It’s a game that’s struck me enough to write about, how about that.

I am gifted/cursed with perception. It’s almost certainly a function of low-grade ADHD, where my brain gets bored of whatever I’m directly looking at or listening to (or smelling, or feeling, or even tasting) and starts pulling in other sensory information to occupy itself. If I’m walking down the street talking to a friend, I can’t help but notice the smell from a nearby restaurant, the couple arguing in a car at the stoplight, the person doing their makeup in the car behind them, the person trying to stop their dog from dashing into the crosswalk, the book the person on that bench is reading, the whispered gossip from the pair crossing the other way, the irregular cracks in the sidewalk, the gentle plants sticking out from the gaps in the pavement, the places where water has pooled in the street instead of running to the drains, the seagulls fighting overhead…

You can see why I link it to semi-diagnosed neurodivergence.

The same perception is in effect when I’m playing a game (or doing anything, really), because I can’t turn it off. I can generally no more shut out the sounds of my office or the rain outside as I can ignore the feeling of each article of clothing I’m wearing on my skin, the omnipresent feeling of my wedding band on my finger, or the physical sensation of blinking. It means a lot of games simply aren’t engaging enough for me to get really immersed.

I’ve had an ongoing conversation with friends (and on our podcast) where I don’t really get games that are about “turning your brain off” because they’re low-impact. For me those games are Ikaruga, bullet hell shooters, or extremely high intensity games like Nerts. If I overload my sensory input, I can relax. It’s true outside of games, too. A theme park, a loud dance floor or concert with bright lights and a ton of people, or a big outdoor event (though usually not protests, those have an undercurrent of anxiety that I can never shake) all give me a kind of peace and clarity. I crossed the street at the Shibuya Crossing while vacationing in Tokyo, and it was such a sublime, calming experience I did it several more times for no reason other than to get lost in the scramble.

So, Indiana Jones.

It’s a stealth game, in theory. Stealth games are games about perception, about paying attention. You’re keeping track of your surroundings in order to move through a space, both determining where you should be at any given moment (usually to avoid detection) and where you need to go, and then working out a path based on what you can observe to get from one to the other. You take risks in order to observe better, peeking around a blind corner or popping up to get a better vantage point. Guards walk in the places normal people walk — streets, sidewalks, inside buildings, so you can get an advantage if you can notice paths normal people wouldn’t walk — rooftops, treetops, underground.

A good stealth game is not about hiding and sneaking; it’s about the environment, and having an environment that both offers enough for you to notice and find satisfying and is, itself, satisfying to overcome. Thief is a game about light, shadow, and sound, remaining unseen and in turn finding small, valuable things to take with you along the way, taking risks to reach them. Dishonored is similar, remain unseen, remove cogs in the machine that is the way guards move until it shuts down without collapsing and you can navigate the machine with impunity. Hitman is rarely about actually hiding and is more often about context, ensuring that you fit in and match what people expect.

Indiana Jones is about clonking Nazis and solving ancient puzzles, also often via clonking.

It is a stealth game, in that the environment is rich, full of interesting things to find and see and do, and you are rewarded for noticing things. For example, you’re rewarded for noticing the bottle of wine on the table near the fascist who’s attacking you by suddenly having an improvised weapon to turn the tide of that fight. You’re rewarded for noticing the layout and high cliffs of an area when you push a Nazi over a railing. You’re rewarded for sneaking up on that Nazi because now you can have a good laugh at his Wilhelm Scream as he falls instead of fistfighting him. You’re rewarded for noticing the windup of the blackshirt you’re fighting so you can parry his attack, and you’re rewarded for noticing the pistol in the hand of the SS officer so you can whip it out and turn a gunfight into a fistfight.

There’s only really as much sneaking as you’d expect from Indiana Jones, which is both a non-zero amount but also not the crux of the experience. You’re still a pulp action hero, not a superspy.
Unlike games like Dishonored or Metal Gear Solid, where detection by an enemy is heralded by loud, abrasive, alarming sounds and a feeling of failure, in Indiana Jones being detected often results in a quip from Indy — “uh, hey guys!” — and a feeling of inevitability. This was always going to go loud, or at least non-quiet, because you’re Indiana Jones, not Jason Bourne.

It leads to the kind of play that makes the game feel even more like the movies it’s based on — sneak in, shoot out, or punch a guy because it’s more annoying to slip around him than not. Maybe you miscalculate — Indy has bad plans sometimes, and maybe so do you. The game largely isn’t going to punish you for going a little bit loud.

It pulls this off by adding a thing that stealth games have had for a long time, but rarely used for much. Most stealth games appear to have two and a half stealth states: hidden, detected, and about-to-be-detected. They often actually have three, where there’s a third “detected but not enough to raise an alarm” which generally exists to give you a split second to react to being seen without everything going to hell. It’s the moment where the guard has seen you and before they shout for help, because every guard will shout for help almost immediately and cause the whole house of cards to crash down around you.

The first thing I noticed when I was seen in Indiana Jones was that the fascist who noticed me decided to handle the problem himself. I wrote it off as tutorialization, but when I later had my mouse disconnect after punching (but not knocking out) another fascist later, I saw him step away from me, and shout for help — AFTER having already tried fistfighting me.

Indiana Jones revels in that layer that in most stealth games lasts for a split second. Really loud noises can alert everyone in an area — whistles, horns, alarms, gunshots — but often the one or two enemies you see will start by trying to deal with you themselves. It means you can be seen and still win, still keep things under control and not have to either die and reload or leave a giant pile of bodies behind you. It means that if you take the “easy” way out and just start shooting people, it gets very loud very fast, and notably it means your enemies will escalate as well. An enemy with a gun does not always immediately resort to shooting you, but contextually you can guess whether they will or not, and often the thing that will cause them to start shooting is if you do it first. It all adds up into an experience that FEELS like an Indiana Jones movie.

