Been meaning to respond to Enrique’s comments on what appeals to us in games for awhile. Finally found a moment to breathe and decided to post this up rather than, you know, breathing.
It’s a breakdown of what I see as the four core tasks that constitute most gaming experiences. I’ll leave a link to the full article, but for a tease, here’s the Cartesian graph that finally let me start wrapping my mind around where I was going.
Look forward to any comments.
Genre: Open
Location: Abandoned Factory
Object: Stick of Butter
Synopsis: A journalist makes the ultimate sacrifice to get her story as a case of late 21st Century identify theft evolves into a dangerous game of cat and mouse.
Cascade
“Where am I?” Cascade whispered while twisting in his chair to test equally restrained legs and wrists.
The few minutes since Cascade had rebooted seemed like seconds–and the fact that his hands were bound did nothing to slow the relativity of time. While the digital bits of his mind had come to life well before the more groggy organic parts, those few digital add-ons observed equally vague details and answered no questions, save one. Three hours had passed since someone shot him outside of Simon’s apartment. Just a strong tazer shot, but enough to blow his lid, both grey matter and silicon.
Three hours and he could be anywhere.
Distant pricks of light rained down from unseen sources above, illuminating more shadows and myths of the eye than concrete details. Rows of metallic arms swung listlessly in front of him, as if manifesting midair out of the shrouded firmament above. The chair holding Cascade rested only a few feet away from the nearest arm; he could see how the implement descended into a steely claw swaying over silent conveyor belts. The robotic limbs gave the impression that he waited within the skeletal ribs of some alien beast. Or, if the dull thumping he could just make out were indeed currents crashing against some distant hull, that he had become Jonas to some near death whale of machinery and darkness.
“Where am I?” he muttered louder, to no one in particular but expecting an answer. He’d likely already be dead if they didn’t want answers. Hopefully.
Frankly, he’d already decided to spill his guts, if it would do any good. Then again, only God threw you into the belly of a whale and expected you to come out again. Whoever had gone through all this–well, Cascade at least wanted answers before they finished the job.
The footsteps came low at first. He tried to pin the echo distance. Two-hundred meters: the compartment must be monstrous, let alone the entire plant. Two sets of footsteps. Men, or damn hefty gals, one larger than the other.
“Tyrone, you’re awake.” The voice came from the smaller man. Cascade sensed a familiarity in the Little Man’s use of the name Tyrone. Nothing good could come of anyone who actually knew Tyrone.
“Where are we?” Cascade corrected.
“See? I told ya Tyrone’s a direct kid, Max. A good kid once upon a time. You were a good kid, weren’t you Tyrone?”
“Still am.” Cascade grimaced. “Least, I’d still like to be.”
The Little Man nodded to Max, who pulled out a knife along with what looked like nothing so much as a thick bar of butter. The big man sliced off a bit from the top, then swallowed it down. The knife looked far too cruel to Cascade to exist for just cutting butter.
“Now that’s a problem. Because we know you should be finishing twenty more years over in SuperMax, not hooking up with some fruit district attorney here in Atlanta.”
“His name’s Simon,” Cascade spat. “And how we spend our time together is our own concern, not yours.”
Max cut a deep piece of butter off, swallowing the slice without a word. Cascade wondered if the fellow was born mute or made that way.
The Little Man smiled. “I don’t give a damn about who you’re blowing, Tyrone. I’m just interested in what you said to get out. Max is interested, as well. See, when he finishes that bar, if I don’t like your answers, he’s gonna skin ya as a message to anyone else who might rat on me. Surely you remember how good Max is with a knife?”
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“No, I really don’t.” Cascade slumped in the chair. No way out of this except maybe the truth. “You see, the name’s Cascade. Tyrone’s just cover.”
“Nah,” the Little Man said as Max took another slice. “We ran DNA–you’re Tyrone, alright.”
The Little Man pulled out a small gun, pointed it at Cascade’s neck. “Let me remind you how your old boss does business, Tyrone.” The wires shot forth faster than Cascade’s add-ons could track; electricity raced through him again, followed by a mental void.
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—
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“Dammit!” Claire slammed her fists down as the visual link faded to snowy static. “That’s what I get for going cheap. Two months of being a gay ex-con down the drain along with twenty-thousand dollars.”
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No more Cascade, no more chance to see what Simon knew about the investigation into Governor Wilkinson. God only knows what that psycho had done to Tyrone. It could take months to rent out another puppet the DA might fancy, and her publisher wasn’t likely to wait.
“Shit, Tyrone, what a waste.” Then again, Claire consoled herself, the cons whole life had already been a waste long before her. Maybe there was a story here after all.
