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Idle Weekend January 8, 2016: Keyframing the Issues

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Idle Weekend January 8, 2016:

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Keyframing the Issues

Welcome our first-ever guest to the show: one Jake Rodkin, Idle Thumb and Firewatch-maker, to weigh in on animated and mo-capped performance in games. Plus, the Weekenders ponder topical questions, such as: What is a keyframe? Are speed runners performance artists? Are we all just faceless members of cultural demographics? And, once and for all, we come to a decision on whether Rob is crazy for liking Limitless.

Discussed: AGDQ 2016, Fallout 1, 3D animation for the uninitiated, Her Story, queer gaming, Fargo, Limitless

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I want to thank Rob & Danielle for owning their ignorance, so to speak, on the issue of game animation and following that up with talking to Jake who has a greater familiarity with the subject. It is definitely a subject that I've always been ignorant about and never really considered in any serious way, and it was great to hear that very basic breakdown of how game characters are animated.

 

The topic of ideology in games is interesting. I'm definitely with you guys where I think how mechanics are getting defined is a little mushy, and we're seeing thematic elements get conflated into the discussion. But I think there's a second thing going on, which is the ambiguous use of the term ideology. As I see it, there are two distinct ways that the term ideology is being used in the discussion, often interchangably, to much confusion:

 

1. There is ideology as a well considered world view. In economics when we talk about salt water and fresh water economists we're talking about two different sets of beliefs about how the economy works, and we can refer to that difference in belief as ideological. This use of ideology represents conscious thought and belief.

 

2. There is also ideology in the Marxist sense of the assumptions we have about the world are all informed by the totality of the modes of production. This operates at a more unconscious level.

 

I think this is an important distinction to make because in the 2nd definition of ideology every single culture artifact produced reflects a capitalist ideology, it would be impossible for it not to be because it exists within the social framework of a capitalist society. Our understanding of what a game is and what it isn't is informed by that ideology. We can recognize moving images on a screen that we operate with a mechanical controller as a game, but a member of an Amazon tribe that doesn't exist in the same set of relationships won't be able to have the same sort of understanding. That's ideology.

 

That is distinct from looking at a game where you play a character that over time accumulates wealth and power, and saying that game has a pro-market or capitalist ideology. That's ideology in the first sense.

 

I think this distinction matters because you can flip the script and make a game where accumulating power isn't the object of the game, and all the bankers, CEOs, and landowners are villains, and despite this more left-wing framework it is still nonetheless a game reflecting capitalist ideology in the 2nd sense because it is a game that exists within that prevailing social framework. So I think there are a lot of different ways you can look at the issue, but I think how the question is approached is pretty important. It kind of reminds me being in college and reading up on Lucy Irigaray's position on feminine writing and sexual difference, writing I definitely can't claim to have ever really understood, but certainly found interesting.

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Good podcast guys.

 

I'm not sure how a Game Mechanic itself would engender ideology in sclpls's first sense of presenting a worldview. The standard definition of Mechanics are the actions a player takes and how the game responds to them, E.G. Mario jumping, combat in the Witcher, grenade rolling down a hill, etc. But if you take the context of the game out, so its now just a game which solely consists of the Mechanics and their outcome then do they still say something w/r/t the game's worldview? Without Win Conditions or Thematic elements it doesn't seem that Mechanics push much of a worldview by themselves on the player compared to the rest of the game.

 

The second sense of ideology, the Marxist sense of the assumptions is present in every work of media. I don't know if a Game's Mechanics reflect their culture's ideology and social framework significantly differently than any other form of media or not, but I'd be interested if anyone had thoughts on that.

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re: speedrunning as "counterprogramming" it very much feels like this is the case especially in situations where the runner will do stuff like RNG manipulation or glitch exploits where they need to perform a precise sequence of actions in order to set a memory register to a particular value.

 

The earthbound run from sgdq 2015 has good examples of "i see the matrix"-like levels of RNG manipulation:

 

The runner can predict much damage their character will do, which attack the enemy will choose to use, what stats they will gain from levelling up, etc. all of which are "randomized" when playing casually.