It’s amplified by how much MachineGames feels like they get Indy, from every great dialogue bark to the feeling of chaos and overall pacing control they have. The first few areas are more slow and thoughtful, potentially plodding if you’re a completionist, and then it picks up at very high speed into the kind of action thrill ride you expect from Indiana Jones. I haven’t quite beaten it as of this writing, but I’m expecting a final, slower area, smaller than the first few but more intense, as a kind of culmination, just because it’s what I would expect from the movies. I won’t spoil it, but there are moments in the game that mirror classic scenes in the movies, and do so in actual play, giving you just a moment to notice what you’re looking at and how you can resolve it and doing so in classic Indiana Jones style. When I’m out of breath from an intense run and I see a guy block my path with a sword, weaving it through the air menacingly, I have a moment as I watch him to go “wait, I know how this goes” and do the scene properly. It’s very satisfying, and totally optional. It’s just a little reward for noticing.

As I’ve been playing, I’ve been deeply immersed because there are so many things for my brain to notice and pick up on. It would be a fun ride even if I didn’t, but for me it’s giving me everything I love in a stealth game without actually really being a stealth game. It’s a rollicking action movie of a game, but it’s not simple about it. The backgrounds are more than just set dressing, the spaces are crafted and thoughtful, not just where I fight the next encounter. It satisfies my perception, because it’s not just picking out nice textures or cute background details, it’s walking into a room and noticing everything I can use as a weapon or tool.

I haven’t been this into a game in years. I’m going to be sad when it’s over, and there’s a decent chance I go and try to 100% it. Easy call for Game of the Year.

I’ve been working on a project lately. (CW: suicide, grief)

In early September, my brother in law Sam lost his battle with mental illness. It was… hard to watch happen, as he descended into a spiral of paranoid delusions, which led him to see hidden assailants that didn’t exist and physically assault people, both in public and in healthcare facilities and ultimately resulted in him taking his own life by jumping in front of a train, an option he specifically took because it meant he wouldn’t be found by his family.

It’s been hard to process my thoughts, especially because I’d only met him a few years ago when I met my wife, and he’d already had the edges of his fraying mental state then. His friends and family talk about him prior to his struggles, and it’s a person I don’t know and never met. The Sam I knew was an artist and musician who felt haunted by internal demons, whose creative works and whose devotion to helping communities and especially working in libraries and with people who most needed help reflected a person trying to do good, possibly because they were afraid of themselves.\

I’d talked with Sam a couple of times about painting miniatures, and he’d expressed interest. I never got a chance to teach him, but we’d talk about painting and he had been interested enough before things went severely downhill that I’d been eyeing a army to pick up for him as a starting point.

Near the end of September, a friend of mine sent me a starter pack of Blood Angels, part of a longstanding back and forth and a semi-joke gift he sent me intentionally to hit my buttons, because for decades I’ve made fun of Blood Angels, all the way back to the original Angels of Death codex where I played the cool Dark Angels and made fun of my friend who played the lame vampires. The gift came with the book Dante which I promised I’d read before deciding what to do with the army, and something clicked for me when I read it.

The Blood Angels are a faction of superhuman space marines, instilled with genetic code to push them well past human capability. They’re notable for their continuing struggle with being, well, vampires. To some extent they’re a meditation on the monster within, and they stave off their internal monster via art, creativity, and about as much community service as exists within the dark setting of Warhammer 40k. They all struggle with “the Flaw”, an affliction that both causes them to hunger for blood but also to see visions of an old battle, one in which their progenitor was killed and whose death haunts the entire group.

Some of them get lost in the visions, seeing enemies where there are none or mistaking friends or innocents for foes. They are often beyond saving, and are given special armor and treatment and transferred to a unit called the Death Company. They’re sent to places where their delusions can be turned against real enemies, where they can meet their end in honorable combat, which the Blood Angels value highly. They are remembered for who they were when they were lucid, and their loss of connection to reality is considered a reminder of how even the best of the Blood Angels are vulnerable.

It’s not… hard to make the connection. Sam was a musician, an artist, and a servant of the community. While when we’d talked about what he might play, Blood Angels weren’t on my list, but as a memorial they seemed apt.

I’ve got a handful of minis left for this project, most notably a Captain and a Death Company Dreadnought. The Captain, with some effort, has a look that’s roughly analogous to Sam’s curly hair, and I want to deck him out in ornate, gorgeous armor. The Dreadnought is a large mech, according to the lore a sort of walking casket for mortally wounded or even technically slain space marines. It’s fairly common in miniatures games to have a particular character represented in more than one way, reflecting different aspects of them or simply different points in time. I’m planning to represent Sam in both of these, golden armor and a halo in one, and a walking memorial to the dead in the other.

I’m sort of hoping it can be a way to keep a bit of Sam around for me. He can be there for the games I never got to teach him and play. My fondest wish when I eventually die is to be, somehow, made into dice so that I can continue to be a part of people’s games, their stories, joys, and memories with their friends, and that I can continue to play even past the end of my body’s limit.

I do a lot of processing my feelings through my creative work– miniatures and tabletop campaigns generally, and this is the third time I’ve done a project like this as a reflection of grief. I wish I’d gotten to get Sam into minis, and see the kinds of things he’d chosen and how he would have expressed himself through the medium. Maybe it would’ve been Warhammer, maybe Infinity or Battletech, maybe historical ship battles or Star Wars, I don’t know, but I would’ve liked to help him get started.

This is not the army I would’ve gotten him, no.

This is just a tribute.

Shaking off some cobwebs on this site. There’s quite a few of them.

It’s been six years since I last posted here, and more like ten since I posted regularly (if my addition to this page could ever have been considered ‘regular’). A lot has happened. It’s interesting to read a log of my own thoughts from years ago, especially because I can plot an arc of my own mood and where I was in my life through just the last five or ten posts. Pretty bleak, all told.

Change is inevitable and I am very much changed.

I’m not yet sure how or if I want to use this space, but I’ve kept it online largely because I can look back at my own writing and thoughts and while I’ve advanced my thinking since then, I don’t fundamentally disagree with myself from six to ten years ago. Despite everything, it’s still me. That said, I don’t even know if this will even work when I hit “publish”. The site is old, and has had some updates, but still keeps throwing me errors as I type into this draft that I started in 2017.

