Today marks the first day of my 28th year on earth. Exciting! You know what I did today? I went out and looked at guitars, hit up a Borders and bought a new copy of The Idiot, came home and made some tea, played a little guitar, then read the new intro to my book. Later tonight I’ll be watching the Criterion Collection’s new release of Mishima, a film I’ve been trying to get a copy of for the past 4 years or so.

As if that wasn’t boring enough, get this: when reading the new introduction to Fyodor Dostoevsky’s The Idiot I learned a new word and instantly thought of how to apply it to videogames. Sometimes I feel like slapping myself. So anyways, the context is that part of the book examines the Russian Orthodox Church. One of the cruxes of this sect of Christianity is kenosis, the Greek word for “emptying out” in relation to Christ.

The Kenostic character model: Any character in a game which has been already emptied out of emotion, family, memory, or some other very personal experience. This allows the player to nicely and comfortably fit inside their mentality. Frequently seen in RPGs.

There, happy birthday from me to you. A new term for videogames.

I’ve always hated bloggers (at least I think that’s the proper term for them) who try to act the part. The part for this story is about being “so avant-garde that I’m an authority on the subject.”

I’m not referring to myself, just someone I ran across while doing research on the internet. About a month ago I was working on a project for class about David Lynch. It was to be a retrospective on his career and life. While doing some research I ran across someone who claimed to be an authority on avant-garde because of all these individual things they’d heard/read/seen.

While I didn’t read the whole essay I came away with one little bit that stuck in my head when they said: “I even listened to Trout Mask Replica twice last year. On purpose!” It was written as though this was some grueling task that required nerves of reinforced steel beams to endeavor.

Why this particular comment stuck in my head I don’t know. I run across people like this on the internet quite a bit, ones who want some sort of award for being stranger than you. It irks me, but usually I just gloss over it. There was probably something about the name Trout Mask Replica that made it stick.

So I obtained the album without any prior knowledge of what it could possibly sound like just to see what a trout mask replica could possibly be. The album is fantastic. It is a bit difficult to listen to, yet nothing that someone who’s familiar with traditional jazz would have a problem with. It’s so bizarre that it paints some of the most vivid pictures with words that I’ve heard. At this point I’ve probably listened to the album a dozen times, every sequential listen is more rewarding than the last.

More recently I tried to figure out why, when I listen to Trout Mask Replica, it started to sound more and more familiar. Heading to the source of our instant collective knowledge—Wikipedia—I figured out why. Apparently in the early 1980’s Tom Waits was introduced to Captain Beefheart (the band behind Trout), which influenced his future work quite a bit. It all clicked together at that instant and I realized that I had heard the inspiration across Tom Waits’ albums.

Then I began looking into Tom Waits a bit in hopes of finding a new album of his that I may enjoy. One album I ran across was titled Night on Earth. Something about the title seemed familiar (probably from the similar named Night on the Sun, an EP by Modest Mouse) only to find out that it was the soundtrack for a film of the same name.

Looking into the film, it turns out that Night on Earth is a movie I’ve been trying to remember the name of for many years. The thing that made remembering the name difficult was that I only remembered one of the five stories that takes place in the movie. Because of this I thought I was trying to remember a TV show, something similar to Taxi Cab Confessions in the 90s. I saw the film with my parents somewhere after the movie was released in the mid-90s. I remember the one story in the film because it was hilarious and absolutely unique.

The vignette that I recall involved a taxi driver in Rome who picks up a priest of some sort. Even though it is night the driver is still wearing his sunglasses, which the priest asks him to take off to ensure his safety as a passenger. The driver, riddled with the weight of a disturbing sexual past, proceeds to confess to the priest as he drives him to the church.

The confession included many stories of sexual acts performed on fruit—large ones like melons with holes cut in them—and then how his friend introduced him to sheep. The sheep part gets more disturbing than the fruit. As he grows older he’s become ashamed of his past and finds a nice woman to marry. On the night of his own wedding there’s an earthquake (or some other natural catastrophe) during the reception, which causes one of the bride’s maids to become overturned on a piece of furniture, her rear unclothed, posterior in the air. After the initial shock of the event passes he looks over to the bride’s maid and instantly recalls his favorite sheep from adolescence and he proceeds to act as he did with the sheep.

