

It’s 10 p.m. and Triforce is at work, uploading videos from his day in line to Duxter, a video game social network that is sponsoring his bid to buy the first Wii U. While the file transfers, he sifts through Facebook, writing on the walls of a few friends. There’s no privacy in Gods’ Arc. A foot to his right are Lincoln and Sanford. And to his left, on the floor, another friend is watching a downloaded episode of pro wrestling.

This is where some of the men live, right there on the floor.

You’ve been here if you’ve ever been drunk in a frat house. A room that oozes testosterone. The kitchen has no food, and the bathroom no toilet paper. The men leave the toilet seat up and use dish soap to wash their hands.

“No women or children are allowed,” Triforce tells me, so I ask about prospective dates. “I don’t bring girls here,” he says. “I go to their place.”

Out of the game
Out of the game

“The focus,” says Triforce, “the attention, the drive, the ambition, the dedication: when you say things like that you’d think you were talking about someone’s wife. For me, that’s video games.”

In 2007, Triforce and his wife of eight years divorced.

“I learned that after I lost her,” he says, “that those things were supposed to go into her. I thought me loving her and me having dedication to her was something different than me having a dedication to my own individual passion. But it doesn’t work that way.”

The line waiting wasn’t the problem. The money was. He spent recklessly on Empire Arcadia, making sacrifices to keep the brand alive. His lifestyle and hers ceased to mesh. Following the divorce he moved to an apartment he calls The Arc, where he lived until moving in 2010 to God’s Arc, 10 blocks away.

“That’s a part of my life I want back,” he says. “I love video games, but video games do not complete my life. In order to get that back, I have to become a lot more stable. I have to be satisfied with this … I just want to do regular business. My time is up. I’m 35 years old. I need to give what I used to do to the younger guys.”

He wants kids, and hopes it’s not too late. A moment later, Lincoln and Sanford bust into the living room, giggling, interrupting our interview. “Yo, you guys done?” one says, “We want to play some Street Fighter.”

Triforce nods.

The future
The future

Back in line, Triforce likes to tell stories of what he sees during the long days. One of his favorites involves the Korean pop singer Psy, who has become a sensation with the song “Gangnam Style.” Months ago, when Triforce was on a different line, Psy was set to appear on a nearby New York City morning show.

“Everybody of every race, of every size, creed, color — they were all here,” he says. “If they were here for that one time, for a song they can hear on the radio for free, what’s wrong with me waiting for a system I can play for the rest of my life? To each his own.”

I ask Triforce what will happen when he retires. What does a 35-year-old who’s defined himself by playing and waiting for games do when he stops? It’s not the first time I’ve asked, but the answer is always long and tough to follow.

He wants to make Empire Arcadia work. He wants to get a job in the business. He wants to move on. He wants wealth and success, the American dream. He wants to pass down his mantle, just like Kevin did decades ago. None of the answers are especially tangible, and I get the sense Triforce — like most human beings — is figuring it out as he goes along.

A friend mentions an upcoming trip to France, and Triforce mumbles a quip about croissants and some beautiful nameless woman.

“I’m taking her with me,” he says. “There’s a particular lady. I waited a year. A year for her. A whole year. No nothing. I just waited. That’s how much I’m into her.

“Do not let that confuse you. I am one of the most impatient people in the world. It has to be something extraordinary for me to wait. If I’m waiting, it’s god-like. It can’t be A or A+ or even AAA. It has to be S-Class. Seriously speaking, I’d definitely wait for her.”

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Why the Halo Movie Failed to Launch - Game

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The Master Chiefs left the offices of Creative Artists Agency around midday on June 6, 2005 in a fleet of limo vans. In their green, red and blue Spartan armour the cybernetically-enhanced super soldiers made quite a spectacle. Each stood six-foot-three tall, visored helmets obscuring their faces. Each carried a red bound document folder stamped with the CAA logo that contained two things: a copy of the Halo screenplay commissioned by Microsoft and written by Alex Garland and a terms sheet. None of them spoke a word.

The security guards on the gates of the major motion picture studios are used to seeing many things. Still, a hulking soldier from the future striding towards them and demanding access to the studio’s top brass was inevitably going to end in some kind of shooting incident — whether involving a United Nations Space Command BR55 Battle Rifle or a security guard’s arguably more deadly .38 revolver.

Fortunately Larry Shapiro’s team at CAA had called ahead and warned the studios’ security heads what was going on. The Master Chiefs were allowed onto the lots at Universal, Fox, New Line, DreamWorks and others without firing a single shot. If this was the videogame industry literally invading Hollywood, it was remarkably bloodless. They delivered their scripts and waited outside the meetings rooms in silent character, flicking through the pages of Variety. Everyone knew the clock was ticking: Studio executives only had a couple of hours to read the Halo screenplay and decide whether or not to make an offer before the Master Chiefs returned to CAA with the screenplay. It was the deal of the century, and a fantastic piece of showmanship.

The Master Chief suits were Shapiro’s idea and they ensured that the Halo deal made headlines even before the trade papers learned how rich the demands were. It was a spectacular attempt to turn Microsoft’s first foray into Hollywood filmmaking into a theatrical event and it very almost worked. Master Chief, the hero of Microsoft and Bungie’s bestselling Halo games, made his debut in Hollywood. Sadly, though, his Tinsel Town ascension was short-lived.