I would use this post to write a plan for my posts, a schedule, etc, but the truth is I don’t have one. What I do have is a broader understanding of games and the business surrounding them. In the last few years I’ve spent time outside of games in Big Tech and since returned to games. It’s given me a lot of perspective on things I didn’t fully understand before, and I can answer some of my own questions from years ago. Right now I have a lot of thoughts, and it’s hard to keep them all organized.

There are a few things I want to write down, to get them out of my head. With any luck, I’ll put them here.

From a conversation with Belghast and some others, where it came up that as longstanding guild leaders, we’ve developed a running list of the kinds of people we’ve met and led.

Behind any organized group is someone doing emotional labor to keep the whole thing together. It’s often invisible, so much so that many people can’t imagine that it even exists. It’s not always the leader of the group, either, though it can be. It led to talking about the kinds of people who you run into. Here’s my list, with some syncing with Bel. Some folks are more than one of these at once, most people shift between them over time. Mostly I view these from the “how do I approach this person with my energy reserves?” standpoint, since that’s often my most limited resource as a guild leader.

THE GUILDIES YOU MEET <3

*The Socialite* – Outgoing and outspoken, this person accounts for their share of guildchat as well as the share of every quieter person. This person is the life of the party, and may or may not also be the heart and soul. If they are, they’re probably doing huge amounts of emotional labor that you’re not seeing. If they aren’t, they’re probably creating said emotional labor in one way or another. Quieter people may end up disliking this person intensely if they feel pushed down by them rather than uplifted.

*The Drill Sergeant* — Let’s get it done, folks. At this time _sharp_, and in this way specifically, and any deviation is going to make us slower or less efficient or _just frustrate them_. Can lend a sense of organization to a disorganized group because they want everything to be orderly, tidy, and efficient. Can also drive everyone else insane. Often an emotional labor sink, especially if they themselves are not cognizant of the need to care about people’s feelings or are bad at reading people/the mood of the crowd. May be necessary, will almost always cause resentment among anyone who isn’t on the same page.

*Chill AF* — Absolutely nothing fazes this person. Even the things that should, sometimes. This person is usually pretty quiet and sometimes sees way more than they realize. They’re mostly happy as long as things are ticking along nicely and generally don’t need special attention, but when things _aren’t_ ticking along nicely they will quietly and definitively check out. Inertia is a thing, and while they’re around they’ll be a great addition but if you screw up and lose them, they won’t be back. This person is usually generally liked but can be resented by others if they don’t appear to be “pulling their weight”.

*Things Explainer* — They know things, and they will tell you things. This person falls into two distinct categories: the person who knows things when asked and the person who will explain everything at all times regardless of context. The big difference is being able to tell when people need or want things explained, and when they don’t. You almost certainly want one of these folks around, or it will be your job to be the things explainer. Can have a chilling effect on community chat if they have a tendency to take up all the oxygen in the room by being more of a know-it-all information gatekeeper (well, actually…) than a helpful encyclopedia (did you know that…).

*The Ninja* — Competent, around precisely when you need them, and unfindable otherwise. Doesn’t spend a lot of time frivolously hanging out in-game but makes every moment count when they’re there. Sometimes very quiet. Usually real quietly on the cutting edge of content, probably knows the fight before you even explain it. Super low stress, super low-maintenance if they’re sociable when they’re around, can quickly become “I’m Here, Now What?” otherwise, especially if they aren’t competent. Can be polarizing, especially for similarly achievement-minded folks who are also on often.

*Side Projects* — Whatever this person is doing, it’s _probably_ orthogonal to what most people are doing. Almost certainly an omnicrafter, regardless of how many alts this takes. Might spend hours a day playing the auction house. Might be meticulously mapping resource nodes. Might be tooling around with their UI mod. Might be a devoted roleplayer. Might be levelling 30 alts. Might be all of these things at once. Your raid core might be the heart of the guild, these folks are often the soul. These are the people who have a bankful of consumables just because, or can help people get caught up with their pet collecting, or are just happy to hang around and chat. Don’t put too much pressure on them to join up for group events—they’ll join if they feel inspired to and otherwise dragging them along isn’t going to help anyone. Often loves being a second-stringer in a raid, hopping in when needed but not committed.

*The Collector* — This person wants _things_. Kind of like Side Projects, but more focused and more driven in specific directions. This person doesn’t just level alts, they max them out. They don’t just collect their favorite pets, they collect _all_ of them. Achievements are the best thing to happen in MMOs, because SO MUCH MORE TO COLLECT. Will absolutely do whatever it takes to drive your group to victory as long as you’re willing to do the fights in some weird way to get the achievement at some point. Random loot drops intersect really, really badly with this person if they’re chasing drops, and they will absolutely demand that you go back to long-obsolete content for the chance at an ultra-rare minipet drop—or they’ll make their own raid to do that thing.

*The Griefer* — This person knows how people tick, and revels in it. They love to understand people, push their buttons, surprise them, find the exact limits of what’s possible and how people react. If they have a conscience, they’re able to reliably do some of the most complex emotional labor of the group, and can morph into the glue that keeps people together. If they don’t, then games are their playground, and everything in them, including the people, are their playthings. Pay close attention to this person, and cut them out mercilessly if you have to. They’re the kind you’ll need to cut and then block, and will continually try to wheedle their way back in.

*The Devotee* — Whatever they’re playing is the One True Game, and everything else is a side thing. The idea of spending game time playing something else either isn’t compelling or never occurs to them. They’re always reliably around, doing their thing. HUGE emotional labor sink, because they often will judge others for being less devoted than they, this goes double if they’re also Downers. These folks will often become bitter that they’re the “only ones around”, but are also your most reliable people, because they’re always around. If you have a group that hops games, these are the folks who will offer to “stick around and keep the lights on” and will (secretly) hate you for it. On the other hand, if this person is also Side Projects or sometimes a Collector, i.e. likes the social part of the group but isn’t reliant on the group to do what they’re interested in, they’ll often happily putter away as long as they don’t feel forgotten. Either way, don’t neglect this person.

