So I was hanging out with Gabe and he was like what do you want to do and i was like what do you want to do and he was like you want to make a comic or something and i was like okay.

It is finished.

If you came to PAX then I’m sure you are familiar with Optimus Rhyme. If you’re looking for something to do tonight you should head downtown and check them out along with some other “promising local bands” at Chop Suey. They will be taking part in “We Are The Champions: A Tribute To Queen” tonight at 8pm sharp. Its $5 at the door and it’s 21+. Optimus is scheduled to hit the stage at 11:00 to crank out some Queen covers. They told me it was not easy “optimusifying” Queen but they assure me they have done it.

When things are at their darkest, simply close your eyes and invoke the transformative power of commerce.

The Xbox has plenty of games that look good, and it ought to, given the vigor of its components:  but I don't think there's another game for the system that looks as good as Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory. 

I like the game too, but you know what you're in for with a Splinter Cell  - sneakin', snappin', unbelievably bad "foreign" accents, etc.  It isn't the only piece of software out there to utilize technology which yelps "Hey!  This is what light is doing on this surface," but I feel comfortable saying that it's never been used more artfully.  It's like eighteen dollars now, if your little heart is set on proving me wrong or something.  You wont.

The "adversarial" multiplayer mode was a retooled version of Pandora Tomorrow's, with some new tech and considerably more elaborate maps that didn't quite stick the way the first one did.  It may be that the people I know had moved on to a new type of experience by then, but getting competitive at a Splinter Cell map is a frightfully comprehensive procedure that allows no half-measures.  Also, losing in Splinter Cell is really the most emasculating sensation.  Short of the medical procedure, I suppose.

Along with a hardcore online experience that was probably too hardcore for ninety-five percent of players, they included another game altogether - where the adversarial still ran on the old technology, the new co-op mode used the sparkling new engine that underpinned Chaos Theory itself.  Filled with two-player gaming experiments and novel action setpieces, it's the main thing I took away from Chaos Theory as a package.   This is Splinter Cell, for fuck's sake - it's an international powerhouse brand that doesn't need market inducements aside from a lengthy single player campaign and a new kind of multiplayer.  So, why did they do it?  I've never played anything like it.  It's the sort of thing we imagine doesn't happen in gaming anymore.

Maybe it doesn't, actually.  From the Game Informer article that broke the story on Splinter Cell: Double Agent, it looks like cooperative multiplayer with its own campaign parallel to the main story is a mutation that couldn't survive in the wild.  A facsimile of the experience will be available against "bots," essentially as a training mode for their rebuilt multiplayer that they hope will make the process less intimidating for new players.  It's probably the right choice, but the sensation that they were developing exclusively for me was intoxicating.

(CW)TB

Our epic tone poem continues apace.

The inversion of my expectations as regards the PSP and the Nintendo DS is something that I imagine will remain with me for a good while. 

I sometimes try to figure out exactly what my job is.  I settle on different definitions at different times, depending on a matrix of factors like blood sugar, time of  year, ambient light, sobriety, and so on.  The most basic expression of it is that I help you waste time, here on the International Cyber Web and elsewhere.  It might seem like people don't need help with that, but most people want their leisure time invested optimally and this is something we can help with.

I attended a Nintendo event before the DS materialized at retail that showed a company almost intimidated by the innovations of its own device - ports of various kinds and tenuous third party leftovers that seemed to point, noncommittally, in the direction of potential.  I grabbed a PSP that launched strong with a beautiful piece of hardware and several great looking games with wireless play in franchises and genres I'd love portable.  

User experience on the PSP - while the system is off, at any rate - really is amazing.

In those days, of course, Final Fantasy: Advent Children was practically launching with the system on UMD, heralding a new age of...  who knows what.  Even when I was absolutely sold on the device, I still thought it was a kind of wedge designed to project Sony's proprietary formats into the marketplace.  I'm not convinced this isn't true, but I also hoped that a strong lineup would emerge to blunt that position.

Every now and then something comes out for it that makes me somewhat less ashamed that I lauded their glossy brick to you with such force.  The media features of the machine are, no doubt, a great comfort to the beleaguered PSP owner.  In my defense, it was a tectonic shift - industry wise - and I lost my footing temporarily as the plates realigned.  I've felt guilty for months, digesting every milligram of PSP news for the standout title that will make me seem like a valid source of information, if only in retrospect.

The games hitting the DS now in their major franchises aren't the filthy ports with a few bonuses tacked on I feared would dominate the machine - they're actually the legitimate sequels, definitive versions that replace the old ones in terms of features and I daresay fun.   The new Animal Crossing game  for the DS is Animal Crossing II, with the multiplayer that was clamored for.  The Mario Kart that is out for the DS is the new Mario Kart.  Not the "portable version," not the constrained subset.  It's the most robust offering in the franchise.

It's so ridiculous to think that after all I've Goddamn spent this year, I keep coming back to a hundred and thirty dollar system to play these tiny thirty-five dollar games.    

(CW)TB out.

stop making fun of my pants

Uh-oh - looks like the situation has escalated. 

