Getting Down to the Tough Issues

This piece of work is coming to you from John Everson, a long time friend of the family who has an incredible knack for coming up with ridiculously complex, well thought out, and often hilarious comments. John and video games go way way back. I recall playing a game on my Commodore 64 that he made when he was very young. It involved killer bees, I believe. John's day job now involves getting games to work on technology that should by no means run games. Someone has got to cater to the frazzled housewife longing to play Bejeweled on her Kitchen Aide.

I'll keep this short as not to detract from the dialog. The following came up while we were discussing the Presidential debate. I wasn't watching it, but from what John has told me, he only changed a few key words. Enjoy.



Moderator: What would you do to solve the financial crisis as president?

McCain: I'll put on a spending freeze.

Obama: But I want a program that educates young children. Senator McCain wants to freeze young children?!!!

McCain: If you freeze them, you can shatter them with one hit.

Obama: Senator McCain, our financial difficulties are not metroids.

~

Obama: I need to make one point, Senator, the republican party is mired in the gaming policies of the 1980's. Bionic Commando Rearmed still doesn't have a jump button and the American people need one in this time of crisis.

McCain: Everyone knows I've never been voted Ms. Congeniality, but the American People know me well that I have also played games from the 90's, like 7th guest and Myst. If America has learned a lesson, it is that the policies of full motion video should not be ignored.

~

Moderator: What do you think of the lessons of the latest round of games for the Wii?

Obama: We have spent over 6 billion dollars so far, almost a trillion, on games like Dogz, Catz, and the Bee Movie game. Many of these are played once and never touched again. Others are still in their wrapper. And all of this costs American people money.

I think the lesson that needs to be drawn is to look to the free flash games, like desktop tower defense, or the one with the dolphins. These games are free, fun, and don't impact the American Wallet.

McCain: I disagree. I don't have the latest version of Flash, so I can't play most of those games.

McCain: Also, if you turn the Wiimote sideways, you can play Donkey Kong Math for 500 wii points



~


McCain: Two fourth of Julys ago, I was in Baghdad, staying with some of the troops. I was honored to be there and to speak with the troops. And I sat down with them for quite some time, and I was amazed that they are still playing Syphon Filter 3 on the PS2. This is a travesty for the greatest military in the world. These troops need our funding, they need our support, and they need 360s, to do their job, and to show the American people they can play Halo 3 as well as the Koreans or the Canadians.

~

Moderator: In 2007, President Bush ordered a voteban of xXPwnOfTheDeadXx from a counter-strike server. Senator McCain voted for that ban. You did not, explain why.

Obama: We have a 20th century mindset that says that if we are getting sniped repeatedly, we should punish those who are responsible.

McCain: I don't think senator Obama understands that xXPwnOfTheDeadXx was clearly clipping. I supported the ban, but I did not support having Pwn sent to Guantanamo Bay. I think banning his Steam account would've sufficed.

~

John: It makes you wonder if fata1ity needs to give his two cents.
Continue?

DS is the Best in the Business P.S. We got Dicks like Jesus

I watched them. I watched them as they did their sweet, loving, sensual dance of passion. At least it appeared passionate considering the fact that I forced the two of them to fornicate and conceive a bastard child. Oh, but I wasn’t done with them yet, oh no. That child, the perfect little child, I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse. I offered him his own mother so they too could conceive just for me. The father on the other hand, I made an example out of him. I laid him at the mercy of the birds and let them pick him apart until he exploded into little pieces.

Ok, now those little pieces may have been candy, but that is still some fucked up shit. On my recent trip to NYC, we stopped at a virgin megastore to look at the new game, movie, and music releases. As my lady-friend perused the DS section, she informed me that Viva Piñata was now out on the portable system. Now I had my reservations, immediately thinking of it as the retard version or one that has nothing to do with the original IP it was based on. But now that I have played it I can tell you once and for all that this shit is for real, son.