Microsoft was aggressive in pursuing the idea of taking Halo to the big screen. It’s easy to understand why. The games, developed by Bungie Studios, were perfect blockbuster material: high-octane, intense sci-fi shoot ‘em ups with a dense mythology and storyline and a dedicated fan-base of millions. Combined sales of the first two Halo games grossed in excess of $600 million over four years, selling north of 13 million units. The movie biz looked on in envy.

When Microsoft approached CAA about their movie ambitions, Shapiro told them about the Day After Tomorrow auction set up by CAA agent Michael Wimer and director Roland Emmerich. With a script for the apocalyptic eco-movie in hand, Wimer called the major studios and invited them to bid for it. The process was unusual: Every studio would send a messenger to CAA at an allotted time, pick up the script and then have 24 hours to read it and make an offer. Each script was despatched with a terms sheet: Here’s how much we want; here’s how much we want for the director, and it has to be a “go” movie (in other words, a picture with a guaranteed start date for production). Each studio responded by trying to negotiate terms. The only exception was Fox, who simply wrote on the term sheet: “Yes”.

Microsoft, unaccustomed to Hollywood’s culture, was impressed by that story. It wanted to be able to dictate the terms even though it was a newcomer in the movie biz. Halo was its prize property and they wanted to protect it.

Microsoft was entering into negotiations brandishing a very big stick.

Microsoft also wanted to make a bundle of money from its sale. For Shapiro, it was typical of the gulf between the two industries. Games creators are, by their nature, engineers who deal in absolutes. For them the subtleties of Hollywood production, with its ebb-and-flow of egos and power plays, were often alien. “To sell a movie into a studio and actually get it made is a lot of work,” he says. “It takes a lot of conversations and a lot of pixie dust being thrown about while you’re getting the deals done. In the games industry, they’re technologists and they’re data driven. They’re looking at data points and saying: ‘We need the movie to be made, it’s got to be this, this and this. If you get A, B and C to be part of the movie, then great we’ll sell you the rights.’ You can’t do that.” But, if that’s what Microsoft wanted, CAA was willing to try.

To set up that kind of deal, Microsoft needed to be ready. Most importantly it needed to have a screenplay so it paid Alex Garland (28 Days Later, The Beach) $1 million to pen a spec script. The screenplay was supervised by Microsoft, which meant it was — for good or ill — heavily steeped in the games’ mythology. Still, the project now had a blockbuster screenwriter and was based on a high-profile videogame franchise.

Next, it was a case of setting up the auction. Peter Schlessel, the former president of production at Columbia Pictures, was one of the main negotiators in the Halo movie deal and served as Microsoft’s Hollywood liaison. Together with Microsoft and its lawyers, Schlessel and the CAA team hammered out a term sheet. “We were literally setting out to be the richest, most lucrative rights deal in history in Hollywood,” says Shapiro. “You have to remember that no property, not even Harry Potter, was getting [what we were asking for].” Microsoft, a global software giant used to getting its own way, wasn’t about to kowtow to Hollywood. It knew Halo was the jewel of videogame movies, the one that could be a true blockbuster hit. According to Variety, Microsoft wanted $10 million against 15% of the box office gross, in addition to a $75 million “below-the-line” budget and fast-tracked production.

Those were big demands. Not least of all since, at the time, videogame movies were still floundering on the edge of respectability. Tomb Raider had made a pot of money and pushed towards the mainstream but its 2003 sequel, Lara Croft: Tomb Raider — The Cradle of Life, suffered a disappointing opening weekend at the U.S. box office and limped by on its foreign grosses. The Lara Croft franchise was running out of steam early. And most other videogame movie outings weren’t even in the same neighbourhood as Lara. Paul W. S. Anderson, the director of Mortal Kombat, parlayed his success into the zombie-themed Resident Evil franchise distributed by Sony Screen Gems. The first movie based on Capcom’s survival horror game series took $102 million worldwide and did gangbuster business on DVD selling over a million units. But it lacked the prestige and mainstream crossover potential of Tomb Raider.

Microsoft were aiming higher — much, much higher. CAA’s deal-making matched the software giant’s aspirations. According to the New York Times, Microsoft were demanding creative approval over director and cast, plus 60 first-class plane tickets for Microsoft personnel and their guests to attend the premiere. It wouldn’t be putting any money into the production itself beyond the fee paid to Garland, nor was it willing to sign over the merchandising rights. To add insult to injury, Microsoft wanted the winning studio to pay to fly one of its representatives from Seattle to LA. They would watch every cut of the movie during post-production. Clearly, Microsoft was entering into negotiations brandishing a very big stick.

With the screenplay written and the ink still drying on the terms sheet, the agents called up the major studios and advised them to be prepared. It was a bold, some might say arrogant, show of power. As Shapiro remembers it, “We told them: ‘You need to have all your decision makers in a room because we’re going to deliver the script for you to read together with a terms sheet. But there’s a fuse on it. You’ll only have a certain amount of time to make a deal.’”

