Worth Reading: 09/29/2014

Patrick Klepek
Updated

One of the benefits of stepping back from video the last few months has been an opportunity to explore (and fail) when it comes to pursuing stories. I've also been writing more, as you've probably noticed.

Let me know what you think of the Sunday editorials I've filed on the site. I really miss when Alex was filing weekly musings about the week that was, but I understood why he gave up on them: it was burdensome to have something to talk about every single week. That's not my approach with these. Instead, since Worth Reading has bumped to Monday, the weekend is often an opportunity when people are playing games and reflecting on them. It seems like a perfect opportunity to drop an editorial. It won't happen every Sunday, it might skip a few weeks. We'll see!

The last two have been tangentially related to Destiny because it's the game I've been spending the most time with lately that's not called Danganronpa 2. That will almost assuredly not be the case going forward. If there any topics that come to mind, please let me know. I've been mulling Notch's recent statement about selling Mojang for a few weeks now, and I might have something to say about that next weekend. Till then!

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If you've been reading Giant Bomb for a while, you know my love/hate relationship with the Metal Gear series. (In short, I adore 1 and 3, but can't stand 2 and 4.) But Andy Astruc makes some salient points about Metal Gear's acknowledgement of the person holding the controller as being particpatory in the Metal Gear experience. This goes far beyond a winking nod at interactivity, the equivalent of an actor walking to the camera. Rather, Metal Gear embraces the player, and acknowledges this only works because of them. WARNING: There are spoilers within (and below) for Metal Gear and Assassin's Creed.

"Games frequently dabble in all things meta as well, from Max Payne‘s fractured realisation that he was inside a computer game (and inside a graphic novel, inside a computer game), to Batman Arkham Asylum and Eternal Darkness‘ fake system errors, to that unnerving part at the end of Assassin’s Creed II where Minerva talks directly to the player in the future through a pre-recorded message played by a very confused Rennaisance-era ladies man. But the introduction of interactivity makes this whole fourth wall business a little more complicated, what with the audience constantly reaching through the screen and fondling the cast.

Metal Gear Solid takes the only logical route, completely ignoring any established rules about the diegetic and non-diegetic to tangle everything into a big, messy ball of non-fictional unreality. Campbell is telling Snake, played by us, how to use the Codec, and since we are Snake, our reaction--absorbing and appreciating this useful information--is equivalent to his reaction. We both exist as the same person, but also separately."

999 and Danganronpa have served as my introduction to the visual novel genre, but generally speaking, I know precious little about it. That's why I found Daniel Feit's report from the Tokyo Game Show so fascinating. Japanese publisher Voltage found a way to bring elements of its popular dating sims--specifically, the aggressively forward gesture known as the wall-thump--to life at the convention. It's an instance of sex being used to attract women--quite different from what we're used to. Unique!

"The games were barely present--many are free-to-play smartphone apps already available, so few people had any need to wait in line to play them. The publishers focused instead on recreating the fantasy within their games.

Voltage’s booth offered a different scenario in each corner. Not only did each 'interact with a hot guy' situation have its own stable of male models, but visitors could vote for their favorite hunk in a booth-wide election. Talk-show stage events were held with popular television actors, who read romantic lines submitted by fans through Voltage’s website."

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