In the 1950’s French magazine Cahiers du Cinema famously coined the theory of the auteur director by pointing out that they are in control of the mise en scene (the medium of the story). This is most easily explained by looking at the rolls of all the other members of a production.

In theatre no matter what the director tells the actors, when the curtain opens he is powerless to change the action. At the same time the actors are powerless to change the events of the screenplay. Hence the playwright is considered the author of the play: Shakespeare, Goethe, and Williams are the names we know in theatre, not the actors or directors. In film the director is the person in control of everything: the action, the camera, the script. All these elements are his to put together in any way they see fit. After the images are imprinted in celluloid there’s nothing anyone can do to change it, even if they try.

The auteur of a videogame is the player. No matter what the director, animator, texture sampler, programmer, or publisher does to a game, after it ships the player is the ultimate author of the game. Every experience is unique. Every playthrough different. This is why speed runs and super plays are so entertaining: we can watch how someone else decided to play out the events, how they authored the sequences and actions.

This is precisely the reason that games don’t evolve. Designers are still trying to deliver the same experience to every player that purchases their game. Sterilized to the point of ubiquity, many games feel like the player’s role is diminished, or even worse unnecessary. The best films are tied to the director, even ones with weak stories or poor writing: that’s not what the medium is as concerned with. Theatre is the realm of writers: even when a poor performance of Hamlet is premiered the writing isn’t what’s criticized. If a player is allowed to turn a game’s world into their own then the writing, acting, and mechanics can be excused.

Morrowind is possibly the strongest example I can think of to prove this. I spent over 300 hours in the game over about 4 different characters. I made the world my own, I broke the systems just as a law could be broken. I explored when and where I wanted. Never was I demanded to follow the tracks of a roller coaster for entertainment. The many, many faults of the game are easily overlooked since I had such freedom. As the auteur of my own experience I owned Morrowind like no one else ever will–well not exactly like anyone else. Games with deep mechanics works the same way, look at any 2D fighter. Diago has dominated his opponents by making every character bend to his will on screen in ways no one else can. His name is possibly more synonymous with Street Fighter than any of the developer’s names.

There are different ways to give the player auteurship (uhh, sure, that word works), and until developers find ways of allowing players to auteur different emotions games can’t evolve. Just putting emotions into the writing, or through actions (Aeris), will never be enough.

More thoughts on this later.

Every once in a while something so original and unique rolls around that it can’t be ignored. Zeno Clash—developed and published by Chilean game developer ACE Team—is not only singular in style, but also eccentric and bizarre, my favorite flavor of originality. The world in which the game takes place, Zenozoik, is hard to compare to anything else out there. While comparisons fail to capture the spirit of game: it’s similar to the visual aesthetic of Dave Mckean, the architectural design of Antoni Gaudí, and the raw brutality of God Hand blended together. The result is an impressive, creative, and extraordinary experience that feels nothing like anything I’ve played before.

I just realized I should probably be logging my articles here. For now I’ll start with today’s feature, The Rise and Fall of Yu Suzuki. I’ll start working on previous ones next.

Yu Suzuki is a father of videogames. His works have influenced the industry above and beyond almost all others. Yet it was announced earlier this week that Sega has “retired” Mr. Suzuki from his R&D creative officer position. This position was already small enough that last year Sega of America CEO Simon Jeffrey wasn’t sure Yu Suzuki still worked for SEGA. Now his title is manager of the R&D department for Sega’s AM Plus division only. But is he really “retired,” or just not as involved with the company anymore?

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.

My second feature is up at Play Magazine online:

I like this one a bit more than the last one. I also got an opportunity to talk with Jenova Chen–creative director of Thatgamecompany–for the article, which is always a treat.

There was an update for Super Street Fighter II Turbo: HD Remix, a game notable–if for nothing else–for having an exhaustively long name. Not that this post has anything to do with that, it’s just that, damn, it’s a long name.