Master Chief in the upcoming game Halo 4.
Image: Microsoft

Because Hollywood is a town built on relationships, CAA’s agents made sure they called all the major players. Even then there were some who felt snubbed; Miramax head honcho Harvey Weinstein called up to shout about being left off the list. Everyone had assumed Miramax wouldn’t be interested in the property. Truth was they probably weren’t, but there was prestige to be had in being invited to the Halo party. The only major studio Microsoft refused to approach was Columbia, which was owned by Sony, its chief rival in the console war.

With his production background, Shapiro decided to add a little razzle dazzle to the proceedings. Remembering the Master Chief costumes he’d seen at Comic-Con, he tracked down the one person in the U.S. who was fabricating the game’s official Spartan UNSC battle armour and hired seven suits: a Red, a Blue and several in Master Chief green. “I had them shipped out to CAA,” recalls Shapiro, “they came in crates and had instructions about how to put them on. I hired character actors to wear the suits because, you know, you don’t just put anyone in these suits. They had to feel like Master Chief.”

For a few hours on June 6, 2005, Hollywood became Halowood. Everyone was buzzing about the Master Chiefs spotted walking through the studio lots and — more importantly — about the richness of the deal Microsoft was demanding. No one had ever seen anything like it before. Microsoft, the global corporation whose products sat on every desktop, had come to Hollywood and wasn’t afraid of throwing its weight around. “If showmanship and arrogance and Hollywood don’t go together, I don’t know what does,” says Moore who was Microsoft’s go-between with Universal during the negotiations, reporting to the software company’s point man Steve Schreck.

Not everyone was impressed. Movie executive Alex Young, who by the time of Halo had moved from Paramount to Fox, recalls reading the screenplay under Master Chief’s watchful eye. “It was one of those gimmicky Hollywood things: hey, force everybody to be in a room, make it feel urgent, have a guy show up in costume and ‘Oh my God! This feels like a big deal’. It probably served Microsoft and CAA well at the time, but ultimately it seemed like a bit of manufactured theatre to me.”
Another problem was that the Halo property was so well-known by that point that everyone knew what to expect. “You either loved the idea of making a Halo movie or you did not,” suggests Young. Having a guy in costume deliver the screenplay wasn’t going to convince you one way or the other.

In the end, though, it wasn’t the Master Chiefs’ fault that the deal stumbled. Nor was it CAA’s. The failure of the Halo movie remains a potent illustration of the gulf that still lies between Hollywood and the videogame business. It should have been the tent-pole movie to die for, instead it became the one that got away. Millions of Halo fans around the world wanted a movie, yet it failed to launch. Partly, it stemmed from the on-going inability of both sides of the deal to understand each other’s culture, needs and language.

“When the videogame industry talks to people they do it open-kimono and they expect the same transparency back. Hollywood doesn’t function that way.”

Most of the studios who read the Halo screenplay passed immediately. Microsoft’s terms were simply too demanding. By the end of Master Chief Monday there were only two horses in the race: Fox and Universal. Microsoft hoped to use each to leverage off the other but hadn’t banked on the studios’ very different approach to doing business. “What the games industry doesn’t understand is that this town is all about lunch,” explains Shapiro. “It doesn’t happen like that in the games industry. If there was a movie studio going out to the games publishers to license Avatar or something like that, they’d say ‘Ok we’re licensing Avatar, send us your best deal. But none of the games publishers would talk to each other and say ‘Hey, what are you going to offer them?’”

The studios weren’t so reticent in sounding each other out. “What happened was Universal called Fox and asked them what they were going to offer,” continues Shapiro, who watched events unfold close-up. “They decided to partner on it. ‘Let’s offer the same deal and offer to partner’. So now we lost our leverage.” Universal agreed to take U.S. domestic, Fox would take foreign. In the blink of an eye Microsoft’s bargaining position had been pole-axed.

The immensely powerful Microsoft had wandered into the deal naïvely expecting everyone to play by its rules and the resulting culture shock put immense strain on the Halo deal. For Moore, then corporate vice-president of the Interactive Entertainment Business division at Microsoft, there was clearly culture clash during the negotiations: “You work for a company like Microsoft, where you do what you say, you say what you do; you think you have an agreement, you’re ready to go, and then… [the deal falls apart].”

It was something that talent agents working at the intersection between the two industries have experienced many times. “When the videogame industry talks to people they do it open-kimono and they expect the same transparency back,” says Blindlight’s Lev Chapelsky. “Hollywood doesn’t function that way, they dance and they sing and they play games and go through their ritual haggling. To somebody who’s not accustomed to that, it can be insulting.”

Microsoft clearly weren’t accustomed to it. They were used to being the strongest contender in any negotiation they entered into. But this time they were far out of their comfort zone. “We don’t understand Hollywood,” Microsoft Games Studios general manager Stuart Mulder confessed to the trade papers in 2002 as the company inked in its deal with Shapiro at CAA. It was a throwaway comment that would turn out to be disturbingly prophetic.

What was apparent during the Halo deal-making was that Microsoft was far from home, perhaps even surrounded in enemy territory. In the middle of the Halo negotiations, as all parties sat around the table, Shapiro recalls the discussion between Microsoft’s Hollywood liaison Peter Schlessel and Jimmy Horowitz, Universal’s co-president of production, taking an aggressive turn. “Schlessel was getting really tough on some of the terms with Horowitz: ‘Come on, don’t be a jerk, blah, blah, blah…’. It was getting really heated. The guy from Microsoft [Steve Schrek] was like, ‘Wow, this is really good.’ Then we took a break and Schlessel goes to Horowitz, ‘Are you coming over for Passover?’ Because they know each other. You don’t have those kinds of relationships in videogames. In Hollywood you can be getting at each other but then you’re playing golf together the next day.”

