Games on Roxana-Mălina Chirilă

Writing, video games and so forth

Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:55:18 +0000

I don’t often write blog posts because somebody says „Be part of this! Write about this topic!” And yet here we are, because I find a certain topic interesting.

Cathy Day, whom I’ve occasionally mentioned on this blog, wrote the following:

I’ve never played a video game, but I recognize that it’s a narrative experience that lots and lots of people value. No judgement. But in my fiction-writing classes, I often read stories and novels that read as if I’m watching someone else play a video game. There’s plot, action, scene, all great, but virtually no interiority, which for me is *absolutely necessary* in fiction. My students have always used films and TV shows to talk about fiction, but now they also reference video games. “This is like Bioshock,” for example, and I have no idea what that even means. I wonder if other creative writing teachers have noticed this quality in student fiction or these references? I wonder if people who play video games could give me some tips about how to help my students make the transition from gaming to writing narrative.

She wrote it on Facebook, then she posted it on her blog and asked for opinions. I like the question and it’s part of something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. It’s a slightly different take, and I’ll start from here: what is up with literature, anyway?

I’ve run into endless discussions concerning whether listening to an audiobook counts as reading the book. Some say it’s less valuable to listen to a book than to read it – because it’s lazier. And then, of course, people often say that books are superior to movies/TV shows, because the latter are less valuable/more commercial/easier to follow. Theater is above TV, but I’m not sure where it is in relation to reading books. Probably a bit lower on the scale of values, unless you’re watching some damned difficult crap. Video games are, of course, at the very bottom of this scale of values, because Pacman can’t compare to Tolstoy, or something like that.

Which is all fascinating and, in my opinion, all wrong. I describe myself as a writer, but what I actually mean by it is that I am a storyteller whose main medium is the written word. But man, I love other mediums, too. I write my own novel and I do my own audio recording of it. If you read it yourself, you get to add intonations and moods yourself. If you listen to it, you get my interpretation of how the story and the characters sound like. You might think this is good, right? I am telling a story, I naturally want to get it across my way, no? No. Sometimes it helps me. At other times, I am very sad that my own voice, no matter how good, will never echo in your mind in the same way as your own soundless inner voice.

The fun part is that no matter how a story gets told, we never get the whole of it. We recreate it from what we have, but in the end we all see our own version of that story. Fans put this in practice: they often write their own crazy stories based on small gestures which are definitely there, but which meant something entirely different to the scriptwriter, director, actors. And that’s perfectly alright and normal and I love it.

So where am I going? Well, to this: there’s no ‘right’ way to tell a story. There is no ‘perfect’ medium. Art is a lie: it makes us think we’re getting the full story, but it’s always giving us more of something, less of something else. There will be things you will wish you had been able to leave out, but must add. A movie will never manage to have an indistinct background as well as a comic series can. It’s easier to hide background details in film than in literature: in literature you need to mention them, but keep the reader’s attention focused on something more exciting. In film, you literally put them in the background.

Here’s what I mean. Look at one of the pages of Exiles, a number of The Sandman, from the volume The Wake:

Look at the subtlety of the black and white, at the elegance of the drawings. The scenery is barren, or maybe it barely exists at all. Different fonts to suggest different types of speech, but they don’t tell you anything about what characters’ voices sound like. I can’t change fonts in a book: it’s too odd, it jumps at you. What you can’t do: add music; describe actual voice pitch; add every gesture. There is a lot of suggestion here – and in other mediums, that suggestion would need to be done in different ways. Literature would use vague words, cinema might use filters and carefully considered sets.

It is unfair to compare a medium with another from a value POV because they all do different things.

But what about video games and fiction writing and what Cathy Day said? I’ve taken you on a ride, but we’re finally arriving at our destination. She mentioned no interiority from the characters. Well…

In video games the main character can be a shell that the player enters (usually first-person games: shooters, Portal, Amnesia). Or s/he can be very clearly defined as a character (Monkey Island’s „Guybrush Threepwood, mighty pirate!”). In the first case, the player’s psychology substitutes that of the character’s, doesn’t it? There is still psychology going on, but you don’t see it because it’s yours. You put it all in. It’s something you simply can’t do with books, they need psychology.

Well, the problem with video games from this point of view is that they don’t teach you how books look like. Which is an odd thing to say, I suppose, but I think it’s the basic problem that Cathy Day encountered: her writers might have stories to tell, but they aren’t familiar with how literature tells stories.

Oh, no. What is there to be done?