At first I was a little put off. The tutorial for this game was a good 10 minutes, but surprisingly it is well-needed. The game holds your hand as it teaches you the very basics of Viva with the new touch screen interface. You can do everything you can on its 360 counterpart. So it teaches you how to plant your seeds, water them, grow your grass (this is starting to sound very much like hashish) and con them cute little bastards into living the rest of their short meaningless lives in the hell hole that is my garden where I will likilly hit them with my shovel and sell them to the highest bidder. Now, I loved my share of Viva on the 360, but I never really got close to “catchin’ them all”, but with the DS version I can easily play a little bit here and there. For instance, I can romance two Squazzils while I'm defecating all by my lonesome. I can put up some statues to attract Flutterscotches while playing flip cup. I can even plant a blueberry tree while gorilla masking a good friend.

However, not all my time in this world has been fun. Sometimes Jeff has to beat bitches to death with a shovel because they just eat the Mousemallow that I was about to force into having intercourse. Sometimes your piñatas think that eating the food with the purple, zigzagging, rotting lines over them is a good idea and then they get sick. And since this game is apparently in the US or some other place with no free health care, I have to pay for a Doctor if I am to revive them. Because the price is so high, I make the executive decision to beat them to death and let the other piñatas feast on their remains.

I’m only about 20% through the game so I do not know for sure how long it's going to stick. Plus, I'm also playing MegaMan 9, which I should post about soon. I’m likely going to grab the Duke on live and FUCKING WIPEOUT HD COMES OUT ON THURSDAY. Cheers hoping that I get some sort of food poisoning so I have many more Piñata filled trips to the can.
Continue?

Do Chulips Feel Numb?

I've recently become acquainted with an absolute gem of a game called Chulip. Originally produced by Punchline and released in Japan in 2002 for the Playstation 2, it was distributed in America by Natsume in 2007. It was a Game Stop exclusive release, but it's not like they made a big deal out of it here. I bought the game on a whim, as it was produced by Natsume and my hunger for cutesy life simulators that incorporate mild fantasy elements must be sated (Harvest Moon has been delayed until the end of the month). Also, according to the box, the central gameplay revolves around kissing. “Smooches!?”, I exclaimed, then giggled and payed 10 dollars for my treasure.

As your little male character kisses more and more “people” (I put people in quotes because I'm unsure what some were), your father speaks with the “Lover's Tree” at night about your progress in the ways of love. The “Lover's Tree” is a tree with a human face, one of several odd characters which are objects with human faces. Anyway, the tree “strengthens your heart” based on how many people you have kissed. A strong heart is one step toward finally kissing the girl of your dreams. I'm level six, which apparently equates to being a Ladykiller, despite the fact the majority of people I've kissed were men. Actually most of the people you kiss are “Underground Residents”, creatures that come out on the surface once a day and are constantly angry. What's scary is that that is an accurate description of myself.

I enjoy the game very much, as it includes some adventure gaming aspects. Each of the many oh-so- kissable characters in the game has a prerequisite to their kiss, whether it be returning something they've lost, hurting yourself in some terrible way, or stealing, just like in real life. If you attempt to kiss anyone before they are ready, they will put your ass in your place so fast, it's not even funny. You have a life meter, which is your heart slowly breaking. The character you play takes everything to heart though. He fell on a slide, his heart broke. He finds fecal matter in the trash (“Poopie”), his heart breaks. It's all very tragic. The only way to restore the love in his heart is with the unconditional positive regard your father provides you as you sleep. It's either that or you wash your hands. You know what they say, "Cleanliness is close to fatherlylovelyness". I just love the fact that nothing can be done within the game without kissing. You can't progress in the story line without laying it on someone and the game ends when you kiss the girl of your dreams. Well shit lady, who needs you? I've kissed everyone in town, plus a bunch of mole people and now you want me? Damn.

