In the last few months, I decided to start listening to audiobooks. I’ve downloaded books from http://librivox.org/ (Jack London Call of the Wild, Whitefang, few others), joined Audible.com, which has new books, but an annoying DRM combined with Columbia House subscription agreement you have to dodge.

Some of these books are decent performances - and either way, I appreciate all of the performances, but some readers don’t really understand they’re not just reading a book aloud: they’re performing.

A friend of mine gave me their copies of Jim Butcher’s Dresden Files, read by James Marsters of Buffy and Smallville fame. I’d read the books before and thought, why not?

After the first couple minutes of Storm Front, I realized I was in for a treat. James Marsters performs all voices and characterizations with such commitment, at times you can’t tell it’s by the same voice. When I started to look around on the net for similar performances, no one seems to be committing to their audiobooks with the same drive. End to end, Butcher’s tales are excellent by themselves, but when Marsters is added, the result is far above and beyond what I’d become used to.

Nuanced and well-paced, these stories are multi-hour now one-person plays, with lots of subtlety and have made me laugh, raised goosebumps, and have been just as enticing as any best selling page turner.

And it’s ruined it for me - I now expect performances from other books. I’ve been hunting for more and if you find any, please drop me a line.

If you’re interested, Audible.com has some samples, here’s Storm Front. You can buy the CDs over at Buzzy Multimedia. I found a digital copy of Walter Jon Williams “This is Not a Game”, which was well done, but I don’t know the performer.

Yeah, a lot of you are going to say, “What, you didn’t read all the bad press?”

I did. But I wanted to give it a fair chance. I’m not a big fan of game journalism: some games that should never get a review receive journo-blow jobs and many that aren’t protected receive a blanket party. Right now, Alpha Protocol is getting the blanket. And I hate to say it, but this one deserves it.

So how far did I get? Half-way through the Saudi Arabia mission before I calmly stopped and thought, “I’m not having fun and I’m not going to punish myself anymore.”

I really wanted to prove myself wrong. As Michael Thornton, you’re a nondescript rookie spy who’s out to… uh… well, I’m wasn’t too sure WHAT you were out to do. You seemed to be working for the US government in black ops, but since you start out kidnapped, you really don’t KNOW if they’re the US Government, but then you seem to forget all that… So, story-wise, the plausible deniability bar is incredibly high from the get go. I’ve heard of Stockholm syndrome, but this was ridiculous.

This game play needs TLC. People may whine about Gabe Newell’s desire to release the perfect game, but in truth they really want him to take their time.

The worst thing: it had a GREAT heart. The writers, the designers (and I’m sure the developers) had wonderful ideas for Alpha Protocol.

Minigames - When it’s just easier not to play them because they’re so incredibly high effort for such low reward (”hacking”) or low effort for annoying rewards (”lock picking”), you may as well not have them. There’s nothing wrong with minigames, but a little A-B testing and designer playability reviews would’ve immediately shown that player

Saves - If I ever own a game studio, I would implement 1 very important rule: Players can save games when they are not in combat. All of my games would adhere to such a rule and if any designer came to me with an alternate view of “Fuck the players, they don’t know what’s good for them” I’d tell him/her to pack their bags and get the fuck out of my office.

AI - yeah, you’ve read elsewhere, but this AI was really bizarre once you see the guys spazzo-breakdance towards you.

Stealth - the one thing that this game ALMOST had was a decent stealth system. But then I triggered a bad hacking minigame and it was all messed up.

Dialog skips - you know what, if you’re going to FORCE me to save when YOU want me to save, at least your dialog skip feature could be something better than a fast forward button - which incidentally, was almost as fun as the minigames.

Graphics and uncanny valley moments - I was ok with both. Other reviews are pretty harsh on the graphics, but I found them ok. Not great, but ok.

Voice acting - See dialog skips, but the voice acting was a lot better than most but due to the lack of a tolerable skip and no save features , one grows tedious of going through the same conversations.

Cut Scenes - C’mon, the ONLY options to avoid cutscenes are: 1) Watch them, 2) Pause the game or 3) Alt-Tab out to kill the process.

So, I feel bad for the developers and designers. Introducing a new gaming IP is something that is financially risky and potentially career busting. When it happens (Half-Life) it’s ground shattering. When it fails, it’s that little engine that couldn’t. Alpha Protocol could’ve been a real contender - you see the gem in the water.