Yeah, ok, here’s the weird part. I remember all of that even though it’s been about 15 years since I saw it. While this may be a slightly inaccurate recollection, I’d wager that it’s at least 90% correct. That’s how vividly I remember the movie. I’m going to try to track it down now; Netflix is the first stop.

And now I’ve come full circle. Two gifts have been presented to me through a series of strange events resulting from research. It’s funny how things end up sometimes.

Radio silence has ended. Sorry for the seeming lack of updates. I’ve started school and been exceptionally busy.

 But, it is Halloween! My favorite time of year. With the holiday comes the glory of good and bad horror movies. Thanks to NetFlix and their “watch it now” on-demand movie viewing service I’ve gotten to experience a gamut of horror movies. I try to fill up for the year so I don’t get the urge to watch them during every season.

I’ve been attempting to watch at least one horror movie a night and to watch them completely no matter how bad they are. There have been some good, some bad, and some really bad. Luckily I actually found a diamond in the rough with The Signal.

Going into the film I had no expectations. I did know that it was written and directed by three different guys, and that the plot involved a broadcast signal turning people into killers. Good enough to start with! So, I watched it and found myself both creeped out about the situations, and really enjoying it. The next day I couldn’t stop piecing together the puzzle of the plot and realizing unique and interesting things about it.

It is still the only film I’ve purchased after watching it on-demand from NetFlix. That means it’s good. Seriously good, and for a horror movie that’s very difficult. Caveat: There’s a small part at the begining of the film that is really, really terrible. It serves it’s purpose, but I don’t think it is neceassy as it was so bad I almost stopped watching the film before it started.

So, when you’re wandering around the movie store this holiday season keep an eye peeled for The Signal.

As a few of you may know, I’ve been under employ by the Federal Govenment for nearly seven and a half years now. I’ve been under the thumb of the United States Coast Guard (a subsidiary of the Department of Homeland Security) and their Uniform Code of Military Justice for far too long. I got into this gig so that I could save up money for college because I knew that I was horrible at doing it myself. I found out recently that I have the added benefit of being able to get a free ride to any Illinois public college on top of over $36,000 from the Montgomery G.I. bill. After all this time I’m coming out of the service with about 34 throw away college credits from the Coast Guard Institute, a free ride in college, and I’ll be paid to be a student.

Funny how some things work out. I mean, I’m pretty much set, the government is even moving me back to the Chicago-land area mid-November. I shouldn’t have to worry about anything, and most people would be more than willing to accept what I’ve been handed, so over seven years of my life in a job that I mostly hated shouldn’t be too great a sacrifice, should it? Nahh, probably not. I had a lot of spare time on my hands at work because my work load was designed for people far more remedial in their tasks than I am (on average, barring about 6 total months over the past 5 years, I was only working about 50% of the time I was at work and was one of the best employees who was constantly commended). Top off that nice career with 90 days of paid vacation (which I had to earn and save) you’d think nothing were wrong. Oh yeah, and I got a Coast Guard Achievement Medal.

That’s me in the middle, don’t I look pretty? With all these positive things you’d think it pretty strange that I’m generally in a bit of a funk, mildly depressed and fairly stressed out right now, but I am. I can’t put my finger on what it is either, which is really bothering me.

Anyways, so yes, I’ve never really liked talking about being in the military becuase it’s never something I’ve wanted to define me as a person, so let’s just move on. My last day was actually Friday the 2nd of November, but I hadn’t done much work at work for the past four weeks (well, technically I took one of those weeks off, so only three). So I decided what better way to celebrate than to do something I hadn’t done in about 10 years: go to Rocky Horror Picture show in a theatre. Apparently it’s only done four nights a year in St. Louis (though I haven’t seen it done anywhere else I’ve lived since I joined the military, so I can’t rightly complain) and I was lucky enough to get in on Friday night. I let my hair down (or up depending on your understanding) and decided to go all out. It was a fantastic evening and a great celebration. My wife Sara and I both got dressed up: her in grand vaudeville attire, and I as unconventional conventionest.

Fantastic night and a great show (although I wasn’t too big a fan of the actor who played Dr. Frank). Well, know I should be working on the magazine more, but, well, I just can’t do it. I’m in a rut. Sorry for anyone who’s waiting on it, hopefully it will be finished soon.