Even after the deal was struck, the misunderstanding over how the movie business operated continued to be a problem. Microsoft wanted a big-name director, but Peter Jackson, helmer on The Lord of the Rings trilogy, decided to sign on as a co-producer alongside Peter Schlessel, Mary Parent and Scott Stuber. Jackson wanted his new protégé, an up-and-coming commercials whiz kid called Neill Blomkamp, to direct. With Jackson’s fee running to several million dollars the studios knew there was an advantage in hiring a cheaper, less well-known talent to sit in the director’s chair. Microsoft was reputedly not happy with the decision.

Blomkamp, a South African director who had made his mark with commercials for Nike and had shot an intriguing short about alien apartheid called Alive in Joburg, was concerned about getting chewed up and spat out while making his first feature with these three enormous corporations and a budget north of $100 million. “My instinct was that if I crawled into that hornet’s nest it would be not good, and it was a clusterfuck from day one,” he admits. “There’s no question that there was a clash of worlds, for sure. The two sides weren’t seeing eye-to-eye.”

What lured him in, beyond the obvious kudos, was his love for the property: “I told Tom Rothman [co-Chairman of Fox Filmed Entertainment] that I was genetically created to direct Halo.” However, Blomkamp quickly realised that the studio didn’t share his artistic vision and was uncomfortable at the prospect of his gritty, post-cyberpunk aesthetic — all blurry video feeds and radio chatter – dominating a summer blockbuster. “Rothman hated me, I think he would have gotten rid of me if he could have,” says the director. “The suits weren’t happy with the direction I was going. Thing was, though, I’d played Halo and I play videogames. I’m that generation more than they are and I know that my version of Halo would have been insanely cool. It was more fresh and potentially could have made more money than just a generic, boring film — something like G.I. Joe or some crap like that, that Hollywood produces.”

Blomkamp’s relationship with Fox was particularly fraught. The way the deal was split between three major corporations and a handful of Hollywood producers caused several unusual imbalances in terms of power. “The way Fox dealt with me was not cool. Right from the beginning, when Mary [Parent, Universal’s former president of production turned Halo producer] hired me up until the end when it collapsed, they treated me like shit; they were just a crappy studio. I’ll never ever work with Fox ever again because of what happened to Halo – unless they pay me some ungodly amount of money and I have absolute fucking control.”

He was also being pressured by Microsoft’s demands too. One of the biggest issues was creative control. Microsoft had paid Garland to pen the screenplay to their specifications in order to retain control over what was clearly a very valuable property to them. Halo was an Xbox exclusive title, a billion-dollar franchise, and its chief weapon in the console war against Sony. The problem was, though, that filmmaking was a collaborative exercise and total control simply wasn’t possible.

“If you’re dealing with a company that doesn’t understand the film industry, its sense of assurance comes with glossy names that have done a lot of big projects that have made a lot of money,” says Blomkamp. “I think the guys at Bungie liked what I was doing. I’m fairly confident in saying they liked where I was going. It’s highly possible that that artwork was getting back to Microsoft and Microsoft itself, the corporate entity, was not happy with it because it was too unconventional. I don’t know if that’s true or not, but it was entirely possible.”

Against this fraught background, Universal funded $12 million of preliminary development on the movie. Some of the money was spent before Blomkamp came on-board by director Guillermo Del Toro, who was initially attached before going off to make Hellboy II: The Golden Army instead. The rest was spent on Blomkamp’s watch and included paying various screenwriters — Scott Frank, D.B. Weiss, Josh Olson — to redraft the original screenplay.

Meanwhile, Weta Workshop, the New Zealand physical effects company co-founded by Jackson, was fabricating real-life versions of the weapons, power armour and the Warthog assault vehicle from the game. Blomkamp would eventually use them to shoot a series of thrilling test shorts. “The legacy of a movie never made,” is how Moore describes the collected footage, which was later cut together under the title Halo: Landfall and used to promote the Halo 3 videogame release in 2007.

With development proving slow, Fox and Universal were beginning to get impatient. The gross heavy deal and costs increased the growing sense of unease. In October 2006, right before a payment was due to be made to the filmmakers and Microsoft, Universal demanded that the producers’ deals be cut. Jackson consulted with his co-producers and Blomkamp, as well as with Microsoft and Bungie, and refused. In a stroke, the Halo movie was pronounced dead in the water.

What ultimately killed the Halo movie was money. “Microsoft’s unwillingness to reduce their deal killed the deal,” says Shapiro. “Their unwillingness to reduce their gross in the deal meant it got too top-heavy. That movie could have been Avatar.”

Blomkamp agrees: “One of the complicating factors with Halo was that Microsoft wasn’t the normal party that you’d go off and option the IP from and make your product. Because Microsoft is such an omnipresent, powerful corporation, they weren’t just going to sit back and not take a massive cut of the profits. When you have a corporation that potent and that large taking a percentage of the profits, then you’ve got Peter Jackson taking a percentage of the profits and you start adding all of that stuff up, mixed with the fact that you have two studios sharing the profits, suddenly the return on the investment starts to decline so that it becomes not worth making. Ultimately, that’s essentially what killed the film.”

