Blips: Wave Racing

Source: What is a Racing Game? On Wave Race 64
Author: Zolani Stewart
Site: The Fengxi Box

Ever since I began reading this essay on Wave Race 64 by Zolani Stewart I've been humming the game's title screen music and fondly remembering this gem of a racing game. In fact it's Wave Race 64's status as a racing game that might prevent it from getting more recognition, but as Stewart notes, it's what the game does within the racing genre that makes it excel as much as it does. There is indeed an element of the sublime at work in the way the jet ski's steer around tight corners, the weight of the watercraft digging into the waves. Wave Race 64 is a beautiful game, and even going back to look at it now, I just think it's pretty. Sure the ocean in a game like Assassin's Creed 4 is going to look more realistic, but it's not a competition for realism, and the sum of Wave Race 64's aesthetic decisions is an upbeat, welcoming place.

Stewart gets into some interesting distinctions between "driving" and "racing" games, and I find the unique distinction with Wave Race 64 to be the open water courses. On these "tracks" the only designation about where to go is the preset rules of the game that ask you to slalom between anchored buoys. In some cases this allows for tremendous shortcuts or the sacrificing of an allowable penalty to cut "corners." I never owned Wave Race 64, but I rented it a lot, to the point where if I bought it, there wouldn't have been much left to do other than beating my own records. However, looking back, I do wish I'd have bought the game for its "driving" aspects. That is, sometimes I just have the urge to get back out on those waves, competitively or not.

Blips: Target Practice

Source: The problem with guns
Author: Zolani Stewart
Site: The Fengxi Box

I'm really digging this post by Zolani Stewart which is the first in a series about guns in video games. I particularly endorse the use of the word "targetry" to label the action and contextual implications of gun mechanics. Targetry is a great word here because it goes beyond just shooting, and gets at the core conceit of games that present the player with a gun in the lower third of the screen by default. In most first-person games of this sort, you can't even lower your sights to speak with people; you are always aiming and everyone is always being targeted. Third person games are more conscious of this, but only marginally so.

As Stewart details, targetry seems to derail everything interesting it comes into contact with. Maybe I did have a very thought-provoking conversation with a support character, but I can't get over the fact that that character was basically speaking to me at gunpoint, and how they didn't seem phased by the smoking barrel in their face. Maybe the game doesn't care about that though and is content to just be a quickly forgotten time-filler, which is fair enough, but doesn't make for much of a cultural object worth critiquing or archiving for future reference.

Worse still "Big Budget games that are rooted in targetry end up perpetuating simplistic perspectives on complicated issues, perspectives that can even be harmful: the uncritical use of torture scenes, apolitical racism, shallow critiques of American culture and bottomless cynicism," as Stewart puts it.

But guns in games aren't inherently a bad thing, as Stewart points out; they're just missing the drama. This is the drama that can give gun violence the gravitas to be taken seriously. Having recently played The Walking Dead, I've seen that there are ways to include guns and even targetry in games in ways that ground those action with emotional weight. That I'm saying this about a zombie game (a genre that revolves heavily around headshots) should be inspirational. If a zombie game can do it, then there are probably ways to maximize the power and impact of guns in just about any other type of game. It's not that every game should aspire to be the same sort of experience, but if a game is primarily trading in targetry, then whatever else it has to say will likely go unheard.

I'm looking forward to part two of this series which will look at SuperHot, which Stewart claims "gets guns right." Should be good. Til then...