Let’s talk about Watchmen!

If you haven’t read Watchmen: you may not want to read on, because there are minor spoilers in in this entry.

(Also) if you haven’t read Watchmen: please, make it a top priority in the coming months. Not just because I believe it is a beautiful work of fiction, but because any element of surprise will be ruined for you once the movie comes out. Even if you’re not planning on seeing the movie there are plot devices and dialog that will fuel internet memes for the next century. Within six months of the movie’s release America will be overwhelmed by Peter Griffin’s poorly paced conversations with Rorschach and unhappy sitcom wives comparing themselves to Sally Jupiter or something. It’s going to be terrible; gestate the work now while it’s still tolerable.

Watchmen is huge. For me, it was the gateway to Russian literature. I think I was ten or eleven when I first read it. I had been buying tons of Batman books, amazed by how Batman not only lacked superpowers but was also kind of a dick. I asked my local comic book store’s owner (his name was Tom; I can’t believe I remember his name) for recommendations. He said that Watchmen was like “a whole team of Batmen” or some bullshit. I’m sure he could barely contain his fanboyism as a potential convert was within his grasp. Now that I think about it, what kind of guy sells a book about sexually repressed anti-heroes to an eleven year old? No wonder I went goth so early.

Being completely oblivious to that book for a number of years, though, and then nonchalantly purchasing it on a whim… man. It was an experience. I think it’s one of those big moments that will always stick with me: losing my virginity, watching Blue Velvet for the first time, meeting my true love, graduating from high school and discovering Watchmen. Crazy.

As I went from “say, Batman is pretty keen!” to “would Ozymandias’ last monologue be considered a revisionary mythopoesis?” with one trade paperback, I craved more. Other comics weren’t good enough. I grabbed books off my parent’s shelves… I went for the thick ones first, because they had a better chance of containing some meat. Don Quixote, Bleak House, Moby Dick, Tom Jones (in that order!); I recall moving on to a Clockwork Orange, Notes from the Underground, and the Brothers Karamazov at some point before finally settling on Nabokov as my personal hero. I was book crazy! From there I got into film, then painting, then experimental music…

It’s worth noting that when I was eleven years old I wanted to be a lawyer. Now I’m an unemployed artist with an awesome beard. So if you had to trace back a point of deviation for this mirror universe, it’d be when Tom from Pyramid Comics in Levittown sold me a copy of Watchmen decades ago.  I don’t think that comic shop is there anymore.

Anyway: the issue at hand.

If you’re reading this blog, I’m sure that you’re aware how our people feel about licensed video games. In short: they are bad. When I had heard that there was going to be a Watchmen game to tie in with the film version, I was very afraid. A few possibilities entered my mind…

Thankfully it’s not that bad. The Watchmen game (creatively subtitled “The End Is Nigh”) is actually an episodic brawler. Alright, that’s still pretty bad. But at least it focuses on events alluded to in the original graphic novel. Players take control of Rorschach or Nite Owl as they battle members of the Topknot Gang throughout the streets of Brooklyn. You know, there’s a reason that these things were only alluded to in the book. Maybe it will, despite being of a somewhat stale genre, excel in the gameplay department? Here’s a quote from the December ’08 issue of Electronic Gaming Monthly, which, according to the spine, is “The Rorschach Issue”…

While the fundamental controls are pretty basic (fast attack, heavy attack, throw, and, depending on the character, block or evade), the potential combos are layered and deep, and the finishing moves are brutal–provided you enter the appropriate quick-time commands when prompted. Additionally, the fighting mechanics are designed so that button mashing will suffice for novice gamers, but more skillful play offers greater rewards, like Rorschach’s counterattacks.

Sweet! Quick time events? Combos? Finishing moves? It’s like they distilled Watchmen to it’s very essence. Wonderful. So, let’s break it down with bullet points.