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I think CBS being the home of procedural mean it is the home of shows that push at the limits of what a procedural can be like the good wife which combines a law procedural with both politics both governmental and within law company(s). It also took  the law show outside of the standard criminal case with trial jury by inclduing civil suits, depositions, military court or people round a table with their lawyers present hashing out some kind of deal.

 

You also have Person of Interest which has become a show that was very precipitant about the extent of the  US surveillance state when it first aired and has become very focused on the development of AI and how they can effect the world and how they can be percieved/used by different groups of people in the world (particularly regards keeping the world/the US safe). Also catching up on the third season I think it is one of the better shows on tv when it comes the range of roles/characters women play on the show from the main cast with Root and Shaw to recurring characters that range from political fixers to the head of the NSA (who had stealth arc in the third season) to once off characters like bounty hunters, amateur MMA fighters and lieutenants in criminal organisations.

 

Also in the third season it had an episode similar to that of communities remedial chaos theory with dice replaced by a computer simulation

 

Also Minnesota nice sounds like Irish nice/polite (or whatever particular group that fits the same role in places that aren't the US and Europe). We are perceived as being very polite, charming etc but get to know us and you'll find plenty of knives behind those smiles that are mostly directed at each other to not scare of the tourists. I do wonder if Minnesota spend as much time as we do writing and aruging about it.

 

PS - can't think of CBS procedural without thinking of this short story about Law and Order (even though it's NBC) - Especially Heinous : 272 views on Law and Order

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I was really honored to have my letter read on the podcast this week, and I'm glad it's generating thought from both Rob and Danielle as well as from listeners. I wanted to go a little more in detail about some of what I'm talking about when I say that mechanics express an idea, how that relates to notions of cultural specificity, and also how that relates to ideology, and I'm going to use cooking as a comparison because I think it's helpful, and because cooking is very much a cultural thing and regional cuisines do express certain worldviews even if it's in subtle ways.

 

So when I think about "a mechanic" I think it's a fairly small element in the same way that "an ingredient" is also small. So let's take, for example, cumin. Cumin is a spice used in a lot of different cultures, and for simplicity's sake, I'm going to just talk about Mexican and Indian cooking (both styles I'm familiar with). Cumin is commonly used in both, and yet I would still say cumin is "cultural," in the same way that a mechanic might be used in both a AAA game and a queer game but still have a sense of culture attached. Now if I just look at cumin as a single ingredient, I can't easily point to a single culture. None the less, it's already narrowing down the list of "possible" cultures. Whatever is being made with this probably isn't culturally Icelandic, for example (another style of cooking I'm familiar with which uses almost no spices outside of salt). And then if you start adding more ingredients, it will begin to narrow down even more. And chili powder, oregano, and pork and I'm going to guess this is maybe Mexican or some other Latin American dish. Corn dough narrows it more, just like plantains would take it in a different direction. Add cinnamon, cardamom, mace, cloves, and lamb and you're definitely moving more towards India. We could even just look at rice and wheat. These are used in A LOT of cultures, but still... they carry cultural significance.

 

So I think, as we begin to add up individual ingredients, we can start to see something specifically cultural appear. So just because cumin is used in a lot of cuisines doesn't mean that cumin isn't still a cultural element of Indian cooking, and doesn't in some way express culture even if just in a broad sense.

 

So I kind of take issue with Rob's claim that you could take the mechanics used in Queers in Love at the End of the World and use them anywhere. Like, okay, maybe. I could add some cumin to my lamb when I'm cooking a dish that is otherwise a very Icelandic dish, but that doesn't make cumin Icelandic and the way it's functioning in the dish might begin to feel at odd with the rest of the food.

 

So the mechanics of Queers in Love is still very much a cultural thing to me. The time limit that marks the automatic "end" might also be seen in something like Guitar Hero or the timed stages in Alphabear, but then it's also being combined with an absense of scoring mechnics (which are present in Guitar Hero and Alphabear), as well as the mechanics of textual choices. Most important, for queer games, the mechanics in Queers in Love are creating a system that you fundamentally cannot win at, or get "better" at. And this kind of system—where you are doomed to "fail" but within that failure can come to your own sense of meaning or value, is something queer games do that (at least most) AAA games don't. And so this is how I think mechanics are cultural and are expressing culture, in the way that ingredients do the same thing.