I do have problems with the game, though I tolerate most of them. The first being that your character can't run. He just walks everywhere like he doesn't have everyone to kiss. The only way to run is to kiss an Underground Resident named “The Hasty Wizard” who then gives you a fruit called the “Speedupple” that you eat and it gives you the ability to run. Which brings me to my next point; the game is really very unforgiving. The guide book that came with the game just tells you what to do. The game is so aware of the fact that you will have no idea what to do otherwise, they go ahead and hold your hand through the game. How am I supposed to know that in order to get the Zombie to kiss you, you need to first kiss the Voodoo Doll and then give Lavender and a wilted flower to a talking stone lion who runs a bath house? I didn't even make that up. Is that common knowledge?

Honestly though, play Chulip. My life feels a little richer from having played it. I learned that you need to give love to everyone you meet (the most famous groupies share this mentality as they give love equally to both rock stars and roadies alike) and in that way, every kiss will feel like the first... with fireworks and serene music while floating in space.

The part of me that is deeply saddened by games that lack an achievements system, has generated some achievements for use with Chulip. Whether or not they are possible is beyond me, but here they are none the less.






-Be accused of rape 5 times.


-Kiss the Lover's Tree.


-Kiss 10 children


-Drink your troubles away.


-Inanimate objects are laughing at and/or with you.


-Contract Oral herpes.


Continue?

Introducing Feral Concepts to the Domesticated Gameworld

As with my last post, this one will concern itself with issues, thoughts, and parallels raised by Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, Games. Early into the book Caillois outlines his classification of games. He places all games into four main categories: Agon (competition), Alea (chance), Mimicry (simulation), and Ilinx (vertigo).

The only objection I had to any of his assertions was with his description of alea, or games of chance. He posits that children are not interested in games of chance because of the way a child “approximates an animal” and does not yet have a fully developed perception of the abstract and inanimate powers of destiny and subsequently, the attraction of ceding one's fate to it. I would have to disagree with this notion. Although he doesn’t completely reject the possibility of a child’s participation with games of chance, he certainly downgrades it almost to the point of non-existence. I can remember in my childhood playing numerous games of chance.

My second grade class was given a stern lecture by our principal about the dangers and poisonous effects of gambling after a week of playing a loose, if not completely incorrect version of poker with candy cigarettes serving as betting chips. I guess Caillois would argue that such behavior would fall under the umbrella of mimicry, namely mimicking adults, but I think that is entirely debatable. I can also recall many a fond afternoon of playing Pooh sticks with a neighborhood guide who wore a belt of throwing knives and who seemed far too old and smoked far too many cigarettes to be an expert on such a juvenile game. Sitting atop a rusted jungle gym that rested above a forest stream, we proceeded to select sticks and drop them into different parts of the stream and see whose stick reached a predetermined finish line first. Agon does enter into Pooh sticks (which parts of the stream have the strongest current, the quality and streamlined composition of the stick, etc.), but it has a very minimal presence and not to someone who has never played or to the more carefree of kids. It was a pure fascination with chance, cause and effect, trial and error, and a general curiosity with seeing the behavior of natural forces that we were interested in. Aside from this aspect of the child and their limited relation to and involvement with alea, I think Caillois’s examination of core play styles is sound.

Despite this one particular inaccuracy, Caillois does a thorough and admirable job of detailing most dominant styles of play and the rules, either implicit or explicit, that come with them. However, in every game described, the player knows the rules before engaging with that game. Be it the correct procedure for stepping onto a merry-go-round and mounting a plastic horse or playing football, the tenets of the activity are known to the participant prior to playing.

One thing I don’t think Caillois mentioned was the phenomenon of a participant playing a game when they weren’t entirely sure of the rules. This isn’t it’s own division of game style since the rules are independent of this, but this blind approach to confronting a game is something I find interesting. In the case of Warioware, I felt that this method of supplying the player with limited information, or no information at all, with regard to the game’s rules was a detriment to the game. The difficulty of the game is making sense of the nonsensical, interpreting foreign, single-serving mechanics that you are being bombarded with. After some exposure to these games (or fool’s errands) as they repeat, you learn what is required of you to succeed. For a majority of Warioware’s games, it is simply the process of discovering just what in the hell you’re supposed to do and not the actions themselves that are challenging and fleetingly fun. Once this discovery is over, the game becomes stagnant.

