By Kieron Gillen on March 19th, 2009 at 10:44 am.
We’ve been promising this for a while, but I’ve finally managed to go through and edit this. It’s still fifty minutes recorded when I was off in New York for NYCC and crashing overnight at game journalist dynamo Leigh Alexander‘s Brooklyn apartment. At near midnight, after hitting a bar somewhere, whilst drinking some manner of whiskey. We mainly focus on Leigh’s background in games and her ongoing interests – which includes lots on sex and sexuality in games, and culture generally. It’s both more off-topic and probably more explicit than usual. To say the least. It’s a fascinating carcrash between some fancy games and cultural theory and… well, just a carcrash. Also, takes a while to get the mic position sorted so Leigh’s laugh causes some peaks, especially early on. We know that some of you are sensitive like that. Anyway – you can download it direct here, it has a special internet home and here’s the Itunes home, while the full running order is beneath the cut…
0:01 Intro, which includes lies about not having done a podcast in a while. It was done back in February, when we hadn’t. Hello Kieron! Hello Leigh!
0:35: Which podcast is best? Is it ours? Is it?
1:20: Some Xenophobia. RPS reader percentages.
1:43: This is as loud as Leigh gets, by the way, and we sort out the mikes from now on in. Don’t run away, sensitive-eared listener.
1:55 Kieron introduces Leigh and what we’re going to do – as in, interview her about her history with PC games and why she stopped being a PC gamer.
2:55 Leigh’s history in gaming and having a blessed childhood.
6:30 Leigh’s cat makes its first entrance as she talks about her depression with Crashing PC Games.
7:05 Leigh says the word “lugubrious”.
7:50 Leigh talks about Majestic. Kieron suggests that stalker internet boyfriends are the new ARGs.
9:25 Kieron is silent for a very long time.
9:30 We start discussing Japanese Dating Simulators. As in, Hentai videogames and Leigh’s reviewing thereof. Also, her cat making noises.
11:10 Leigh tries to get Kieron in trouble with his girlfriend.
11:30 Hentai Achievements on Xbox Live. Discuss.
12:30 Sincere romantic stories in the game leads to Kana Little Sister. Plus stirring defense of incest in fiction on Leigh’s part.
14:05 Kieron proves that he isn’t mature enough for this conversation. Leigh soldiers on.
14:50 Why does none of this get reviewed? Other than Leigh and Something Awful. And more importantly, why can’t Leigh get free copies?
16:55 Leigh is upset that Kieron may edit the podcast. He did edit the podcast, though not to clean it up. Just to remove the totally slanderous stuff. Though not all.
17:40 “Refining our approach to sexuality in videogames”. Yes. Leigh takes in how it works in real world drama. Kieron interjects with meanness against fellow RPS members.
19:00 Leigh gets worryingly close to confessing she’s a furry.
21:05 Do drunk podcasts work? Drunks! A little about what we’ve been up to. Possibly not on topic.
22:20 The story about the man who stunk of piss. Kieron is mean to another member of RPS.
23:00 Why are we interested in shitty videogame narratives? The reason why videogame movies suck and our love of certain characters in games.
25:10 Cheesy hentai conventions which, in themselves, can be the entire point. Yes.
26:45 Kieron paraphrases John Walker’s argument against her position. Perhaps too paraphrased.
27:40 Red Alert 3 add-on discussions. Leigh proves she understands PC Games. Communazis.
28:30 Kieron gets back to the point: the Highlander’s Understanding Comics and iconic imprinting on simple narrative.
30:10 Halo Novels and other spin offs. Kieron may get no more work from certain employers. Deep Resident Evil Fanfiction.
31:10 Games Journalist slash/fic. No, really.
32:25 Leigh does NOT fancy Warren Spector. We tease about his seeekrit product.
33:00 Kieron calls Leigh on her Furryness. Leads to a serious chat about animal sexual characteristics in humans: “The theoreticals of certain fetishes”.
36:10 Kieron pours Leigh more booze. Will they never learn? Debate continues on similar sexual elements and literalism in Western culture.
38:00 Bonesville as a western porn game. Plus Red Light District. Swiftly segues to Second Life not turning Leigh on. At All.
39:20 Escort review sites for Second Life. Leigh plugs her column on Red Light District. How having people in her sex fantasies is a turn off.
41:00 Cybersex versus Avatar Based sex.
42:15 Kieron probably asks too personal questions. Leigh talks about Roleplay scenarios back in the day and wrestles with her aversion to avatar-sex.
