Low Cutoff 2013 Round-Up

This will be the last Low Cutoff post in 2013, and what a year it has been. Though Low Cutoff has archived posts that go back a few years, the site itself was launched little more than 12 months ago. With the addition of Blips, I've been publishing stories every weekday (with exceptions, of course), which has been a wonderful practice to maintain that both keeps me on top of current happenings, while also forcing me to write something everyday. Here are some of my favorite posts from 2013:

Unfit For Consumption
Ever-Present: Proteus (Mac) Review
Half-Tucked: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune (PS3) Review
Selfish Superhero: inFamous (PS3) Review
Blips: New Media Literacy
The Remake Impulse
Bonus Feature: Interview with Miasmata Designer, Bob Johnson
Blips: The ____(name) of ____(medium)
Retro Blips: Critical Void
Blips: A Gran ol' Time
Blips: Buyers Market
Blips: Antagonist Gamer
Blips: Press X to Rosebud
Blips: The Artist's Dilemma
Blips: The Ludonarrative Dumpster
Bonus Feature: Interview with Pippin Barr
Development Hell: Crypt Worlds (Mac) Review
Blips: The Age Of Games Is Upon Us
Gotcha!: An ARG Story
Blips: Hidden Fortress
Blips: Indulgence
Blips: Video Games: Legacy: Origins
Blips: Platform Exclusive

Additionally, my work also appeared on a few other sites. Here were my favorite freelance stories from 2013:

How the magic sounds of Proteus are making their way into the real world (Kill Screen)
Completely Hands-On (Unwinnable)
Twilight Crossfade (re/Action)
Inside the videogame version of the Marina Abramovic Institute (Kill Screen)
Real Simulation, False Prophecy (PopMatters)
The Stanley Parable Review: A Review of The Stanley Parable (Kill Screen)
How an artist turned Shadow of the Colossus into a rumination on chance (Kill Screen)
The PlayStation 4: A Review in Four Parts (Kill Screen)
The top 10 worst buzzwords of 2013 (Kill Screen)

As far as actual games go, I don't have a list of 10 games that were released this year, but I will mention a few that I played this year that I really enjoyed:

Miasmata
Proteus
The Stanley Parable
Pac-Man CE DX+
Crypt Worlds
Braid
WipeOut HD Fury
Gran Turismo 6
Money Idol Exchanger
Slave of God
SimCity 2000
World of Glue 

I'll be doing a "best music" list over on the old Gold Skulltulla blog, so keep a lookout for that. Otherwise, see you in 2014!

Blips: Shipping Out

Source: Who Built That Video Game?
Author: Michael Thomsen
Site: The New Yorker

If you've sat around for the credits on any video game with a big budget or from a large studio, you've probably noticed how long they seem to go –much longer than they used to. While maybe some have slowed the scroll, more often it's because a greater number of people is required to make these kinds of games than it used to take. As Michael Thomsen's recent New Yorker piece speaks to, this has lead the majority of video game companies to outsource at least one aspect of their development process. This means that some element of most games (probably art assets) was produced outside of the country where the game company is based because it's cheaper to do so. Why keep 20 artists on staff in California when you can pay for 20 artists in Malaysia for a fraction of the price?

Thomsen also points out that these low paying outsourced jobs can be economic opportunities for the laborers that acquire them, but as far as general corporate practice goes for the commissioning corporations, it's a race to the bottom. The video game industry has a difficult enough time providing decent labor conditions for their in-house staff, let alone the responsibility for conditions of workplaces on other continents. I certainly don't expect an industry with a reputation for "crunch" labor and a high rate of worker burn out to approach a dicey practice like outsourcing with careful oversight. I'd love to see the game industry get its own house in order first, but I fear that outsourcing might actually be seen as a solution to those domestic issues instead of a simple matter of expansion.

Blips: Derivative Works

Source: The Players-Authors Project
Author: Greg Lastowka
Site: Gamasutra (blog)

I realize I just railed against the use of "content" to describe video games, but the term can serve as valuable industry shorthand at times, even if I have to cringe a little when I say it. I'll keep the mentions to a minimum. I put in this disclaimer because I wanted to share Greg Lastowka's blog post on research he's done on what players are actually doing with "user-generated content" (UGC). This blanket term is used to cover everything from character customization to modding tools with wide spectrum of degrees in between. We've heard that allowing players more creative control in games is the way of the future, Minecraft being the recent blockbuster success story. But what about when players use those customization tools simply to make references to other games, skirting a fuzzy line between fair use and copyright infringement?

Well, this is where Lastowka's research comes in. He has a link to the full 160 page report in his blog, but I'll just be focusing on the highlights he summed up so nicely. First, consider the snap judgement that if you give someone a level editor, they'll just make World 1-1 from Super Mario Bros and be done with it. While that's not entirely untrue, that level and others like it don't represent the vast majority of user-made levels in a game like LitteBigPlanet. However, in many cases the most popular custom levels and characters tend to be referential in nature. Still, the referential slant of popular UGC would still fall under the umbrella or original, creative material, not piracy. Your fake World 1-1 isn't meant to be a stand-in for actual Super Mario Bros, but a similar experience translated through a different platform. Also interesting is how little the oft-lauded act of "remixing" actually occurs. This means that most use of co-opted intellectual property in UGC would have a hard time justifying itself as "fair use" under close scrutiny.