*What’s Going On Lately* — Something new is in, this person comes out of the woodwork to see what’s new and cool and interesting. Tends to be really interested in whatever’s _new_, can get bored with doing the same things over and over, at which point they check out. _LOTS_ of players fall into this category, plan accordingly. Your Devotees will resent that these folks come in and leave, but this is a sort of elemental force. Let these folks come in and out because if you don’t, they’ll burn out and never come back.

*I Got Mine* — Cool, thanks for the loot, I’m out. This person will max out their character and check out, whether that’s simply not being motivated to log back in because they “won” or hopping to a more advanced group to climb the next mountain. Can and will do this when they’re still an integral member of a group, heedless of whether they’re leaving the group out to dry. Fuck this person, they aren’t worth your time. If you must, use them the way they’ll use you.

*You Need Yours* — The opposite of I Got Mine, this person is unsatisfied until everyone else has everything they want forever, sometimes at the expense of their own interests. Get ready to force this person to take loot while they insist (despite being multiple tiers behind) that someone else needs it more. This person probably has “Take them, I’ll drop” on a macro. Everyone else loves this person and you’ll need to spend a lot of energy convincing them to take some things for themselves constantly. Do this by convincing them that in order to support the group, they need gear upgrades too. They’ll still only take the bare minimum and this will drive you nuts because if they actually had good gear, they’d be your star players, but this is what you get.

*My Dude* — This person has your back, more or less always. Even when they shouldn’t. There are a million possible reasons for this, and it’s worth spending the energy to figure out which it is, just to better understand this person. At best, this is someone who thinks you’re cool and is interested in openly supporting you and your goals. At worst, this is a McCarthyist witch hunter who will use you as an icon to drive out people they don’t like, or seed mistrust. It’s nice to have someone who vocally supports you, but unless you know why it’s worth being somewhat suspicious. This goes double if this is someone who’s relatively new to the group and is suddenly very vocally supportive. Be careful, though: if you’re too obviously suspicious of them, and they’re the first kind, they’ll be _really_ hurt.

*The Hiker and Backpack* — More than one person. One of these people is amazing, and is active, helpful, and constantly moving onward and upward. The other person is… not, but they’re connected to that first person, and you’ll never see them apart. The Hiker will cheerfully and blithely carry the weight of the Backpack, but it’s the latter one that will annoy people, because they seem to be content just being carried. Sometimes the Backpack is full of rocks, dragging your group down and contributing nothing. Sometimes the Backpack is full of unexpectedly useful things, and even though you’re carrying them you’re happy to have them along. Either way, they’re a package deal, and there’s no avoiding it.

*I’m Here, Now What?* — This person has overcome the hurdle of sitting down and logging in and now wants to _play_. Right now. Let’s go. What’s going on, what are we doing, let’s go! Gaming, and the groups that go with it, take a backseat to their life schedule and whatever they want to be doing. When they’ve logged in, they want to play, and they don’t want to wait, because their time is precious. It might be. They might have legitimate reasons for wanting to cram as much enjoyment out of their playtime as possible. Trampling over the rest of the group isn’t worth it, especially because they often are unable or unwilling to commit to any kind of schedule. On the other hand, if these folks are cognizant that the world doesn’t revolve around them, they’ll instead log in and join into whatever happens to be going on, even if that’s just folks chatting. At that point, they’re as much the soul of your group as Side Projects, and it’s worth doing a bit of extra effort to ensure they can be included in anything that’s going on. After all, they’re doing the same for you.

*Ready To Go* — This person wants to go go go go always gotta go fast never slow down chainqueue for dungeons never stop let’s go. If they’re not actively doing a thing, actively fighting a thing, actively preparing for a thing, or actively queued up for a thing, they’re instantly bored. This may, in worse cases, cause them to declare that “nothing is going on” and log out/leave. Let them. Trying to keep up with this person will exhaust you, unless you are also this person, in which case pay attention to who in the group is exhausted by this person. This person doesn’t need specific attention but may cause you to need to spend energy on _other_ people, who feel frustrated/guilty about not being able to keep up.

*The Downer* — Everything is about to fall apart, always. Your raid is backsliding, the content is getting less interesting, the game isn’t what it used to be, _games just aren’t as good anymore_. It’s not just that this person is unhappy with the state of things, it’s that they think everyone else should be just as unhappy and will spread their unhappiness vocally. Sometimes these folks need help, but it shouldn’t be your job to be that help. They can be a heavy drain on your group, and your own energy. Especially be careful if these people are highly competent, because your more competent people tend to get some level of authority, and having someone like this with people listening to them will devastate your group’s morale.

*The Positivity Cannon* — The opposite of the Downer, everything is great and fantastic and wonderful and this person will hear nothing to the contrary. Great for making people feel happy, everyone likes some positivity, but can and will be frustrating for people with legitimate complaints. Nothing is perfect, and pretending like it is can be just as harmful as obsessing over small flaws. This person can (intentionally or not) shut out or drive away people who have issues, don’t feel comfortable expressing them in the presence of this person, and let their frustrations fester. If this person is your guild leader, be wary of the guild detonating dramatically at some point, because below-the-surface issues are probably going unaddressed until they go critical.

*Silent But Competent* — This person is like a stone pillar. Probably never says anything, but is reliable, consistent, and carries their own weight (and probably several other people’s as well). Inexperienced guild leaders will say they love to have this kind of person around, but if you don’t break through that silence and get to know the person behind the competence, you’ll have a hard time knowing what they need or what might be bothering them. Without this, these people may just ghost you and you’ll never know why, and losing them will be a huge blow to your group, if your group relies on competent people doing a good job. Sometimes these folks are simply very shy, sometimes they don’t speak your language very well, sometimes it’s something else, but either way they are worth your energy. If they open up, they will often become the best kind of Things Explainer.

*Respect My ______* — This person is in it for recognition. Whatever it is they do and think they’re great at, they want everyone to recognize that they’re awesome at that thing, and awesome in general. If they’re not showing off in game or are outclassed by other people, they’ll start bringing in their real life accomplishments into the picture. If they’re outclassed by another person like them, you’ll see some very vocal competitions. Constant competition will annoy other people, and constantly wanting praise will annoy other people even more. Sometimes you can turn the competitive thing into an inward-focused drive for self-improvement, where instead of praise they desire feedback, but this is kind of rare and is kind of precarious.

