Worm Sighing

My mum just said something rather interesting to me. She gave a big sigh and said that at this time of year she “gets a heightened sense of temporality”.

In other words, Christmas reminds us of the passage of time and our own finite existences. Which is nice.

I wonder why this should be? It’s a classic response, really. We’ve all done it - wake up on a cold morning and see that, though they’ve been there for two months anyway, the decorations in the local supermarket are finally appropriate. Buskers are playing carols (and getting more money for it). Parents are starting to look a little stretched. And we say to ourselves- “bloody hell, can it be Christmas again already?”

New Year’s is similar. “God, this year went quickly,” we mutter, and then get drunk.

Would this be the case without our own constructions on the season- the expectation of festivities at christmas, hannukah, or whatever superstition your traditions lead you to indulge in? Or is particular to the time of year alone- the short, short days with their blink-and-you’ll-miss-it sunlight?

 I don’t know about your family or friends, but my lot tend to run about doing a lot of tidying at this time of year. Things must be made cleaner, as if the house is briefly to become a maternity ward and the little baby jesus is due to arrive in far more than spirit. It’s a wonder we don’t run around sticking safety-plugs in all the electrical sockets and fencing off the kitchen with those infuriating white and powder-blue gate things.

I’m not immune either. I spent most of yesterday ‘picking up’ my room (in the Turkish and American slang). And here it all is- the past itself, your own personal snail trail congealing into the patio of your personal history. Old love letters, books you never got round to finishing, dust-covered gifts from last Christmas - or was it the Christmas before? No- hang on- it was five years ago. Already.

And today, the same story in our sitting-room. We’re a family of hoarders, and I get reminded of this every time I come home for Turkey. Clearing one shelf of pottery… stuff, and photographs, and bits of kitsch one or the other of us couldn’t help buying on holiday, can take a couple of hours. Especially if you work in dusting-time as well. And it’s all memories.

There are really two types of people- those who get stressed by Christmas, and those who get depressed by Christmas. I’m pretty sure that these are mutually exclusive, and I’m pretty sure that they effect everyone. I am about as pro-Christmas as you can get in a strictly agnostic way, and even I can feel the tug of negative nostalgia sometimes, when the ‘Merry Little Christmas’ comes onto the radio and another brick of lego goes into storage.

Time speeds up as we get older. We all know it. So how come we never get used to it? “That year went so fast!” we cry, but relative to what? To when we had the emotional and mental capacity of a barbary ape? 2007 went fast. So did 2006, 2005, and 2004. I’m pretty sure the last moderately-paced year was 2002, though it certainly must have seemed fast enough at the time.

My point is that if we’re aware of this perceptual change, then we can combat it. Guess what, guys: years are short. But there’s quite a lot of them, eh? So let’s try and not be so surprised about it this time next year.

Hello again. By popular request, there shall be renewed posting for the festive season. Also by popular request (erm, one chap), I shall attempt to inject a small amount of Dickensian Christmassyness into my otherwise strictly secular words. See if you can spot it.

 Why the dead period? Well, I’m up to my neck in dissertation right now. And even when I’m not internally debating the emergence or non-emergence of a school of counterfactualism in historical or historiographical thought, I’m a busy man. It’s not all travel and marsupials and sci-fi and perfectly pitched political or games commentary. Oh no.

But I’ve managed to clear myself a little breathing-space (lebensraum, perhaps? - secretly fascist ed) from the writing and the reading and the constant, constant financial horse-trading that goes hand-in-hand with any degree course in London. Not to mention doing a bit of preliminary Law research (for that, beloved followers of my every moment’s whim, is the direction to which my thoughts tend these days and, indeed, these sharp winter nights).

So what do I do with this hard-won break? Why, I read some other stuff, write some other stuff, and worry about how much money I can spend on Christmas presents. Of course.

So I’ll be writing a few bits and bobs on here over the next ten days. Perhaps a day-by-day Christmas journal?

There are a few things from various media that I’d like to review/comment upon as well. And I’d very much like to say something about politics here at the moment.

So that’s the menu. Unlike most restaurants, however, you (my precious little masticators of words) receive no assurance that the chef will actually deliver on anything he says he will.

Joy to the world, peace on Earth etc.