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Radiator Blog: Desperate Gods and rules-forcing in video games.

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, by , is a virtual board game made for ; you have a bunch of virtually simulated tokens and cards, but you must process and execute the game rules yourself. You can easily cheat, but then what’s the point? DG is not the first game or toolset to do this, although it’s certainly the most polished and nicest looking so far. , for instance, gives you a deck builder, a table, some tools for keeping track of state, then walks away and lets you get to it. The rationale, from their FAQ: There are a few implications that emerge from this implementation — that game design is not a matter of programming, that cheating isn’t “cheating” if you want to “get to the fun part” faster, and that games are mental constructs that we voluntarily create so why not voluntarily change their fundamental structures at any time? Non-digital games commonly have a notion of “house rules”, changes in balance or mechanics that rarely require any material changes — limits on betting and handling blinds and buy-backs in poker, or number of re-racks and and edge-case handling in beer pong, or what the hell to do with “free parking” in Monopoly. They’re called house rules because the host broaches them and the players, being guests of the house, are obliged to oblige. You don’t argue with them. You just welcome the constraint with sportsmanship. Meanwhile, in video games, a house rule is often a design impurity encoded in a context of perceived skill and player authenticity. You “break” the game design either because you suck or because you’re so great that the regular game is too boring otherwise. “No rushing” in Starcraft is a house rule that only novice players would broach because they cannot balance the trade-off between early-game build-up and massing vs. later-game build-up and teching. In contrast, “ghosting” a level by never alerting or KOing guards is a house rule in the Thief community that only the most hardcore players attempt. (It’s worth noting that the ghosting in Dishonored, as ratified in the game system, is fairly lenient compared to the original house rules.) , a platformer where the player is told to hold their breath if their character is underwater, as a welcome player handicap that still effectively operates even with peoples’ different lung capacities — again, a certain notion of difficulty and skill. I argue that non-digital games, with house rules, are not necessarily tied to skill in this way. They’re just different game variants that you accept, otherwise you’re a stubborn asshole who thinks they’re hot shit. It’s like the American notion of organized religion — it’s your own business if you’re practicing or non-practicing. (See also: from Rules of Play.) It makes me wonder whether hybrids are possible that combine these unique affordances better. I’m not talking about some silly “Eye of Judgment” augmented reality thing; I’m talking about something more like Desperate Gods, except what if there were AI players in this who try to hide tokens underneath the board, or purposely fudge the math on something, or move your pieces while you’re alt-tabbed away? What if you could argue with a computer about the design of the video game it’s enforcing?

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To the Games I Will Never Finish: A Love Letter

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I can’t remember thinking The Smiths were a miserable band until I started listening to them when I was miserable and then I became…well, a “Girl Afraid.”

Morrissey seemed the answer. And then, it seemed like he was mocking me. He was telling me, and not showing me. “Back to the Old House” ate me whole. I stopped listening to music. It can’t be my drug. I do not participate in music like the characters of Phonogram; I am a muggle almost, as if I do not understand music’s power or how to interpret it. When we first met, a now-close friend told me that I am a Belle and Sebastian lyric (I want it to mean that I am beautiful and Scottish and mysterious) but I have no idea what that means. I just know that music happens to me, and I can’t do much about it.

A friend told me that I am a Belle and Sebastian lyric (I want it to mean that I am beautiful and Scottish and mysterious) but I have no idea what that means.

Pass the rum. I need it for this. This is coming out all High Fidelity.

Why can’t I talk about games like this? What is stopping us? Is it the Call of Duty bros? Fuck that. Call of Duty is some emotional shit. Grim Fandango is a fucking fine wine of quiet contemplation and mariachi; I agonize over Bioshock because he played over our save, goddamn Sven Co-op is in some of my most fucked-up happy dreams, don’t even ask (I know that you will ask). We worry about our kids being desensitised by the violence in Call of Duty, but even non-violent games have trained me to become needy for a reaction, a thrill ride, that dopamine rush. They have trained me to be emotional. That’s dangerous, kids. Use protection.

No. Videogames are a hazy cocoon in which I can work out where my passion and hurt comes from: as if in therapy, I wrap myself in remembering them. Videogames are something that I participate in, am active in. They are intrinsically part of my romantic life, my sex life – any life in which I have been around people or loved people or been upset with them. There is rarely a time when I have not associated the men that I have loved with their favourite game, or by the act of my playing a certain game when I am in love with them, or the act of lending a game, talking about a game, the game that in between sex you play together, like foreplay.

There has never been a time where I have not associated someone I loved with how they played a game. Relationships are life co-op.

To cry, to cry over a keyboard. That is a thing.

———

In Shadow of the Colossus, you ride in on a horse with a dead girl. You hold this girl up in her white dress, lifeless, to the altar, and you think that this is who you care for, and you know that you want her back.  She is mysterious: you want her.

You ride out into the world certain that you will brave challenges and come out triumphant. That whole green landscape seems full of certainty and hope. The game’s structure seems so simple and clear, laid out before you in the temple as 16 tasks. You know what your aim is: it is to save that woman, and it seems certain that you love her. Why question your task?