First, the TIGSource B-Game Competition is over. If you recall, I was involved with one of the games, donating 5 games to the The 100-in-1 Klik & Play Pirate Kart. We took 6th place (out of 29) so that’s pretty good! The winner was also one of the games I voted for because I have a soft spot for zombies. Unfortunately I don’t think that this actually resolves the issue that the competition set out to tackle: what is a B-Game. The winning game ended up being very polished, and sort-of straight forward. It was clichéd in many ways though, which is kind of always how I see B-Movies (clichéd and bombastic, which Cottage of Doom fits into). Also, of the two mentioned writeups on the games, my entries to the Pirate Cart were mention in each. Kick the Habit was mentioned in one, and Sad Old Man in the other (though just in image form).

~Over at High Dynamic Range Lying there was a new entry titled Telling stories and Realizing worlds. Since I’m replaying and still greatly enjoying Half-Life 2 again the image at the top made me read more carefully than usual to what Nayan was saying. He touched on some topics about HL2 which I think are both prominent and important not only to the game itself, but games in general. I recommend reading the article linked to above otherwise my comments may seem a bit disjointed (which, you know, they are):

HL2 is pretty much, the state of the medium as far as combining narrative and gameplay. The result is the emergent product. I honestly feel like this is what most reviews miss, or at least don’t realize is the point of the game. The product is not the disc sitting in the box. It’s not a list of bullet points and length. The product is the result of many months/years of hard work from the developers mixed with the player. Unlike most mediums, a game does not exist without a player. A game can not exist in a vacuum where graphics or writing alone actually mean something and can be graded. This is not to say that the graphics are irrelevant: flash-level graphics may get the job done as well as cell-processor level HDR bump-mapped graphics. The product is dependent on how well the creator gets their point across using an actor they’ve never met.

For the instance of a puzzle game, the actor is omniscient and molding the game around them. Without the developer to give them the items to mold there is no game, and graphics or story exist as spread sheets or movies. These items only exist as a result of the emergent narrative.

It’s interesting to think about, and the more that developers actually do think about it the better experiences we’re going to have. Valve goes through extensive play testing and QA stages (note that Bungie also did for Halo 3). In these play test sessions they make sure that the player is doing what they want them to do as an actor. As a result the player (generally) will follow a script they don’t even know exists for them, and experience something above and beyond what any other medium can offer. The best example of this is the very early chase sequence in Half-Life 2. As a result of so much play testing I ended up falling directly into the hands of the developer and was molded like putty into the actor I needed to be. It was brilliant, and probably one of my fondest game memories from the past 5 years.

Also, it’s pretty important to differentiate between Story and Narrative. Story is the easier side: it’s what’s told to the player, either in text or through video/cutscene. Narrative is a slightly different beast which is far more developed in earlier games than since the birth of the cutscene. For example: Strider. The narrative is the player killing wolves in the artic to break into a mechanical fort. As the player runs across the mine laden snow field the narrative of what’s happening unravels: you’re running down the side of a mountain and entering a base. When the sequence is over you, the player, know you have just done this but the game never states it, you don’t have your actions re-told or encompassed into a story. Many arcade games and early console games did this best, and as a result we have very fond memories of these games because we made their stories, they weren’t told to us. One of the most crushing days for me in gaming was finding out every little detail about Samus’ past via the anime storyboards in Zero Mission. Since the story of Metroid had previously been so much based on the narrative I created through playing, the illusion was shattered with “real” explanations. Narrative is very powerful, and often something that is lazily ignored in current game design.

Sorry, I’ve gotten way off topic and gone on long enough! I think the point I was getting to is that the games with the best stories are the ones incorporating it into the emergent narrative of the game rather than forcing it as an aside.

So basically I just wanted to capture that here and talk about Half-Life 2 a little more.

~ As a final note, I was linked to a really excellent blog recently titled The Criterion Contraption written by Matthew Dessem. As an aspiring script writer he’s currently going through ever Criterion film in order of release on DVD to get a better understanding of foreign film, and film in general. He does a lot of research into each film with a self established average of fifteen hours work put into each entry. After about three years of steady work on the blog even Criterion has officially recognized it and linked to it from their main site. He’s only up to #77 (Criterion is currently up to #401) but there are still some really amazing films up to that point. This also reminded me that I need to invest in some of those new Eclipse series box sets Criterion is releasing. Specifically the Ozu and Kurosawa box sets.