Thor Losers

People had opinions after Marvel announced the new Thor. #Thor was trending on Twitter for two full days. Nothing trends on Twitter for multiple days. The Twitter collective has a maximum attention span of 27 hours. But the Thor announcement cultivated such a response, that it spawned a feedback loop of nerd-rage and counter-rage-at-rage. I stopped eating for the duration, instead absorbing the opinion-fueled-energy directly through my eyes and converting it to calories. I also seemed to develop additional calf definition. I'm just saying that your nerd-rage sustains me.

And while I firmly fall into the New-Thor-Direction-Is-Awesome camp, I'm always curious about the makeup of my nutrition. Yes, nerd-rage is delightful, but what flavor am I consuming? Before getting into specific nerd-things, it'll probably be helpful to look at more general norm-things to give some context. 

Human beings have a serious commitment to patterns. We prefer them, we seek them, whole parts of our brains are devoted to identifying them. In the grand scheme of the universe, we are tiny, meat-based pattern recognizers-- we're not even that picky about the quality of our collections. We have systems in place to help us identify true patterns (SCIENCE!) while simultaneously engaging in making up whatever patterns suit us (constellations!). Theories of cognition posit that we have a representation of objects in our heads (a cat, for example), and that we identify things by seeing how closely they resemble that representation (Do they have triangle ears, fuzzy belly, and incorrect grammar? Object identified: CAT). This process then both informs and reinforces our internal pattern of the object/concept/thing. We tend to have a distaste for things that don't conform to our expected patterns-- it's why many people hate jazz (less repetition of musical themes within the song), and moving to a new OS often first inspires a level of frustration generally seen only in bureaucratic offices and when operating the Mako in Mass Effect 1.

I hate everything about you. Your very shape inspires exponential rage.

And it's why we get so threatened when gender norms are violated. Humans have created expectations of modes of behavior based on cultural ideologies that are tied to a perceived gender. While some behavioral trends have been informed by biology, there is nothing explicitly "natural" about most gendered behaviors. Take a turn down a different cultural-development street, and females being the smaller of the species could have resulted in an increase in violent action to defend their place in a social hierarchy, rather than taking the roundabout make-friends-to-secure-social-safety route.* No, there is no niceness gene in the female brain, and research has shown that testosterone is not responsible for violent men. We train children on how men and women act, and society reinforces it-- the same patterns get reinforced for generations and the behaviors become so entrenched that it's called "natural".  There's a ton of research about this, people devote their entire lives to studying this, and its mind-blowingly fascinating so if you have any interest, there's a ton of resources to delve into.

So we have a bunch of made up patterns and a species that gets flustered when patterns aren't adhered to. We expect Thor to be a man, and we expect women to act a certain way. Certainly not swinging weapons around, and especially not ones that require strength to wield-- that would be weird and doesn't adhere to what we know about Thors and Wimmins. So we have a giant outburst of OMG LADY-THOR MAKES BAD FEELS and this is all exacerbated by nerds' tendency to want to protect the fandom. Some members of the culture are particularly protective of who has access to the culture, or what changes are implemented in our fictions. Nominating themselves to fulfill the role of gatekeeper, these individuals champion the authorization of potential persons, media, or changes to either, and are not at all hesitant to make their opinions known on the internet. (Behold: A nerd making her opinions known on the internet. The irony is not lost on me.) Gatekeeper behavior in nerd culture is particularly consumed with authenticity and leads to many of the issues being discussed on the internet about our culture today. (See: fake-geek girls, character representation, and rage at those who became fans only after the movie came out.)