Typically around this time each year we break down the gaming experiences which have been most meaningful, or at any rate the ones that we can actually remember.  We used to do it by way of the "We're Right Awards," but somewhere along the way we decided that actually making comics might be a good idea for our Internet comic website.

I still like drudging up and subsequently rinsing off an entire year's worth of these cherished adventures, even if we don't devote our strip to the process.  So, unless something bizarre emerges which we would refuse to discuss at our peril, we can spend the next few days remembering these things together.

For example, though it just edged its way in on the cube, Resident Evil 4 rightly belongs on any proper accounting of the year of our lord two-thousand and five.  I suppose that's another reason this kind of enumeration - what Jeremy Parish might call a hagiography - has value.  I crave novelty like anyone else, and I can be devoured by it, and relinquishing my will to the simulation - playing absolutely - is sort of what I do.  There are times when something I've really enjoyed looks pretty mechanical and uninspired a few months out.  I would not say that this applies to Resident Evil 4. 

It could have been so bad.

Look at Final Fantasy now, the wheels are completely off the fucking franchise.  They don't have any idea what they did to create it, and then they let people who didn't understand it to begin with interpret it poorly.  Their teenaged fumblings have destroyed it. 

I spoke with someone at PAX would would love to have the old Resident Evil return and sees this new mutation as not entirely unpleasant but still unseemly and even perhaps somewhat damp.  I've still got a few REs of the old persuasion in me, if they choose to go that route - but I don't know that they could materially improve on Code Veronica, and I think they're aware of it.  Indeed, I'm alsmost certain they are, having retreating into prequels and "reimaginings" immediately upon its completion. 

The reality is that by five separate interpretations of Alone In The Dark, the evil had become perhaps too resident, a little set in its ways.  They were good ways, I mean, shit.  I liked those ways.  But I don't find the new ways less legitimate, disrespectful, or what have you.  They've simply taken the slider that represents the supplied ammo and turned it up, while at the same time amplifying the number of enemies to a tremendous degree and - this is why it works - emphasizing precision and trick shots.  It is as though the game is in a different key.  There's that music term again:  transposition.

In any case, the game is a Goddamn sight more interactive while it hits those notes we find so delicious about survival horror.  That it is also exquisitely beautiful, proving the claim of a console that never really got respect for its prowess, well, that never hurt none.

(CW)TB out.

chamomile, motherfucker

Don't remember who the Merch is? Well then take a look at this comic.

It's only just occurred to me that what we do each year now around this time is to obliterate Christmas with an extended storyline. 

Severe time constraints remain in effect as I'm sure you can imagine, and so - in an almost calgonian sense - I luxuriate in each unfettered moment I am  allowed in those simulated realms.  I've purchased and installed City of Villains to this end, as creating characters has become in a way my game of choice. 

This was true before as well, when I lost myself (as sometimes happens) in City of Heroes.  But trying to create compelling villains is actually a much more difficult affair than I realized.  I'll go into that at some other time.  I doubt very seriously you want to hear about my character over the course of several excruciating paragraphs. 

My character John Legion.  Ahem!

I had it in mind to try and create a final run on the Child's Play wishlists, but I don't know how exactly you could make this year a more extraordinary success.  We're at over $420,000 already.   I suppose I could exhort you to take us to $430,000, and don't let me dissuade you, but money is still coming in from companies and sites that pitched in which will take us very near to a "cool half-mil."  My private objective was for Child's Play to reach a million dollars in donations over three years, and it's already done that.  Of course, I say it has already done that, but it doesn't have the power to do anything.  You have done it. 

We aren't very well equipped these days to manage truly unironic sentiment.  When we are overwhelmed by emotion, I believe it is the custom to make a very minute, nearly undetectable gesture - preferably inside a coat pocket or in a dark closet, hidden from view.  Well, as a purveyor of bulk negativity the rest of the year, let me thank you in the most genuine, most absolute terms the hypertext markup language will allow.  When I imagine the respite you have provided thousands of young people, the notion is so massive that I am nearly crushed beneath it.  

(CW)TB out.

mr. pibb and red vines equals crazy delicious

This Live Journal entry has some nice shots from the Child’s Play charity dinner. I brought my camera but I was so busy all night I didn’t get a chance to snap any shots. I’m glad someone was able to take some good shots. He’s also got a nice write up about his experience at the dinner.

Last night we delivered a little Christmas present to our Horde friends. Well we didn’t give them a present so much as we slaughtered them out in the Western Plaguelands and then chased them all the way back to the Under City before finally hijacking one of their zeppelins. Merry Christmas you filthy animals!

I'm not sure exactly what it is.  It could be the cold.  It could be the long-ass nights and almost infinitesimal daylight.  But every year 'round this time, defenses are low.  And from the shadows, like a...  like a shadow, doth that glittering serpent Continuity make himself known. 

Ebert Movieguy made a splash in our realm a couple weeks ago suggesting that videogames weren't now art, and couldn't be art because their interactivity disallows firm authorial intent.  I don't think that's a particularly strong point, particularly these days where what the author intends with their work is just a single azure twinkle in the manifold Lite-Brite of interpretation.

