Dear Developers,

Please be sure to understand what your source material is actually about before adapting it into a video game.

Thanks,
Big Jim Murderbloggins

I’ve been unemployed for a little over a month now, with absolutely no job prospects and very little money to my name. This means I have a lot of free time. I’ve been trying to figure out what the average vocationally impaired american does instead of working. I tried drinking in the morning (I saw that one on TV), which, by the afternoon, I realized was a very bad idea. I tried growing a beard, which was an even worse idea… now my Xbox Avatar looks like a creepy junior college lit professor. I considered writing the great American novel, but more than a few have already walked that path. I was at a loss.

Then, during my family’s annual Thanksgiving circus event, I got to talking with my cousin Timothy. He’s a few years older than me and recently completed his Master’s in English language and literature. Needless to say, he’s been looking for a job since April. I’m going stir crazy after a month; I can’t even imagine going that long without doing something. His secret? World of Warcraft. “That’s ten hours a day right there.” Oh, Timothy.

I can’t imagine that’s what the average jobless fellow does with all his free time, but I’m sure there are many like my cousin out there. I’d venture a guess that some are unemployed because they play World of Warcraft. The fifteen bucks a month subscription fee isn’t too hard to swing. That’s, like, only four ounces of plasma.

A Confession: I have never played a massively multiplayer online game. In fact, I’ve actively avoided them. The whole grind-until-you-die-from-exhaustion angle never appealed to me. I mean, trying to balance an extremely addictive game alongside my job, my girlfriend and my social life would have been hell. I could barely find the time to play twenty minutes of Bomberman after work as it were.

Now I don’t have a job or a girlfriend or a social life. My days consist of scratching my hideous beard and staring at the phone, waiting for some big firm to call me and say they have a position open. Which, FYI, isn’t going to happen. Perhaps the time has come for me to take the plunge and become one of those people.

So, as if by some divine magic, I received an email last week from Atlus inviting me to beta test a new MMORPG. “Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine. ” It could be nothing other than fate! Or maybe the fact that I’m on the Atlus mailing list and they sent a beta key to every subscriber. Either way, I knew what I had to do.

Some Background: Megami Tensei — or MegaTen, as hopeless romantics will refer to it — is a long running series of Japanese roleplaying games. There are, seriously, like a million different titles. Not many were released in North America, but the Persona sub-series has gained a bit of a following (I consider Persona 3: FES to be one of the finest roleplaying games I have ever experienced). The quality that sets Megami Tensei games apart from the average JRPG is that they are not terrible… there are no elves or ultimate troll swords or undying gods that happen to resemble the protagonist’s father. Thematically, most MegaTen titles are set in modern day and the player has to fight demons and junk. It’s different, which is probably why the series has attracted an audience.

I downloaded the Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine client, installed it and created my account. Things can only get better from here.

A.D. 20XX TOKYO

In the aftermath of the Great Destruction, those who survived constructed shelters, waiting for the day when they would rebuild their city.

Led by the Seven Philosophers these survivors constructed a massive tower.

This tower came to be called Shinjuku Babel.

Having lost their homes, the remaining survivors took refuge in an underground city called
Third Home. This is where you learn the skills and techniques to be a Demon Buster.

Okay then! That text is all the backstory I get before I’m dumped at a menu screen. The game boldy announces “You will be able to create a new character.” The music is actually fairly interesting, despite being a twelve second loop. Before I can be able to create my character, I have to chose a world in which to inhabit. I guess such is the norm for MMOs? Different servers and all that? I only have one choice: Cerberus. How goth.

I name my character ‘Evil Tom Waits.’ Both the male and female character models look identical, except or the male being a bit more feminine. All the hairstyles are hilariously douchey. I choose ‘mushroom,’ hoping to make Evil Tom Waits resemble Edith Head. Not quite.

I’m pretty anxious to play, so I leave most of the options untouched and click start game. “You can not create a character with that name.” No explanation why. I try taking off the last name (maybe there’s some sort of celebrity defamation filter in place), but no go. “Pussycat Central” doesn’t work either. Nor does Zachary or any of my online handles. I get frustrated and start entering random phrases until I find one that’s acceptable. So, uh, Bob Murderville it is.

Start game! A computer terminal tells me that Murderville has to investigate Home II at once. No exposition or anything… I like that. Then some blocky chick in a visor says the same thing. I’m finally in the game and the amount of stuff on the hud is overwhelming. I approach a lion thing named ‘Unseasoned Cerberus’ who exclaims “I HAVE A BAD FEELING ABOUT THIS.” The visor chick starts talking about demon busting and saving citizens and… oh! She’s a SLUT (Systematic Linear Unavoidable Tutor). You know, the sort of NPC that you have to put up with for a while to learn how to play the game. The kind with no varying dialog and a throwaway personality. This is the opposite of something like Link’s Awakening, which features DICs (Detail Instance Coaches); multiple NPCs who subtly relay information about the controls and game mechanics. I swear that these are real acronyms and not something I made up just now to keep this post interesting. Anyway, tell me how to use the camera, SLUT!