First off, let’s do some light administrative stuff (you like that, don’t you, my bean counting heterodoxes, my good-willed cherubs with upturned faces lit by the candle in my frost-encrusted window of new-media borne discourse?). 

By which I mean, I shall now address myself to the nine (nine! count them!) responses that have accumulated to the previous post on this blog - an ill-advised warble of a top-five-albums-list that is now hopelessly and forever out of date - in the eons since its writing. I shall write a few thoughts, and prefix each with a numerical bullet-point, each numeral being sequentially the next consecutive numeral from the last in the list of points represented herewith. With the exception of the first, which shall arrive, shall we say, with no precedent, save the emptiness which precedes it, which may, if you wish, serve as substitute or representation for zero (nought, nothing, invented mathematically by Muslim scholars in the 13th Century).

1. Do you think my sentence-structure has become more complex since I started looking at Law?

2. Reports of my death have been greatly exaggerated (check me out with my literary references).

3. Yes, Steffe. Chistmas is coming. (Yes, Quigs. Like your momma). Does anyone else think that the marupials are the killers here? In a non-literal sense?

 I think that just about covers it. Check back frequently, happy, frost-bitten winterlings that you undoubtedly are.

Got the urge to write a list (perhaps you know what I mean?)

So here we are: my own personal current Top Five Albums for listening to all the way through. Properly. From Start To Finish. AS ALBUMS.

In no particular order, and liable to change:

Johnny Cash: The Man Comes Around

Cash’s voice only got better as he aged. This is probably the most depressing album I’ve ever listened to. It is almost utterly maudlin, a descent into musical grief- over ageing, over lost friends, over missed opportunities and loneliness. Even the higher-tempo songs and the occasions of lighter bluegrass seem deeply ironic, or skewed somehow toward sadness. But the lyricism is phenomenal, the cover-versions beautifully selected, the recording treatment tastefully textured and Cash’s voice cracking, dry and warm. And then there’s the final lift, We’ll Meet Again. And with it, the sun emerges. Here is Cash’s final video, which he made for his cover of Trent Reznor’s Hurt.

Pulp: His n’ Hers

Not as successful as Different Class, but a stronger all-over album. Pulp here give us the absolute apogee of the Britpop episode, with an album that’s infused with energy and humour, Pulp’s trademark intelligence allowing for guilty-pleasure songs that are pure adrenaline from start to finish. She’s a Lady is seminal.

Brian Wilson: Smile

It was such a long time coming. But this is simply happy on a disc. The production values are immense and the anachronistic optimism of re-approaching a Beach Boys album- say, Pet Sounds- is brought to a new, popular and ageless life. Plus a much, much stronger new version of Good Vibrations to chew on.

Supertramp: Breakfast in America

I do love a good concept album. This is certainly the best I can think of off the top of my head, essentially a musical dialogue between Britain and the USA, both in terms of style and lyrics. The songs sweep from powerful hooks to adrenaline-buzz finales via the best bits of a dozen genres, and none of it has aged even a single day. The title track has been essentially raped by some heav sampling in appalling music recently.

David Bowie: Aladdin Sane

My favourite Bowie album seems to change every time I listen to one again. Right now, the filthy, cheekily debauched antics of Aladdin Sane are rocking my boat. It’s never been appreciated on the same level as Ziggy Stardust, and this is a huge mistake. Aladdin essentially does for the American rocker what Ziggy did for a more British tradition. He’s a remarkable character, and rewards repeated listening.

How about you guys?

Okay, I know I’m a little behind the curve here. Everyone and their uncle have already completed Bioshock three times, one for each different ending (well… two-and-a-half endings, I suppose), and once on Hard so that they can get their final, shiny XBox 360 ‘achievement’. And a great deal of these people have taken the time to write about it.

It’s one of those games, where the disparate, hazy community of hobbyists seems to surge into debate as one. Where you don’t feel like you’re done with it until you’ve talked about it. Head over to RockPaperShotgun for a collection of excellent critiques and links to reviews, interviews etc.- including an encounter with Bioshock’s creator, Ken Levine, that’s really a must-read.