Watchmen: The Novel is about…

• the manifestation of power in sociological context

• the delusions of Reganism

• visual language as an extension of content

• the motivations of modern cultural archetypes

Watchmen: The Game is about…

• pumping out a Streets of Rage clone to tie in with Watchmen: The Movie and Watchmen: The Lunchbox

Putting aside my personal feelings about Watchmen, I’m mostly perplexed by the need to turn every intellectual property into a franchise. The typical merchandising campaign is spread across so many industries that quality assurance becomes difficult and creative control is nearly impossible. For some properties it may make sense, as Transformers and G.I. Joe are envisioned as franchises and engineered to make as much money as possible in any form. But do we really need a Big Lebowski action figure or a Sopranos bowing ball? If you can be convinced that these tie-ins exist because someone is passionate about the property, you are delusional. They are manufactured because large corporations want to profit off of your enthusiasm.

Licensed video games are especially hurt by this due to the sheer amount of work required. Games that are anything above mediocre take a lot of people, a lot of time and a lot of freedom. Being tied to a license and held to a one year turnaround is a recipe for disaster. Consider: a developer could spend six weeks perfecting a physics system for vehicle suspension only to be told by the license holders “we dropped the car chase, make that section of the game a skydiving level instead.” Do not forget that video games as a hobby almost went away completely as a result of such constrictions.

In the specific case of Watchmen, attempts at building a franchise seem inappropriate. This is a fairly heavy work with subject matter way beyond that of the normal summer blockbuster. I think a good rule is: if the movie you’re making contains a rape scene, don’t manufacture action figures for it. Seeing little kids with Heath Ledger masks on Halloween was weird enough.  There’s also the fact that the mass marketing of Watchmen characters was addressed in the book itself.

I’m going to guess that the marketing people have never read the book.

At best, the Watchmen game is going to be a decent brawler that has no business being called Watchmen.  I’m curious what will be the next in line for the ill-suited game treatment. If this, of all things, can get a licensed game, where can you really go from there?  Lolita: the Official Game? Oh, wait… that’s already a whole genre. Thanks, Japan.

Many proponents of gaming have long speculated as to what the Citizen Kane of video games will be. Considering what Watchmen has done for comic books as a medium, I think that’s a more appropriate comparison. It bothers me that if, a year from now, I ask someone what the think the Watchmen of video games will be, they’ll most likely reply with “Watchmen? Dude, that game sucked.”

Postscript: This is mentioned in the EGM article, but a Watchman game already exists. Not only that… it’s actually quite good, most likely due to the involment of Alan Moore. That’s right: Alan Moore signed off on a game based on his work. The kicker is that it’s an RPG. You know, like, a real RPG… the kind that requires imagination and interacting with other people and basic math skills. Mayfair Games published a sourcebook in 1987, along with two scenario modules–”Taking Out The Trash” and “Who Watches the Watchmen?” I have the modules but have never come across the sourcebook for a reasonable price. There were also lots of lead miniatures to go with it, which I would love to get my hands on. It’s crazy meta, as well; check out the scan below.

A few months ago, Sega opened a new concept restaurant in Tucson, Arizona. It was being billed as a combination of fine dining, sports bar, and arcade. That’s kind of cool, right? Sega is still the market leader when it comes to arcade hardware, so I suppose it makes sense. I know that the arcade market has been hurting in the United States. It’s kind of nice to see Sega taking a risk and trying to revitalize the industry. Arcades may be nearing extinction, but they’re still an important (albeit small) part of American history and I’d love to see them become relevant again.

One of my complaints about arcades has always been the children. Every arcade I’ve visited over the past decade or so has been swarming with small children who can barely reach the controls of most games. I don’t hate kids or anything, but they’re loud and small and you shouldn’t swear around them. How much fun can a game like Street Fighter II be if you can’t scream “FUCK BALL SMACK KHAKI MOTHERFUCK!” when someone breaks your winning streak? The arcades of my high school years were highly competitive environments filled with trash talking, amphetamines and tearful back-alley handjobs. That is no place for a child! Or, um, anyone really. Eastern Pennsylvania was kind of a shithole in the early ’90s, but that played a strong part in defining my arcade experience.

Also, if I wanted to be owned by an eight-year-old in my favorite arcade game I’d just play it on Xbox Live.