Well, the short answer is: read books. Read more books. Look at what it is that books do. Grab books from various different genres, different countries, different times and see what they do and how they do it. What catches your attention? What makes them interesting? What makes you read on? Study books, don’t just read them. If you like a page, figure out why you like it. I am not saying you should do this as a reader. As a reader, you really ought to give in to the story and enjoy it. But as a writer, that’s how you learn how to do things. By studying others.

C. Day is asking about transitioning from one medium to another.

Well, transitioning is a bit like translating. The theory of translation says the following: a translator doesn’t go from language A to language B. Instead, he goes from language A to a certain meaning, which he then moves into language B. In other words, „Mary goes to the market” is English. It is then translated into the idea of Mary going to the market, in present tense, which then needs to be retold in, say, Romanian: „Mary merge la piață.” This can lead to several choices for the translator (Do I call her Mary, because that’s her original name? Or do I call her Maria, so Romanian readers can feel closer to her?).

The same is true for changing mediums, I think: you have the story in medium A, which you then translate to yourself as a complex web of plot, character and details, which you then try to get across in medium B, with medium B’s tools and techniques. But the story is, to my mind, the central thing.

I haven’t played Bioshock, but I’ll talk about Tomb Raider, which is new, shiny and well-known, okay?

Lara Croft struggles there against two types of opponents: ones who catch her and ones who don’t. This division is important because those opponents transmit two different things: the ones who don’t catch her are at a distance. They have guns and other such. They can shoot her and kill her, but you can evade them. They are there to underline her skills with a gun/bow and arrow/weapon of choice. They create a stealthy Lara, who works hard at not being seen, who is a scared woman, but a deadly woman. They make you feel strong.

The enemies who catch her are up close and personal. They grab her. They hold her. You need to hit a sequence of buttons at the right time to escape their grasp and you often can’t. This Lara is more scared than skilled, more desperate and in difficulty than on top of the situation. I did wonder for awhile why the hell I needed to press left and right in quick succession to evade a crazy psycho, but the answer is this: because it’s effing hard for her to escape.

This is how the story works for games: is it difficult for Lara? The player will struggle. Are stealth and skill needed? You get ten opponents and alarms everywhere.

Literature is more subtle. You don’t have to kill ten opponents to prove stealth. One or two are enough. Four are numerous. I will disbelieve you at ten. Explosions don’t affect us much, because it isn’t the idea of an explosion that really makes an impact on us: it’s the sound of it, the light, the way things fly all over and are destroyed. You need to describe that.

Video games are explicit. They need to hit you over the head with a hammer to get a point across. Literature is subtle and relies on small things, on details and observations.

Here’s how it can be done. Lara against opponents who don’t catch her:

My knee scraped against the ground as I fell, but I couldn’t scream. They would hear me, and then they would kill me. I hurt all over, but I needed to find a way out, so I searched for something, anything, a rope, a surface I could climb on, but seconds ticked away and they got closer and closer…

Lara caught:

She felt his hands running across her body as he whispered words in Russian that she couldn’t understand. Lara had no idea whether he meant to kill her or rape her, she wanted to curl up into a ball and cry either way, but that wasn’t an option…

If you want to transition, you need to switch modes of expression. What can literature do that video games can’t do (as easily)? References, thoughts, impressions, feelings, moods. It comes down to learning what your medium can do, what has been done so far and how. Which is why writers need to read books.

(But you can pick up stuff from other mediums as well, of course. And as for video games, I really recommend that people should play some. You might eventually realize that they Aren’t Your Thing, but they are an experience of their own, no? A whole new type of telling stories.)

Jocuri ieftine de la Humble Bundle

Thu, 05 Sep 2013 14:51:25 +0000

Cred că am mai pomenit de Humble Bundle, dar nu pe larg.

Humble Bundle e un site cu o idee mișto în spate: vinde un pachet de x jocuri (sau x cărți, sau x albume de muzică, sau x alte chestii, dar de obicei sunt x jocuri) extrem de ieftin. Adică cu un dolar. Și dacă plătești mai mult decât au plătit în medie toți ceilalți care au cumpărat pachetul, mai primești y jocuri (sau y cărți, sau y alte chestii, înțelegeți ideea).

Eu am luat Amnesia, plus alte câteva jocuri, cu 3$. Săptămâna asta (din care mai sunt 3 ore), dau jocuri de la Paradox. Mai au, tot acum, ceva standup comedy. Dacă plătești cât peste 1$, primești pachetul de bază.