She teaches me to move around and says I should check out the elevator. I check out the elevator. “The elevator is broken.” I go back to the visor chick. She says to go down the hallway. I go down the hallway. A dialog box warns me that I’m on my own from this point forward. Um… okay? I guess all I really need to know is how to move around. Fade to black.

“ACT 0: THE SIN OF WEAKNESS.”

Except I’m not on my own. The visor chick is somehow in the next room giving first aid to a rambling solider. “I could have saved them… if it weren’t for those darn demons!”

So far this game is unbelievably boring. The rooms are so big in relation to my character that it takes an unnecessary amount of time to move from place to place. I understand the need for a tutorial sequence (as there are a million weird buttons on the screen and the documentation is a bit lacking), but can’t something interesting happen? Shoddy flow is a breaking point for most titles; poor pacing in the first few hours of a game is unforgivable. And this is an MMO… shouldn’t I be able to interact with other people by now?

No one seems to be around. I imagine that most massively multiplayer games confine the player in such a manner during the introductory segments.

The next room has a monster in it. It’s a green slime. Left click to target, left click again to attack. Click haphazardly in rapid succession for more efficient attacks. I kill that thing dead. The following room has three slimes in it instead of one! These rooms are seriously way too big. I kill a purple monster in the adjacent room and level up. Entering the status window lets me assign ability points. Fairly straightforward. I pump it all into intelligence. Bob Murderville is obviously lacking in that area if he’s running around battling monsters by himself in an MMO.

A room with a locked door introduces an important mechanic: loot. I find 19 pieces of magnetite on a corpse. It’s kind of refreshing that the game uses actual mineral names instead of magicite or awesomtonium. Still, I wish there was some way to just buy loot using actual currency instead of having to find it in the game. That’d be really convenient. Maybe I can use this magnetite to forge a compass later on, or turn it into a ferrofluid during a challenging chemistry minigame.

A blood stained control panel sits in an adjacent room. Menacing. “A door has unlocked somewhere.” I wonder if it was the locked door from the previous room? I fight some weird ‘Gaki’ monsters and dispatch them quickly. Each one has two band-aids. I have so many band-aids! I was under the impression that “band-aid” a brand name and non-licensed versions had to refer to themselves as “adhesive bandages.” How peculiar. I should probably send an email to Johnson & Johnson letting them know about this possible trademark infringement.

Okay, how the hell was was the visor chick behind the locked door? Maybe she’s a demon! We have a conversation. There are many ellipses involved. “It seems the demons came through… the service entrance.” What the hell kind of post apocalyptic stronghold has a service entrance? That is some seriously poor planning. I make my way to the stupid service entrance.

This extended tutorial is becoming quite tiresome. The Shin Megami Tensei series is known for two things: enjoyable game mechanics and an engaging story. I have yet to experience either of those elements in this online iteration. I’ve been playing an introductory sequence for almost two hours now; the only characters I’ve encountered are paper cutouts lacking in motivation. By this point in the game I would hope that
some sort of lure would present itself, a reason to continue playing. Two hours should be the cutoff for that, right? Instead I’m making my way through a maze of identical rooms filled with identical monsters, hoping for a — HOLY SHIT WHAT THE HELL IS THAT?!

Where did Kali come from? Is she a demon? I thought she was a goddess? What the hell is going on? Why are the subtitles for this scene in a crazy moon man language? The visor chick and Unseasoned Cerberus are dead at Kali’s feet. There’s a strange hissing noise and my character passes out. Fade to white. This game may just have gotten awesome.

Now Mr. Murderville is in some room that… well, looks exactly like all the other rooms. A non-player character tells me about a training computer I have to use to move on. I try it and the NPC goes into SLUT mode. “Let me tell you about controlling the camera.” Wait, what? I’m in another tutorial. What happened to Kali and all the cool stuff? Why do I have to do this again? “Use your basic attack skill to kill five slimes.”

I exit the game.

Somehow, even though I have absolutely nothing better to do, I lack the patience for this. The gameplay proceedings are downright dull… click an enemy, then keep clicking until it dies. Click it’s corpse to get loot. Click on the floor to move forward and find another enemy. I understand that a computer mouse is the primary input device, but c’mon. The mechanics should probably be a little deeper than “click on things until you level up.” This is no different than a button masher. I realize that I spent very little time with the game (in comparison to the average person’s cumulative engagement with an MMO), but I was told by two tutorials that I would not enjoy the primary method of interaction. I’m sure there are all sorts of neat Megami Tensei standards buried in the title, but they’re not worth the repetitive stress injury I’d get trying to discover them.

The comical element here is that I couldn’t stomach the game enough to get to the online portions. You know, the online portions of an online game. I was under the impression that MMORPGs start to suck due to interaction with other players. “Griefing” and all that. Normally the core elements of a title are rewarding enough for people to put up with that sort of aggravation. In the case of Shin Megami Tensei: Imagine, such activities would most likely cause severe emotional breakdowns and destroy entire families.

I realize that the flaws of this game do not reflect the genre as a whole. The issues I encountered have to do with pacing and combat, elements specific to the title. Next week I plan on spending some time with the free trial for World of Warcraft… the end all, be all massively multiplayer game. If I do not enjoy that, I’m probably a lost cause.

Maybe I’m just not cut out for this unemployed wastrel position.

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.