Combine these general-human factors with geek culture's tendency to view itself as Official and Benevolent Gatekeeper of the Fandom and you have a recipe for a sexist nerd-rage backed with all the righteous indignation of the most devout rules lawyers. It's a layer cake of various flavors of misconceptions-- deliciously complex. I've mentioned a lot of things and cited a bunch of science, so the tendency may be to think that this behavior is normal for humans and there is nothing to be done about it. This is a wrongness-- don't think this thing. My intent, rather, is to highlight that these are not simple issues. They are complex problems, intertwined with a bunch of behavioral norms, so just blaming sexism is to simplify the variety of issues that need to be addressed. The good news: culture is alterable! By being aware of and deliberate about what culture we are reproducing, we create new norms of behavior and expectation in the rest of the fandom. Which is precisely what Marvel is doing with this change. That said, raging-nerds, I'd appreciate it if you'd jump on board as soon as you can. You're harshing my fem-Thor buzz.

* Someone will likely argue that statistical differences in strength among sexes results in a preference of one course of action over the other, and thus I will refer back to how biology can (and often does) inform behaviors, but, again, this is not a required course of action.

 

Pattern recognition: Scientific American | Turn Me On, Dead Man

Creating gender: TED | Colin Strokes: How movies teach manhood

Testosterone findings: Scientific American | Strange but True: Testosterone Alone Does Not Cause Violence

My Wildstar Obsession: Community and Marketing

Today was the first day in… some quantifiable amount of time I can’t be bothered to math at the moment… that I haven’t been able to log into Wildstar for random play fix. This is a sad world I’m living in— I had gotten quite accustomed to not having any barrier between me and super-fun-stabbin'-times, and now I have to wait for head start to continue said stabbin'.

It has given me the time, however, to review the unending mass of dev videos, blogs, and various other community interactions that Carbine puts out/updates regularly. It’s a vicarious fix, but it soothes the savage beast in the interim. And they provide plenty of salve. This is an aspect of Wildstar that doesn’t get quite as much vocal appreciation from the community, but truly is an unsung hero of development.

So games are one of those quirky art forms that requires an audience. Images/music/choreography/etc. can be created in the home of the artist and never see the light of day again, but can still be widely considered to be an art. Games, on the other hand, can’t be a game until they are played. The very definition of game-ness means that someone has to interact with it in order to unleash it’s game-y nature. In this sense, the anticipated audience makes up a good portion of the game. But game companies are still kinda fuzzy on how to develop this part. Developing communities usually gets regulated to marketing or advertising, which always (unintentionally) has a air of skeeze to it. And this often makes it feel fabricated, heavily constructed, and just fake as fuck.

Carbine has decided instead to operate not as an salesman, but as a community member, and I’ve deemed it (in my infallible wisdom) to be rather successful. They post blogs, they make videos, the troll fandoms and repost their favorites. They get visibly excited about updates, geek out unabashedly about mechanics, and get personally invested in the game. They admit when things go wrong and make fun of themselves for it. They admit when things are awesome, and make fun of themselves for it. They have an awesome sense of humor that mirrors the one their fanbase has (The Nexus Report 5/13 included a Walken Off— a competition members of my social circle has spent years battling each other for superiority). They play with us— while some make a distinction between them, I truly believe that games are (at their core) toys— and using this understanding, it’s the only game community development that makes any kind of sense.

So hats off, Carbine. You not only made a game so good that I am openly, embarrassingly, OBSESSED, about it, but you've come to my house to geek out about it with me. Bold move-- I dig it.

Game Night: Indie Edition - Gone Home

I finished Gone Home a week ago, but I wasn't entirely sure how to begin to describe it. I certainly wasn't prepared to tell others how good it was. I found myself in conversations I feel I've seen parodied in sitcoms, where one person is excited about an event but unsure if it's considered cool or not and wants to talk about it, but isn't sure if they should be wanting to talk about it, and the other person is a normal-fucking-human-being.

me: I finished Gone Home!
normal-fucking-human-being: How was it?
me: It was awesome. I mean, it was okay. I mean, if you like that sort of thing. It was weird. But good!
normal-fucking-human-being: What's it about?
me: It's about a girl and her family. Well, a girl and her sister. But no, actually her sister. And her sister's friend. And you're the girl. But the story's not about you.
normal-fucking-human-being: What's the game play like?
me: You run around clicking on things. And those things give you more insight into the story.
normal-fucking-human-being: So it's a point-and-click adventure game?
me: Yes! But not like that at all. I mean, you point and you click, but you don't adventure.
normal-fucking-human-being: ...
me: Well, not normal adventure.
normal-fucking-human-being: ...
me:  It's an emotional adventure? 