There's a lot more to the report, which I'd encourage checking out. What with all the recent YouTube issues when it comes to footage of video games, it's interesting to see research on how players use the tools that developers have provided in-game. OK, I only said "content" a few times; I can live with that.

Blips: Bad Words

Source: The top 10 worst buzzwords of 2013
Author: Dan Solberg
Site: Kill Screen

My list of horrible video game buzzwords from the past year is up on Kill Screen. Consider giving it a look. It was a fun list to make because it allowed me to write jokes about dumb PR phrases while also venting a bit about the ways certain industry terms are used outside of upper management corporate strategy meetings. Spoiler: "content" the my number 1 worst buzzword this year for exactly that reason. I guess people are averse to using "product" now; perhaps it references the market too directly? I don't know, but "content" is just "product" for Millenials.

The other buzzword I was considering including was a perennial favorite, "fun." In 2013, it felt like "fun" came under fire more than it had previously, thanks in large part to critical breakdowns of what the term actually means in the context of video games from Ian Bogost and Leigh Alexander. It's similar to the way "beauty" was tied to the value of art for a very long time. All of a sudden there were painters and sculptures creating works that were not conventionally beautiful, works that could be a bit uncomfortable to hang over the couch, yet they were incredible, moving works of art. The need for games to be "fun" is likewise a limiter on what's possible in the medium as well as potentially constraining of what "fun" can mean. This is not meant to condemn fun games (after all, who doesn't enjoy having fun?), but rather to acknowledge what's actually being said when the "fun" descriptor is thrown into the mix.

Blips: Boom and Bust

Source: The Glorious Lie of the Indie Bubble
Author: Ben Serviss
Site: Dashjump

The indie game bubble is a myth. The rising number of indie games being produced regularly does not reflect the marketplace that led to the crash in the 80s, and developer/writer Ben Serviss explains why that's the case in a recent post on his blog Dashjump. Problems arose in the 80s not just because of the tremendous glut of games being released, but because many of these games were low quality or were copycat designs that stirred confusion in the marketplace. There may be an expanding number of indie games being released now, but the bar for quality has also raised tremendously, which an impressive number of games are able to meet or surpass. Developers with game design degrees are pouring out of colleges and institutions like never before, which ensures that more indie devs know the basics of how to approach the practice. Game prices are down, and more people are able to get their hands on development tools than ever before.

However, the story's not all roses, as commenter Daniel Cook points out. The indie game space might not be a bubble, but that doesn't mean some of the market trends shouldn't be a bit concerning. Development costs for indie games are going up as more money is being spent on visuals to make games stand out in an increasingly crowded environment. This makes production less sustainable in the long term as it intensifies the need to have a "hit game" (not a statement of quality) simply to survive because there's less room for error. Previously underrepresented genre niches now has overflowing coffers of games for players to choose from to the point where that kind of gap-filling novelty doesn't go as far as it used to. Actually Cook's breakdown is an incredibly succinct post about the difference between development now and in the 80s and opportunities the near-future market may hold.

Either way you look at it though, it doesn't appear that video games are headed for another bust in the near future. I'm not saying it could never happen (Zynga and social games have had better years), but I think we can leave those particular alarms switch off for now. There are plenty of other issues worth concerning ourselves.

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: She's a Robot

Source: GlaDos, The Stanley Parable, and the evil female AI
Author: Carli Velocci
Site: Kill Screen

This is a cool piece about gendered AI voices in video games by Cardi Velocci. It's no accident that Apple's Siri has a female voice since studies that Velocci sites show that people prefer to listen to a female voice over a male one. Also, as Velocci points out, listeners see the female voice as more comforting and conversational, while the male voice is more authoritative and direct. How much of those male robot associations are drawn from 2001: A Space Odyssey's HAL, is debatable, but it definitely seems to have set a precedent.

In games, the most famous robot voice is probably that of Portal's GlaDos, as performed by Ellen McLain. What's great about this casting is that GlaDos takes the assumptions about the female voice as a supplier of motherly assurance, and uses them against the player when her true nature as an authoritarian overlord is slowly revealed. GlaDos begins the game as no more than a glorified laboratory GPS, but gradually breaks "character" once you stop playing by the rules she's laid out for you.

When an update was available for my iPhone, I actually switched Siri to the newly available male voice, which is still called Siri. Inflection and tone plays a huge role in the way the voice comes off, and the male Siri voice sounds nothing like the menacing deadpan of HAL, but actually seems friendly and open to conversation. Mostly I just wanted a change of pace though, as so many robots have very similar sounding female voices and, for me, they've started to present as more robotic by association in such quantity. Maybe at some point we'll just go back to wanting our robots to sound like robots. I'd be into that.