On the other hand, a game like flOw practices this similar idea of limited user information, but does it in a way that adds another component to the game and adds a fruitful afterlife to the gameplay rather than a premature death. The act of discovering relationships between your single-cell self and other creatures, other organic life (of the nutritional, caloric variety), and other players in the cooperative mode (or in some cases, uncooperative) adds an element of investigation, careful observation, and player interpretation to the game. Sharing thoughts about the attributes and effects of certain digestible matter with other players is also very fascinating insofar as you see how others interpreted the mechanics. This dialogue exposes little aspects of how someone interprets an unknown quantity and adds their own meaning to it through speculation. Different people can perceive the same in-game item as an aid or a hindrance, both not entirely sure of what it does. Some people think a certain action, attack, or state had more of an influence over the space and AI than others. These differences offer little insights into how people think.

But over time, these assumptions begin to break down and the dynamics between the player, the other species, and the resources in the game become apparent. Unlike Warioware, the enjoyment of the game does not cease after this period of discovery because it does not chiefly consist of repeating tasks that only have one proper solution. This is where non-linearity enters in. Once the rules are known to the player, the game goes on to be a remarkable meditative journey, a microscopic fugue that explores relationships between pacifism and antagonism, the will-to-power and all forms of life, consumption and depletion of resources, nourishment and gluttony, primal instinct and rational thought, outward appearances and intimidation, allies and enemies, and so on. Not to mention that it's also the only game that I couldn't comfortably eat snack foods while playing. I became self-aware, stared contemplatively at the finger paintings of potato chip grease that covered my controller and thought about consumption while comparing my eating habits to those of my single-cell self. I think that is quite an accomplishment. To get back to the point, cooperation and competition are both equally supported in single and multiplayer.

This unconventional hybrid of play styles is not something Callois really touches on, but doesn’t rule out either. He does stress that agon games are largely competitive exhibitions to display one’s superiority over obstacles and others. This can be the attitude one would choose to adopt when playing flOw, but it is certainly not the only one. flOw is a rare species. In an industry permeated by classical, agon-centered games, flOw illustrates that we can marry together mechanics from unlikely genres in intelligent and invigorating ways.

I believe that once games start resembling our reality more and more, we’re going to see a dramatic rise in this approach to organic, implied game rules detailed above. Eventually designers won’t need to bother wasting their time and the player’s time on implementing tutorials and gameplay mandates, not to mention the inseparable disruption of player immersion and dramatic investment that follows these in-game irritations, because the rules of the game will already be intimately known to the player through life experience. Obviously this won’t apply to every game, but graphical fidelity, dynamic gameplay-monitoring systems, and improved AI will be instrumental in subtly conveying gameplay opportunities to players in even the more unrealistic of games. At least I hope this is the trend we will see. I suppose that if this paradigm shift is to occur, we first need courage on the part of more designers, publishers, and players to encourage this biotic exchange of experimental game design, to administer this much-needed transfusion of new blood into the pallid skin of mainstream games. Though courage is a rare commodity in the industry these days, games like flOw foster hope for this fascinating possibility. Continue?

Of Master Chief and Men

For a videogame production class I’m currently taking, I’ve been reading the book Man, Play, Games by Roger Caillois. The book was written in 1961, but it is still incredibly, if not disturbingly relevant to modern athletic games and videogames. It’s an anthropological look at the games of men and a categorical classification of them all, while also being a smaller study of some of the similarities between the games of men and animals that emerge within nature.

When Reading Callois’s opinions on the important role of social dynamics in games, certain modern multiplayer conventions bear a striking resemblance to those of antiquity, such as Eskimos being the cosplayers of yore. In Caillois’s description of mimicry games, he says, “ [The disguise] serves to change the wearer’s appearance and to inspire fear in others.” He also adds, “ Acts of mimicry tend to cross the border between childhood and adulthood. They cover to the same degree any distraction, mask, or travesty, in which one participates, and which stresses the very fact that the play is masked or otherwise disguised, and such consequences ensue.” This observation certainly holds foreboding echoes of what is now the most popular, present-day disguise that can be used to intimidate (or at least attempt to) and obscure the act of play to the point of either borderline or imagined legitimacy; the avatar and all of its anonymity.