All of this- and much of what shall follow here, to be sure- is riddled with spoilers. If you live on the moon or have no real interest in the medium, then you might be unaware of the fact that Bioshock includes one of the all-time-greatest-ever twists of anything ever, somewhere just after the middle of the game. If there’s ever any chance that you’ll pick it up to play for more than a few hours together, you DO NOT WANT TO HAVE THIS TWIST SPOILED FOR YOU. So stop reading, please. And stop reading comment threads, articles, reviews, walkthroughs or editorials from the gaming community until you’re done with Bioshock. Look, just play it, alright?

It’s unlikely that I’m going to have anything to say here that hasn’t already been mentioned by others already. All the same, and perhaps with an eye to my rant of a few weeks ago, here are some thoughts.

Firstly, I’m glad I took my time over the game. I got it the day after it was released, and have played it slowly ever since. This morning I finished, which is perfect because as of next week I’ll actually be a busy human being again. Now, the forums are stuffed with people bragging about how they completed the game in one or two sittings, with only ten or less hours of play. And there’s some strength to the argument that games, in general, are far shorter than they used to be, and whether or not this is a Good Thing. But I am very thankful that I had stuff to do, and so couldn’t follow my impulse to storm through the game in a couple of all-nighters. The richness of the environment, of the atmosphere- decaying, retrograde 1950s art-deco opulance- absolutely demands reflection.

And it’s this that leads to my first real criticism of the game. It’s too busy. I recognize that the tight, enclosed space of the game helps lend it much of its horror, and makes possible the kind of closed-circuit mechanic (gatherer/hunter/guardian) that makes the whole thing special. But it’s stuffed with action, and noise, and light, and movement (voluntary or otherwise). Momentum is one thing, yes- but there isn’t a spot in the game where you can simply observe your world without the loud buzz of a nearby camera, the maniacal shrieks of some splicer in the distance (boy do voices carry underwater), the thump, groan and miniature earthquakes of a Big Daddy that you haven’t got around to dealing with yet. There isn’t enough space to make the whole thing feel like a city, which is what it’s supposed to feel like. Horror and action work best where the breaks feel like breaks, where you can contrast the action and the fear with, erm, absence of action and fear. The game, on occasion, was simply too loud. The Thief series arguably does it far better-and freedom, too. But more of that later.

If I had created a soundtrack and effects as sumptuous as these, I’d probably play them loud as well. The voice-acting is simply the best I have ever encountered in a video game, as is the script. The game’s plot and twists are very script- and delivery- dependent, and a lesser game might have let you down on this.

It’s also these twists that make Bioshock, I suspect, the first game to contain a truly effective critique of the medium. After having my own poodleish antics thrown in my face as they were here, it’s actually going to be hard picking up another shooter anytime soon without seeing the lines, the joins, the places where all the bloody orders just stop making sense. In this sense, Bioshock is not just a great story- it’s a story that could only have been told as a computer game. This alone sets it on a plinth, in the company of very few others. That it also takes the time to say something we didn’t know we were all already thinking, to be truly reflexive, almost Brechtian in tearing down the third wall, showing us a mechanic for what it is… that’s just phenomenal.

Part of the strength here is in subverting a fundamental weakness. Compared to Deus Ex, Bioshock is practically a half-life-esque linear shooter. Slightly disappointingly, this doesn’t really alter after we have the essential nature of our hobby used as a major plot point. My initial excitement at realising I had to collect some elixir but that there were two batches of it in different parts of the game world was quickly quashed. I needed both, of course. What looked like a big decision turned into a minor one- not ‘what would you like to do?’ but ‘what order would you like to do it in?’.

This holds true throughout. Real divergences and areas not required by the main plot are few and far between. This is a retrospective qualm, however, as I felt constantly driven by the game’s plot- even in the final third. There was enough emotional investment to make me seriously want to push through to the end. Most games don’t offer you such a compulsive experience. If they do, you can be damn sure they won’t give you much of an option to ignore it. Bioshock does, in places, and that’s nearly a miracle.

And the key mechanic for the game’s compulsion is where Bioshock’s ’spiritual successor’ status comes in. Both of your key enemies in the game are essentially godlike, and this is a direct echo of System Shocks 1 and 2. Atlas/Fontaine (note the references to Rand’s books here in the monikers of our key nemesis) and Andrew Ryan all, inevitably, remind us of Shodan. And the best thing I can advise you to do here is read and enjoy Kieron Gillen’s essay on the queen of all game villains, here. Come back when you’re done.