How do you judge a thing if you have no category for it, no schema to understand it, no examples to compare it to? What merits a good whatever-Gone-Home-is?

Super-Brief Spoiler-Free Analysisless Summary
You come home from a year-long trip through Europe, to find your house dark and empty. You start making your way through the house and picking up objects, nosy-neighbor-style, to find out what's been happening since you've been gone. Each paper scrap, letter, and note gives you a bit more insight into the lives of your family members. Over the course of the two-hour game, you put together why they aren't home. (And waiting to welcome me with sweets and rollerskates, having turned the foyer into a personal skate rink with only the best music. E.g., all Ghostbusters all the time. Which is what I expect each and every time I arrive anywhere.) Since much of the game is about the process of discovery, every specific detail I could give becomes a spoiler and thus makes a summary a bit spotty.

Things I like about it
It's loud in all the right places. Every sound is jarring and out-of-place in the silence of that desolate house. Every decibel is relevant. The murmur from the telly sounds summons you down the hall like a whispered name, and you physically hunger for the continued revelations from your sister's journal just to hear her voiceover. The punk rock is terrible and tinny, just like I remembered mid-90s punk and the musical proclivities of teenagers. The sound of thunder is always startling and though the game boasts that there are no puzzles, conflicts, of fights, I couldn't help spinning around to face the door in preparation for a zombie ambush. (No guns ever made themselves available, but I'm pretty sure I could fling one of the bazillion carefully rendered objects and dropped them in the general direction of brain stems.)

You have never been in the presence of a plastic cup so dangerous.

This game is achingly lonely. As you make your way through the post-its and paper scraps, you discover three individuals suffering their own personal crises in isolated worlds, surrounded by each other but utterly failing to connect. It gives the impression of ghosts passing by each other in the kitchen, and sidling past one another in halls. The game makes you meet it halfway. Since the story is told in found notes and bits of trash, you are find yourself inferring emotional confusion, depression, anger, and joy. You're forced to make an effort to derive meaning, and therefore unintentionally become more invested. It's ridiculously fucking immersive.

Time management. It's two hours. (It's two hours if you're thorough and read everything, anyway.) This is the perfect amount of time. Any longer and it would feel like a chore. Any shorter and it would have felt like developer laziness. I make a whole section for this because knowing the right amount of time an experience should take is trickier than it has any right to be.

Moment of awesome: Following the trail of my sister's sleepover antics, seeing the remnants of her seance, and scaring myself by being alone in the dark, empty house and speculating on the monsters and baddies that were going to jump out at me from around corners.

Problems I have with it
It's not a game. There is no indication of what's important and what isn't, so after the eighth toilet paper roll you examine, you have to convince yourself there won't be anything under the ninth. Forced to self-determine importance for the sake of time, you can't stop wondering if there was something special about that last cup, maybe a word carved into the bottom that would unlock another journal entry. It's also ridiculously linear-- once you've explored a room, well... that's basically it for that room. Once there is nothing more to see, you move along. This is likely to be reflective of real life, you aren't likely to snoop through someone's living room, leave to snoop through the kitchen, then get an explicitly worded hint that you might have missed something in the back corner. Except that...

Kidding, it IS a game. And you do get an explicitly worded hint to go back into a specific room. But to uncover the super-secret panels that were put there originally for... a plot device to further the story. The secrets in this game are of the not-really secret variety. And once you uncover them, you feel vaguely disappointed that you got so worked up to begin with.

Stupid Sitcom Family is Stupid. The entire premise of the game is that you have no idea what's going on with your family and you have to discover it. They attempt to explain your ignorance with a year-long trip to Europe-- you even find postcards you sent from your travels! But apparently, your whirlwind trip was so erratic, you didn't have an address for your family to send a letter back to you. Neither did you have time to call, due to all the fantastic travel you were doing. Or maybe, your family didn't want to depress you with the mundane trivialities. Because, you know, this is set in the mid-90's when people refrained from telling their children about the happenings at home. (The better to induce a laugh-track, my dear!)