Banii ăia pot să ajungă în general în trei locuri: la cei care fac site-ul, la creatorii respectivelor jocuri/cărți/chestii și la organizații caritabile. Tu poți să decizi cât merge în fiecare parte (dacă n-ai chef să le dai nimic celor de la Humble Bundle, de exemplu, poți să nu le dai nimic).

Toată lumea câștigă: tu iei jocuri ieftine (sau cărți ieftine, sau…) și le iei legal, nu mai piratezi; creatorii își fac reclamă, fac o chestie bună și mai și câștigă puțin; iar organizațiile caritabile spre care merg donațiile au în mod evident de câștigat.

Desigur, dacă vrei, poți să dai și 100$ sau 500$ pe un pachet de jocuri, dar nu trebuie.

Pachetele de cărți sau de alte alea le poți downloada de obicei direct de pe site-ul Humble Bundle. Jocurile ori le poți downloada direct (cum a fost cazul cu Darwinia sau cu alte jocuri de la Introversion Software), ori primești coduri de Steam pentru ele (cum a fost cazul cu Mirror’s Edge, Amnesia, Sacred 2 etc.).

Amnesia

Wed, 28 Aug 2013 13:10:05 +0000

Amnesia is a scary game
Amnesia is a fright
I love to play, so it’s a shame
It kills my sleep at night.

Insomniac, I walk around
A glass of drink to find
When in the dark I hear a sound–
Steve might be right behind!

I dart around, a crazy girl
In an old, friendly house
I find a box, in it I curl
More quiet than a mouse.

When dawn is nigh, I crawl outside
And glance around in fear
The laptop then I open wide–
The time to play is here.

Tomb Raider and the History of Japan

Fri, 02 Aug 2013 08:49:54 +0000

[Note: This is a translation of an article I originally wrote in Romanian, but which I realized I wanted in English as well. And translators translate, even if they hate translating themselves.]

I’ve been playing Tomb Raider these days. I won’t pretend I’m enough of a gamer to write a proper review, but I personally liked it. The plot isn’t amazing, but the atmosphere is. And it’s really neat to play from beginning to end.

However, I noticed a few mysterious things about the history of Japan pretty early on. I won’t necessarily say they’re bad (it’s a game that has a strong fantasy side, in the end), but they drew my attention. (I was a Japanese major)

1. Yamatai.

The first time I heard the name, it sounded vaguely familiar – because I’d heard of Yamato (an old region of Japan, associated at one point with the imperial family). So I browsed the net to see what Yamat_ai_ was all about. It would seem that there are indeed old documents which say that it was the land where Himiko ruled, but the its location is merely „Where in Japan?”, not the romantic notion of „Let us seek out the lost kingdom”. Long story short, if it was in a certain area, then Himiko was the local ruler and that was that, but if the kingdom was in another (specific) region, then she might be connected with the imperial court later on.

2. Himiko

She is actually mentioned in Chinese chronicles, but not so much in Japanese ones. Or if she is, she’s mentioned under another name. The thing is, with the Japanese you can always encounter things like postmortem names for emperors or with the desire to avoid calling women by their proper names (in the Tale of Genji, 11th c., written by Murasaki Shikibu, the majority of women are named after where they live, or details that remind you of them; even „Murasaki Shikibu” is a pseudonym).

Technically speaking, the Kojiki and the Nihon Shoki, two important Japanese chronicles, were written at the beginning of the 8th century and they avoided naming women during the Heian period, which started at the end of the 8th century. But whatever. I don’t know enough history to be able to tell if that naming interdiction existed earlier on.

3. Sam as a descendent of Himiko

This is where that interesting thing with the unknown location of Yamatai is of consequence. If Yamatai is in the area in which the Yamato imperial court lived later on, that means that the emperors of Japan are Himiko’s descendants. And here’s the fun part: it means that today’s imperial family is descended from Himiko, because the Japanese never changed their ruling dynasty. Moreover, the noble families descend out of the imperial family themselves – when it was clear that a child wouldn’t end up on the throne, he got a family name and became a noble. They didn’t ennoble commoners.

Then, after so long, and so many descendents in so many clans… it’s possible that Sam is very distantly related to a huge number of Japanese people, via Himiko. (so it’s not that unlikely that she’d be compatible with the funky blood-dependent rituals mentioned in the game)

Oh, and about that: in mythology, the Japanese imperial family descends from the sun goddess, Amaterasu.