But the colossi are not simple beasts. You ride for what seems like hours to reach them, the landscape enchanting you. You stop to shoot lizards with your bow, fascinated by their scuttling and by the sparse environment they disappear into, as if by magic. When you reach the colossus of choice, you realise that these behemoths are part of your landscape, a temple themselves. To get their attention, you fire arrows at them, provoking them. They wrestle feebly with you, trying to shake you off. It is a sort of dance. It is a seduction. Sometimes they succeed in brushing you off, and throw you to the ground. When you finally, breathlessly, get them in their weak spot, they fall, slow-motion, into the dirt.

The soundtrack kicks you in the neck. Your conscience bleeds and black tendrils envelop you, casting you back to your still unconscious girl.

The girl you actually want.

———

Back when I was a brunette, I hooked up with a tall blonde doctor at the Tokyo Game Show. It was the first time since I’d broken up with my boyfriend of five years. Five years.

I needed to have some pretty urgent sense fucked into me. I needed someone to tell me that there were other men. That I wasn’t stupid or ugly or boring. Tall hunk from Australia, he liked Resident Evil 4, Metal Gear Solid 4; he was going to do that. High-five me later, I’m telling a story.

It was the worst sex I’ve ever had. It was impersonal, it was lacking chemistry. I guess what I’m trying to say was that it wasn’t responsive or adaptive or…interactive, at least not in a satisfying way. Sex isn’t for one person.

It convinced me that I should have slept with a friend instead. My boyfriend of five years had once been a friend.

Feelings are the worst STDs by a mile and you can’t get rid of them with antibiotics.

There is nothing better than sleeping with a friend.

Bed is the only place you haven’t been before, together. It is natural and gentle. Or it can be rough, joyous.

Anna Anthropy wrote that the theme of her game Calamity Annie is, “being driven will drive you to love, and that passionate people are attracted to passion.” She is right. The voice you associate with an earnest argument over which sprawling RPG landscape you got lost in, or which tabletop game is the most frustrating, or which midnight multiplayer made you laugh or spit so hard you felt physically exhausted: that passion is reassuring in your ear. It can know your worth.

If you ask, arms will hold you. If you ask, hands will touch you. If you ask. If you ask.

But sometimes friendship can misrepresent your value. If the terms aren’t clear beforehand, even the good lord Charlie Brooker cannot save you from yourself. They should hand out emotional contraceptives in every school: feelings are the worst STDs by a mile and you can’t get rid of them with antibiotics. God, just imagine if you could. You’d switch them off as if they were the sound in Amnesia: The Dark Descent. A world without terror. Just memories of shadows in the dark.

Yes. Though it is the most beautiful thing on earth, there is nothing worse than sleeping with a friend.

———

By the fifteenth colossus, you realize you are becoming a zombie. You have ridden far from your origin. You are not sure you want to reach the end. The once beautiful Forbidden Land seems barbarous, all-engulfing, lonely. You have started to dread the sadness of the colossus dying, crying out, the end.

You feel alone, afraid to carry on, because you know that you are putting in motion something horrible. Are you a monster? Why are you becoming numb? The colossi are symbols of nature, part of the ecosystem. And you are killing them. It is killing you.

You wonder if this out-of-reach girl will solve all your problems. You wonder if, when she wakes up, she will make it all okay. You want her to resurrect those colossi you have killed, because you know it is wrong you have killed them. Will she even love you if she sees what you have done?

Then the game takes away Agro, your horse.

———

…More rum, please. Thank you.

I switched off the PlayStation 2.

I was in a six-tatami apartment in Japan, living alone. The last time I had played through this game was with my ex-boyfriend, but it had been a communal experience, a game that we hadn’t thought deeply about, a game of joy.

Now the simple Japaneseness of my sliding doors seemed ugly. The silence outside seemed to leak into the room through the windows. As I sat barefoot on the tatami mat, I put the controller gently down.

I never started up the game again.

———

I used to wake in the morning to gunfire, and be in love.

The reload sound of the original Counter Strike’s AK-47 will always be a spike on a seismometer in my brain; the sound clip “Cover me!” became a mantra for a relationship efflorescing quietly in the dark with LED-lit keyboard.

AFK.

AFK.

AFK.

Cover me, I sometimes remember, late at night. Cover me.

———

And then the game takes away Agro.

Another swig of Captain Morgan – for him.

A short cutscene, and he is gone. There is no chance for you to save him. No quick time event. There is no choice but to see him fall helplessly from the precipice. Agro has been your companion throughout the entire game. An active and unquestioning accomplice, he has never hesitated at your decisions, has never not come when you called. Though he might have sometimes appeared to be laughing when you fell to the ground or missed a jump, he would always come to your aid. When you had to leave him outside for a colossus battle, your heart sank. His movements were fluid and beautiful, his response to your rein hand natural and real.

Agro was a constant. We’d been a team. He had been taken away from me.

I felt…hurt.

Agro comes back, limping, when you are dead; the girl does wake up. In your place is a small horned child, born of your monstrous bodily struggles with the god of the temple.

Is it enough that you have completed your task? Was she everything you wanted? Is this your prize?

The beloved horse is out there, waiting for you, injured. It will wait for some time.