—
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Tyrone woke to pain. His head burned so hot that his eyes refused to focus. Sweat soaked his skin cold enough that he vomited from the nausea induced by the contrast. The acidic spittle mingled with a thickness that could only be blood. Tyrone wondered why he wasn’t choking, only to realize that part of his body’s lurching came from the spasm of involuntary coughs; his mind simply couldn’t catch up in time to the torrent of agony his body endured.
“Oh, Tyrone, I hope you enjoyed your time out.”
Tyrone knew that voice. From somewhere. But where was he? Why hadn’t the prison guards stopped this?
“You’re just a blank note for our message,” the voice continued.Â
Tyrone’s eyes focused enough to see a big fellow approach; he could almost remember that the voice didn’t belong to someone so large. The hulk gulped the last bit of some yellow slime from his knife. A greasy smile spread across the man’s face as he redirected the blade against Tyrone’s abdomen. Tyrone wasn’t sure he could actually feel the carving of the knife into his chest, but he screamed all the same.
So, Monday I leave Texas for Oregon, which in today’s mad, mad world somehow manages to be on my way to England. Before that I wanted to share the 2nd flash story of the competition.
Title: A Place to Keep Them
Genre: Ghost Story
Object: Horseshoe
Place: Circus
SYNOPSIS: A young man on a first date becomes unexpectedly bound to the latest object of his affection, a free-spirit with a collection even more odd than his own.
So I entered the NYC Midnight Flash Fiction contest for the second year. Flash fiction is a short story that uses 1,000 or fewer words. I made the finals last year, but failed to place. More importantly, it was a fun way to generate some solid story starts in a variety of genres.
Here is story one from this year’s contest.
The required prompts were
Okay, as many who read this blog know by now, I’m relocating my family to Leeds in August. We’re taking about six suitcases with us to the United Kingdom, which leaves 95% of our belongings in storage. I can’t stand my board games sitting in storage for a year or more, pieces silent and dice still. So I’m offering them to foster homes while I’m in the UK.
Kurt wanted a list of all my games, but I’m a little busy for that, so I let my iPhone do the heavy lifting. Here are all my games. Let me know if you want to drop by and use them for a few dozen months.
Just click an image to see the games in detail.
I’m not a big baseball fan, but after last weekend’s once-in-a-lifetime NCAA Austin Regional, I had to buy tickets to the Super Regional.Â
For those who don’t know, last Saturday the University of Texas and Boston College played the longest baseball game in NCAA history, 25-innings and over seven hours. Austin Woods provided the real drama, however, picthing 13 innings of no-hitter ball. The President of Vince Young University called Woods’ overture the single greatest athletic performance in school history. We’re really hoping Woods can replace Roger Clemens as the greatest picther Texas has ever produced. Seriously, I need a voodoo doll for this purpose.
Better, on Sunday, a worn out UT team entered the bottom of the 9th-inning down 10-6 to Army in the Regional Championship game. The longhorns rallied to first tie Army 10-10, and then won the game on a walk-off grand slam that left the score 14-10 in favor of Texas. Monday, it was announced that Woods’ cap would be going into the Baseball Hall of Fame in honor of the 25-inning victory.
So my son and I are heading to game 2 of the Super Regional between Texas and TCU to see who goes to Omaha. We expect a good game, but it couldn’t possibly approach the drama of last weekend? I mean that would be greedy, right? Like VY stealing two Rose Bowls greedy.
Here’s a little bit from the historic game.
You know like, “every rose has its thorns†or “man, I didn’t age well but I still look better than Vince Neil.†Kinda like Terminator Salvation feels a lot like the disappointment from Revenge of the Sith and a lot less like Alien Versus Predator. Hey, I’m trying to find somewhere nice to start because Henry covered the beatdown.
Spoilers fall like rain below.
****
Okay, this film isn’t good, but I could taste the hint of a decent film beneath some of the mistakes. The problem arises from how lazy the mistakes were. I contend that if they had taken the time to fix just six mistakes, T4 had more than enough in it to live up to the first two films. That said, lazy filmmaking is the difference between Terminator and Krull.
So, six points that would have made this film work for me:
Is that Michael Ironside out acting your A-list lead?
I’ve loved Michael Ironside since V, and it was great seeing him reunite with CGI Schwarzenegger for the first time since Total Recall. That said, holy cow how badly did Bale have to mail in his scenes to get out acted by a C-list baddie from the 80s? I understand that this film seemed to be more about Marcus, but Connor hasn’t been so secondary in a film since appearing as an embryo in the original Terminator. Seriously, his best emoting came from Linda Hamilton’s voice tapes. How hard would it have been to find an actor who cared enough to try?
Can we find something smaller than a metal beam to stab John Connor with?
Not sure what else to say here. Even in Hollywood, if you’re human and stabbed by a full-sized beam of metal, that’s it. Game Over. Would it have been so hard to have stabbed him with a piece of metal mangled into a pointy tip instead? Really?