The conversation these ideas spawned has actually continued on his site in three (3) installments.  I find it almost incalculably boring.  Every now and then you get a nice turn of phrase, but it's so clear that the entire "conflict" isn't over core issues but over a syntactical clusterfuck like the definition of art.  Something tells me that Roger Ebert's letter column isn't going to get to the bottom of that one, but I have been called a cynic.

It is a conversation we have had and re-had with slight alterations any time some mass media know-nothing doesn't give "us" the respect we imagine ourselves entitled to.  But we have the conversation about some high-flown extrapolation of the real issue when I think the basic topic is somewhat more terrestrial.  

I don't think that all games aspire to be art, just as all movies don't.  Now we call comics sequential art, because they've gone through this cultural hazing and come out the other side emblazoned with the imprimatur of civilization.  But does the entire Marvel line-up constitute a body of bold works?  Probably not, but it doesn't have to.  It's disingenuous to refer to the most primitive, arcade exercises when trying to disprove the narrative potential of a medium, but that's what you get when you chat with people who don't know what they're fucking talking about.

Here's what I think the discussion has skipped over:  I don't think that engineering, of which I consider game design a subset, is considered an art form by most people.  It may be because I am something of a nerd, or it may be that my own work is so meager that I want the definition of art expanded so that it will apply to me.  It might also be that I have had strange experiences with well made, almost psychic bits of technology that I found powerful.  But I simply accept that the cleverness of inventive language or visual composition or a stirring string movement has some engineering analog. 

Look at something like Final Fantasy, which is a single machine - a machine designed to produce amusement - with some traditional expressive elements that no-one would even consider disproving as art.  Uematsu is an unbelievable composer, Amano is a powerfully expressive artist - if you were to combine their contributions, do they somehow cease being art?   Now, if characters are created to give the art and music context, does our construct lose the potential to communicate meaning?  I think that's a hard case to make.  But when Sakaguchi introduces rules to govern world behaviors and resolve conflicts, allowing the player to collaborate with the course of events, now the whole thing becomes tawdry, somehow? 

Anyway, that's what I was thinking about.

(CW)TB out.

chalk marks in a rainstorm

Shirts bearing the Goldfarmer, Aggro, /spit, and Dupe designs all just hit the store in sizes I am told suit "the ladies."

I don't know if it is important to you, but I have seen this sort of warning at other comics:  Monday is the cut-off date for two day shipping, and Wednesday is the cutoff date for overnight.  Please internalize this deep wisdom.

(CW)TB

Rise of Nations was a great game, but if you were flipping through screenshots seeking out some new addiction it wouldn't have stood out - you'd get the impression that you had played "that game" before.

It's hard to dismiss Rise of Legends in the same way.  Big Huge Games could probably have put out another Rise of Nations in the same vein and done alright, but instead they chose to go completely batshit insane and I think we're all the better for it.

(CW)TB

All eight pages of our Prince of Persia comic are now online. The script is by Tycho the drawings are by me and the colors are by Joe Pekar. Let me know what you think.

As an encyclopedia, Wikipedia has some issues.  As a model of how and where distributed intellect fails, it's almost shockingly comprehensive. 

When we were first considering making Epic Legends Of The Hierarchs available as a publically manageable satirical metanarrative, we dropped the basic timeline on Wikipedia because I liked the way their software went about things.  Of course, a phalanx of pedants leapt into action almost immediately to scour - from the sacred corpus of their data - our revolting fancruft. 

That's okay with me.  I wasn't aware they thought they were making a real encyclopedia for big people at the time, and if I had, I'd have sought out one of the many other free solutions.  I had seen the unbelievably detailed He-Man and Pokémon entries and assumed - like any rational person would - that Pokémaniacs were largely at the rudder of the institution.

I am almost certain that - while they prune their deep mine of trivia - they believe themselves to be engaged in the unfolding of humanity's Greatest Working. 

Reponses to criticism of Wikipedia go something like this:  the first is usually a paean to that pure democracy which is the project's noble fundament.  If I don't like it, why don't I go edit it myself?  To which I reply:  because I don't have time to babysit the Internet.   Hardly anyone does.  If they do, it isn't exactly a compliment. 

Any persistent idiot can obliterate your contributions.  The fact of the matter is that all sources of information are not of equal value, and I don't know how or when it became impolitic to suggest it.  In opposition to the spirit of Wikipedia, I believe there is such a thing as expertise.

The second response is:  the collaborative nature of the apparatus means that the right data tends to emerge, ultimately, even if there is turmoil temporarily as dichotomous viewpoints violently intersect.  To which I reply:  that does not inspire confidence.  In fact, it makes the whole effort even more ridiculous.  What you've proposed is a kind of quantum encyclopedia, where genuine data both exists and doesn't exist depending on the precise moment I rely upon your discordant fucking mob for my information.

(CW)TB out.

i'm not sorry if i do detest you