 

Similarly while A Place to Fuck Each Other may share some mechnics with Dungeons & Dragons or Apocalypse World, there are different mechanics (no dice to determine the outcome of events, a lack of continued "ownership" over individual characters, etc.) that are already expressing ideas that are independent of the textual element that says, "This is about two queer women trying to have sex or move in together, rather than killing orcs or surviving the apocalypse," and I think the ideas expressed in those mechanics are culturally queer.

 

And so ideas, at the smaller level, go on to express ideology at a larger level. The presence of absense of a scoring or grading metric expresses an idea, and as we add this to other mechanics to create a more complete system, we can begin to see an ideology. Cart Life may share a lot with other games that try to model the economy, but there are some differences, and those differences create a system that is inherently designed to fail or be unstable, rather than a more "pro-capitalist" game system where it is designed so that you can more easily succeed at mastering that system. There is additional textual elements ("content," as Rob put it) which re-inforces the ideas expressed, but those ideas are still in the system as well.

 

And you can see games where the ideas of the system and then the ideas of the textual "content" are at odds. This is kind of what people mean when they talk about ludonarrative dissonance (as much as that term may be overused). Think of criticisms of Hotline Miami that the system is all about how much fun killing is, and how rewarding it is, and then the text says, "You're bad for liking this." It's like the gam intentionally made this model of killing people that is really fun, and what you're getting about of this system is entertainment, but then the text is like, "Haha! don't you know killing is evil? So it's wrong to like this." The system never really shows you how killing is bad. A lot of people don't like that game precisely because the system is expressing an ideology that is at odds with what the game claims to be about.

 

Of course, part of my original email was also that I think cultural specificity in still new to games, but I think it is there and it's growing. I think it's even there in the differences between JRPGs and Western RPGs. I don't think the names are entirely a misnomer. And yeah, a Westerner can make a JRPG. I can also cook Indian food and I'm not Indian. The food I'm cooking is still culturally Indian even if I've given it my own personal meaning as well.

 

And I guess as one last thought, since I mentioned it in passing, I do think food carries ideas and possibly ideology as well. Compare the vegetarianism important to a lot of Indian food with the beef-laden diet central to a lot of American cuisine, or the communal nature of many restaurants in China with the "everyone gets their own plate" nature of most American restaurants. These might not in totality express all the complexities of "capitalism" and "communism," but they still express cultural ideas about how the world works that are also expressed in capitalism and communism. Even just the complex spice mixtures of Indian food compared to the minimal ingredients in Japanese cooking express cultural ideas that you might also seen in Indian and Japanese art.

 

Of course, there are a lot of ideas I'm throwing out here, many of them as just seeds for thought I hope to continue to develop as I do my own work in games, but I'm adding it here as (if you will pardon the pun) more food for thought.

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For me, the fascinating thing about culture is its totality. The word, "culture" refers to the sum of human experience and activity, so there's no getting outside of it. You can only understand other cultures by analogy to your own: through similarity and difference, presence and absence, positive and negative.

 

That's something that gave me pause when Rob suggested that progression systems in video games are maybe just a function of the human predilection for things getting bigger and better over time, as reflected in the foundational archetypes of the hero's journey. "Of course, that makes sense," I thought from my position within the modern capitalist culture of the English-speaking West, before I tried to think of actual examples in pre-modern fiction and faltered somewhat. Campbell's description of mythopoesis is evocative and useful, but he is definitely speaking from a his position within the modern capitalist culture of the English-speaking West, too. A lot of what he wrote off as noise, distracting from the kernel of commonality in every myth, are things that the originators of those myths valued a lot.

 

In fact, many pre-modern narratives have their nominal heroes accept crippling disadvantage or submit to die because victory is impossible. Odin and Tyr suffered from mutilation of eye and hand respectively in their search for peace and order, which was significant as gods of a society that held such disfigurements to be so unlucky as to be contagious, and they ultimately lost their apocalyptic battle with the forces of chaos as a result. Even in the Christian tradition, Jesus Christ appears as the living incarnation of an all-powerful god, yet constantly provokes secular authorities and refuses to defend himself when they finally retaliate against him. In the end, his promise is essentially to abandon the world to the forces of evil and take all true believers elsewhere, which was an extremely attractive prospect for medieval authors who viewed the world as irretrievably tainted by its own creation and doomed to decay until humanity was effectively extinct. Otto of Freising, a twelfth-century bishop and relative of emperors who authored a complete history of humanity, wrote about living "at the end of time" with the most peculiar mix of joy and misery. I can't really imagine a video game from that cultural perspective, but I'm sure it wouldn't involve a tech tree or leveling up.

