My Favorite Game Genre

            I have not been posting nearly enough this year and I want to steer back from that.  To that end I have found a 30-day blog challenge and will be writing out entries, hopefully I can get all thirty days without any breaks, and if I manage to do that (since August has 31 days) I will think of an additional entry to write about.  I have done a 30-day challenge before, it for movies, but that was a while back, feel free to read those too if you like.

            Today is day 2, “My Favorite Genre”.

            Genre to me has a lot of different connotations.  It can evoke a style (Found Footage), a place of origin (Foreign Language), subject matter (Historical), setting (Western), or mood (Horror) that the work in question is.  This varies with Books and Movies but one thing neither of those mediums have is the element of Gameplay.

            Video Games can have Strategy, both Turn Based and Real Time; they can have Platforming, which can include a means to move from platform to platform in space via jumping, swinging, or teleporting; they can be Action games, with action based around a third person perspective, first person perspective, or even a far distant camera hooked up to some unseen ceiling.  Games can have guns, magic, or tools to build.

            When I was thinking about this I realized that there are two genres that battle for my affection here, the first is Turn Based Strategy, TBS and the other is Role Playing Game, RPG.  Each have their own strengths and weakness, but often start from a similar point, you are dropped into the world with very little skill and few abilities and gradually grow in power to win the game thru the acquiring of new abilities… I realize that is try of lots of games power ups are kind of important in lots of games that would not be described as RPG or TBS… Batman and Samus both get various flavors of mobility and offensive powers as they go along.  So what are the things about each that I really like apart from that slow gaining of power?  Choice.

            Let’s look at TBS with “X-Com: Enemy Within” a game I played about 130 hours of (and have talked about before).  In that game I am given a small team for each mission, I choose the members.  Each of those team members gains new abilities as they gain levels, I chose the abilities.  Everybody gets new gear, new weapons, and carries new equipment, all of which I chose to research and prioritize at some point in the game.  When I get the laser weapons is not pre-set by the game, what abilities my snipers’ choices are not preset by the game (though there are certain abilities that are so much better than others that there isn’t a “real” choice in some cases, I mean come on, who doesn’t pick squad sight?)  These things all happen because I chose those things to happen.  And sometimes those choices kneecap me like a mob enforcer.

I chose to have a soldier cut their limbs off so as to better fight aliens as a cyborg mecha.

            Let’s look at RPG with “Fallout 3”.  What does my character look like?  I get to choose.  Am I smart?  My choice.  Am I strong?  My choice.  Am I lucky, charismatic, or perceptive?  My choice.  What weapons do I like to use, be they bombs, knives, guns or lasers that can turn a gunman to dust.  Where do I go?  Wherever I want.  There is a story but it can simmer on the back burner till I get around to it.  (What is funny, is that while I am using it as an example of what I like here, I do not like Fallout 3 nearly as much as many people do, and precisely because it lacks a lot of the more nuanced choices I want in a story of this setting.  Many of the choices are too binary and often done with too little motivation.)  What I make of the world is shaped by my decisions and who I chose to work with.

I chose to let a lot of narrative problems go in order to enjoy the setting.

            I will talk about one last game while I am here that kind of strides the two of these categories that is fine but never really grabbed me deeply (so I won’t mention it too often for the rest of these blogs), “Pokemon”.  Pokemon has both an RPG element, in that you can choose what monsters you catch and train, what items you use on them, what moves you choose to teach them (which I find painfully thin on the ground), and contains a multitude of color and variety and drips with personality and consistent tone (even when it steps outside of those elements it doesn’t do so in a way that is not immediately reversible, so yeah there is a graveyard and a group of terrorists, but they are silly ghosts and goofy terrorists, just don’t think too hard about any of it).

            Pokemon has turn based combat, and this is where it differs from my tastes in a small but important way.  Where as in “X-Com” you would deploy a team of soldiers to the field, explore the area and engage the enemies, making placement and group tactics a much needed element to deepen and enrich the experience, Pokemon doesn’t.  Pokemon is a turn based combat game, which has very little strategy beyond picking the monster whose type trumps the enemy’s type, and they stand at the opposite end of an empty screen and shoot energy blasts at one another.  I am not a fan of that.

I think we can all agree that they have some of the best theme tunes of all time right?

            Here is where this blog will take a strange digression to talk about some broader things.  There are lots of fandoms that I have never got into, “Harry Potter” is perhaps the biggest pop culture thing that left me by, and Pokemon is close to that.  While I did enjoy two and a half of the games released over the last 20+ years it is not something that cuts deep (never played the card game, only saw one of the movies, never collected any toys, posters, or clothes) even though it has things I do like.

            It is important to know, that not all things are for all people.  That many things exist outside of one’s own tastes and experiences and that is okay.  In fact, it is great.  Having lots of different ideas contributes greatly to the strange mutations in fiction and games that allow them to grow and change to serve the needs of new people.  I see a lot of vile things online about certain movies, shows, and books, and while I do not like many of them, and see others as containing questionable messages, they are not harmful, and they serve a point.

If you find yourself looking at a game that doesn’t fit in with your world view, maybe instead of saying that you hate it, you just shrug and move on.  And the same goes for movies and TV you do not like.  Because you spewing hate at something might ruin the fun of someone who did like it and would like more of it.  Instead, maybe pay attention to things that are a lot more real and hurtful that you can do something about, and focus your energy there.