 

When’s the last time you played a multiplayer game that was purely cooperative? There aren’t many of them. Almost all of the ones I can think of and find also set you and your team against another entity of some form. Oftentimes, as in games like Divinity: Original Sin, Left4Dead, almost all MMOs, and similar, that entity is an explicit opposing force– some great monster or enemy faction or villain of some flavor. In other cases (as in a game like Mansions of Madness, Pandemic, or The Secret World), the opposing entity is more vague, an unknown that you have to give shape to before fighting.

Consider that these are the cooperative games, the ones in which you are ostensibly working together. They’re structured to create for you an enemy to fight against, and when one isn’t immediately apparent, to create one. Even cooperative games are often focused around creating adversarial relationships, and it’s generally more important that you beat the enemy than help your friends.

What does this teach us?

Well, judging from the obsession with it in storytelling, it teaches us that heroic sacrifices are some kind of ideal, rather than a costly pyrrhic victory. “Go on without me”, the doomed movie hero claims, often attempting to redeem an extended series of flagrantly awful behaviors with a single ostensibly noble act.

It teaches us that the fight is more important than the team— it should come as no surprise that teamplay games such as MOBAs have such incredibly toxic communities– the games themselves incentivize victory over teamwork, to the point where a flagging team member is a target for derision, because they “bringing everyone down”, rather than an opportunity to work together.

It teaches us to identify opponents before identifying allies, and often to distrust allies, who by some quirk of AI or differing tactics or player skill are unreliable unknowns. If there is no opponent, we create one.

Likely half of you are rolling your eyes and saying this is an overreaction; the other half are nodding along. What fascinates me about this kind of thing is that it has very clear parallels elsewhere. There’s a chicken-and-egg argument about whether games are a reflection of real world mindsets or if the real world mindsets are what create games (to wit: why are so many games about violence? is it because we are violent and games are an outlet, or are we encouraged to be more violent and games reflect that taste for violence?). I think this is a false dichotomy– the two feed one another.

I talked with someone years ago who genuinely could not understand why someone would play a singleplayer game. “There are no opponents, you’re just playing against the computer,” he told me, “how does that not get boring?” The idea that you might play a game for some reason other than establishing dominance among other human opponents was entirely out of his comfort zone. That kind of thinking isn’t inherent, it’s learned– he got heavily into MMOs for the PvP and now plays exclusively PvE raids. The hops were fairly straightforward: solo deathmatching -> team deathmatching -> team objective-based PvP -> team objective-based PvP with progression -> team objective-based PvP with progression tied to PvE -> team PvP in parallel with team PvE -> team PvE supported by solo progression.

Each step along his path taught her about some new behavioral pattern, until his behavior changed entirely. Remembering our previous conversation, I pointed him at DayZ, only to hear him tell me that he didn’t like DayZ because it was “too oppositional”. Something of a surprise coming from someone who, only a few years before, suggested that a game wasn’t worthwhile if you weren’t fighting against other humans.

I think the heavily competitive focus of games — be it against other players or against the game itself —  also teaches us to define ourselves by how we face opposition. It’s an interesting bit of identity generation, because it goes a layer deeper and teaches us to look for opposition so that we can define ourselves by how we face it.

It’s something I catch myself doing a lot– it’s very easy to see real-world situations as us-vs-them because both “us” and “them” are deeply trained to look for opposing forces. When none exist, they’re created, and you see coalitions disband and groups succumb to infighting.

At the same time, when an opposing force does surface, we come together rapidly and effectively, because it gives us an opportunity to define ourselves.

I wonder, then– what if games taught us to define ourselves in other ways? It’s hard for me not to think of Bioware RPGs here, with the sheer amount of fanfic and fanart inspired by a game that often downplays “fighting the threat” in favor of “hanging out with your friends”. I can’t help but wonder what we might look like as a community if those sorts of games were the majority, not the minority.

A big thing that stopped me blogging last year was a sense that I didn’t have anything interesting to say, not on a daily basis. Realistically, I don’t have something interesting or thought-provoking to say every day, and trying to come up with one is kind of unsustainable when I have other things to do (which I do, now!)

So, instead, when I feel like writing but don’t have a clear topic, I’m just going to label it “daythoughts” and run down some of what I’m thinking. It’s my equivalent of chatting about my day when I get home, except in my case my dog is not the most receptive. This might be interesting for me to look back on later, too.

So. Daythoughts, 9/6/17.

–I am deeply concerned by the weather, locally and elsewhere. Smoke and ashfall where I live is distressing. Monsoons in south Asia are devastating, the hurricane(s!) slamming the Caribbean and Gulf Coast are doing serious damage, and basically the predictions of increasingly dangerous weather that went ignored for so long are proving to be as accurate as the data used to predict them. I’ve checked in with my family as much as possible, but I don’t have contact info for some of my more extended family, who are going to get hit by the weather.

–I think about data a lot lately. We have more tools to know more things about more things than ever before, and we live in the Data Age. Information is one thing; we can communicate what we know. Data is a different thing– it’s empirical evidence that can be used to predict what we don’t know. If we get good enough at it, and in many places we have, we can act on things we don’t know as well as if we did know it. I can imagine a person from today with some basic modern data collection tools flashing back even a hundred years and putting them to use. That person would look like a prophet, just acting on simple behavioral data.

–Despite all of this data, we’re really, really bad at actually listening to it. I think there’s a deep-seated (learned?) distaste we have for the idea that we’re predictable to a high degree of accuracy. It’s weird for me personally, because it’s something I take comfort in, it suggests that we don’t act randomly, that we act in patterns that can be seen and understood and modeled. It’s not just a chaotic weave that we all contribute to, it just looks that way if you aren’t looking at it with the right tools.

–I wonder, often, how much of this aversion we have to being predicted is cultural. I think about trying to spend some time living in another country, just to get a feel for how differently people think.

