Blips: Gamer Chic

Source: Prêt-à-Jouer and Videogame Couture
Author: Nathan Altice
Site: Metopal

Video games and fashion might seem like oil and water, but they actually have a lot in common, especially when it comes to the cyclical nature in which they function as industries. This was the premise of Nathan Altice's presentation at this year's No Show Conference, and it's an idea that has a lot of merit. Games, and in turn games writing, focus on the cinematic elements of games, operating from the correlation of games as interactive moving pictures. It's true that games and movies have been sharing an increasingly common DNA since the advent of polygonal characters and environments, but these film-like touches tend to overshadow other correlations and dominate the conversation. Consider that both games and fashion operate on seasonal cycles based around 3 major press events, and both have a tenuous outsider status in the art world.

Altice even refuted the one argument I was going to make against his analogy toward the end of his piece: that there is no gaming couture. This is acknowledged though, and using personal games as a substitute does fit on a certain level (games not meant for wide distribution with the distinct traces of an individual auteurist (there's that film language again!) hand). However, framing games and fashion in respect to capital, it's worth noting that even the most technologically advanced new games rarely cost beyond $60 unless they come with accessories. Then again, you can't play games without a console or a PC, both of which are definitely in the range of luxury items, but then the metaphor starts to get a bit muddy.

While I think that speaking about games through the language of fashion sounds incredibly refreshing, it does require a certain level of familiarity with fashion to pull it off, one which I don't think most game designers and writers possess. Film is a much more natural parallel in this regard due to the high rate of nerd culture crossover. The exchange of ideas between film and games is obvious and explicit, and to read into fashion in games is to interpret subtexts. I'm not saying this can't change, because it certainly sounds cool, but it would definitely take a collective effort from a lot of different people.

This isn't entirely dissimilar from my approach to games through art. In fact, I use this angle to pitch myself as having a unique perspective on games at a time when we're seeing them pop up in museums more often. Few people in the video game industry seem to know the language of art, the history of art, or the contemporary dialogues of the art world, and if they do, they're not framing what they have to say through this context or other voices are drowning them out by hierarchy or sheer volume. I have to imagine it's a similar situation with fashion, and part of me thinks it just comes down to having a limited amount of time and energy to invest in different fields of interest. I might not ever be the person who writes about games from a fashion perspective, but I'd definitely love to hear from someone else who knows what they're talking about.

Blips: Indulgence

Source: Game of Thrones Characters as Video Game Consoles
Author: Dan Solberg (as Gold_Skulltulla)
Site: Giant Bomb

So, a cool thing happened earlier this week. I posted this comparison of Game of Thrones characters to video game consoles on my Giant Bomb blog, and it proved to be quite popular. It's currently received over 125,000 pageviews and about 150 comments, almost all of which are extremely positive. The ball started rolling slowly when I originally posted the piece at about 4am EST, which meant that the initial batch of viewers were probably European (i.e. some commenters addressed me as "mate"). Eventually the Giant Bomb mods took notice and liked my post enough to promote it in the Community Showcase slot on the front page. If things had stopped there I still would have been quite pleased, but it was only a matter of time until some outside sources started picking up the story.

After some tweets and retweets, Luke Plunkett reposted a couple of my comparisons on Kotaku, along with some nice words of his own. Then things really took off, and my original post was racking up around 1,000 views and hour. Also, since Kotaku has such a wide reach as a publication, reposts of their repost began popping up all over the place too. I even got a shout-out from Bill Corbett who was a writer for MST3K and voiced the robot, Crow, for a couple seasons.

Here's a list of all the citations I've been able to track down so far:

Original Giant Bomb blog, Giant Bomb User Community Showcase, Giant Bomb Community Spotlight, Kotaku, Koatku Australia, Vinny Caravella tweet, Bill Corbett tweet, Snackbar Community tweet, a ton of other tweets, Reddit Gaming, Reddit Wii U, NeoGAF, Groupthink Jezebel, Imgur, TOR, IGN forums, Winter Is Coming, GameFAQs forums, Xerq forums, High Def Digest forums, PakGamers forums, Otaku Helpers forums, Retrovia Ireland forums, Funny Junk, Video Game Lab, Gee Willikers Batman, LOL Shed, Mordicai!, Gags and Fails, Chez Geeks, Cheezburger, Randomization, P1 Luck, Garotas Nerds, and Nerd Approved.

I'd never made a "listicle" before, and genuinely thought it would be fun (it is, or at least this one was). After the initial idea came to me, I looked up whether this had ever been done before, because it seemed sort of obvious. Turns out there was a meme that got passed around before, but it was limited in scope and lacked polish, so I felt like I was in the clear. I've been listening to the Game of Thrones audiobooks after making my way through all 3 seasons of the TV show, so this stuff had saturated my mind at a certain point. I had a tentative list going for about a month or so, and then I just realized that some of the jokes I'd written wouldn't work once the new consoles were released, so I stayed up and put all of the images together, applied the finishing touches, and sent it out the door.

What a relief it was that people actually seemed to like it! I didn't expect the level of positive response that this post got, and ironically, it seemed like a bunch of people went in expecting to hate it. In fact, I think "surprised praise" is the most pervasive sentiment in the comments. Well, that and people wondering where the SNES is (note: as a character, the SNES is boooring). I wish I could have worked in a ton of jokes and Game of Thrones references that were left on the cutting room floor, but I didn't want to force anything; that's why there's no Robb or Catelyn, for one. All in all, even though it's just a list of pop culture comparisons that gives the initial impression of being "click-bait," I'm really proud of it and glad so many people gave it a chance.

Thanks everyone!

Blips: Compare Contrast

Source: Please Stop Comparing Real Life To Video Games
Author: Mike Fahey
Site: Kotaku

Ever since reviews of the movie 300 started drawing comparisons to video games, I've been interested in the concept of relating video games to something outside of themselves, like movies or real life. The thing is, when the shorthand of "like a video game" doesn't in itself say much of anything, the comparison requires too much explanation to be worth actually using as shorthand. Well, that is unless you don't mind making unfair or uninformed assertions about what games are and what people do when they play them. How is 300 like a video game? I've read all of the reviews and watched the film myself with that question in mind and I still don't really know. My best guess is that they think that 300 looks like Dynasty Warriors with Spartans. I'd get that, but no one says as much.

As Mike Fahey points out in the article that had me thinking about this again, there are plenty of comparisons to video games that are apt, but in many cases "video game" is just a stand-in for a fictional world with its own set of rules. I'm sure you've heard some iteration of "Life's not like a video game; you can't just hit the reset button." But similarly, life's not like a book; you can't just skip the chapters you don't like. Or, life's not like basketball; you can't just call timeout. Making a comparison to the way video games are mechanically used is such a dull comparison to make. You know, school is like a video game, if you really work at it you'll probably perform better.

Furthermore, video games are an increasingly diverse medium where making broad assumptions about what games are just comes off as ignorant of the actual situation. Oh, maybe comparing things to video game is like a video game; you're operating in your own little reality.