Shodan, of course, was the real Deus Ex Machina - or Deus Est Machina. As a gameplay mechanic, she was a stroke of genius. We fear specific things- death, the unknown. More than these we fear a malevolent god. And Ryan, in the first part of the game, fulfils these same roles. As you progress, he mocks you, taunts you. He sets traps for you, punishes you for resisting him. When one god is felled- not because you defeated him but because the bastard ordered you to, to prove a point- our new, worse deity takes over. This one really is the devil, because he’s a trickster. Like any trickster, he gave you all the clues you needed- visual suggestions- the tattoos on your arms, the momentary flashbacks, the repetitions of that phrase.

This is why I don’t think the game’s finale- the much admonished Boss Fight- was a bad idea. In fact, I enjoyed it. I’m not a truly skilful gamer, and so found that the difficulty was pitched just right- frustration vs. excitement. The plasmid/tonic technologies even give a decent in-game excuse for such a titanic figure to struggle against, which is more than I can say for most games. Like every other part of Bioshock, this last section was self-aware. It was The Way Games End. It was a Boss. The removal of your regeneration system was important here. too. You fought, you died, you fought harder. Eventually you won, and you felt that familiar flush of victory- and then you hated yourself for it, because the game’s just told you that you’re playing a game. But critically, in an experience where you can’t die, not ever, where all your fear and anger stems from a sequence of gods- you are given the power and the opportunity to destroy one. Not because you were told to- but because you wanted to. That’s satisfaction.

Andrew Ryan’s ‘utopia’ of Rapture is an explicit and repeated homage to the works and philosophies of Ayn Rand. To what extent is it a critique of them? As the man himself intones: “It wasn’t impossible to build a Rapture at the bottom of the ocean. It was impossible to build it anywhere else.”

Levine has said that he is attacking absolutism- in that any absolute ideology is dangerous. But I believe that Ryan represents the impossible predicament of a totally anarchistic society. He betrays his own ideals in order to attempt to do away with Fontaine, nationalising assets, forming armies, even introducing state-led capital punishment. Bit of a departure for the ultimate libertarian. The destabilising element is, of course, a twisted side of human nature. Fontaine is a crook with ambitions. Within a super-capitalist society such as Rapture, he is free to become the biggest fish in the pond. The ultimate flaw with Objectivist ideology, as with any, is that there will always be someone willing to subvert it to their own ends (in this case, a nihilistic con-man).

There’s so much to be said about this great work. It neatly summarises everything a piece of interactive art should be. Embrace it, love it like a brother. Lose yourself to Rapture. I really feel that there’s no coming back. The only first-person games that appear remotely palatable after this are Half Life, Thief, the first Deus Ex and maybe sandbox games like Oblivion or GTA.

Rapture really has changed the world.

First let it be established that I am by no means an expert on comic books. I read few of the super hero serials as I grew up (it’s an aspect of childhood far less common than in the states). I did read a few of Spiderman, quite a lot of Hulk, the occasional X-Men, and a few ‘themed’ graphic novels or one-offs that could be found in my local library. I was initially fond of Peter David, whom I stumbled into from his Star Trek novels, a childhood fascination of mine. Even then, David’s were just a little bit less rubbish to my developing snobrain (new word!)

More recently, I’ve made a point to catch up where it counts- Warren Ellis (in particular Transmetropolitan), as well as classics like Watchmen and some of the more celebrated Batman books (Dark Knight Returns and so on). I’m currently working my way through Neil Gaiman’s Sandman. If only my dissertation wouldn’t keep interrupting me. Oh, and Next Wave rocks. COME TO PAIN MOTHER.

So, as any decent comics fan will tell you, I am very much a newbie. Interestingly, I’m also probably exactly the sort of casual reader that comic books could really do with attracting. I may be a symptom of broadening appeal and pigeonhole disintegration. Which is new for me, I think.