43:25 Second life and games journalist Matthew Kumar. We are incredibly mean to Matt Kumar.
45:00 Leigh talks about people who take Snow Crash a bit too seriously. Kieron just won’t leave Matt Kumar alone.
46:45 Leigh is very arrogant. Kieron is very mean. Plus GEEK PRIDE…
48:00 Except that geek. You know the one. The one who likes Second Life.
50:00 Sex and the Sims.
50:05 Which Leigh brings in tales of small town bicuriosity and making Jesus and Priests have sex. No, really. The Sims as an experimental lab of race, sex and class.
51:50 Sick things Leigh does with the Sims.
53:00 “Maybe I’m just a psycho”.
53:15 Wrapping up and high fives. Leigh Loves you.
19/03/2009 at 10:46 Feet says:
This should be amusing.
19/03/2009 at 10:48 ChaosSmurf says:
FEMALES? ON MY INTERNET? and such forth.
19/03/2009 at 10:50 Feet says:
I’m going to stop listening to Three Moves Ahead ep4 to listen to this. Should be an interesting change of pace. ¬_¬
19/03/2009 at 10:54 Kieron Gillen says:
We talk about terrain briefly!
KG
19/03/2009 at 11:00 Fashigady says:
Wow, can’t wait to listen to this… I think :/
19/03/2009 at 11:01 Feet says:
Here you go Leigh, the whole of the Last Express on vimeo.
http://vimeo.com/3089597
19/03/2009 at 11:09 PC Monster says:
Anyone would think you’re a bit smitten, Keiron, the way you keep banging…on about her. :P
19/03/2009 at 11:11 Feet says:
Come on, let’s be honest the entire internet gaming community is smitten with her.
19/03/2009 at 11:11 MacBeth says:
PC Monster, that’s been obvious for months…
19/03/2009 at 11:11 Steven Hutton says:
I have to say after trying for 2 HOURS last night to get a game on left 4 dead which didn’t immediately disconnect me from whichever awful basement server the game was running on. I can really sympathise with Leigh’s move to consoles.
19/03/2009 at 11:13 Okami says:
You know, at some point you will run out of naming conventions for the podcast file and have to use re-use an old one..
19/03/2009 at 11:15 PC Monster says:
“Come on, let’s be honest the entire internet gaming community is smitten with her.”
I’m not. Does this mean I’m not part of the gaming community? :(
19/03/2009 at 11:19 Kieron Gillen says:
Okami: I thought I re-used the one most of them have been? What have I fucked up?
KG
19/03/2009 at 11:33 Klaus says:
@ PC Monster.
Yes, that’s exactly what it means. Some men in nice hats will be at your location shortly to decommission you. Thank you and good day.
19/03/2009 at 11:47 PC Monster says:
*cries*
Meanwhile…great point about game narratives usually sucking hard. Resident Evil had a pants narrative, but was enjoyable to play. What’s with that?
19/03/2009 at 11:49 Bobsy says:
“deleted the slanderous stuff”? What about the libel? Surely that’s more pertinent?
19/03/2009 at 11:51 Kieron Gillen says:
I like to think we’re in conversation with you guys rather than broadcasting, because we’re all friends. Except with pedants. Those guys are tedious as hell.
KG
19/03/2009 at 12:08 Pedant says:
Your last sentence should have another as in it; “those guys are AS tedious as hell”
XD
19/03/2009 at 12:09 Serenegoose says:
Achievement unlocked! Mr Bubbles: Be the adored playmate of 50 underage girls.
19/03/2009 at 12:10 Kieron Gillen says:
Well played.
EDIT: You too, Serenegoose.
KG
19/03/2009 at 12:11 Feet says:
@ PC Monster
Ok, smitten is probably the wrong word, the gaming community should certainly think that she’s awesome though. ;)
I’d say Leigh deserves a huge amount of credit for her work in games journalism. The whole Rapelay thing she did recently being a case in point, but her abberant gamer column contains loads of great articles. She’s smart, articulate and clearly love games. And, well, she’s a she. So she can’t be instantly dismissed as a testorone-filled pervert.
She does write about consoles too much though.
19/03/2009 at 12:14 Matt says:
You guys really need some better mic’s! the high pitched breakup is destroying my ears. Aside from that, good cast.