–This is the worst time of year for me. I am reminded of the things I haven’t yet accomplished this year, the things I meant to do but didn’t, or couldn’t. It’s some combination of convention season, my birthday, and the end of summer, which is my favorite season. Cons remind me that I am not the person I’d like to be, my birthday reminds me that time continually ticks away from me, and the end of summer is a start of the cold/sunless/quiet season. It’s not quite loneliness, but the expectation of impending loneliness.

–I’m trying to engage on Twitter a bit more. It’s a platform that I really don’t like for a variety of reasons, but it’s also one of the few that I’m a part of that have expanding circles rather than contracting ones. I’d really like to meet and get to know some new people, and Twitter seems like the best avenue for that.

–It makes me really happy to play games that feel like they have something to prove. I’ve spoken before about my love of the “second place” MMOs, because they really try harder than whoever’s on top at the time, and it’s true for other games in other genres as well. Currently am very impressed by the storytelling in GW2, which is something I didn’t expect I’d say, and the anniversary event in FFXIV was really touching. I look forward to more from both.

–I’m looking forward to the GW2 expansion more than I expected. I’m (finally) caught up in the story and while I’m sometimes frustrated by certain parts of the game, I have fun pretty much every time I play. Unlocking our guild hall and working towards that is really fun.

–My FFXIV playtime has dipped, as it often does, as I’m left in a place where any progression I do either requires a full raid group or requires me grinding daily roulettes. I really don’t love daily things, and (frustratingly, predictably for this expansion) long queue times as a DPS haven’t done much to inspire me to play more.

Thoughts for today. Not sure if they spark anything in anyone, but let me know if they do.

–Tam

WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS SPOILERS ABOUT PERSONA 5, THROUGH AT LEAST SUMMER.

Persona 5 has been stuck in my head basically since I played it, which would be literally the day it launched until I’d finished it, taking a couple days off work to do so. It’s been stuck in my head so much that my morning walk to work is mostly paired with P5 OST tunes, and not only because Wake Up, Get Up, Get Out There is a great song with which to start your day.

It’s stuck with me, I think, because it’s taught me a bunch of things that I hadn’t previously had a good inroad for. The easy one is the Tokyo subway. At the start of the game, you’re sent to get to school and told “don’t be late!” which automatically triggers some amount of urgency-anxiety in me, especially when I don’t know how to not be late. I got terribly, terribly lost in P5’s initial subway system, and what I found out in the process is that it’s laid out almost exactly like Tokyo subways, including how you navigate them. I’m now used to navigating P5’s subway system, and from folks I know who’ve visited Japan, the parallels are good enough that I might be instantly used to navigating those subways, just through osmosis. It’s an interesting thought, and with any luck I’ll be able to take a trip there and see for myself at some point.

More interesting to me, though, is seeing how P5 has quickly and effectively taught me about judging people, and then letting my opinions change. It’s a game where you’re encouraged to make early judgements about people, because it’s a survival trait. P5’s world is not a friendly one, and it’s one where, from the very start, you’re told that not only is someone going to betray you, but that it’s going to be someone close to you. It teaches you not to trust people early on. It then teaches you that if you’re too untrusting and too paranoid, you don’t get close to anyone, and that sometimes those early snap judgements are the right ones. It’s a really impressive series of arcs that twists and turns and leaves me with Thoughts, about the characters, about the portrayals, and honestly about a lot of stuff.

The one that sticks in my mind the most is Yusuke/Fox, the artist. He’s not my favorite character in the game, but he’s probably the one I’ve thought about the most. I started out hating him. I didn’t like his introductory arc, I didn’t like what looked and sounded like overt sexual harassment / blackmail towards Ann on his part during that arc, and there really wasn’t any kind of redemptive piece to that arc that made me feel any better about him– he never even apologizes to Ann (nor do any of the other characters, who abet that whole arc, also bothering me).

Then he’s a party member. A useful party member, and one who moment-to-moment annoys me less than Ryuji/Skull, but with whom I’ve had a bad start and am still put off by his being a pretty horrible person in his intro.

Then we talk, because The Emperor is a useful set of personas and I’m working on social links. Sometimes it’s just because I have nothing better to do that day. I hear about how obsessive he is about his art, how much he delves into tiny details and how frustrated he is when he can’t quite get them right, even (especially!) when he can’t quantify or explain how they’re not right. I watch him struggle for words and just deflate, defeated, and I roll my eyes because I don’t have a lot of sympathy for him.

Then we meet Futaba. I get Futaba, I think she’s pretty awesome, and I want to help her with her problems for a variety of reasons, not least of which because she wants to be helped with her problems, and hasn’t had a good onramp for it until now. I’m willing to do what it takes, and engage on her terms, because I (as a person) can relate (to her character). I also notice that she’s really good at talking with Yusuke. They don’t get along, per se, but they communicate with one another incredibly effectively, and Yusuke is like a different person when they’re in the same room. Then Futaba makes an offhanded comment and a theory clicks into place. I get it.

I don’t think Yusuke is an asshole. I think he’s somewhere on the autism spectrum. There’s a design in his head that he has trouble communicating, and he’s not great at relating with people, and he gets frustrated when these two things intersect. He’s intensely awkward because he just doesn’t get social cues, but he’s also very smart. He knows he’s bad with people, and is trying to get better at it, and partly doesn’t know how and partly has his own brain working against him. He’s able to look at and imitate people who he views as more socially functional, it’s just that his exposure to those people has been badly skewed over his life.

He and Futaba, while they don’t exactly get along, are on a similar wavelength, just by dint of being awkward around other people. They’re both very smart, and both frustrated about not being good communicators, but they can communicate with each other.

Flash back to my entire series of interactions with Yusuke at this point, and I realize how consistent this has been. I understand why so many of my dialogue choices have gotten a poor response, and why I feel like I have to work so hard to “get through” to him. I’d been treating him entirely like a different person, because it wasn’t obvious that he wasn’t.

This is on me. This is me snap-judging someone (even with evidence, I think his actions during his intro are still pretty crap, even given the ‘doesn’t really understand how to interact with people’ context) and then not giving them a chance. Yusuke’s been trying to open up and I’ve been patronizing him. He’s asking “how do I become better at this” and my answer is “you’re bad at this”, which is something he already knows.