———

I once was briefly in love with someone who was not in love with me. We played Metal Gear Solid together. It was his favourite game. I had never played it, so we were working through it. Two strangers playing a game: one, whose swirling emotions and memories were being channelled, one whose emotions were being forged hot in newborn fire.

Then, in the midst of the game, he told me that it was getting too serious for him and that we had to be just friends.

Solid Snake is still stuck in a vent. I hope he has some cigarettes and rum to pass the time.

———

You can find Cara on Twitter at @Carachan1, where she tries to get Martin Hollis to give her relationship advice. He advises her to stop conflating sex and videogames.

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» Objektiv testen 99leben

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Objektiv testen

Botanicula vs. Dishonored vs. XCOM: Enemy Unknown

Veröffentlicht: 20.11.2012 | von: earlmobileh | Rubrik: Reviews

In der letzten Zeit bin ich leider nicht so häufig zum Schreiben gekommen, wie ich es mir gewünscht hätte. Gleichzeitig weiß ich, dass Euer Budget genauso knapp wie meines ist und die Entscheidung für das beste Computerspiel des Herbstes im Treibsandsumpf der Genrevielfalt manchmal überwältigend sein kann. Um meine persönlichen Spielerfahrungen trotz chronischen Zeitmangels hier noch einmal aufzuarbeiten und natürlich um euch darüber aufzuklären welcher Kauf der richtigste ist, habe ich mir einen neoliberal-effizienten Kunstgriff ausgedacht: Ich benutze einfach mal die branchenüblichen, objektiven Kriterien für die Bewertung von Videospielen. So werde ich euch aufs Hundertstel genau mitteilen können, welcher Titel der beste ist. Botanicula vs. Dishonored vs. XCOM: Enemy Unkown. Let the battle commence!

Zunächst einmal ein paar Worte zu den Spielen:

Botanicula kann guten Gewissens in die Indie Schublade gesteckt werden. Die tschechischen Entwickler von Amanita Design haben mit viel Liebe zum Detail ein zeitgemäßes Point&Click-Adventure geschaffen, welches in bester Genretradition die Punkte zwischen Humor und Rätseln zu verbinden weiß, ohne dabei zu unfair zu werden.

Dishonored führt den Spieler in ein interessantes Steampunk, beziehungsweise New Weird-Szenario (mir aber eigentlich auch egal, was das jetzt ist) in welchem mir als Protagonist und ehemaliger Leibwächter irgendeiner Herrscherin der Mord an Letzterer angedichtet wird. Die Entwickler von Arkane Studios überlassen dem Spieler im Punkto Gameplay relativ freie Hand: Je nach individuellem Spielstil fühlt man sich an Thief, Deus Ex oder Bioshock erinnert, ohne dabei jedoch die Tiefe der geistigen Vorbilder zu erreichen.

XCOM: Enemy Unkown ist ein Strategiespiel rund um eine Alien-Invasion. Die Makro-Mechaniken laufen dabei in Echtzeit ab, während das Mikro-Management innerhalb der einzelnen Missionen rundenbasiert gestaltet ist. Das Spiel ist ein Remake des 1994er erschienenen UFO: Enemy Unknown. Es erfindet das Rad somit zwar nicht neu, den Entwicklern von Firaxis Games ist es jedoch gelungen, zumindest die Speichen auszutauschen und den Reifendruck zu prüfen, sodass das Studieren einer buchlangen Spielanleitung keine Notwendigkeit mehr darstellt.

Quelle: Internet

GRAFIK

Trompetenvogel Trondheim?

Botanicula hat einen sehr eigenen und durchweg detailverliebten Art-Style. Ähnlich wie mit Ubisofts Rayman: Origins wird hier gar nicht versucht an den Skyboxes der üblichen AAA-Titel zu kratzen, stattdessen beschränkt man sich auf die Verwirklichung einer relativ zeitlosen, humorvollen und individuellen Ästhetik. Die optische Gestaltung trägt zudem in hohem Maße dazu bei, die vollkommen wortlos transportierte Narration zu vermitteln – eine Methode von der ich in anderen Titeln gerne mehr sehen würde. Der Objektivität geschuldet ist es allerdings noch anzumerken, dass die maximale Auflösung lediglich 1280X800 Pixel beträgt, in den heutigen Zeiten ist so eine Unverschämtheit absolut nicht mehr hinnehmbar. 8/10 Punkte.

Dishonored ist dank der Unreal Engine 3 über die meisten Verdachte erhaben. Die Lichteffekte sehen umwerfend aus und optisch inszenierte Stimmungswechsel funktionieren großartig. Wem es gelingt, trotz des vielgenutzten Prollomotors unter der Haube, eine so außergewöhnliche Welt zu erschaffen, dass fast jeder Gamingblog ein paar Worte darüber verliert, der hat ein zusätzliches Sternchen verdient. Kritik findet sich nur beim relativ häufigen Aufpoppen von Texturen: Zumindest mit der XBOX360-Version erlebt man es immer wieder, dass Wände oder Schilder sich mit meiner Anwesenheit plötzlich einem Facelift unterziehen. 8/10 Punkte.