19/03/2009 at 12:18 Roritharr says:
This was an incredible podcast… i’d love to talk about games like that, but here in germany most people haven’t accepted video games and so it is still stigmatized if you try to talk about it seriously.
At Night.
On a kitchen floor.
Drunk.
19/03/2009 at 12:22 PC Monster says:
@Feet
Sorry, I tend to get a bit literal. But yeah, I agree – she’s a very interesting figure. Doesn’t hurt that she’s also pleasant on the eye but I’ve read and enjoyed more than one of her reviews and blog posts. Exploring the areas of gaming that she does is also very brave and highly commendable.
19/03/2009 at 12:30 Okami says:
I’ve allways thought of myself as beeing pedantic in a rather cheerful and nice sort of way. I’m also a really rather sloppy pedant, since this really is the most common naming convention.
*sigh*
Anyway, what’s more important than my stupid nitpicking is, that this is, as always, a grand podcast.. Made even better by mentions of bunny girls and cat girls.
Err…
19/03/2009 at 12:38 Kieron Gillen says:
Okami: In your case, I seriously want to know what I did wrong. :)
KG
19/03/2009 at 12:49 MetalCircus says:
A GIRL.
WHAT
19/03/2009 at 12:53 Okami says:
You actually did nothing wrong. I just tried to be pedantic about all the RPS podcasts having files named after different naming conventions and failed. Miserably. Because there actually is a certain method to it.
19/03/2009 at 13:06 Matt Kemp says:
Insightful comments hidden between piercing laughter.
My brain hurts now (from both).
19/03/2009 at 13:11 Kerotan says:
That was awesome, I enjoyed it very much.
Also I love the shittyness factor if you know what I mean from all these podcasts, something touches me when it is announced through cackly mics that you’re recording from the bedroom/kitchen/train, and then podcast starts to derail minutes into the discussion of things I wouldn’t traditionally associate with gaming, but are still incredibly interesting.
Bravo.
19/03/2009 at 13:11 Tworak says:
Who? Also, sex?
19/03/2009 at 13:19 pignoli says:
@Matt: The mic is fine, it’s just the pitch of the voice going into it is too high for a pc game podcast…
Interesting insights into a segment of gaming I don’t really have the time or inclination to get into though, nice work.
19/03/2009 at 13:39 Markoff Chaney says:
Enjoyable Listen! Slight variations in loudness and timber lead toward keeping my hand on the volume, but the content was enjoyable. Good to hear a colonist’s voice on an RPS podcast. ;)
19/03/2009 at 14:09 Leigh says:
I hardly remember any of this conversation. And man, I am an annoying drunk!
Thanks for the very kind things you said about me, though.
19/03/2009 at 14:17 Baris says:
Brilliant podcast, I had never looked at sexuality in hentai or MMO games that way before. Kieron’s comment at the very end almost had me on the floor with laughter too, definitely a nice way to end it.
19/03/2009 at 14:19 Kieron Gillen says:
I almost cut that actually.
KG
19/03/2009 at 14:32 Baris says:
Glad that you didn’t, while the whole podcast was very funny that last bit at the end really made it perfect.
19/03/2009 at 14:32 Nutterguy says:
Glad you didn’t because it was priceless! X-D
19/03/2009 at 14:33 Nutterguy says:
oh Jinx!
19/03/2009 at 14:38 Kieron Gillen says:
It was a borderline “I think this is funny but someone will take it seriously and say ‘You’re disrespecting your readers!’”. But totally went for it.
KG
19/03/2009 at 14:41 Nutterguy says:
…and that’s why you are who you are and we love you all the same!
19/03/2009 at 15:03 PC Monster says:
…and you were spot on. *whistles nonchalantly*
19/03/2009 at 15:08 Robin says:
More drunken podcasts please.
Leigh should try emulating the old Japanese home computers (PC-98 etc.). Some of the 1990s eroge are interesting. Developers only had a few floppies worth of storage, 16 colours and midi music to play with, but were still able to make the games weirdly atmospheric. Every picture had to be a ‘payoff’ (ahem).
Yeah, I probably wasted my teenage years.
19/03/2009 at 15:26 AndrewC says:
There’s a lot of furry-hating and general ‘look what shit Japan came up with now!’ that goes on around the Internets I frequent – and lord knows it’s fun. But Leigh gave a pretty good explanation of why it always felt a touch ‘off’ to me – namely the stuff about Westerners treating their narratives literally, but those crazy Japs being much more abstract about their stories. The mocking suggests we’re better, as opposed to just very, very different. Still, as long as I can mock Halo fans with equal brio I guess i’m balanced out. And Resident Evil 5 is soooooo racist.