I’d like a side of subtlety with my power of the human heart analogy, please.
This analogy fits the series, but we don’t need it served up with actual dialog. The Terminator has a heart. That’s enough right there. We get it. Please stop.
Doesn’t a war movie need casualties?
Can you name a war movie where none of the leads die? Sure, we presume Marcus does, but we don’t see it. Michael Ironside doesn’t count because we aren’t supposed to care about him. I mean he’s only the leader of resistance. In the end, for all the chatter, this isn’t a war movie because there are no casualties that bring it home.
To really make this point, consider that such light-weight fare as Independence Day killed the president’s wife, the hillbilly pilot, and Houston. Salvation didn’t even have the conviction to singe Blair’s hair in a rocket launcher explosion.
Is there a reason Kyle’s still alive? Beyond the fact that you can’t let him die, I mean.
Why even have Skynet find him? Let him stay hidden. Because once Skynet finds Kyle and doesn’t put a bullet in his brain we’re suddenly in 70s bond villain territory.
Maybe we should avoid allowing our homage list to take us into Airplane! territory
Henry covered this well, and I did love some of the film’s references. Fighting the top half of a terminator, Guns and Roses playing, and even the harvesters worked a hundred times better in this movie than in War of the Worlds, but these things pile up quick. Pick a couple and let it go. I mean why do you need a Newt character when you’ve eliminated the tradition of a strong female role from the movie? At the point where people think your electric eels are an homage to The Princess Bride, you might as well have Shatner replace Michael Ironside.
You think Ironside’ll appear in the new V series? You can bet I’d post about that.
Anyway, if you fix those elements, you have a decent enough film going on here. Chekhov keeps the imitation train going from Star Trek with a dead on Kyle Reese impersonation. The Marcus character seems a natural evolution of the humanization of the terminator concept (so long as you stop “beating†us over the head with his Wizard of Oz-like heart metaphor). And the idea that we have to go back to the future to get some good ole fashioned T-800 action warmed my heart–which beats with the inimitable strength of my irreplaceable humanity, just so you know.
I didn’t hate this film like I thought I would. I loved parts of it: Connor listening to the tapes, CGI Arnie throwing down, the GnR reference, and Michael Ironside. But that just made all the fixable mistakes so much more painful, especially given just how lazy they felt. I wouldn’t mind another film, I just hope a little bit more heart goes into it.
Deep Thoughts by Boba Trice
I realized late tonight that April was the 5th anniversary of the one short story I ever sold for cash. Frankly, there’s been few stories I’ve sold for even magazine copies, let alone for a real honest to goodness check. Much of my lack of fiction publishing is honestly a straight up lack of trying and commitment. I tend to assume my analytical style lends itself to nonfiction, and I’ve had plenty of success in those venues. While I’ve never had the romantic attachment to nonfiction that I have for creative storytelling, I’ve always been easily seduced into writing what gets me recognition over what I love. When a talent comes naturally and generates quick praise, too easily we can think of it as our fated partner and grow to love the ease of the gift more than the gift itself. To some degree that’s true for me and nonfiction, though I do love many apsects of my research. It’s just a different kind of love. Nonfiction is a safe, reliable love. Fiction offers anything but that.
Sometime this year, my first chapter in an academic book will go to the presses at McFarland. It likely won’t sell much, but it’ll almost certainly be my most read piece of writing to-date beyond a few articles in Dragon Magazine and the Daily Texan. And the ScreenBurn blog. I tend to forget the ScreenBurn blog because it was mostly silly fun.
Of course, Grammy was silly fun as well. I wrote the first draft in three hours and spent about a two weeks editing it, with few significant changes before submitting the story to Anotherealm. It was later published, and I’ve spent the last five years tinkering with it every time I got frustrated with whatever story festered within my brain at that moment. Grammy became a safety blanket for me. I could pluck at its story and characters while working, going back to school, and writing everything under the sun except fiction. So long as I had Grammy, I could feel okay about writing only one or two stories a year. Not that I would ever complete most of them–let alone send them out. When I wanted to feel rewarded for writing fiction, I’d workshop Grammy or send it out to some minor contest in a revised fashion: Grammy the novel, Grammy the play, Grammy the flamethrower! Hell, the Writers’ League of Texas actually gave me an award for this heroin of the mind back in 2006.
And while this behavior has undoubtedly inhibited my growth as a storyteller and writer of fiction, the same choices nurtured a handful of successes in game writing and many in scholarship by feeding my passion for storytelling just enough to allow my productivity to flow elsewhere. In an admittedly convoluted way, my addiction to Grammy earned me a Fulbright every bit as much as it stagnated my creative growth.