Play does in fact “lack something when it is reduced to a mere solitary exercise." I know this all too well. Some of my darkest, loneliest, most forlorn moments have been while playing Mario Party with me, myself, and a platter of cream cheese and pepperoni sandwiches I made. As we crawl out of the doldrums of self-imposed digital purgatories, we venture out into the wide social world of online gaming. But as Caillois posits, the social agon (competitive) game is more of a rivalry-motivated, glory-reaping exhibition than a brotherly communion. I told myself that playing Halo 3 online would strengthen long-distance friendships and maybe forge new ones. The game fulfilled this desire to an extent, but the beast quickly took over.

Suddenly, you start to see your rank go up. Your melee elbow becomes battle-hardened. You see and hear the cruel face of interactive war; teenage kids accommodating every fresh corpse with a post-mortem teabagging and guys with ‘DJ’ somewhere in their gamertag rap battling their way to victory (forfeits where the degree of annoyance was too great for our team and resident rapper, Jeff, to endure). You see your service decorations get shinier, bigger, more ornate. You enter games and see guys in the pre-game lobby that have all sorts of crazy emblems. “ A silver phoenix? A golden spatula? I don’t know what the fuck rank that spatula represents, but I’ve never seen it before and I’ll probably never want to see it again after this match,” you tell yourself.

A little bit longer and you’re thirsting for victory and that fearsome, intimidating veneer, that golden spatula to call your own. It’s fun when you’re sober as well as blood-drunk, but karma quickly comes back to you for every white, nameless, cross-shaped data archive you helped erect in the vast graveyard known as the Bungie.net stat server. With the sour taste of defeat still in your mouth, you start playing as a ‘lone wolf’ because you think your team is bringing you down. Once that adrenaline-fueled war high starts to wane, post-traumatic stress takes hold. You come full circle, become reformed, start playing by yourself again and looking for meaning, purpose, and God in the serene fields of Hyrule. But every now and then that trigger finger becomes itchy, you start hearing things, the sound of your maiden whispering into your ear. “ Say my name,” she demands. “ PWNage,” you respond… “sweet, sweet PWNage.” Continue?

Fuck Kevin Petrasceni, Fuck Him in His Fucking Face

After the revolting and horrible news about Fallout 3 now being censored in all territories, I was a bit pissed off. Lets just say I may have had one end of my dvi to hdmi cable tied to my neck and the other end to the ceiling fan, with an old plastic picnic table chair underneath me. Luckily in what might have been my last moments, I saw the post on gamevideos of Ken Levine’s PAX keynote. I slowly loosened my fate from my neck, cleared my keyboard of the last remnants of my volcano taco from my taco bell big box meal, grabbed a small amount of hand lotion, moved the box of Kleenexes over to the monitor and began loading the Levine Keynote.

As I readied a turkey sandwich, (because nothing goes better with Ken then a good ol’ American sam-itch) I began to ponder what he would discuss during the keynote. Smearing the mayonnaise on the top of the bun, I remembered that I had read that he did not even talk about the development of Bioshock or any of his other games for that matter during the keynote. I’m back at the computer now, I take a bite, I feel the lettuce crunch, put my right hand on the mouse, left hand in my pants and click play.

Ken whispered sweet nothings into my ear for a full half-hour. He talked about growing up in the seventies, reading comics and fearing for his life. The more he spoke it reminded me of an episode of the wonder years if the wonder years sucked shit. I was shocked to think that Ken was an outcast for most of his life. Some fuck named Kevin PetraWEENIE (see what I did there?) used to punch him in the arm everyday on the bus. He used to read comics he hid inside his textbooks during his lunch period. He was as he said “a closet nerd”.