XCOM sieht hingegen leider etwas durchschnittlich aus, begeistert war ich da nie. Dass die comichafte Gestaltung der einzelnen Missionen arg monoton ausgefallen ist und der Stil in dem die Basis dargestellt wird sich deutlich vom Ersterer unterscheidet, tangiert mein ästhetisches Empfinden unangenehm. Als Topping serviert mir Firaxis dann noch Cutscenes die so ätzend aussehen, dass sie auch Teil eines Nintendo 64-Spiels sein könnten. Nein Firaxis, ohne mich, wirklich! 3/10 Punkte.

SOUND

Empirische Methodik auch innerhalb der Spiele

Botanicula spielt zumeist niedliches Gedudel welches durchaus zur Atmosphäre passt. Gebrochen wird die Nettigkeit eigentlich nur in den Momenten, in denen die Parasiten das Leben aus irgendwelchen Organismen saugen und da passt die Zäsur wiederum gut. 10/10 Punkte.

Die auditiven Stimulationen, die Dishonored so absondert, haben mir ebenfalls ziemlich gut gefallen. Interessant geschriebene Dialoge die man nebenbei aufschnappt, vertiefen das Verständnis der virtuellen Welt und die Musik passt ins Bild. Übel aufgestoßen ist mir allerdings, dass der Sound teilweise etwas übereifrig ist und die triviale Narration damit im Kontrast noch schwächer aussehen lässt. 8/10 Punkte.

XCOM kann mit seiner Akustik leider nicht besonders punkten. Zwar ist die Musik gut gelungen indem sie eine bedrohliche Stimmung verbreitet, aber davon abgesehen steckt einfach zu wenig Feinabstimmung im Spiel. Das Geräusch der Knarren klingt nur so mittel, die Dialoge sind blödsinnig und das Gelaber der Soldaten nervt sehr schnell. 4/10 Punkte.

GAME-DESIGN

Wer ein Märtyrer sein will tut gut daran unfreundlich auszusehen.

Botanicula gelingt der Spagat zwischen Abstrusitäten und Nachvollziehbarkeit an dem viele aktuelle Point&Click-Adventures leider scheitern. Ich werde zwar das Gefühl nicht los, dass die einzelnen Rätsel durchaus etwas anspruchsvoller hätten gestaltet werden können, dieses Manko wird jedoch durch die Meisterleistung ausgeglichen, sowohl das ganze Gameplay als auch die Erzählung flüssig aus dem Spiel heraus zu erklären. Obwohl mir nichts explizit erklärt wurde und Sprache kein Mittel der Narration darstellt, war ich nie wirklich verloren und stets gefesselt von der Handlung. 9/10 Punkte.

Dishonored ist eines der wenigen Spiele, in denen Stealth in der ersten Person halbwegs funktioniert. 1A-Leistung, wenngleich man in weitläufigeren Räumen immer noch etwas zu häufig den Überblick über die Gesamtheit seiner Umwelt verliert. Die verschiedenen Spielstile funktionieren insgesamt aber gut, Kämpfen nur leider etwas zu gut, weswegen man sich für den Schleichweg beizeiten wirklich motivieren muss. Insgesamt fällt der Titel jedoch leider etwas zu einfach aus und die Handlung erreicht höchstens das Level eines Groschenromans. 7,52/10 Punkte.

Und endlich punktet auch XCOM mal. Wie es sich für ein rundenbasiertes Strategiespiel gehört, beginnt man nach kurzer Zeit schon unter Entzugserscheinungen zu leiden wenn man gerade mal nicht am Rechner sitzt. Erst gegen Ende des Spiels lässt die Abhängigkeit dank sich wiederholender Missionen und allzu stark ansteigendem Schwierigkeitsgrad etwas nach. Die leicht abbauende Motivation gleicht XCOM allerdings mit dem ausgezeichneten Verhältnis von Mikro zu Makro wieder aus. Kaum ein Strategiespiel der letzten Jahre vermochte es, sein Ying und Yang so gut zur Ergänzung zu bringen. Einziger echter Maluspunkt: Immer wenn es wirklich haarig wurde habe ich einfach einen alten Spielstand geladen, das ist fast cheaten und hätte vielleicht verhindert werden sollen. 9/10 Punkte.

SPIELSPASSKURVEN

Die wichtigste Kategorie zum Schluss. Im Folgenden habe ich nun in Kurvenform aufgemalt wie viel Spaß mir die Spiele gemacht haben um am Ende eine Schätzung zu den entsprechenden Integralen abzugeben:

FAZIT

Wenn ich jetzt alles zusammenrechne und die einzelnen Kategorien gleichgewichtig behandle komme ich zu einem eindeutigen Ergebnis: Botanicula ist zu 92,5% ein gutes Spiel, Dishonored zu 81,3% perfekt und XCOM ist mit 60% Güte leider weit abgeschlagen. Bei knapper Patte kann die Wahl also nur auf Botanicula fallen. Von XCOM muss ich – obwohl es mir ausgesprochen viel (subjektive) Freude bereitet hat – leider entschieden abraten. Es ist objektiv leider nur 64,8% so gut wie Botanicula und erlaubt es sich, im Einkauf auch noch etwa 400% teurer zu sein.

Damit ist doch alles gesagt oder!? Für eine Erweiterung in die Subjektivität empfehle ich den Konsum von Let’s Play-Videos. *hust*

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