Moment of screaming furiousness: When half the house was locked from the foyer for no perceivable reason whatsoever. Compounded when I finally found the way in... only to discover that it was locked from the foyer for NO PERCEIVABLE REASON WHATSOEVER.

What the fuck is it?
Gone Home describes itself as "an interactive exploration simulator" and this is probably both the most and least accurate descriptor. It isn't a game in all the head-deskingly frustrating ways that you would want a thing to be a game. But it sucks the player in so completely, pushed face-first into a feels-filled ballpit that the experience morphs into something else, something wholly unexpected and something near-embarrassingly indescribable. I'm calling it a game if only to encourage developers to do more of this part.

From the Depths of Game Obsession

I’ve been alternating between being wholly involved with school or Animal Crossing. I’d atone for being so one-track-minded, but I haven’t unlocked a “sorry” emote yet. Legitimately incapable or apologies.

SteamOS and Consolification

I've been so inundated with schoolwork that I didn't even know to look for the announcement. Thank god Twitter blows up at the smallest waves in the internetosphere, and that I feel no guilt in perusing the 140-character news bursts while dashing to class. (On that note: sorry to the bicyclist who must have thought I had some sort of bizarre walk pattern as I dashed out in front of you, stopped suddenly, did an excited arm flail, then looked terrorized before dashing off again, requiring you to swerve manically out of my unpredictable path. But, to be fair, us peds are known to be wily and thus why you aren't supposed to be riding on the sidewalk to begin with, so it's your own fault, really.)

I'm generally a Valve enthusiast, loving the games they make, supporting their platform.Valve has honestly tried new things without reserve. They support and market indie games, they embrace new distribution methods. Steam was ridiculously brilliant when it came out and continues to be brilliant.  The Steam community is vast and varied, connecting gamers cross-genre. They seamlessly integrated the community into their platform, they make fantastic games, they experiment with new mechanics. They're hiring researchers to study their community. (They think that their community is something worth studying. And oh em gee it feels awesome to have my studies validated after coming up against derision for so long and so consistently.) Basically, they are super rad.

So when they announced yesterday that they are releasing SteamOS, for free, in 2014, my first reaction was to do the aforementioned spastic-arm-flail-of-excitement. And then, because I'm a worrier, I got worried. I feel no shame in the worry-- come, worry with me. But first, excitement justification:

Giddies:
Stream-to-TV: By including the feature to stream games from your PC to the TV, you feasibly give yourself the ability to choose how you want to play your game, at that moment. Feeling the need to be as horizontal as possible, perhaps in Batman footy jammies? Stream it to the telly and couch it. Want to capture one of Bioware's touching romantic scenes so you can finish your Garrus/Tali/Thane/Liara tribute video? Motivate yourself to your computer. That can be within the same day if your gameplay moods are as fickle as mine.
Resolution of the Romeo and Juliet Dynamic that is the Console/PC Divide but Without Tragic Circumstances: I've long bemoaned the rift between PC and console players of the same game. I play TF2 on PC, but my friends seem to be more comfortable controlling fine actions with the unwieldy flippers commonly found attached to a controller. (It's fine, I don't judge.) Even worse, we can't settle this in true gamer fashion as we've never been able to play together while using our respective platforms. On SteamOS, this divide is effectively removed, and the battle of which-is-better can actually be based on statistical win data.
One Platform to Rule Them All: My couch friends are my PC friends, and my couch achievements will be my PC achievements.