Mattel’s Closet Nerd Ken TM showed me a very surprising side of himself that may be hard to picture because of the tone of his games: his sense of humor. Ken Levine is a funny and clever son of a bitch. He spoke about his secret love for Magneto's daughter, the Scarlet Witch, described talking about D&D at the front of a bus full of Jocks and Freaks as being similar to singing in Hebrew in Nazi-occupied France, and when he proclaimed “when the dark lord of the sith offers you five, you give him five.” He described his childhood stutter so vividly that you would think he was baffling you with his speech impediment at twelve years old right next to you.

I think the thing that made me cum the most about his keynote was the level of appreciation he had for his “tribe”, one tribal brother being his friend and co-worker that did not make him feel ashamed for being himself. I don't think I ever had it even close to as tough socially as Ken did, because I had always had a “tribe”. Once all the kids moved up to middle school they got tired of playing fake gun games, but my friends and I bought airsoft guns as soon as we were allowed to and just kept the dream alive. My “tribe” would gather in a dark, dank, dingy basement and put in the latest Resident Evil or Silent Hill game. We would often take turns playing them together in complete silence while one of us traversed this horrific world until they could handle it no longer and had to pass the journey on to another. My fondest memory of this was deep into our first playthough of Silent Hill 3 when we entered a room with a giant wall-sized mirror. Suddenly the side beyond the mirror began to be covered by this living tissue. Then the tissue covered our side of the mirror. We froze…we literally turned off the game and watched infomercials for a half-hour because neither of us could continue. We still game together. Alex and I played the last boss of Gears of War for almost two hours trying to figure out the trick to him and why we kept dying. Turns out we just had to shoot him a lot. My friend Chris and I played (or mostly watched) Metal Gear Solid 4 for twenty-two hours straight until we beat it. I still play with my “tribe” now, but my new “tribe” usually involves beer and other illegal means and ends with me getting into a rap battle victory over Xbox live during some inebriated rounds of Halo.

The point is if I did not have my tribe when I was playing games, I may have tried to find some other social outlet. But my “tribe” has only encouraged and influenced my current love of games. Sorry for all this sentimental posting, but Ken reminded me again why I love games. But I still hate everyone from Australia for renaming my real drugs in Fallout, you Aussie rating board fucks. Continue?

Big Trouble in Little China

I have convinced myself that these ramblings are vaguely relevant enough to post. The summer games may not have been games of the video variety, but they were games nonetheless, and that’s enough of a viable excuse for me.

I don’t wish to speak too much about the opening ceremony of the summer Olympics because I’m still scared shitless. It appears that China is assembling an army worthy of Mordor. It really seemed to me while watching it that this event would be in history books if (and by if I really mean when) China becomes the next dominant world superpower. This would be the event that kids would learn marked the beginning of the end (or long decline, depending on your degree of pessimism or optimism). First it starts with beating ancient drums that have been tricked out, presumably by Xzibit and everyone at Far East Coast Customs, then it becomes invading countries, but don’t worry… they will come smiling and smeared in face paint.

In all seriousness, it’s not that I think someday China will bring about the end of the free world as we know it, but I am uneasy watching this. Noam Chomsky has said that China’s global dominance will be inevitable. And just seeing how China treats the individual, exploits their tireless dedication, loyalty, and spirit to favor the whole (and by whole I mean the exceptional individual: government figures, celebrities, and glowing beauties who gracefully dance on the backs of the hundreds lifting her and her platform up) is troubling. Every nation does this to an extent, but the scale on which China operates seems completely foreign, well maybe apart from the hive mind mentality of domestic honey bees.

I will, however, speak about certain adjustments and new practices I think the Olympic Committee should adopt to add a bit of honesty and pizazz to this wearisome, tradition-steeped event.

