1888: Put the Phone Down

I’m coming to detest my phone, not necessarily for what it is, but for what it’s done to me.

I don’t specifically mean my actual phone, either; more the general concept of smartphones and the “always-connected” nature of modern existence.

I don’t even specifically object to the “always-online” nature of modern society, more the habits — or, more accurately, compulsions — that it tends to instill in people. I’ve become very conscious of my own compulsions in this regard recently, and I’m making an effort to try and change my habits.

Here’s the problem for me: picking up a phone and fiddling with it (usually checking Twitter and/or Reddit) has become a default thing to do if no better activity is available. Phones are great for that; with the wide variety of apps available these days, there’s something sure to distract and entertain even the most attention-deficient individual, even if only for a few seconds. That “even if only for a few seconds” thing can become a problem, though; the fact a phone can fill an empty few seconds easily means that it’s easy to reach for it while you’re in the middle of something else, breaking your concentration and perhaps immersion.

I became particularly conscious of it while I was playing Criminal Girls the other day. (Side note: I’ve now completely finished that, so expect a comprehensive writeup on MoeGamer very soon.) I noticed that even mid-battle, I was reaching for my phone and fiddling with it while animations were playing, or sometimes between turns. There was no good reason for it, either; I wasn’t particularly interested in what Twitter had to say at that moment, and I was genuinely enjoying the game. It was just a nigh-uncontrollable compulsion to reach for it and look at it.

It happens in the night sometimes, too. I can’t get to sleep, so I pick up the phone and look at whatever vapid nonsense social media is spewing at any given hour. There’s rarely anything meaningful — although there’s occasionally an enjoyable late-night conversation with some of my friends in other timezones — and it doesn’t really have any value; it certainly doesn’t help me get to sleep when I find myself mindlessly refreshing for minutes at a time instead of putting the damn thing down, closing my eyes and trying to disconnect from the stimuli of the outside world.

So I’m trying to stop myself from doing these things. When I’m sitting down to play a game, unless I’m specifically intending on “liveblogging” my experiences as I play, I’ve started putting my phone out of reach or, at the very least, covering it over so I can’t see the notification light and screen. When I go to bed, I’ve started switching my phone off altogether rather than just leaving it in standby mode. And while a phone is a convenient thing to fiddle with to stave off social anxiety when dealing with other people face-to-face, I’m going to try and make an effort to keep it in my pocket unless it becomes clear that I really am surplus to requirements in a particular social situation. (Not necessarily in a negative way; I may just be along for the ride while others are discussing making arrangements for something or other that doesn’t directly involve me, for example.)

I feel like smartphones have done serious damage to our collective concentration spans over the last few years. And I’m quite keen to get mine back.

1887: Fading Gold

Finished watching the romance anime Golden Time today. It was a quiet day, so I marathoned the last few episodes — though at a little over 20 minutes apiece, it wasn’t really much of a “marathon”, I guess. Still, I have now watched the entire series and feel a little more qualified to comment on the whole thing.

I enjoyed it a lot overall. Its biggest strengths come from its more unconventional characteristics: a protagonist (Banri) that’s a little more fleshed out than your average self-insert leading man found in a lot of other romantic anime and visual novels; a heroine (Koko) who, although certainly physically attractive, is presented from the outset to be a little, to put it politely, “difficult” (and consequently, perhaps, to some, a little less desirable than she perhaps might have otherwise been); an amnesia backstory that isn’t used as a crutch for the whole show, but instead as an interesting source of conflict; and a fast-moving, pacy plot in which something of significance happens in every episode.

The last few episodes do meander a bit more than those that had come previously, as it becomes time to finally resolve the amnesia plot. The meandering comes from said plot being wrapped up fairly comprehensively, however; the payoff is very much worth it, with some emotional final scenes and a satisfying conclusion to the whole run that gives everything a pleasing sense of closure.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from the end, as it happened. The tone of the show is interesting; comedic one minute, very serious the next. It’s effective in making the situations depicted feel fairly down to earth and realistic, and a probably intentional side effect was that I spent the entire run wondering if things would end neatly or very, very badly, because there was the potential for it to go either way right up until the last moments. You’ve probably already inferred which way it went from my comments above, but just in case you haven’t, I’ll refrain from spoiling how it all ends for now.