 

My point is, these are people and stories that motivated entire societies for centuries on end, even though they run counter to what are understood to be the positivist tendencies of the human brain. Maybe psychology and behavioral science have proven that they were anomalies, or maybe they've just proven the effects of capitalist values on cognition? I'm not sure, because it's hard to see outside my own culture, but I sure do wonder.

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Ok, I am not sure if I will able to articule this, sorry if sound strange or unclear, but...

Rob moment of doubt during the discussion could it be because : the trick thing is, the reasons why people play games and why people make them can very different and even if you say this or that game reflect this or that, that still not explain very well why (and how) people play and why (again how) they made it. Take a MMO, you might say they reflect some capitalist aspect or something else, but the reasons why people play them, might have nothing to do with it - since you could have people which roleplay, other which play for fun, some which just play to chat with friends, other because it a good type of game to play when listening to a podcast (that would be me), a few because they like the IP, other because graphics/gameplay and so on.

 

Sengoku Basara (a Dynasty Warriors style of game, made by Capcom), which again could be seen as a reflect of certain aspect, but lot of people play simple because they love the over the top and ultra wacky humor, in fact, this game is really popular with woman in Japan, from what I heard, among the reasons is simple because some of them really like the characters and voices actors.

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Whoa, Danielle snuck the mention in really off-handedly but she's no longer working at Polygon? Anyone follow what she's up to these days?

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Didn't listen to the podcast yet but what the hell is this title picture?

Nathan Drake smiling.

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I really enjoyed Rob's "prison of your own taste" metaphor. Last night I saw the trailer for the new Coen Bros movie - Hail, Caesar! - and was immediately struck by how many elements of that trailer directly appealed to my tastes. That doesn't mean I'm any less excited to see that movie, but seeing the trailer so soon after listening to this podcast made me think a little bit more about the entire situation.

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Great episode, as someone who's studied animation I liked the chatter about it. What's funny is that animation takes so much time and detail oriented work but it's strength is in stylisation rather than any attempt at subtle realism. A lot of animation is not about adding but observing what you have, tweaking the positions and timing of the movement until you can add more and make something that's communicative in the acting sense while simultaneously being physically believable.

 

I loved the email about mechanics as a cultural artifact. I think one thing that heavily colours your take on that discussion is your definition of mechanic. I don't personally think you can divorce a mechanic from it's theming. If you wanted to go to the extreme end of reductionism, most game mechanics are just pressing a button or moving an input. Obviously that's a meaningless abstraction, but where can you draw the line between what's theme and what's mechanics?

 

I personally feel like the theme is a necessary part of a mechanic, because it informs why the player perform the interaction. If Mario didn't jump when you pressed A then what's the point of that mechanic? By including the meaning behind an input (it's consequences and effect on the game world) then you get a full picture of what it does. I feel like reducing a mechanic to less than that robs it off half the point and makes the discussion flatter because surely

 

I really enjoyed Rob's "prison of your own taste" metaphor. Last night I saw the trailer for the new Coen Bros movie - Hail, Caesar! - and was immediately struck by how many elements of that trailer directly appealed to my tastes. That doesn't mean I'm any less excited to see that movie, but seeing the trailer so soon after listening to this podcast made me think a little bit more about the entire situation.

I catch myself doing this so much with "x meets y meets z" games.

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Holy crap, this show is amazing, the talk about animation and then the talk about mechanics and what they mean and culture where all amazing. I wish I could be more constructive but my mind is kind of blown right now and in awe. It's kind of driving me nuts how great you guys are at articulating your thoughts (while still being super respectful to other opinions and doubting your own, are you guys sure this isn't scripted? xD), especially Rob, holy crap. Great show , keep it up guys! 


Also awesome that Jake could be on for a bit! More Jake for the people!