So when I heard about Sega’s idea for World Sports Grille, I was thrilled. An arcade that serves alcohol? Awesome. I envisioned old men in cardigans crowded around import cabinets, chewing cigars while a cocktail waitress brings them all whiskey sours, then retiring to a smoky dining room to talk about the stock market and tell dirty jokes. That’s what I want my life to be! That’s my life dream! I look great in a cardigan!

I had to try it before I left Tucson. A friend and I made the fifty minute drive to check it out. We figured that we would grab some dinner, maybe a drink at the bar, then cruise the arcade area and play a few games.

Upon walking in we were greeted by… no one. Three employees stared at us for a few minutes while blabbering into their headsets, never addressing us directly. Normally this wouldn’t be so weird, but in this case the mezzanine was completely empty: Just two customers standing in this massive area waiting for someone to acknowledge them. I had to go up to one of them and make it clear that I wanted a table, which required the guy to talk into his headset for several minutes more, apparently checking with every other employee in the establishment. “Table for two, table for two… hmm hmm hmm… table for two, table for two… chk-chk-chk, table for two… let’s see, table for two…” Maybe it was a new business tactic meant to define the unique experience that World Sports Grille stands for. Like, everyone’s supposed to act like Sonic the Hedgehog and be all about the ‘tude or something.

The host guy finally told us there’d be a 45 minute wait and we were handed a plastic device thing that would play disco music when our table was ready. So we decided to check out the arcade while we waited.

It was not what I was expecting. The arcade was completely segregated from the bar area. Children were everywhere. I immediately realized the concept at work here: mom and dad get drunk at the bar while video games babysit the kids. I was way off base with this one. It was actually really hard to take pictures, because every shot I lined up had a little kid run into frame at the last second (and I don’t want to be one of those people).

Most of the games seemed to be of the racing or light-gun persuasion, with a few rhythm titles near the entrance. I didn’t see a single fighting or puzzle game. Maybe those aren’t in vogue anymore?

RAMBO! I think this title is pretty new. They only had one machine and it was set up in the center of the arcade. The screen was really, really big. Probably sixty inches or so. Scenes from Rambo III played when we started it up and then there was the expected stream of soldiers to pew at. I actually had a lot of fun with this game; it’s a license that lends itself well to a fairly simple genre. Wired’s GameLife blog has an in depth write-up on it if you’re curious.

Worth noting: the guns for the Rambo game were huge, heavy and vibrated violently when fired. It was pretty badass. I really wanted to Rambo it up and use one in each hand, but that would have cost me eight dollars. Screw that.

Another light-gun title, Primeval Hunt, had a little touchscreen for navigation. The game is about shooting dinosaurs with pump action shotguns, as far as I could tell. Two frat boys were glued to the machine the entire time I was there; I don’t think they even so much as glanced at the touchscreen.

There were tons of UFO Catcher and Stacker machines all over the place. I really wanted a Martian Manhunter plush from the machine on the left, but the claw only had two prongs, pretty much guaranteeing no one will ever win a prize. The Stackers had DS Lites, PS2s and lots of autographed sports memorabilia. It cost twelve dollars for one go at the Stacker machine, so you’re probably better off just buying a DS Lite.

Side note: I keep referencing how much each machine costs, but it’s worth mentioning that my math may be way off. See, all credits are purchased using a rechargeable card that players can buy for two bucks (I think it’s called a ‘World Sports Grille Membership Card’). So you pay two dollars and then load additional money onto the card, which gets translated into credits according to some invisible algorithm. I put about twenty dollars on my card and got something like 56.7 credits. That struck me as something of an odd number, but maybe that’s just me. I like to imagine there’s a constantly shifting USD to Arcade Credit exchange rate responsible for this.