However she never seemed to be able to elucidate her misgivings about second life sex beyond ‘eeeuuuu!’. Maybe it was because she was too drunk by that point, Kieron you terrible man.
19/03/2009 at 15:29 Saskwach says:
I hate admitting this but I have in fact read the first three Halo novels, when I was young and stupid, or maybe just a bit younger and more stupid than now. God were they terrible. Fittingly enough, the worst by far was The Flood, which was a novelisation of the game (how anyone could have thought that a good idea I don’t know, but then they got my money for it so who am I to judge?) while the best was The Fall of Reach, which was a prequel, and thus the least constrained by the game plots.
19/03/2009 at 15:32 The_B says:
There should totally be an achievement when you start a hentai game.
ACHIEVEMENT UNLOC…
This never normally happens. Honest!
19/03/2009 at 15:36 AndrewC says:
Halo game plots hahahahaha. We all did stupid things when we were young.
19/03/2009 at 15:53 PleasingFungus says:
Saskwach: Honestly, I really rather liked The Fall of Reach. Shame it vanished mysteriously from my shelves about a year ago.
I’ll agree with you about the rest, though, especially The Flood. That one was… so very bad.
(Halfway through the podcast now, paused to respond to Leigh’s question about the Halo novels. It’s like I’m having a real-time conversation! Except, less so.)
19/03/2009 at 16:03 Okami says:
A novelization of the original Halo game?
That sounds grand.
The master chief was told to look up, so he looked up. Then he was told to look down and he did that as well. After he had looked up and down, he had to look left and right and not even that was an obstacle for the hero.
tbc…
19/03/2009 at 16:28 Kester says:
@Okami: And I guess the second half of the book would just be the first half, only written backwards.
19/03/2009 at 16:29 The_B says:
Also: you’ve now totally opened the doors to some new RPS/Leigh Alexander slash/fic. It’s like Candyman, only the mirror is the internet.
19/03/2009 at 16:40 Pags says:
I simply refuse to believe that there are people out there who haven’t played The Last Express.
19/03/2009 at 16:43 AndrewC says:
Me.
19/03/2009 at 16:44 Pags says:
Your life is incomplete.
19/03/2009 at 16:53 BeamSplashX says:
Leigh hasn’t been to Europe?!
And of course, excellent podcast. First one I’ve listened to, actually.
19/03/2009 at 16:54 Hypocee says:
Alternatively you can just watch it. http://fidgit.com/archives/2009/03/the-last-express-as-a-movie.php
19/03/2009 at 16:55 Hypocee says:
I’m so sorry. I don’t know how I missed that.
19/03/2009 at 16:59 Schmung says:
This was splendid, though it did leave me with an urge to go out and get trolleyed. Ah well.
19/03/2009 at 16:59 Pags says:
Simply watching The Last Express completely defeats the purpose of the game though, because there are so many different ways to play it and you really have no idea how some of your actions might change the game later on. The only other examples of games I can think of which do that sort of choice as well as The Last Express did are maybe the first Fallout and, slightly more recently, Fahrenheit.
19/03/2009 at 18:51 Morph says:
One of the most oddly insightful podcasts I’ve listened to. Never followed Leigh that much because of my whole ‘consoles suxxor’ attitude. Great stuff!
19/03/2009 at 20:20 Xercies says:
Hmm I’m very open about consoles now since most of my later childhood we didn’t really have a powerful machine so we had to make do with SNES and N64.
Anyway Hentai games, i like what she is doing with them(No just no don’t even think about it) and if there was more people like her then maybe the people playing them would be a little bit more open. Since I like a bit of hentai now and again, its just so stigmatised in our countries.
Great podcast though it did hurt my ears a lot.
And yes its very easy to get smitten, but that’s only because its rare to find a woman that likes videogames that much to have an intelligent conversation about the nature of hentai games.
19/03/2009 at 20:36 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Anyway Hentai games, i like what she is doing with them(No just no don’t even think about it)
Too late.
I’m listening now, first RPS podcast I’ve ever listened to, actually.
19/03/2009 at 20:38 Radiant says:
Well there has been ONE japanese dating sim that sold very well in the west.
A lesbian dating sim at that.
DOA Extreme Beach Volleyball.
The marketing on that was genius.