1. The silver and bronze medals should be replaced by clumps of human shit. Silver will now be Shit 1, and the neck ornament formerly known as bronze shall become Shit 2. Shit 1 is sun-dried and solid. Shit 2 is wet, bloody, and at the rate it drips, it wouldn’t even last you the whole day. Elderly men would definitely have to be the primary donors. Just think about the potentially awe-inspiring spectacle of watching thousands of elderly Chinese men defecating into LED light-laden, ceremonial bedpans while smiling widely. If only that could have been included in the opening ceremonies for Beijing.
2. Coaches who slap gymnasts’ asses deserve a medal themselves. Those gluts are like concrete for fuck’s sake. Similar to a pommel horse routine, this is a risky procedure that requires courage and years of practice.
3. Interpretive dance should be added as an event and judged mercilessly on a numerical scale.
4. Most athletes it seems are just genetically more ideal for success in certain events than others (Phelps and his large fin-like hands and feet, tall guys in basketball, volleyball, and running, etc). For the most part, it seems like we are just rewarding athletes for their arbitrary genetic identities coupled with an absurd amount of years spent mastering one task. I propose that in the future, when the necessary technologies emerge, we should just make purebred athletes spawned from medal-winning fathers and mothers. The Olympics will then consist of running a gamut of tests on these babies (blood tests, cardiovascular tests, genetic tests), entering all of that data into a computer which will then determine through accurate simulation, which of these babies would have won their assigned event at a future Olympics. They will then either be given gold teddy bears or pacifiers made out of shit.
5. The next-gen Olympics aren’t going to be interesting if the Olympic committee preserves this stance of theirs on doping. When nanotechnology becomes commonplace and little kids are hitting baseballs out of townships and men are enjoying a leisurely 4 hours at the bottom of their pools before surfacing, how are the “true” athletes going to compete against this new shift in human abilities without the aid of technologies that the average person has? I suggest a merger between Rapture and the Olympics, the NanOlympics©. The committee can still keep their beloved element of chance and suspense, but in the form of syringe injections and which athlete can manage them the best during a given event… that is until a new nanobot emerges that exponentially increases proficiency with syringe injection management.

During one gymnastics routine I was watching, a Chinese gymnast launched himself off of a vault, whirled through the air and spun down toward a blue mat beneath him like a beautiful, dancing leaf falling from a tree branch above a serene vernal pool. As he landed on the mat, he made the supreme mistake of losing his balance temporarily and wavering before finding his center of gravity once again. After raising his “I’m done now” arms into the air, he walked off of the mat and gave an embarrassed smile. A commentator then said something to the effect of “ I don’t like that. I don’t like when gymnasts laugh after making such a crucial error.” I concur. How dare he! How could he possibly not take doing flips and revolutions through the air while wearing spandex seriously? The nerve of some people. How beautiful is a leaf if it doesn’t stick its landing in that natural body of water? Not very fucking beautiful at all. Then it’s just a rogue leaf, a smartass leaf that chooses to succumb to external forces and other variables by just simply landing anywhere it, or the wind, pleases. Only the supernatural, the exceptional, truly beautiful ones land in the pool in front of you. They become miniature boats that sail you away to the realm of fantastical daydreams and relaxation. The ones that land on a bed of their rotting peers are just ordinary organic material, not worthy of note. This fucking gymnast, he should sulk, languish, brood, mope, self-mutilate, self-immolate, beat himself up and squirm till the end of his days with the knowledge that he failed himself, his sport, his dead ancestors, his dead cat, but most importantly… his country.

It seems the idea of country is most of what this comes down to, a prestige contest (or dick size competition) between nations with athletes serving as their playthings. As if it was America that made Phelps such a fast swimmer. America isn’t the only place that has water to swim laps in, although I could see how some might get that impression in light of some of these commercials. But perhaps it is the only place that has pH-controlled freedom water that seeped into his skin and gave him that motivational shot of the American dream. No, lots of fucking, a few people who gave them guidance (not Lady Liberty), how much of one’s life and soul are surrendered to the cause, and in the case of long-distance running, a healthy whiff of smelling salts have more to do with an athlete’s success than nationality. But try telling the majority of Americans that. It’s no surprise that Michael Phelps got that early, fake copy of CoD: World At War, he’s the greatest soldier we have.