I spotted Konami’s Drummania V4: Rock×Rock machine. Kind of intimidating, but I was amazed at how solidly built the hardware seemed (compared to other Konami products). I skipped it and chose a drum simulator a little more suited to my skill level…

Taiko: Drum Master! It’s so Japanese! I had played this on the PS2 at one point, but never with a big ass taiko controller. This is the best game at World Sports Grille, hands down. Even thought one of the drums was smashed up, the Japanese text was perplexing and the ’90s alt-rock from the bar drowned out the music, we had a blast. This is a good example of a video game’s presentation trumping all other elements. I mean, it’s a rhythm game and we couldn’t hear what we were performing, but we still had fun. Those cartoon taikos are just so cute that it’s impossible not to have fun playing the game.

After successfully running through a few songs, a QR code popped up for each player. Since I’m a red-blooded, God-fearin’ American I lack the technology to decipher such forward thinking nonsense. Any idea what function these serve?

At this point the weird gadget in my back pocket started vibrating and playing a monophonic version of Gregg Diamond’s “Take The Boogie Home”, so we made our way to the restaurant area. A host silently lead us to the quiet section, which was located approximately ten inches from the not-so-quiet section. Once again, the experience was not at all how I envisioned it. The main dining room had projectors mounted on the ceiling, covering the walls with various baseball games. I can’t really fault the establishment for that; it’s called the World Sports Grille, after all. But every few minutes the entire dining room would erupt into cheers when something happened in one of the games, making it impossible to have a conversation or even focus on the menu. If I was more into sports I may have found it charming or something.

The Menu: I know this is not that sort of blog, but I feel obligated to talk about the food offerings. The menu is basically identical to what you would find at any American chain restaurant. Everything screamed “pre-packaged,” which I thought was odd considering this was a concept restaurant and not a chain. We ordered some tex-mex rolls for the appetizer, which was supposed to be marinated chicken, corn, avacado and some other junk in crisped flour tortillas. What we got looked like this…

Those aren’t crisped flour tortillas… they’re deep-fried, frozen, then tossed in the fryer once again. Seriously, look at how shiny those things are. There wasn’t a single distinguishable flavor other than grease. The filling was nothing more than a paste that may or may not have contained the items described on the menu. I can’t even come close to describing how bad these things were. Maybe it wouldn’t be so offensive if we were anywhere other than Tucson, where one could walk twenty paces from the restaurant and find a similar item prepared properly for far cheaper.

I was surprised to find tajine on the menu, which is a sort of Moroccan slow-cooked feast. It seemed really out of place alongside the rather plain burgers and salads. I was curious, but didn’t want to wait an hour for my food. Another concern was that it was billed as “authentic Moroccan tajine,” but their prime offering was a shrimp and white fish version, which is about as unauthentic as you can get. Moroccan tajine usually contains lamb or chicken because the fat is an important component for proper braising when using the tajine pot. Maybe I should have made Muderblog 3D a cooking blog. I know way too much about this sort of crap. My parents thought teaching me such things would give me a strong cultural background, but instead I just ended up being a food snob.

Another surprise on the menu was that every letter ‘L’ was bolded. I know I’m just nit-picking with this one, but it really bothers me when a print job is botched because someone got lazy during pre-flight and didn’t properly collect all the fonts before rasterizing the document. That, uh, might just be me, though.

We decided to order entrées that worked with the atmosphere of the World Sports Grille: I settled on the double burger, which was actually a single burger with onions and coleslaw, while my friend got a brie and shiitake mushroom burger, which was exactly what it sounds like.

I grew up in Pennsylvania, so I imagined ‘coleslaw’ to mean a bit of shredded cabbage (Dutch style, y’know?). I’ve had burgers like that and they were quite good. In this case it meant some carrots in a mayonaise broth plopped on the bun. It was not good. The burgers were obviously packaged, as they were identical in form and weight. Really, they were both quite terrible. Neither of us could finish, but not due to fulfillment.

This entire time I had not seen a cocktail menu, which was one of my main reasons for visiting the damn place to begin with. I think I asked our waitress for one, but she had a tendency to forget that she was a waitress and disappear for long periods of time. We saw her maybe twice during our dinner: once when she took our order, and once when she dropped off the check. Maybe she was sinking her tips into the Stacker machines.

After dinner, we hit the arcade again to try out anything we had overlooked.