You didn’t know what you were playing until you were knee deep trying to buy the right gifts to keep your partner happy.
19/03/2009 at 20:49 drewski says:
I’ve always thought games stories are vastly overrated compared to more sophisticated narratives, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily because games want dodgy stories, but rather because we tend to get vastly more invested in game stories and tend to be biased by that. Deus Ex is a classic example – the amount of people I’ve read hailing that as an amazing story baffles me, it’s B-grade cyberpunk at best. But people are invested in it, so they hail it as a masterpiece.
There are some good narratives in games and a handful that could be made into decent novels or films, at least taken as a broader world rather than tying them to the strict origins of the material, but I think they’re the exceptions.
You could probably make a pretty interesting film about the human-Combine war in Half Life, for example, but it wouldn’t be anything like a Half Life game which would probably result in AIM rage destroying civilisation.
19/03/2009 at 21:01 Hypocee says:
So right. I remember vividly when my brother borrowed an XBox from a coworker for a few days. I got DOAXBV included in the rental list because despite its embarrassing content and marketing, we both liked videogame volleyball (Kings of the Beach on the NES!) and DOA.
The scene: Middle America. Five or six teen-and-twentysomething males are lounging around the room watching and talking as one of them plays DOAXBV. All are experienced gamers, thoroughly familiar with and hardened (no) against puerile sexual advertising and content. The player is scrolling through a long list of expensive clothing and baubles.
PLAYER: OK, so I’d like to get Tina on my team because she spikes like Vlad Drakul, but she hates me because we beat her two matches ago I think. I could get her that ring she wants, but it’s no guarantee and that means I can’t get that zebra stripe for Kasumi to keep her happy. By the way, dude, you were right – that white sun hat looks fantastic with the sunglasses on Hitomi. Hmm. I wonder if I just save up for-
SPECTATOR: Wait! Go back, go back!
PLAYER: What?
SPECTATOR: New. White. Sandals.
ALL: Ooooooooh.
It’s a shame they went down the other path with DOAX2.
19/03/2009 at 21:02 Pags says:
Like drewski says, becoming invested in a story is very different to the story being good. Leigh makes a good point about this, saying that there is a general conceit amongst gamers where we fool ourselves that a game has a good story because we find ourselves interacting with it, but in any other medium it simply wouldn’t work as well because it’s missing the interaction. Deus Ex is an excellent example because it has interaction on a variety of levels; characterisation based on both moral and practical choice, and the ability to shape the narrative based upon those choices. It’s a part of the game that I single out a lot, but the scene where the suits come for Paul is a great example of this as your choices about what your character excels in up to that point might dictate how you have to react in that situation. A sneaky, non-violent type might not be able to help his brother at that point because they simply aren’t strong enough; in a film, without allowing the audience to imprint a personality onto JC Denton, a narrative event like that simply wouldn’t work and it would seem trite and manipulative of the audience’s emotion.
19/03/2009 at 21:15 Radiant says:
@hypocee
Yes! Exactly! lol.
I remember playing DOAEXBV and thinking “I’ve played this before…but there was no volleyball and I had sex with a robot”
19/03/2009 at 21:17 Pags says:
Also, talking about sexuality in Western games, I’d like to go to another favourite example of mine, which is Fahrenheit. There’s a scene where you bed your ex-girlfriend after impressing her with your guitar skillz; what follows is an endurance style game where you have to click rapidly to pleasure your lady. Do well and you get a nice little boost to your self-esteem and your character becomes slightly more relaxed (actually measured and displayed in-game); fail though, and your character becomes stressed and anxious which could lead to disastrous repurcussions later. Now, I have very limited experience of Japanese sex games, but from what little I’ve read they seem to be highly sexualised experiences where in-game failure tends to occur outside of the act of sex. But with Fahrenheit, there’s undertones of an inferiority complex as the act of sex can actually fail; sex for Western audiences is less about self-pleasure and more about pleasuring your partner. Fail to perform and you fail at the game of sex. Japanese games don’t have that problem as they’re self-gratifying fantasies, which Leigh talks about at length with a worrying number of examples.
The famous scene in American Beauty with Kevin Spacey imagining Mena Suvari is typical of Western attitudes to sex; he pleasures himself at the thought of providing pleasure to this young girl, rather than of her providing him pleasure.
19/03/2009 at 21:26 Mad Doc MacRae says:
Just got to the end.
Like a rock, Kieron, like a rock.