Now I’ve started writing a bit more fiction this summer. Thanks in no small part to a flash fiction contest I did at the end of last year that forced me to finish several stories, no matter how small. I’ve even returned to a novel inspired by Grammy where the first order of business was stripping out all the elements based on the old Grammy short story. I doubt Grammy’s dead since I have to get through a ton of research articles this year. Still, maybe after five years I’ve found a way to nurture that creative side with a bit more productivity reserved just for it.
We’ll see.
Okay, I may well be the closest to an actual Trekkie/Trekker on this blog. Like all aspects of my life that involve geekery, this one comes pretty much directly from my father. Let’s be honest, much of what we call preference likely exists as little more than random acts of osmosis from the fragmented habits of our parents.
RPGs? My parents started playing them when I was four. I be knighted my first character with the name of Bert and my sister Ernie. My mother promptly tried to kill us with a purple worm at 1st level. Those who have played in any game of mine might consider this insightful.
Classics and pulp? While my house frequently went dark from unpaid electricity bills during childhood, when light could be found the works of Ovid, Caesar, and Plato set nestled beside works of Lovecraft, Tolkien, and Heinlein.  My parents’ collection would never bear the weight of unread vanity texts.
Board games? I cut my teeth on Axis and Allies and Blitzkrieg. My first steps into game design involved my father and I tweaking Fortress America in an attempt to make that historic mess of a simulation vaguely fair. We, as so many before us, failed.
I should get back on Trek. My father adored Kirk and company. Between the original series and Dr. Who, I likely spent more time watching television with him than just about any other activity beyond Boy Scouts. One reason for that may well have been that he worked nights and slept days, so catching late night sci-fi provided us a rare chance to do something together on a daily basis.
My first convention was a Star Trek convention in downtown Fort Worth. Dad took Sam (not the Sam of this blog), Jason, and myself. I recall buying a Red Dwarf t-shirt and not a ton more. I’m sure Dad could recite the events of that day in detail.  That’s how it goes; feel free to take a Harry Chapin break.
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Now, I can recall numerous Channel 39 marathons of Star Trek, complete with dial-in trivia questions. I devoured the original series during these marathons. I knew everything about Kirk, Spock, and McCoy.
Maybe in part because I’m from the rural Southwest, I always adored the angry, emotional stalwartness of McCoy’s sense of determined from the gut justice. I point this out in contrast to Henry’s comment about the secondhand nature of McCoy in the original series. In no way unrelated, I also found Urban’s portrayal the most annoying in the new flick. It felt more façade then inspired re-invention—and now that the thought has arisen within this reflection, let there be no doubt, I found J.J. Abrams new film the definition of inspired re-invention.
Really, it’s more than discovering the crew on the Enterprise anew—and Chekov, Sulu, Uhura, Kirk, Spock, Bones, and Scotty will always be the crew of the Enterprise to me. Some of the true art in this film comes in how the actors who are known quantities disappear. Nero might not be a great villain—there’s really no such thing as a great Trek villain—but he definitely doesn’t scream Eric Bana. And I’m still not sure I believe Ryder was Spok’s mum. Most importantly, Chris Pine and Abrams have rescued the character Kirk from the gloriously absurd satire of Shatner’s legacy. Because of this film, I have hope again that new audiences might understand why some fans take Kirk seriously. Mostly because we knew him before T.J Hooker, Airplane!, SNL, and “I’m Denny Crane.†There actually existed a time when you could view Kirk as legit, when the original crew was legit. Abrams has given that back to a lot of us—and not just those old enough to have written letters in the 60s, but a few of us who had fathers that might have written a letter or two.
I doubt a pulp franchise could ask for anything more. Abrams might not have done for Gene Rodenberry’s Star Trek what Shakespeare did for Arthur Brooke’s The Tragical History of Romeus and Juliet, but I bet George Lucas prays at night someone half as talented as J.J. Abrams will rescue his franchise someday. In a theatre far, far away (Yep, cheapest joke of the post). Since my son and I have a similar connection over Star Wars as Dad and I over Star Trek, I must hold out hope.
Oh, and as far as Trek canon and the new film. I defer to the wisdom of my father who stated, “the original series didn’t follow any canon from one episode to the next. Why should this film?â€
No reason at all. It’s too true to the original spirit of the series to care a whit about canon over character.
Now I have to sleep so that I can get enough work done in the morning to slip out of the office by 10:15. My son is dressing up as Neil Armstrong for school tomorrow and will give a speech about the journey from Mercury to Apollo. There’s a family legacy at stake, one with an eye toward the stars.
Plan on taking the kids out to Rogue’s Gallery after breakfast and the boy’s guitar lesson.
Also, a good chance for dad to sneak in and buy gaming stuff the day after payday. Mmmmm, come home and teach a new game while they read their comics. Just another day in geek paradise. Reminds me that I need to find out where the gaming/hobby shops are in Leeds. (Moving to the UK in August so that the blog can have that global feel)