This race car thing looked pretty cool. It’s on some sort of hydralics so it flies all over the place whenever you make the slightest motion. They even have a fence around it that screams “Hey, I’m Dangerous!” I had to give it a whirl, even though it cost 15.889 credits.

This is a picture of me in the machine. I’m not sure if it’s clear (and I couldn’t tell from a distance either), but it was definitely not for people of my size. The steering wheel dug into my crotch and my legs bowed out so far that it was hard to reach the pedals. I didn’t think this was so bad until I actually started racing and the whole thing began to lurch around violently. It felt like someone was punching me in the testicles over and over again, which, FYI, is a terrible feeling. I did one turn before hitting the emergency shut off switch. Oh God, it was painful. Maybe I’ll try it again if I ever become four feet tall.

There was a similar machine that may have been more accommodating to my height, but it displayed a Windows desktop on the main screen throughout the entirety of our visit. I remember reading that Sega had started using Windows XPe for all of it’s arcade games, which appears to have turned out exactly as one would expect it to. I felt bad for the drunk woman who paid the ticket price, then sat in the cab pressing the ‘start’ button on the screen for twenty minutes. It’s worth noting that any ‘arcade technicians’ could not be located.

A weird Japanese table tennis game sat by it’s lonesome near the bar area. I had four credits left on my card so I gave it a shot. Either it was amazingly easy for an arcade game, or I wasn’t playing it right and somehow ended up cheating the system. I seemed to win effortlessly: just swing the paddle, and then move on to the next round. It was also not a very good game, so I simply put the paddle down after my third victory and walked away.

During that last game, I started to feel not very good. I wasn’t sure if it was the food or being kicked in the balls by a racing game. My friend also felt not very good, so I’m guessing it was the food. So we left. On the way home, we stopped by Safeway to grab some Pepto-Bismo. We both felt not very good at all.

The next morning, I had some serious issues. I consider this a family blog, so I’ll just leave it at this: do not eat the food at World Sports Grille. It will result in very bad experiences.

That’s my experience at Sega’s flagship concept restaurant. I wish it had been better. If I had to sum it up into a single sentence, I suppose it would be: “This is the Sonic the Hedgehog of Restaurants.”

Way to go, Sega.

I think they’re playing the nostalgia card.

Just kidding, here’s what it actually looks like.

Even though it’s being billed as Microsoft’s answer to LittleBigPlanet, Boku has actually been around a lot longer than that title. The main difference is that Boku was being developed as an accessible GUI rather than a full fledged platform. I suppose the waves of user created content for big console titles have changed that, as it seems Microsoft is looking to push it as an Xbox 360 title.

Am I the only person who likes my games to already be games by the time I get my hands on them?

Let’s examine Gamespot’s review of LittleBigPlanet…

“Although Little Big Planet could be described as a platforming game, its dedication to creativity in every area takes it far beyond the confines of the genre. Everything from your character to the environment is geared towards user creation and adaptation, via stickers and costumes right up to a full-blown level creator. Each level of the story mode is an unforgettable trip through the wild imagination of the designers, and it would be difficult to find a game that’s as much fun to play with friends co-operatively. It’s a little disheartening that the Story mode is over so quickly, and although there’s some longevity to be had from finding all the hidden extras, you can still see everything the story has to offer in six hours. Then there’s the level creator–an astoundingly powerful toolset that theoretically allows you to recreate anything you see in the included levels and much more. However, it still requires a great deal of time and skill to develop something that people will actually want to play, and despite the best intentions of the developer, it’s a feature that not everyone will be able to take full advantage of. The overall result is a game that’s incredibly fun while it lasts, and one that has the potential to be taken further by its community.”

But…! I don’t want to create. And I’m not sure I want to experience what has been created. I want my games to have a carefully engineered freedom, to present an illusion of immersion that has been examined by a team of experts and deemed worthy of experiencing. I want them to secretly dominate me, to be able to anticipate what I’m going to do next at any given moment. If I want to create, I have mediums for that. A pad of paper and a pencil are a hell of a lot cheaper than a new video game (and can also reach a much larger audience). I want Super Mario Galaxy and Portal and Metroid. I want focus and structure, a tightened experience presented by a group of people with a common vision.