So yeah, after that long sidetrack because I have felt kind of sickened by the nerd culture’s treatment of certain things lately (and for a while).  I will just go ahead and repeat that I like RPG’s and TBS games the most as far as mechanics are concerned.  I would say that my tastes vary wildly in other areas though, and I will talk about those this month too.

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Incongruous Soundtrack

            Music plays a huge part it what we perceive on screen in movies and television.  Shows have blamed various drops in quality on the loss of good music direction/production ("Star Trek: The Next Generation" is the example I can think of, dropping a talented musical presence just as the rest of the show was shifting into gear).  This is a tool I think can be used in other ways though.

            Prevalent in theaters there are a lot of remakes and adaptations of older movies and books, but these productions lack an identity of their own because they are just doing what was done before with slightly better special effects or lighting budgets.  I actually think that one of the stronger ways a movie can distinguish itself is through a drastic change in the anticipated musical choices to accompany the scenes.  The best example currently would probably be "The Great Gatsby" released last month.

            I do not care for the book of this story, I find it to be well written, but the subject matter and the characters are just so spit inducing bad that I can't muscle through it.  This movie has those same issues, but it does something to distract you: music.  By putting in a soundtrack that is not just another 1920's production the film wakes the audience up and invites comparison to other things.  Rap music in the modern day based upon singing about drug dealing and casual misogyny evolving into an industry that sings about being rich and how awesome it is.  This is juxtaposed against a world of rich, misogynistic assholes who are miserable, and one of them got his money from alcohol distribution during prohibition.

"How about we don't make just another forgettable remake?" -Luhrmann

            All of that aside it gives you something else.  "The Great Gatsby" has a look, a feel, expectations, and a lot of previous iterations that were the book.  The Robert Redford film from ages back is a bland and joyless movie with no sting or identity beyond being an adaptation of the novel... basically beat for beat.  But the modern Baz Luhrmann directed version has an authorial stamp that distinguishes it in the minds of people.

            Luhrmann's "Gatsby" will be remembered for sucking, but so will its unique presentation.  This style was applied to the director's other period pieces, "Romeo + Juliet" which took the dialogue of the original play and set it into the modern world, and "Moulin Rouge" which took a period setting but with modern music adapted into it, taking typical troupes and a lot of music people knew but presenting them differently enough to grant the work a memorable (albeit kind of shit) collective whole.

            If I could make another example, "A Knight's Tale" directed by Brian Helgeland takes a story from "Canterbury Tales" and adds a rock soundtrack... to great effect.  It shows how sport was a popular thing and instantly draws your mind to the music the stadium plays during lulls in a game to keep the crowd up and interested.  It is granting you a perspective and identifiable mentality to the audiences in the movie.  It is drawing you into a film that is at its core very cliché.

Though I imagine the reasons people saw this movie might vary.

            This sort of thing is sorely missed in a lot of movies that really needed it.  "Troy" was a god awful film starring a huge cast, tons of costuming, huge numbers of extras, and fight scenes that were really cool.  The dialogue and music did nothing.

Though I imagine that the reasons people saw this movie might vary.

            "Troy" did try to change its source material up, changing a story involving very active gods and magic and making it very terrestrial, but did nothing to fix the real problems of Homer's "Iliad" (the story this all turns on).  The real problem is that the work was translated very literally by people who have no ear for normal people.  The movie has speech that is stilted to the point of being unbearable; terribly clunky and formal.  People in ancient Greece did not talk in formal English, soldiers in that time spoke the equivalent of soldiers today, like regular people in a stressful situation far from home.  People going to a theater want to watch a movie that sounds legitimate, not like it is out of time.  One might say that the movie, "The Immortals" (while visually and story wise being balls to the wall insane) is vastly easier to watch and be taken in by because the characters sound like people.

Though I imagine that the reasons people saw this movie might vary.

            Imagine a movie in which you saw warfare in the Classical Age via dialogue and music that elicited the feel of a war movie set in World War II or Vietnam?  Playing "The Ride of the Valkyries", "The End" by the Doors, or "Ohio" by Neil Young.  The juxtaposition of music between modern war and classic war might make the audience think about how the people at war in "Troy" were just like those kids who went to war in our own time, and that the greed of kings like Agamemnon is a thing that is as old as history and is STILL AROUND.  Then you could loosen up the words to have them flow naturally instead of like they are being written by a Professor of Classical Literature who is masturbating to the thought of Homer blindly reciting this all to a group of Greek Aristocrats.

            For other examples of music working with genre to make something unique isn't hard, and I think it is going to be done more and more as directors and producers have to try to express their own creative interests in a movie world that will only let them do so via adaptation.  "Firefly" was a science fiction show with western music and themes, "Cowboy Bebop" was jazz science fiction, and "Samurai Champloo" was Samurai hip hop, all of these were original properties with a blending of music and themes, while "Scott Pilgrim Versus the World" was indie rock Superhero, an adapted work which took a lot of the source material and (I think) elevated it with music you can actually hear (I have no idea how some authors have the audacity to produce comic books about music the reader cannot hear).

(This is the gayest blog post I have ever done...)