19/03/2009 at 21:44 Xercies says:
I think in the west we still haven’t gotten past that victorian state where you just don’t speak about it combined with the childishness that happens in teenagerhood. So we have a weird view of sex.
19/03/2009 at 21:46 Mono says:
Snow Crash was utter dreck? I’m not a huge Stephenson fan, don’t play Second Life, nor am I a big Sci-fi enthusiast. Still, I found Snow Crash quite prescient, and entertaining. The ending wasn’t great, but that’s a hallmark of the author.
19/03/2009 at 22:01 Gap Gen says:
I think the main problem with Second Life is a case of hype. It’s far more popular in the press than it is in the gaming world – hell, my university commissioned a Second Life version of itself for some stupid, unknown reason.
It’s possible that that sort of thing might become more popular. Then again, the convenience and ease-of-use of non-3D internet communities makes it a bit pointless for now.
19/03/2009 at 22:37 David says:
I hereby demand Gillen/Alexander slash fic. In Second Life. With furry avatars.
Snow Crash is an awesome book. Wasn’t written by Gibson though. That was Neuromancer.
19/03/2009 at 23:11 Kommissar Nicko says:
YEAH! SNOWCRASH IS DRECK! But William Gibson didn’t write it, it was Neal Stephenson.
I like Leigh Alexander.
19/03/2009 at 23:33 Helm says:
I apologize in advance if my comment sounds antagonistic, what with the internet being what it is and speaking tone & body language missing. This is an interesting subject to me and I thank you for the stimulation, but I’m having a lot of difficulty with the implications of the presented reasons people as you say, like bad stories in games, cheesy voice-acting and so on.
I for one never felt the least compelled by the narrative (or Alone in the Dark-ish gameplay, but that’s another matter) of Resident Evil games. I remember playing the first one for the Playstation at a friends house and it was really crummy even when I was 13. At the time I wasn’t damning the game because more than it irritated me it confused me (I was, like many, mistaking bad choices, bad design, bad artistry for some sort of statement), so as a Greek I chalked it up to culture differences. As I grew up I started to realize exactly what a ‘Japanese designers hyperstylize their misunderstood notions of western movie tropes’ clusterfuck the RE games were and it made my early dissatisfied experience click. I think that to say that confused mess of a mythos, informed of nothing deeper than ‘what seemed cool at the time’ is an enduring narrative for the ages is a really strange statement.
People find themselves invested in shitty video game stories mainly because a) on a bare level anything will do as long as they get an instinctual kick out of it and b) they are first introduced to the tropes and functions of these shitty stories very early in their gamer life so they grow up in somewhat of an arrested development mode when it comes to criticizing their sources of fun & nostalgia. These two reasons work in a startling unison and we arrive with aficionados of videogames that mainly consume vast quantities of them with near-uncritical concern for aesthetics and meaning. This isn’t a video-game exclusive effect. You might as well be asking “Why do millions of people pay to watch dumb Hollywood summer blockbusters?”.
To test the point: make a 30 year old person who has an affinity for video-games generally but out of random luck has never played Resident Evil, play Resident Evil now. They most probably will not be invested in the awful story in the least as they will have no direct nostalgic stake in it. They might tolerate it because that’s the instinct modern consumers have. They will recognize the patterns in it and they might amuse themselves to a degree but they will not say they were drawn to the narrative especially.
While I appreciate Keiron’s (and Leighs, to a degree… they weren’t exactly saying the same thing) alternate approach to answering the question and I am certain it is meritorious in some ways, I think it’s mainly misleading. The boring sociopolitical angle is probably correct: People get into awful videogame stories because that’s mostly what’s out there (the conditioning effect as described in the podcast) …and it is useful to be maintained as a status quo (not described in the podcast). When the artistic standard is raised in the field, so will the critical standard. As this generation of videogamers grows older there will either rise a part of the market that provides better written and more mature videogames or not. The results will be interesting to observe, but let’s not become apologetics for an industry trying its best to not grow up because the path of least resistance is still paying off for them. We don’t HAVE to like videogames if they no longer appeal intellectually, I mean we don’t have to find reasons for liking the bad videogames we’ll be left with. Moreover I fear it will be detrimental to this process of actualization of the medium to keep on find a post-modern justifications of why people like shitty video game stories just because it sounds more interesting that what likely is the truth: because they’re used to them. I do not say there is any shady motivation in your approach, I am certain you’ve come to an idea and are following it to its logical conclusion but it’s a huge leap of faith to go from ‘well people like what they’re used to like’ to ‘if it’s too sophisticated, too challenging, too lifelike, people will find it repellent’ (sorry to paraphrase).