There are some great side characters supporting the main cast. Protagonist Banri’s childhood friend Linda is a very likeable “other woman” throughout, for example, but the potential angst she could have generated is kept on a tight leash: it’s explored, and features a number of touching scenes (and one surprisingly sexy one), but it doesn’t force the show into a cliched love triangle situation. Instead, Linda is depicted as an interesting, sympathetic character in her own right who plays her role in the story of Banri and Koko’s love without derailing it.

Probably the highlight of the supporting cast is “2D-kun”, though. Initially introduced as the stereotypical glasses-wearing otaku character, 2D-kun repeatedly proves himself throughout the series to be a true friend for Banri, as well as exhibiting considerably more character depth than the usual “hurr, hurr, I like 2D girls” this type of character is often limited to. Indeed, he plays an absolutely crucial role in the final moments of the series, and his contribution here makes him a worthwhile — and, judging by comments on Crunchyroll, beloved — addition to the cast.

Overall, I enjoyed it a great deal, then, and thoroughly recommend it to anyone looking for an enjoyable anime series with interesting, realistically flawed characters and a somewhat unconventional take on the usual romance formula. Well worth your time.

1886: The Order

(Couldn’t resist, sorry. This post has nothing to do with The Order 1886.)

Spent the evening round at my friend Tim’s house this evening. We played some multiplayer games and just hung out a bit. It was pleasant.

On the multiplayer front, we gave ZombiU a go properly now that I have a Classic Controller Pro or whatever the Wii U Xbox controller knockoff is called. It’s much more playable than the cumbersome, weird Nunchuk and Wiimote setup we tried it with last time, and made for a far more enjoyable game.

ZombiU’s multiplayer mode is a lot of fun. There are two distinct ways to play: a Capture the Flag-style mode and a variant on a “Horde” mode. Neither of these are conventionally implemented thanks to the focus on asymmetric play: one player has the Wii U GamePad, while the other has some form of more traditional control scheme (preferably a Classic Controller Pro) and plays on the TV. The GamePad player is essentially playing a top-down real-time strategy game, while the player on the TV is playing a conventional first-person shooter.

It’s a simple idea, but very effective. The GamePad player is able to summon zombies of various types into the player’s game by tapping the screen, though there are certain limitations: firstly, different types of zombies cost a certain amount of resources, which increase gradually over time; secondly, you can only have up to eight zombies summoned at once; thirdly, you’re not able to just plop zombies down right next to the player: red zones on the map (including a mobile one in the player’s immediate vicinity) show where you’re not able to summon one of your minions. Each time you place a zombie, you creep closer to a level up, which allows you to unlock new zombies and abilities; in other words, the longer the match goes on, the more difficult it gets for the “Survivor” player.

It’s definitely worth a try. Not sure how much “staying power” it has, but we played it for a good while this evening and it was consistently fun.

Having the opportunity to spend some time with Tim this evening got me thinking, though. It’s been a while since we were able to hang out together, and with two of our regular board gaming group now considerably busier than they once were — one with a new house, another with a new baby — it’s getting more and more difficult to find opportunities to spend time together and do fun things. This is all part of “growing up”, of course, but, to sound like a petulant child for a moment, I don’t like it all that much.

Over the last few months, I’ve found myself feeling quite a bit more isolated for various reasons. I haven’t seen quite a few of my “real life” friends for quite some time, partly because they’re busy with their own real lives — there are several new babies in my circle of friends, for example — and also partly because my own social anxiety makes me feel like I’m being a bother when I consider asking people if they have time to hang out.

There are lots of things I’d like to do with people, but I’m not entirely sure if the people I know now would be interested in doing them. I’d like to play board games with a wider circle of people, for example; I’m envious of my friends elsewhere who have groups who can meet much more regularly than mine. I’d like to play some role-playing games — both silly ones like Maid: The Role-Playing Game and more traditional ones like Dungeons & Dragons — but I’m not entirely convinced I know anyone who’d be up for it. And I’d like to shamelessly copy my friends Mark and Lynette in having a regular “anime and cocktails” evening (perhaps with less emphasis on the latter, as I don’t drink much these days) during which we watch several different shows with markedly different themes. I am at least thankful that I can share Final Fantasy XIV with Andie.