Anyway, Phonogram. I read it yesterday, and it didn’t come out very long ago. It’s essentially a protracted essay on the way that music constructs us, the Britpop movement taken as a particular example. In the vivid, wonderfully pretentious world evoked by writer Kieron Gillen and artist Jamie McKelvie, music is the same thing as magic, manipulated by two groups- phonomancers, like our protagonist, and retromancers, who are to all intents and purposes the baddies. When the semi-deity patron-queen of Britpop, Britannia, disappears, David Kohl is ‘recruited’ to find out what’s going on. But his own intense personal connection with the Britpop era is involved as well, especially when Kohl realises that his own past is at stake…

It’s a quick and very easy read. Gillen subjects us to a niche culture without ever descending into the worst of geekiness, and the book is never less than accessible. The art is very clean and crisp, with a sort of graphic-design sensibility running throughout. The combination is very effective, and will surely sweeten the pill of all the philosophy which the tale carries along with it, as we deal with the nature of personal construction and, implicitly, art itself.

Happily, it all coalesces to a bit of a classic comic-book ending (insane cultists must be STOPPED!). And Kohl himself is pleasingly arrogant, the supporting cast witty enough to keep the whole thing bubbling along nicely. Laugh-out-loud moments are few, I suppose, though I’ve been spoiled by Next Wave lately.

Perhaps the greatest impact Phonogram had for me was strictly personal. I grew up during the height and tale-end of the Britpop phenomenon (I remember Common People being the first time I enjoyed watching Top of the Pops). I was only old enough to start appreciating the whole thing by the very end. I was actually rather fond of Kula Shaker, a band I stole from my older sister and which (amusingly) comes in for a pretty rough ride in Phonogram. But I also remember owning an Echobelly cassette, and my love affair with Blur kicked off pretty early. And, of course, Britpop has informed much of the music I listen to today, and my retrospective approach to many of the classics of that age is more important to me musically than any delving with truly contemporary bands. In short, Britpop was the first cultural phenomenon that I was actually aware of; the first tiny way in which I understood that there was a zeitgeist to be tapped into.

Now look what’s happened. Thanks to this comic, I’ve started digging it all out again. And it’s great.

Part of this is also because I associate Kieron Gillen quite strongly with my mid-teen interests. He’s cut his teeth as an excellent games reviewer. Specifically, he once wrote a Dear John letter to Descent 3. I don’t think I’ll ever forget that.

Anyway, if you want to see the first proper step in imbuing 90s Britain with a character, look no further. A great graphic novel, and especially worth the attention of anyone who’s even vaguely interested in music.

Here’s a nice preview to get you started.

Apologies for the lack of update lately. Here’s something I just ran across, just to keep you sweet until I have more free time. To my mind it’s the best thing that Canadian director David Cronenberg ever put together, a little piece entitled ‘Camera’ originally produced for one film festival or another. Enjoy.

Well, it’s got to be better than History of Violence, right?

I shall write again soon- thinking of starting a sort of TV reviews roundup thing. Though I suppose there are plenty of other sites out there doing the same thing, I really feel the need to write a bit about the British stuff, which tends to be a touch under-represented.

Maybe if I looked at the actual forums a little more often I’d have seen this coming?

EDIT (AND AGAIN): Ah, so this isn’t a nasty surprise for anyone else but me. I know I should be happy for you all, but I’m still a little upset.

To be fair, you had to wonder just how the man had time for everything else (the novels, the comics, the screenplays, the failed TV pilots…) as well as regularly updating a site filled with wonderful bits and bobs and moderating a massive and active community forum.

Here’s hoping all of the archives remain available for a while. It’s like dipping into one of those Christmas-time ‘bit of everything’ reference-style books (except, you know… good): a cross between Schott’s Almanack and Snow Crash; the Guinness book of World Records and Transmetropolitan.

The internet is interesting in that way. It’s a world where everything moves far faster than we can expect. Hell, it’s instantaneous. And in adapting to the rate of data flow and information exchange, we accellerate our own perceptions of it. In no time at all, trawling through The Engine for interesting tidbits became part of a regular net regime for many of us. I barely even contributed- it’s over my head, for the most part, a lot of the time- but it was great to enjoy a sort of all-access pass to a the inner workings of a lot of talented people’s minds.

In next to no time, The Engine became an institution. That’s the way of things online. I suspect there are very few edifices on this medium that will outlive their creators.

But here’s the upside: www.rockpapershotgun.com is new, and really very good.

How else can we mark the passing of an institution? Well, there’s always contributing to a nice, in-depth discussion about the perception of video games.