19/03/2009 at 23:36 runcrash says:
Thanks for the ID3 tags.
20/03/2009 at 00:30 baf says:
Concerning her tales of tormenting Sims: I seem to recall an article by one of the developers of The Sims on observing how people interacted with the game. There were four kinds of players, they discovered: the ones who treated it like an interactive dollhouse and spent a lot of time choosing wallpaper colors and the like, the ones who liked setting up situations and seeing how the sims act with minimal intervention, the goal-oriented ones who tried to make their sims advance up the career ladder and buy the most expensive furnishings, and finally the sadists who did things like Ms. Alexander describes.
20/03/2009 at 00:49 Hypocee says:
Hey! Snow Crash is great!
Nuclear-powered bullet-time pitbulls that love motorised-skateboard couriers who in turn sort of love Inuit eschaton-imminentisers. Come on!
20/03/2009 at 00:54 TwistyMcNoggins says:
Thanks to pioneering women such as Carrie Bradshaw, women don’t need to just write about sex to be regarded as successful journalists ¬_¬
On unrelated news, Aleks Krotoski is still writing for The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2009/mar/19/sxswi-austin-is-game-crazy
20/03/2009 at 01:40 Radiant says:
Have you ever met Aleks Krotoski?
That woman is ridiculously tall.
20/03/2009 at 02:02 mister slim says:
While I don’t think the Halo novels, or at least the one I read, sit much above all the other tie-ins they’re shelved with, Eric Nylund’s Signal novels are excellent. Dark abstract thoughtful books with a touch of Lovecraftian paranoia. I’m always hoping he’ll use his Halo profits to write a third Signal book.
20/03/2009 at 03:32 Thants says:
Man, you should have edited out her saying that Snowcrash is dreck. I mean a drunken slip of the tongue is one thing, but that’s just shameful. What if she wants to run for president one day?
20/03/2009 at 04:14 Trestkon says:
Possibly the best podcast ever. I recommend more drunken podcasting!
20/03/2009 at 04:25 ForTheLulz says:
Much thanks for the play-by-play! It helps a lot on podcast posts! :D
20/03/2009 at 04:49 Leigh says:
I would just like to state for the record that Leigh knows who wrote Snow Crash. Meant to state both Stephenson and Gibson as creators of the fantasy ideals I was discussing, too drunk to clarify.
20/03/2009 at 04:54 Jetsetlemming says:
I’m gonna man up and be totally honest here: I’ve played, and loved, Yume Miru Kusuri, in my teenage youth. I found myself really drawn into the story line I had picked, that of befriending the weird suicidal girl that everyone hated. My character was ostracized from his peers for my decision, and drawn into weird, bizarre situations, and had to play the role of crisis counselor multiple times, and the tale ends with attempted murder and dropping out of highschool. The writing was surprisingly good, the watercolory backgrounds were very pretty, and I was really drawn in to the goings-on. I would’ve never, ever expected such effects from what’s supposed to be a simple porn game.
20/03/2009 at 04:58 Muzman says:
What’s the matter with Snowcrash? It’s dated a bit but managed to be hilariously over the top and have quite a few genuinely interesting ideas at the same time.
The other thing is about game narrative; stating the premise perhaps, but I don’t think you can find a bad game narrative that people endured in a game that wasn’t also highly enjoyable. Resident Evils have been very atmospheric and fun since the start, as well as being The Zombie Games.
We should be surprised that the movies were crap because the people who made them should have realised that in order to match the source material for atmosphere and excitement they needed to be quality movies in movie terms, not merely hit a few story markers from the games. (funniily enough, most people I knew when the first movie came out weren’t the least bit surprised that the movie was crap, because the game story was crap. I was the only one I knew of annoyed by it not measuring up the the games’ level of involvement. I dunno what that means for all this but there you go)
20/03/2009 at 05:00 Jetsetlemming says:
Also “Trained to be aroused by bad translation” is… uh. So, are you attracted to Pathologic?
20/03/2009 at 10:20 Kieron Gillen says:
(For the record, I loved Snow Crash back in the day)
KG
20/03/2009 at 13:53 Snappyterm says:
Enjoyable podcast, though I was getting very stressed listening to the narrative section. I gain not one tiny drop of enjoyment from the Resident Evil series precisely because of that kind of crap narrative. It’s been the death for me of so many incredibly successful games.