4. Himiko’s samurai

This was the detail that had me going „Wait, what?!” in the beginning. That legends would say Himiko is guarded by samurai. The Ancient Himiko, guarded by Middle Age samurai. It’s like saying, „Legend has it that the Caesar was a leader from Ancient Rome and his personal guard was formed of loyal knights.” Not really. Warrior samurai appeared centuries after Himiko.

This should’ve been the legend that made Lara wonder what was going on.

5. Himiko as a Buddhist

The island is full of Buddhist statues and Himiko’s represented in the same way. But Himiko was most likely a Shintoist (Shinto is the Japanese indigenous religion, full of gods, demons and spirits). That’s probably where she gets her shamanistic reputation.

6. The art is all over the timeline

Between statues and paintings, my feeling is that they were more keen on representing medieval Japan. Which is explainable in context, but it really should’ve made Lara think.

7. Seppuku

The idea of suicide (with the implications and meanings we associate with Japanese suicide) started around the 12th c. and became a ritual later. So the corpse Lara finds of one of Himiko’s generals who committed seppuku was really suspect.

8. The mummies.

They’re very mummified. Which isn’t really something that would happen, considering the climate. Approximately all the dead you come across seem to have enjoyed the benefits of an Egyptian climate, in which they wouldn’t decompose too much. But considering the weather on the island, they would’ve turned to dust a lot faster. And the samurai who’d committed seppuku would’ve probably been eaten by various animals and bugs.

But, well. Magic!!!

Computer games DO make you violent

Thu, 20 Jun 2013 21:33:14 +0000

Today I felt sort of like crap. I think there’s some sort of virus striking at random and it was my turn to feel as if I were hit by a particularly nauseating bus. So I wrote a bit and played a bit. World of Tanks, because it’s apparently what I play nowadays.

So here I was, in my amazingly fast and sort of powerful tank, dashing across the map like a mad motorcyclist in Greek traffic, feeling sort of gleefully suicidal (you play awhile more seriously and then you want to do something crazy, I suppose). So I went straight through the enemy lines (well, most of them had moved elsewhere, but still), past bigger tanks, stronger tanks, better tanks shooting at me and, for once, not hitting.

Near the enemy base, I saw their artillery, in the open – higher level than mine, I think, but they’re wonderfully weak in close combat, even if they’re amazingly annoying when they shoot you down from half the map away. So I head straight towards it, shooting and hitting just fine. Its health points (or whatever the hell tanks consider health) go down, lower and lower. 80%. 55%. 30%. 15%.

Oh, yeah. For once, I am totally acing this. My suicidal tendency is paying off and I’m not just, you know, dying. I get to take a huge annoyance out with me – and maybe even live to tell the tale.

And just as my gun is reloading and I’m about to shoot one final time…

I get this window opening in front of my game. Yahoo messenger. My nemesis.

Person: hey
Person: needs some help
Person: any ideea what this means?
Person: 択時

Queue, „ARGH, NO, GET OUT OF MY FACE!!!”

I keep the ‘w’ button down, to keep moving. Even if I can barely see where I’m going. I try to figure out how to close a damned window without changing the window you’re on, possibly telepathically.

No luck. Cursing and about to rip Google translate to pieces for not materializing in front of every person wanting to ask me a question related to Japanese (or English), I switch windows really fast and try to get back to the game.

Except my tank is dead. See, no matter how realistic a game like this might be, no matter how well researched, how good in imitating life and so forth, it will always have one feature that will never destroy a tank in real life, but which will destroy a tank in gaming: the edge of the map. I’d crashed into it, stopped, become a sitting duck and got shot down. Probably by the very artillery I had been about to shoot down.

Noob mistake, I suppose. I left my messenger on. And experienced the profound wave of violent feeling that computer games are reputed to have. I had never believed those rumors, but the messenger window proved me wrong. Curses!!!

(also, I have no idea what that means and my dictionary is shrugging at me; for some reason whenever people want me to decipher Japanese for them, they seem to have acquired really odd stuff)

World of Tanks

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 17:30:15 +0000

Ok, ok. Tancurile sunt mișto. Nu am crezut, dar sunt.

Din păcate, tancurile m-au distras de la alte chestii pe care ar fi trebuit să le fac azi. De exemplu de la citit. Și scris. Și alte chestii. Ce citeam, iar? Povestea lui O? Povestea lui Genji? Eschil? Ceva fanfiction? Ceva despre fanfiction?!

Uf. Fir-ar ele de tancuri. Și de liste interminabile cu chestii de citit și scris.

(Apropo, World of Tanks e un joc simpatic, care merită jucat. Și e și gratis, așa că yay!)