The applications of this in my actual life are beyond count. Good communication is a skill, not an inherent trait shared by all people of some level of competence. Like many skills, some people will have a much, much harder time developing them. I’m kind of short– basketball is a skill I am predisposed to have a hard time developing. The same is true of communication for other people.

It’s a drum I beat regularly, though usually in the context of management. Good management is a form of good communication, which is a skill, that not everyone has. You’d think I’d have expanded that sphere to this extent, but it took P5 to get me to broaden that sphere.

P5 has a lot for me to unpack. It baits me a lot with things, suggesting I make a snap judgement about them, but sometimes proves that those snap judgements are correct. The lesson feels like an interesting balance between making the snap judgements and being open to having them changed, which I think is a lot harder than only doing one or the other.

Long hiatus, back now. A thing about me: it’s an effort for me to talk when I don’t feel like I have something to say (often, even when I do). I usually default to listening. I’ve spent a lot of the last year listening.

When it comes to games, we talk around some topics a lot. An example: games are art. This isn’t really refutable. It honestly wasn’t, ever, but for a solid couple of decades there was a big question mark around that. We’ve moved past that in a big way, and we’re seeing more and more amazing, beautiful, moving things in our games that simply aren’t possible unless it’s widely understood that games are art.

That understanding is important, it unlocks things, it makes people think and inspires them. Modern graffiti wasn’t viewed as an artistic medium for decades, and wasn’t widely accepted for even longer. Now we have Banksy, and massive outdoor city murals, and street art. The frame of expression widened as acceptance did. We’re seeing the same things in games.

This gets me to my original thought– listening and talking around topics. Games are art, indisputably. Games also teach, indisputably. We have an ever-expanding body of research that concludes that games are one of if not the best mechanisms for teaching. We’ve known that games are great for teaching for centuries– Go and Chess are old war games, used to teach strategy. The question becomes not “*can* games teach?” but instead “what are games teaching?”

It’s a thing we talk around a lot. We’ll talk about how well the game teaches us how to play it, how good the tutorial is and whether the progression curve teaches you the skills necessary to keep progressing. We talk about games teaching resource management, and strategy. We’ll laud games that use smaller versions of boss mechanics to prepare you for the boss itself.

What doesn’t come up much is the other stuff games teach us. Assassin’s Creed taught quite a few people how to appreciate classic art. Guitar Hero and Rock Band taught people about classic rock. These aren’t a core part of the game, they don’t help you beat the game, but they’re the parts that can stick with you. In school, no one cares that you’re good at completing worksheets or homework– what those things do is give you skills that stick with you for when you need them. Math class teaches you how to finish math class, but it also teaches you how to balance a budget, how to make estimates, how to think about problems logically, and a variety of other handy life skills. It teaches you how to use a calculator, so you can solve complex problems with one, and teaches you how NOT to use a calculator, so you can tell if the answer the calculator is giving you is likely to be correct or if you’ve put in some errors.

Games teach us all kinds of ancillary things, but we don’t really talk about them much (outside of some flavors of game scholars, hi2y’all if you’re reading this). It’s certainly not a discussion that comes up in the design process. There’s rarely enough space in the usual games-industry development cycle to have those kinds of discussions, much less act on them.

It means that a lot of stuff gets unintentionally taught, lessons that sink in that weren’t ever part of a plan. There’s an parallel to parenting here– the parents I know talk about the things they teach their children, and then the things their children “pick up”. These are the unintentionally taught parts, and games do the same thing.

I want to spend some time over the next few posts trying to put words to the unintentional things I’ve learned from games. It’s a conversation I find interesting, and (as mentioned) not one that comes up a lot. It’s a hard thing to think about, because it forces me to not just read between the lines of the game but also self-analyze and see how I’ve changed.

Might be an interesting experiment, we’ll see!

Per the title, quite possibly the least meaningful question it is possible to ask about anything. We learn it early, we learn it from everything around us. We obsess over the answer, as if the answer had any significance whatsoever. Spoilers: it never does. In relationships, in business, in politics, in parenting, whether the event in question is good or bad, we ask this question constantly.

We’re also really bad at answering it, or of doing anything useful with the answer once we have it. Perhaps we can definitively assign blame, then what? Are those to blame then exiled? Social pariahs? Sometimes. Sometimes we eliminate them in a variety of ways, removing them from “positions where they can continue to do damage”. Oftentimes we seek revenge for their wrongdoings, exacting vengeance in the name of justice as if any data anywhere suggested that was effective. What all of these things do is drive  a desire never to be caught, for even the tiniest mistake. Never be at fault, never be the one to blame. It is how small errors pile up until massive systems come crashing down. It is how those seeking to exploit the system find loopholes and get away with them. It is what makes it ever harder to answer the question “whose fault is this”, because we all know that it will be a Very Bad Time for whoever that person is.

What do we gain by this? Do we correct the error by identifying its source? Can we even accurately identify the source, or is that, like many things, more complicated than a simple pointed finger? Does ferreting out those responsible change the past, or adequately ensure that errors won’t happen in the future? Not really. Instead we spin our wheels unproductively, generating acrimony and paranoia to no real end. We get very worked up over the pursuit of this unknown, as if knowing it is an end unto itself.

My mother has a question that she poses whenever I or anyone else is getting worked up this way: “How would that be productive?” It’s a question that comes from a lifetime of clinical detachment, a need to separate conscious thought from emotion lest the latter overwhelm you. It can feel heartless; when I confide in her that I’m trying not to have an anxiety attack over my current stress level, she asks what having a panic attack would accomplish. Nothing, obviously, and to the wrong target that would be infuriating. For me it’s a redirection, a shift in focus and a hint at a better question. I get anxious when I ask the question “what is going to happen next?” — it’s not an answerable question and it’s possible to expend a lot of energy trying in vain to find an answer. It’s stressful to pursue unanswerable questions, but “How would that be productive?” hints at a better question: “What would be productive?” At an uncertain time, my mind works to find certainty, and I get anxious if I pursue questions that can’t be answered. Pursuing questions that CAN be answered, ones that add value and are productive, gives me something for my mind to work on and lowers my stress level.

