Blips: Needs More Metroid

Source: 'Troid Rage: Why Game Devs Should Watch Alien—and Play Metroid—Again
Author: Maddy Myers
Site: Paste

It's rare that I can side so wholeheartedly with opinions about video games, but Maddy Myers' recent piece for Paste about the state of the metroidvania had me repeatedly exclaiming "yes, exactly this!" multiple times while reading it. Myers (an undisputed Metroid aficionado) lays out the reasons why so many so-called metroidvania games fall short of the titles that originally inspired the hideously titled sub-genre. Real quick note here, but I'm in the camp that thinks this genre should drop the "vania" addendum, as Castlevania: Symphony of the Night was really just a Metroid-like that did some interesting, original things with the formula. OK, but still, there are game like Shadow Complex that rekindled interest in Metroid-like game design, yet miss the core of what made Metroid play the way that it does.

Myers argues this point as well as the way Metroid itself draws inspiration from the Alien films to frame its environments and protagonist in an extremely powerful way. In contrast, Shadow Complex feels positively soulless, full of bland characters, bland levels, bland weapons, and a bland plot. All that's left is the basic mechanical device of an open ended map that requires specific abilities be gained before passing through certain doorways to new areas. And that's a great game design framework to emulate, but it's not enough on its own. Everyone likes to taut Metroid's atmosphere as a defining feature, but for some reason atmosphere (a combination of many factors including character design, animation, difficulty, level design, music, sound, and more) isn't seen as a necessary component of a metroidvania. And that's a shame, because it seems like the knowledge of what made Metroid special is actually being deteriorated by modern metroidvanias. Still waiting for a proper Metroid Prime 2: EchoesVania over here.

Blips: Conference Chic

Source: How to Be Visibly Femme in the Games Industry
Author: Maddy Myers
Site: Paste

So there's a big video game conference coming up –what are you going to wear? There aren't great official standards place for many of these sorts of events (for better or worse), so it's up to you to figure this out for yourself. Maddy Myers just posted an article on Paste where she recounts what it's like to attend these types of events as a woman in an overwhelmingly male-dominated environment and how clothing selection plays such a profound role in how seriously you're taken by your peers. Jeans and t-shirts are considered "professional" attire (or "professionally casual," really), a notion that feels unique to the game industry –a concept born of the programmer man-cave perhaps. In contrast, to appear "cute" is to be disempowered, and unfortunately there's a lot of truth in that, which, as Myers explains, makes for an uphill battle for a woman of short stature in a crowd of dudes. Myers story is deeply personal and touching. She talks about how she's felt pressured to dress like "one of the guys," despite more recent inclinations to don more femme attire. Please give the whole story a read; you might even learn a bit about certain fashion trends along the way (I did).

Blips: Look Closely

Source: Two Games That Undermine The Concept Of Games
Author: Maddy Myers
Site: Paste

Maddy Myers really nails it with her recent piece for Paste about the institutional critique of The Stanley Parable and Antichamber. While other games like Hotline Miami and Spec Ops: The Line attempt to twist the expected campaign path back on the player, they do so at the player's expense. The curtain pulls back and the games accusingly ask, "why did you do that?" The Stanley Parable and Antichamber both satirize the role of the game developer instead, which actually further empowers players by allowing them abilities that would break most other games. In fact, "breaking" these games is part of the point. Myers begins her piece with a puzzle in Antichamber where continuing forward locks you in an endless loop, a metaphor for the typical gameplay loop that serves as a core element of game design. However, the only way to progress in the game is to break the loop and go back from where you came, a move that surprisingly leads somewhere totally new.

I haven't finished Anitchamber yet (a couple hours in), but I have a running theory that the game is about games as artworks, or rather, art as a game. This is in contrast to The Stanley Parable which is a game about games, which could be interpreted as art. Antichamber rewards astute perception, the sort that reveals hidden truths that require time and focus to unearth. The white cube space might as well be the "white cube" of the modern art gallery, the snarky puzzle hints on the walls the accompanying wall text. There's even a room in Antichamber full of sculptures in vitrines that reinforce the non-Euclidean nature of its world by appearing as different objects depending on the angle from which you're looking. How do you absorb an artwork, interpret it, and make it meaningful to you? For a painting, you look at it, study it, and live with it. The approach to Antichamber is only different insofar as the medium is different; ultimately what you're doing is the same.

Once I finish Antichamber, I'll flesh these ideas out more thoroughly (assuming I still feel the same by the end of it), but even now I can say that the game offers an opportunity to literally play with the idea of what games are and the spaces in which they can exist. That's a sophisticated level of institutional critique very few games approach, and fewer deliver.

Blips: "Video" Games

Source: Hyper Mode: Videogame The Movie
Author: Maddy Myers
Site: Paste

The video game / film comparison topic has been making the rounds again in the wake of The Last of Us. I've already highlighted a handful of essays on the debate, but today Paste ran a piece by Maddy Myers that put an interesting spin on the issue by considering gameplay narrative in light of YouTube videos that compile cutscenes from games and present them as "movies." Myers points to cyberpunk action game Remember Me as an example of a game that, despite its other problems, managed to fuse cinematics and interactivity with its hacking scenes in a way that incorporates the strengths of both simultaneously. It's telling that these YouTube "movie" editors included these hacking sequences despite the fact that they're actually "gameplay."

Myers also makes a strong point against quantifying gameplay as a measure of game-ness. Just because those hacking scenes in Remember Me don't involve direct character and camera control the way the action portions do, doesn't diminish they're value as part of a game. Expansive control and choice in games are not interesting systems in themselves, and neither are linear, cinematically driven quick-time events. The game is the framework that holds everything together and turns those systems into worthwhile experiences, or doesn't. There's something to playing games, even ones dominated by non-interactive cutscenes that you don't get from watching them in video form. The different parts inform one another as part of a unified experience, making cutscene compilations inherently out of context.