Worries:
Linux is Scary: For those used to buying a box and just having it work, SteamOS will take a bit more to implement. Choosing (or building!) a box and installing OS could be intimidating to those on the busier or less technologically inclined. I assume that Steam will be announcing just such a box to get around these concerns, but until then, I'm leaving this on the list. And while Steam already has tech support, there is the additional issues that arise from using Linux. Already, many people can troubleshoot their own problems on Mac, Windows, or even their consoles. Linux quite a bit less used, and hardware developers may not have had Linux in mind when creating their drivers.
A Question of Interest: Do Steam players want to play in front of the telly? Or are they part of the Steam community in part because the mouse-and-keyboard calls to them? If this is the case, how will they be incited to become couch converts?
Conversion usability: As of now, the only way to use a controller with Steam games is to plug it in as a peripheral and map the controls to your liking. This could be a deterrent to the plug-in-and-go group, and be difficult for devs to find time to pause work on the current projects to retrofit a new control scheme. (Especially all those lovely indie devs that have less manpower to reallocate.)
How We Play: I've mentioned the player-gamer interface issue a couple times in my worry list, so maybe this is indicative of a broader question. Is there a new way we could consider playing in the living room? Something with the fine control of the mouse and keyboard, and the relaxed mechanics of the controller? Such a system would be perfect for the Steam Box, but I've heard absolute zero discussion on input device redesign with these goals in mind. I suppose all controllers are trying to be better versions of the one before, but they seem to be evolutionary rather than revolutionary.

Steam has promised two more announcements this week which I'm sure will illuminate some of the specifics of the living room experience they have planned for us. But Steam has the ability to play with and redesign our expectations and perceived possibilities in how we play games. And judging from their history, we're likely to see something interesting. I'll try to be more stationary this time when the news comes out.

Travel Preparations

I'm preparing to go to PAX. This is my single favorite trip I take every year, and as such, my pre-PAX schedule is specific to the point of absurdity. At this point in the travel process, I have packed twice, cleaned once, determined the point in time which I should be doing final checks, final FINAL checks, gathering bags, and walking out the door. Simultaneously, I am constantly taking inventory of what I packed to make sure I forgot nothing. (Clearly the worst possible thing. As there is no possible way to replace my Cthulhu Fluxx at a gaming convention.)

Husband, by contrast, is setting up his webcam so he can spy on the cats.

100% Rational Fears

I hate city birds.

Not so much for the noise or the hygiene, those are pretty standard forgivable bird-things. Their calls sort of bring a sense of natural peace to an area. Similar to fountains, the sound of wind through the trees, and the silence of the conspicuous lack of children. And I can't expect them to politely order their food from french-inspired bistros, but the food there is good, so I don't blame them for pecking at yet-to-be-bussed dishes.
No, what I hate is their flight.

They swoop around with reckless abandon, as if the entire z-axis from the earth up is their personal territory, and by god they will use every damn piece of it. Diving around bicycles, parked cars, power lines, and pets. Near-missing trees, and barely-dodging buildings.

I don't trust them.

Every time I see one of these birds flying toward my face, and here in Texas, it's usually Grackles, I raise my arm to protect my face. Better to sacrifice my arm to beak-impalement, than my cheek. I fully expect them not to pull up in time, and will find myself with a psychotic flying disease machine embedded in my flesh. Seriously, I prepare myself for lancing every time I exit a building. Seeing one of them dipping and haphazardly making its way in your direction is a terrifying experience. There's no pattern to their madness. Their path cannot be predicted. I drive the Mako with more sense after consuming two-thirds of a bottle of wine.

Husband thinks this fear is hilarious. But he hasn't seen the frenetic, stomach-dropping panic of a pedestrian when one of these flying death beings didn't quite pull up in time, and one claw grazed his scalp. I have. And he looked at me with wild eyes, fight and flight experienced in equal measure. I couldn't help him. There was nothing I could say to ease the trauma of the moment. Still, I had to say something. Reach out as one human being to another, and give comfort in shared understanding of the war between birds and men.

"Oh my god. That bird was an asshole."

He turned and walked away as, what I image to be, a sense of peace and rightness washed over him. I do what I can.

And as I, now many months later, felt the breeze of a very near miss on the back of scalp, and heard the resulting caw that I assume roughly translates to "fuck off," I pulled out my phone to issue a single text.
"My fears are not unfounded."