For me, it’s a stepped process. I might not be able to answer “What happens next?” and I might not be able to answer the better “What do I do next?” I’ll take that a step deeper, if I don’t know what I should do next, I’ll ask “What can I do next?” Sometimes this isn’t enough, and the next question becomes “How do I find out what I can do next?” If I can’t answer a question, I step down until I get to a question I can answer, then work my way back up.

So, “Whose fault is this?” is really two questions. One is “How can we stop this bad thing from happening again?” and the other is “How do I stop feeling bad about this thing that has happened?” The unspoken thought process here is that finding the fault allows us to answer both at once, by “eliminating” the problem. Unfortunately, that’s not how problems are fixed, especially with people. At the very best, it brings up another question: “What do we do with this knowledge?”

There’s a different question that I’ve come to prefer: “What do we do next?” It helps us move forward productively, and helps us focus our efforts in a way that bears fruit. It skips the assignation of blame because the followup step to finding fault is inevitably “okay, now what?” which is where we’re getting to anyway. It sacrifices vengeance for forward motion– we will go on and if you are not with us, you will be left behind. It outs your actual saboteurs while allowing those who have made honest mistakes to atone. It is not forgiveness, it is efficiency. Exacting punishment requires resources that would be better spent on forward motion. We are a social species; being left behind is often punishment enough, and exceptions tend to make themselves known.

I spend a lot of time now trying to pursue only questions that have productive answers, and determining what those questions are. I want to ask actionable questions, I want to pursue trains of thought that have a tangible effect. It’s called in some circles a “bias for action”– a bias I’ll readily admit to.

I read an incredibly, incredibly petty article today. It’s written as a defensive piece that lashes out and, ironically, proves the very thing they’re railing against.

Short version, so you can skip the article if you choose: Polygon is upset because Bethesda has evidently claimed that games journalism doesn’t matter. They cite Bethsoft’s “late” review copies as an attack on reviewers and, by extension, customers. They strike back by offering the “sage” wisdom of not preordering games. It’s honestly sort of a pity that this kind of thing is coming from Polygon, because of all of the gaming media outlets out there, they’re the ones who flirt the closest with actual journalism the most. Polygon has some really excellent articles on occasion.

I have a variety of thoughts about this. First of all is the difference between “journalism” and “enthusiast press”. We have a name for news written by fans of a thing, about that thing, that is generally excited about said thing. It’s called enthusiast press, and it is what virtually every gaming media outlet actually is. Enthusiast press is fine, it’s a way of being a marketing signal boost, it’s a way of celebrating common interests, it’s great for building hype, it’s great for getting the word out about upcoming things. It is not hard-hitting journalism.

Journalism is a different thing entirely. It takes a goodly amount of training, and is genuinely very difficult. You have to extract information from potentially unwilling people, you have to know exactly how to protect your sources, you have to understand concepts like fact-checking, reduction of harm, integrity, and accountability. You also have to find a way to keep the lights on in your office WITHOUT that revenue stream being a conflict of interest. You can lament reality all you like, but that separation is absolutely vital to calling your content “journalism” and having anyone take you seriously.

I have no doubt that there are people at Polygon who understand this. It probably chafes them, I’m sure they would love to be able to do actual journalism. It chafes me, because the games industry could use some really great journalist outlets, ones that can report and make the entire industry better through transparency without pandering to major publishers or allowing themselves to be influenced or controlled by the very people they’re supposed to be reporting on. The industry could use it. Unfortunately, what’s happened instead is that the games enthusiast press has, as their relevance has shrunk, started throwing around the term “games journalism” to regain credibility, painting an illusion of separation where, realistically, none exists. In so doing, they’ve devalued the term “games journalism”.

Allow me to retell a story I heard: A group of people from games media outlets were invited to a closed-doors showing of an upcoming title. Their trips were paid for by the publisher, as were their meals and their hotels. Fairly standard practice. While viewing the game, several of these people heckled the presenter, disrupted the play session, and otherwise made big enough asses of themselves that they had to be escorted out. Their later-published reviews of their experience were, unsurprisingly, extremely negative. The publisher said nothing, simply did not bother to invite said people to another event. They quietly made a note, remembered the behavior of the hecklers, and acted accordingly.

Some of you may think you know who I’m talking about here. You probably don’t. This is a story I’ve heard retold MANY times, and the only difference is the publisher response– did they uninvite people to future events or did they grin and bear it? Otherwise the stories I’ve seen and heard are virtually identical. There’s a term for this: it’s called “biting the hand that feeds you”.

This kind of thing is *why* journalistic integrity is important, and why it’s vitally important for any kind of “honest” reporting to have that separation. Lest you think I’m absolving the publishers from this, consider: if the publisher is paying for the trip, controlling what reviewers see, and otherwise bankrolling the entire thing, how do any of us possibly think the results are unbiased? What possible value is there in paying money to show someone something and have them announce publicly that it’s awful? From a business standpoint, that’s unacceptable and expensive risk.

It’s not an unsolvable problem. If games media outlets don’t like being classed as “enthusiast press” and don’t like what they consider honest reviews to be characterized as “biting the hand that feeds them”, they can take the route of legitimate journalism. The difficulty here is that journalism in general is getting crushed out by enthusiast press which can be controlled by the things it’s reporting on. Finding a way to make money, to keep the lights on, without becoming beholden to the very people you’re trying to report on is a difficult obstacle to overcome. Not a lot of media outlets have figured it out, and I’m not limiting that to games here.

It’s a nasty problem, and it’s not one with a clear and obvious solution. Highly trained professionals with decades of experience are trying and failing to solve it. There’s no shame in being enthusiast press, because it pays the bills and keeps the lights on. It’s what a LOT of media outlets have been doing. But much like publishers can’t get both unbiased, publicly trusted mouthpieces and universally good reviews, the reporting side can’t get both the trust of journalistic integrity and the money/support from their targets.

Games reporters can accept this and either live with being enthusiast press or try to forge a path to journalistic integrity, but sniping at companies because they cast aspersions on your relevance is, well… petty.