Aside from this ridiculous notion of national pride, the display of man’s conquest over obstacles and essentially, nature, or his will to power, seems to be the other big draw of the Olympic games. We can be dolphins, we can be eagles, we can be cheetahs, we can be… whirling dervishes, we can overcome the limitations of our bodies and take out our frustrations on water, land, and shot put balls. We arose, quite literally, out of a defiance to nature. Some biologists have argued that one of the only logical reasons why our species at some point decided to walk on hind legs, neglecting bad balance and becoming visible to predators above tall grass, was out of this cultivated and now inherent spirit of defiance. The Olympics are not the only home to the exhibition of the will to power. It can also be argued that art and technology are also similar conquests, but at least they aren’t solely conquests... for the most part.

It was during this summer games haze that I started to notice that as much as I criticized athletes for foolishly trying to challenge boundaries, limitations, and nature for no particular reason, I myself am responsible for my own vendettas against nature; the gamer’s will to power.

I used to be a 360 achievement whore. I’m reformed now, clean. At the peak of my habit, I would have done anything to get another fix, to see just one more cheaply-designed binary bauble come up on the screen and tell me reassuringly that I had accomplished something in this world. I felt like a depraved boy scout who lived and died by the promise of getting that Eagle Scout status. I would have sold skooma to children, if there were children in Oblivion, if it meant being handsomely compensated for it. I would have swabbed 50 q-tips worth of crime scene semen in Condemned, had a restraining order issued against me in Sneak King, I would have done anything short of signing up for the Battlefield newsletter, pre-ordering Bad Company, naming my first-born ChallengeEverything©, or whatever other absurd and inane marketing tie-in hoops you needed to jump through in order to unlock new weapons in BF: Bad Company.

But, like I said, those days are well behind me… that was until a patch was released for Super Stardust HD that supported trophies. Then, I relapsed. I bought the $5 expansion in this whirlwind hysteria of trophy collecting I was in, thinking that was more than enough money to unlock all the meteor-blasting content and frustration there was to be had. Then I discovered that the co-op trophy can only be unlocked by buying yet ANOTHER $5 add-on. What’s next? Only after buying the chrome ship color add-on can you then unlock the ‘admired your cool new ship color for 20 seconds’ trophy? This was where I drew the line and what prompted me to sober up again.

It’s during these moments of clarity that you realize how outlandish and hollow your actions were that received an empty symbol of recognition, not unlike Olympic competition. Kicking gnomes to gain potions or simply riding the ‘Cockatrice’, shooting unsuspecting pigeons, collecting yarn, Cyrodillic brandy, vampire dust, skeletal remains, COG tags, getting 50 headshots, killing two enemies with one Spartan laser blast, killing 1,000 enemies during one game and head biting 50, killing enemies with a curb stomp, an airborne toilet, and road flares is just some of the behavior I have regretfully participated in to gain decorations for my service. It could be worse I suppose. I could be touting how my PC can run Crysis and posting videos of it as evidence. It seems like we’re almost at the point where people are going to be demanding recognition, accolades, and trophies just for wasting enough money to get a sub-par game running properly.

Oftentimes, conquest takes president over all other gameplay mechanics. And the ridiculousness of what you’re doing is neglected in favor of this spirited conquest. It’s not that there will never be a place for mindless games on my shelf, it’s that the achievement, trophy, what have you, knows what I can’t resist, knows my own inner circuitry better than I do, and exploits these innate desires to give a game an unearned, unnecessarily long, and fruitless arfterlife.

Sober, I watched the ending ceremony to the Olympics with my mother and father. The upper rim of the Bird’s Nest crackled and spew out fireworks into the night sky. Call it withdrawal paranoia or trophy-induced mistrust, but for a minute I thought these so-called fireworks were actually disguised inter-continental missiles hurdling toward various international cities. No amount of “oohing” and “aahing” could change our fate. I tried to get my family to go into the basement, but they were hypnotized by the dazzling display. That’s the desired response the Chinese wanted I told them. I began to prepare for impact. What wishes had gone ungranted? What aspirations had been left unfulfilled? What should I accomplish before the end? … Earning the coveted platinum trophy. Continue?