I don’t know why my enjoyment of gaming is so tuned for the narrative (I certainly don’t claim to have some kind of unique perspective), as I’m perfectly happy playing plotless sandbox games. If there’s a narrative though, if it’s not what I would at least consider reasonably competent, it ruins the game for me.
Perfectly understandable why others would comment much as you both did, as it seems that at least a fair number of gamers are perfectly content with the simplistic (Possibly a bad word choce, as I don’t intend the slightly derogatory connotations) narrative, but it does rather leave me feeling that the future for my deviant kind is a little barren, when even the elitist journalists (uh, I mean that in a good way) think well-constucted and presented plot is an afterthought, and perhaps even a negative to the experience.
Anyway, didn’t intend to waffle on. Cheers for the listening material, looking forward to the next one.
20/03/2009 at 15:15 Larington says:
Interesting content, and yeah, though I more or less agree with the campaign against furries and all that sort of stuff, I think its a bit overzealous, more of a “WTF HATE HATE HATE” than a “We don’t understand” which always bothers me.
I’m of the opinion that whilst yes, there is an issue with the problem where game/film stories don’t translate between eachother at all well, and I don’t seriously believe that will ever change, but I strongly believe that in time writing stories for games will reach such levels that the stories will be equal to or greater than that of film, but in entirely different ways that are appropriate to interactive entertainment.
20/03/2009 at 15:18 Larington says:
Also, damn ye both for knowing what Spector is working on whislt I don’t… I mean that in the nicest but none-the-less enviousfully(?) possible way, obviously.
20/03/2009 at 19:17 ale frassetti says:
Still she says you can have her dignity.
20/03/2009 at 21:09 qbert911 says:
*fap* *fap* *fap*
21/03/2009 at 04:04 Jae Armstrong says:
Snow Crash was enjoyable- in a mindless way- right up to that scene where Hiro gets together with the mafia boss and the other two powerful dudes and unloads this… batshit insane spiel about brain programming and Babylonian mythology that’s actually a metaphor for sex on them.
And they accept it. Without question. Three cynical, pragmatic, highly powerful men unquestioningly fall into line with a conspiracy theory that reads like it was cut from Illuminatus! for being too ridiculous. I could hear my suspension of disbelief breaking.
Anathem nearly lost me the same way, with the Platonic realism thing. Not so much the theory in itself (I’ll accept just about any premise for the sake of a good argument) so much as the fact that Stephenson associated it with the empiricist faction in his world.
That and Orolo’s conception of consciousness comes dangerously close to assigning privileged status to the human brain.
But I must admit the Rat Things were cool.
21/03/2009 at 10:32 Kieron Gillen says:
I just like using Reason on them.
KG
21/03/2009 at 10:45 Dorian Cornelius Jasper says:
I am saddened that there was no mention of Fate Stay Night when Leigh was defending erogames from your dastardly normal-person’s-perception-ness.
21/03/2009 at 11:58 Ffitz says:
That was very, very interesting. And it made me lol like a rem on the tube into work, which is a bad thing.
21/03/2009 at 14:52 Hypocee says:
I loved the Babylonian glossolalia brain-assembly-language bit. After all, his audience has seen the results for themselves and the man behind it has already claimed to be unbelievably powerful and ruthless. What pissed me off was A. that it was written clumsily as an unbroken infodump for things I’d already figured out, B. that he was able to do this speaking teleconference while being hunted by the hordes through an aircraft carrier, and C. that Stephenson contradicts everything a few pages later by saying that the virus came from SETI – I just pretend that part doesn’t exist.
23/03/2009 at 00:51 Azradesh says:
What the heck is Snow Crash?
23/03/2009 at 13:41 M.P. says:
What did you tape this on? An 80s Walkman using a tin and string as a microphone?
j/k, I enjoyed this, but the sound quality is awful, every time either of you laughed it would be like somebody was trying to file down my skull. Invest in a mic that has a little foam padding, you can get one for a fiver.
23/03/2009 at 16:15 Rei Onryou says:
Leigh needs to be integrated into the RPS Hivemind. She has her roots in the PC, they just need to be nurtured back into fruition.
30/03/2009 at 07:15 Variable Gear says:
As a casual RPS reader, I still got a lot of enjoyment out of this podcast. Have Leigh on the show as much as possible.