What lessons should game designers learn from this?

* Don’t recreate the wheel - steal your interfaces from other companies which work (Bioware Dialog skips work)
* If you’re gonna minigame don’t maximize the pain - default to BORING, FAST and STUPID rather than so overly complex it’s just not worth it.
* A-B Testing - which game features are people enjoying?

It’s always good to break a mold and challenge what we know. But also, it’s important to challenge ourselves to admit we’re wrong.

I am HeresyBob, and I bought this game so you don’t have to.

Recently, a friend gave me a copy of Walter Jon Williams’ This is Not a Game where an intrepid young Alternate Reality Game (ARG) designer creates gets caught in a situation beyond her control. To save herself, she uses her followers to save her bacon. Fun book. It holds some interesting moral decisions in the end. Highly recommended.

Then I watched the TED Conference talk of Jane McGonigal (below), where she wants to transform game players into a future resource.

These two endeavors side-by-side are excellent examples of science fiction becoming fact, and part of the transition between an experienced future vs. an engineered future. However, they’re late to the game. Getting people to play games to control their behavior is already occuring.

Control over a populace’s behavior is the favorite pasttime of governments. Democratic governments seek to control the press for popular support for an governmental action (Hilter’s tell the big lie from Mein Kampf). Totalitarian government have more overt ways of “gaming” the populace - in fact, I’d argue that Boys Scouts, religions, fraternal orders all have their elements of gameplay and “levelling up.” Every time I hear someone saying “I’m a deacon/brother/wizard/level 6 in my church/fraternity/klan/scientology group” my first reaction is to wonder “So how much did that cost you?”

Even more recently Wikileaks revealed that the CIA has been playing the Europeans to get them to change their support for the war - a delta of behavior patterns.

Now, these two endeavors are about guiding this to “good actions”: solving murders, treating gamers as a resource. But the biggest issue here is that planting trees in FarmVille doesn’t save the planet carbon concerns, so we need to migrate to a different model.

The obvious model is a non-profit game company that champions a cause: “Play Tubman’s RailRoad Tycoon and we’ll send money to free modern slaves.” But the money exchange is short sited.

Better ideas: to create a pyramid scheme of people who tutor other people. The more you tutor, the more they tutor, and in return, you “level” up. A competition between teams - say like in Eve conglomerates - where the goal is to actually recover a failed economy state. What if we *did* tie the gold in World of Warcraft to an actual failed-state economy like Nigeria? People from all over the world would be able to exchange that currency for goods, thus creating demand and support. I’m sure I’m not the only person thinking of such things, but as such the opportunity is pretty endless.

However, we must not think this has never happened before. We’re all players and victims of our own games we create and join every day.

This week’s entry for Young Romance, All true love stories.

My Contribution

Almost a year after I started, Arcanopocrypha is in a form to be downloaded (40megs) for all to view and whine about. So far, I’m getting really good responses from people and I’m excited to see what doors this will or wont open.

I blame Warren Ellis for this story. And Johnathan Hickman. And Brian Michael Bendis. And I thank them. In the last two years, they’ve been laying down some words that finally triggered in my mind to stop wishing and start doing. Specifically it’s been a combination of “now you tell ME a story” and “get off your ass and do it” and “commitment.” Since I started, and really committing to these scripts, I’ve never been nicer. Since I saw people read my stories and say, “you know, this doesn’t completely SUCK, Bob,” I’ve given myself the benefit of the doubt that I can pull this off.

I don’t think this story, Arcanopocrypha: the Journey Box, is the best. Of course, it’s not the new Watchmen, or anything other that a story that meets my emotional needs. Strangely, I don’t care if you like it… scratch that… I don’t care if you dislike it. Either it’s going to speak to you the way it does me, or it’s not. I hope it does but I’m ok if it doesn’t.

Since my work has become visible, I’m seeing a transformation - of how I see the world, how I see others, how I view myself versus what the world is, how others behave, what I truly am. I’ve always been bitter about the fact that we - humanity - could be so much more. Nicer in every way, but we deliberately choose not to. It’s very similar to the way people say things, “Like that may be so, but I believe in God so it must be wrong.” We COULD be a society that works towards the benefit of all. But we deliberately choose not it because something… else… something in OUR MINDS tells us to stop. Something in our minds is telling us to FAIL, but it’s our choice to listen.