What I don’t want is to have to sift through crap to find such an experience. While I can respect LittleBigPlanet as a title (and, indeed, that “common vision” I mentioned above may be presented flawlessly, although aimed at a completely different audience), it does not seem to offer what I want from a platformer. I had not read anything about the single player campaign until after the title had launched, and even then it equated to “this is what you have to sit through to get the the level editor.” There may be a wealth of content available, but it doesn’t seem to offer the experience I desire as a gamer.

ANALOGY BREAK!

When I was in college, I had a bulky TV with rabbit ears that got two and a half channels (public television only counts as a half, right?). Most of the time I had my choice between Becker reruns, talk shows, or infomercials. For some inexplicable reason I chose all three and watched television constantly. Whenever I had a paper to write or a drawing to finish, that TV would be tuned to some throwaway crap that I could lose myself in. It was just there: always ready for me and exactly what I expected it to be.

That stands in sharp contrast to when I would go home for the summer and visit my parents. They have Comcast Digital HD Super Party or something. Six billion channels, every moment of recorded history available on demand and even IPTV functions. The signal to noise ratio is so great that I could never find anything to watch. Last night I decided to look for an HD movie on demand. It took me twenty five minutes to sift through everything in the ‘Horror’ category; by the time I had finished I decided just to read some old Wonder Woman comics and go to bed. There is so much out there that there seems to be nothing out there. If you’re a user of the internet, you may be able to relate.

YouTube is currently serving up over one hundred million videos. Thirteen hours of video are uploaded every minute. How much of that is actually worth experiencing? Well, that depends on your patience. You can search for anything and, with luck, find exactly what you’re looking for (I tend to focus on “old people falling down”). But if you just want to be entertained for a brief moment, you might have some trouble. You can check out featured videos, sort by the number of views, or be brave and click around randomly. In the end, you’re still viewing amateur content… something lacking that certain polish and pacing you expect from a professional operation.

That’s me: I just want to be entertained. I want to experience games as I’ve always experienced them… accessible distractions that may or may not have something to say in the grand scheme of things. I’m sure that LittleBigPlanet can produce some stunning work as a platform, but it does not currently function in a manner that makes those works accessible to the average user. It currently presents itself as a limited platformer with the opportunity to be much more. Joe the Plumber isn’t going to spend hours trying shitty uploaded levels until he finds something he likes, no matter how much Sony markets to him. Joe the Plumber has a bidness to run. He’s like me: he wants to be entertained without effort. Except Joe the Plumber makes $250K a year and I bitch about games on the internet while eating discarded shoes for dinner.

I’m wondering where the balance is. The point where user created content is considered part of the package rather than something for the consumer to seek out if they feel the need. I think Super Smash Bros Brawl handled this somewhat ingeniously: the player can opt in to recieve one user created level per day, as chosen by some dude at Nintendo who probably knows what the story is. No sifting through crap. You get access to new content every day, but it’s mediated and explicitly chosen as good user content.

There is a big deal being made about user created content and procedural content in console games. I think the next big thing will be both: user content that is incorporated in context. Imagine if all those LittleBigPlanet levels were sorted and separated into various campaigns… an algorithm processes keywords, rating and length to string everything together in a cohesive manner. Instead of sorting through various levels, you sort through clusters of ideas. You get a mix of good and bad with almost no effort. There aren’t enough LittleBigPlanet videos on YouTube to illustrate this point, but I hope you catch my drift. It could be golden. Instead of seeking, the player would sample and consume.

I have no beef with LittleBigPlanet… it may be a wonderful title; I haven’t fully experienced it yet. I think the way in which we access extensions of traditional media is flawed and needs to be reconsidered for new audiences. I want my gaming experience to be structured and considered, which I feel is a weak point for most releases that hinge on user created content. And if I, as a core gamer, feel that way… how does the rest of the market feel?