So, as those reading this who’ve been my friends for a very long time know already, I use to be a huge fan of fighting games. During the Dreamcast era 2D fighters were among my most played genre.  To this day I can’t escape a certain passion for King of Fighters character drama. Now that everyone’s up to speed, you may find it strange that I’ve never been too fond of the Street Fighter series. When the title was first released I was far more interested in playing Samurai Shodown, or Mortal Kombat (hey, it was cooler then). Even my friends were far more interested in these games than SF2, which caused me to naturally avoid the game.

Over time I eventually fell into place with Street Fighter when SF3 was released. I was a huge fan of the SF3 series, and to a very small extent even attempted to learn how to play Ken and Mokoto at a competetive level. I had a friend in New Orleans who helped me try to get up to speed with other competators so that I would at least be able to place somewhere above last. Long story short: that never happen.

Since that time I’ve fallen further and further from my fighting game roots. This had to do with a combination of things, first was the decline of the arcade. The few remaining ones in my area started shutting down until only one remained (which was constantly filled with High School freshman dropped off by there parents with no money and greasy hair). Shortly after that Hurricane Katrina shut down that last one, which also caused me to relocate to an area that had no arcades that I could find. Moving around a lot causes a man to lose touch with many of their friends, and also to try less and less finding new ones.

So here I am, 8 years after the peak of my fighting game salad days, back in the same general part of the country and without nearly any friends… again. I’ve wanted to pick up Street Fighter IV since its release any yet any motivation to do so goes out the window the instant I remember that there’s no one to play against. Getting back to that patch for the game: I did pick up SF2:Long Name for the PS3 because I don’t have to pay monthly to play online. Because Sony doesn’t even have a mildly respectable online framework, a patch requires me to slowly and painfully download the entire game over again. During that time I devised a plan.

 The Plan

So, here it is. Because SF2:LN actually has decent netcode and I can play versus real people online I’ve decided to attempt to regain any skill I use to have at fighting games and perhaps even grow in strength. Since the game patched I’ve had a chance to play and fought two opponent. Both games went three bouts, all of which I lost. Currently I’m working on my Cammy skills because she has a quick and frantic style which matches my play type.  Today’s discovery: I found that there’s a followup attack to her qcf+P attack! This should help my arsenal.

So the time has finally come for me to use the first part of my blog title: WORK.

Here’s my first article that’s put up at Play Magazine Online. Hopefully it’s the first of many, and I know at least one more is coming, but only time will tell.

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.

As a matter of obsessive habit I check Steam every Friday when I get home. Sometimes it’s like getting a present that I can share with other people. Games have been known to go so cheap they’re impossible to pass up. There’ve been a few games that I bought once for a console then re-bought on Steam for basically nothing. Five minutes ago that game was Lost Planet.

Lost Planet was one of the early release titles of this generation of consoles that gave me faith in the “new direction” at the time. Many people condemned the game for the very reasons that it apealed to me. Boiling down the game to a skeletal shell of itself leaves a player with the impression of both very-very pretty graphics, and “archaic” 16-bit design ethos.

Rather than being upset over this contrast of the very-new and the just-old-enough, I thought of it as a breath of fresh air from the stale smell that most new games around that same time gave off. Many were overly complicated first person action games. To me it felt like Capcom sat down and figured out what they could do best (that “archaic” design ethos) and then combine it with what they thought the public was looking for (bloom-infused high resolution graphics).

This seems to have confused most people who were looking for “something more.” I’ve never figured out what that exactly means. To me Lost Planet is one of the gems from this generation of console games, and for $5 I feel it’s worth giving a look if you haven’t yet.

So, I’m still very busy with school. I’ve been taking some photography classes since I started returning to school so I thought it was about time to post some images.

Honestly this is more of a test than showing off something special. I shot these recently at Mandala Sand Painting exhibition. For those unfamiliar with my personal life, I feel should point out that I’ve always had an interest in Buddhist philosophy. Seeing Buddhist monks perform this art was a real treat for me.

If you want you can leave comments about the photos, but like I said this isn’t to show off my photos (I’ll show off later). I used Adobe Lightroom to edit and create the website using a basic template. Any design comments are welcome as well. You can find the gallery HERE or by clicking on the images below.