It’s our choice to become authors and artists and creators of our future. Or we can choose to let others create the future for us, which isn’t necessarily bad, but it’s definitely less than optimal. But I’m no longer on the fence about this, and you’re welcome to come with me on this journey, but I’m going to expect you do deliver. And I want you to hold me to the same high standard.

Bob Kelly, April 2009

::snort::

Via the Grinder krewe at Grinding.be - thanks, Xutraa.

Lo, there be Spoilers here
After watching these characters’ lives be shredded, built up, re-shredded and eventually ground into a gaseous mist of blood, there was no other way to end Battlestar Galactica . These characters have gone through the fucking wringer for our amusement and we needed to pay tribute to the characters - the actors, the writers, and production team. And I didn’t mind giving them that moment, after all the “Oh Shit” moments they’ve given me.

A Child’s Odyssey… and Adult’s
From the very beginning, Ronald D. Moore’s BSG set off on a parallel path of the 70s show, and if you look at the two shows, I see one as the children’s version of BSG and the other the accurate one, comparing children’s nativity plays to the sick fucking Passion-of-the-Christ blood and gore. Even down to the Angelic version of characters in this intergalatic odyssey, there’s a kid’s version and the “warts and all” truth version.

BSG was ripe for it’s time: in moment of panic, America was about to declare war on the world to ensure tyrants never force others to obey them. There’s a kernel of painful truth in that last sentence. BSG similarly blockaded the characters into a metal box against a deadly environment. The metaphor wasn’t just spot-on, but obvious.

So, what does this mean to television?
I don’t know. I do believe that episodic TV that has no goal is mind is reaching an end. Personally, while I can’t stand 5 minute episodes like The Guild or Red vs. Blue - funny as they are, the story is never deep enough for me. And excellently written TV is now more rare, especially with the CSI/Numbers/Bones feces-infested shows that insult everyone who participates in them these days. Real science is hard. Real life is hard. Why don’t we EVER see the villain get away and the cold case grow cold, die, and be an bitter pill.

BSG gaves us plenty of bitter pills, from romances that should’ve and shouldn’t to betrayals to the worst suicide ever depicted on tv (Dualla’s). Depressing and horrific. But it made for a compelling story. End to end, BSG left it’s mark on television.

The Cautionary
The cautionary tale of BSG truly is what is the next phase of life. Where do we go from here? My opinion is we go forward. We build the robots. We make the AI. We do it early. We do it often. We do it prolifically. And we make a strong effort to not obliterate ourselves in the process. We do these things like the way we climb mountains: because we can, because it’s there. Moore’s cautionary also comes with the nature of man, questioning the religious effort of people. Having heard him speak a couple times, he’s as brazen as most people get about this.

But still we have billions of people working to perpetrate the myth machines. However, Moore has as well. Making Kara Thrace an angel - or a construct that fulfilled it’s mission and self-deleted, and implying that Caprica 6 and Baltar could see constructs/angels, means there’s a design in the chaos. It’s very ham-handed, deus ex machina, and my rational-minded viewpoint, disappointing. I believe he backed down from the wall of “your religions are lies” - spoon feeding myth-lovers a last minute backdoor so that “everything” end ok because a deity is looking out for these characters.

Yes, this is one of those cool “ooo, look at the stats with nice visuals and excellent music.” (Fatboy Slim rocks) But it’s a great example that we must adapt, and we must adapt at a faster rate than ever before. Everyone is going to suffer from being “too old” or “not up to date” - which is very similar to being within the proximity of a black hole - time slows, and we can’t perceive changes.

Time isn’t slowing or speeding with the Singularity/Posthuman Rise/Rapture of the Nerd - we’re just unable to adapt to the rate of change.

We’re knowingly obsolete.

And that’s ok.

So, for the few (looks to be about 20 of you) readers of this blog/site should know my updates.

Juan’s really beginning to cook with gas! Everyone who looks at his work responds with “HOLY SHIT Look at that!” It’s an amazing feeling, not just pride in my book, and not just that the art is great, but the fact that people react positive and sit down to read it.

I’m putting together an ashcan, which I’ll put here for a download as well.

I’m still looking for 2 more artists for the Ellis “Form a Band” - almost had one and then realized his artwork needed a different story. He’s great at portraits with big eyes, so I incorporated that strength into the story. Today, I finished the story Arcanopocrypha: Samael, and have it set for another experimental publishing on the net.

W00t.