‘Game‘, noun.

1. An amusement or pastime, eg: children’s games, party games.
2. A scored, competitive activity or sport between two or more players, often played before spectators.
3. An activity which is played in strict accordance with a set of rules.

My name is Simon Kaye, and I am not a ‘gamer’.

I play many ‘computer games’, and ‘video games’; more often than not, on a PC with a microprocessing core. I have been playing these ‘games’ since I was twelve. Indeed, I often read a magazine entitled PC Gamer.

But I do not consider myself to be a ‘gamer’. Because the word ‘game’ in ‘video game’ or ‘computer game’ is desperately misapplied, inadequate in describing the sheer breadth of the industry.

Type ‘Game’ into an online thesaurus, and what do we get back? Amusement. Distraction. Diversion. Festivity. Frolic. Merriment. Piddly.

‘Game’ is a dismissive word, and it allows others to be dismissive and condescending of our hobby. Some might point to Deus Ex, others to System Shock, again others to the simple beauty in certain arcade classics. Ours is a truly interactive medium, a collaborative art that is the first to involve the direct collaboration of its audience. It deserves, in cases of excellence, to be taken very seriously indeed.

‘Game’ is an immature word, and it allows others to assume that our hobby is completely immature, or played by the immature. Which, admittedly, it often is. LOL n00b headshot haX WTF? etc. But this is an age of 18-rated releases. It is an innate feature of our hobby- our ‘gaming’- that allows the Daily Mail to claim that it is destroying the ethical framework of a generation, or Hilary Clinton to take cheap shots at it on the campaign trail. If our hobby’s noun did not directly imply a youth audience, how could such ill-conceived, nannyish positions remain viable?

‘Game’ is a word that brings with it connotations of childishness, of unreality, of cops-and-robbers. Worse, it linguistically implies competition and scores, rather than experience and spectacle. Who, precisely, am I competing against in Bioshock? The computer itself isn’t an adversary, it’s a platform. Too often do I hear talk of someone ‘beating’ a new ‘game’. Yes, there is a competitive element: online, or multi-player, we are often vying to display the greatest skill or attain some vaunted position or score, and against other human beings. Yes, even single-player ‘games’ usually involve an element of tactical or physical conquest over ‘enemies’ which are controlled by the software’s AI. But this by no means covers the whole gamut of modern video-’gaming’.

And yes, I’ll say again: there’s a whole load of crap titles out there. And after that, there’s a lot of titles that are good, or even brilliant, but are still essentially ‘games’. But every time the word ‘game’ fits a new release, it fails to apply in another case. What about super-realistic simulations? What about strategy titles with many, many times the complexities of chess or Risk? What about plot and dialogue-based titles like Planescape or Dreamfall? And what about the masterpieces of emergent interaction - modern or ageing - like Deus Ex or Bioshock? 

In these cases, the word ‘game’, as a label, is simply wrong. Describing Half Life 2 as a game is like using the word ‘cartoon’ to describe the Sistine Chapel ceiling. Except more people worked on HL2, and arguably for longer.

It’d be very easy at this point to simply accuse me of linguistic snobbery. What does it matter, after all, right? It’s just a fucking word. A game by any other name would play as sweet.

If only this were true.

Firstly, ours is a hobby under siege. In Britain in particular, as the press and the politicians begin their latest frenzy over youth violence and gun/gang-culture, out hobby is clearly in the firing-line. And, for a moment, let’s be fair: computer games have been full of violence from near the very beginning. They are stuffed with killing. The problem here isn’t with simulated violence, it’s with a public assumption that the violence is designed for the consumption of children. Children who buy and play games.

Secondly, and more essentially, our words make our reality. Our labels are half of our perceptions. For a growing but still minority medium, video ‘games’, thus labelled, are set up for a fall. People cannot help but approach with a preconception of silliness, of lightness. God help anyone who picks up Bioshock expecting a ‘game for Windows’ and is given an intensive, horror-driven, beauty-filled art-deco romp instead. Along with a strong critique of Ayn Rand and absolutism in ideology.

Of course, all this leaves me without a new term for one of my favourite pastimes. Suggestions welcome.

But whatever we opt for- isn’t it high time we re-branded?