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 loved the email about mechanics as a cultural artifact. I think one thing that heavily colours your take on that discussion is your definition of mechanic. I don't personally think you can divorce a mechanic from it's theming. If you wanted to go to the extreme end of reductionism, most game mechanics are just pressing a button or moving an input. Obviously that's a meaningless abstraction, but where can you draw the line between what's theme and what's mechanics?

There's a difference to me between actions and mechanics. Pushing a button is an action. Having an avatar 'jump' when the button is pushed is a mechanic. Having the mechanic of gravity affect the character is also a design choice, Actions that result in consequences which are constrained by mechanics form the vast majority of games as we commonly understand them.

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In fact, many pre-modern narratives have their nominal heroes accept crippling disadvantage or submit to die because victory is impossible. Odin and Tyr suffered from mutilation of eye and hand respectively in their search for peace and order, which was significant as gods of a society that held such disfigurements to be so unlucky as to be contagious, and they ultimately lost their apocalyptic battle with the forces of chaos as a result. Even in the Christian tradition, Jesus Christ appears as the living incarnation of an all-powerful god, yet constantly provokes secular authorities and refuses to defend himself when they finally retaliate against him. In the end, his promise is essentially to abandon the world to the forces of evil and take all true believers elsewhere, which was an extremely attractive prospect for medieval authors who viewed the world as irretrievably tainted by its own creation and doomed to decay until humanity was effectively extinct. Otto of Freising, a twelfth-century bishop and relative of emperors who authored a complete history of humanity, wrote about living "at the end of time" with the most peculiar mix of joy and misery. I can't really imagine a video game from that cultural perspective, but I'm sure it wouldn't involve a tech tree or leveling up.

 

My point is, these are people and stories that motivated entire societies for centuries on end, even though they run counter to what are understood to be the positivist tendencies of the human brain. Maybe psychology and behavioral science have proven that they were anomalies, or maybe they've just proven the effects of capitalist values on cognition? I'm not sure, because it's hard to see outside my own culture, but I sure do wonder.

 

I haven't played it but from what I have heard on three moves ahead Attilia : Total War might be the closest there is to such a game. 

 

Also it might not have a tech three but it could have a transcending mortal concerns/ steps towards enlightenment tree which you can unlock faster but giving up your material wealth in the form of cash.

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I'm going through the archive of AGDQ 2016 (I'll take this opportunity to once again plug the

) and the Yoshi's Island race reminded me of this episode.  It's an extremely short race (about 5 minutes) and is more of a showcase than a full run.  Danielle mentioned how speedrunning is almost like programming and in this case it literally is.  The runners use very specific actions to put code into the game's memory, then use a glitch to crash the game and force it to run the code they previously entered causing the game to skip to the end.  It's an extreme case of just how much the runners know about the games, as well as a testament to how dedicated they are to their art when they're still finding ways to break a 20+ year old game.

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Think of criticisms of Hotline Miami that the system is all about how much fun killing is, and how rewarding it is, and then the text says, "You're bad for liking this." It's like the gam intentionally made this model of killing people that is really fun, and what you're getting about of this system is entertainment, but then the text is like, "Haha! don't you know killing is evil? So it's wrong to like this."

I remain utterly mystified by where these interpretations of Hotline Miami are coming from. I can't think of a single line in the game moralizing about violence being wrong. As far as I can tell, people just take the line "do you enjoy hurting other people?" and just mentally insert "because if you do that makes you a bad person" because it's so expected, then criticize the game for not following through on the thing it never said. Am I missing something here?

 

I really enjoyed Rob's "prison of your own taste" metaphor. Last night I saw the trailer for the new Coen Bros movie - Hail, Caesar! - and was immediately struck by how many elements of that trailer directly appealed to my tastes. That doesn't mean I'm any less excited to see that movie, but seeing the trailer so soon after listening to this podcast made me think a little bit more about the entire situation.

This is an approach to entertainment I find a bit frustrating. This whole idea of guilty pleasures, of deliberating on whether something is actually good or just pandering, feels like such an unnecessary exercise to me. Obviously, if we as audience find something compelling it's because it feeds some need or desire within us: Isn't it more useful to try to understand that desire and the role it plays in our personalities than to feel bad for trying to feed it?

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