Chances are I do know at least a couple of people who would be interested in some or all of the above, but it’s sometimes difficult to know how to bring these things up — or, in some cases, how to ask to join other well-established friendship or activity groups who would be into this sort of thing. It’s even more daunting to contemplate the prospect of finding completely new friends, so I have to wonder if I’ll continue to be stuck in this faintly dissatisfied situation, never quite able to truly share some of the things I enjoy with other people?

1885: Backloggery

I like lists. I like checklists. I like ticking things off and completing objectives. I like quests.

As such, it surprises me that despite having had a Backloggery account for about two years now, I’ve not done a whole lot with it. It is, I’d say, an ideal means of both tracking your game collection and your progress through beating as much of it as humanly possible — although the site isn’t without its flaws.

The main issue with any sort of curation system like this, be it a database you set up yourself (which, to be honest, is pretty much what Backloggery is; the site simply provides an easily understandable front-end for your particular chunk of said database) or a pre-built solution is that it takes time to set things up appropriately. Backloggery, for example, is not at all useful until you’ve manually added each and every game in your collection to your account, a process which is not at all automated, and which requires you to go through, enter the title (without suggestions), choose the platform and any other pertinent details you might want to add.

I spent a bit of time playing around with it today and despite the initially daunting prospect of inputting the games I own and haven’t yet beaten — there are a lot of them! — I actually started finding it quite fun after a while. What I particularly like about Backloggery is the ability to add your own personal flavour text to your database entries: you can add both a “progress note” describing what you’re working on in the game at any given moment, or what you hope to achieve in it, and a review (complete with star rating) for some more detailed thoughts once you feel comfortable enough to express your thoughts about it in a bit more detail. The latter option sensibly has a character limit, so you’re forced to be brief in your thoughts; it’s not a space for an in-depth critique, rather simply some personal, immediate reactions to the game and perhaps a link to some more detailed thoughts elsewhere if, as I often do, you feel the need to write in great depth about something you’ve really enjoyed.

My Backloggery account at present is not complete by any means, but I’m going to work on adding my collection to it piece by piece. It might, then, provide the incentive for me to work through some of these games and share my thoughts on them. And, in theory, the site acts as a sort of social network, too — though I only have one friend I know on there at present — so you can use it as a means of sharing your thoughts on games and perhaps convincing friends to try out some particular favourites you’ve discovered in the course of delving into your own backlog.

As I say, it’s not the perfect solution for this sort of thing by any means, but its presentation is cute and the fact it’s been around for a good few years now without turning into something complete shit means that it’s unlikely to just disappear in a puff of smoke one day, leaving all the curators’ hard work for naught. I’ll be interested to start using it a little more regularly to see if it adds any value to my gaming life. If you’re on there, feel free to add me to your “multitap” via the link above.

1884: I Finally Want a PS4

Well, it happened. I finally want a PS4, and naturally this desire comes at the exact time when I have no money coming in whatsoever, making it both futile and frustrating. Still, I can probably survive without one for a little while at least, though once I have some money coming in again — assuming that actually happens at some point; let’s be positive — it’s going to the top of the list of “Things I’d Like to Spend My Disposable Income On”.

Why? Well, several reasons, but chief among them right now is Final Fantasy Type-0, a game which I’ve been curious about for some time but have never known a great deal about. For the uninitiated, this game was originally a PSP-based spinoff of Final Fantasy XIII’s deep (and, to some, incomprehensible) mythos and is noteworthy for having an astonishingly good soundtrack. This, of course, is nothing new for the Final Fantasy series as a whole, but Type-0 seems to be particularly well regarded in this department by people who know their RPGs.

I don’t even know a whole lot about the game, save for the fact it’s mission-based and has quite a large cast of playable characters, each of whom are useful throughout the game. I’m on board with what I believe is some sort of school/academy situation, and what little I saw of the demo version at PAX East certainly looked enjoyable enough — though with every new installment of Final Fantasy which doesn’t incorporate traditional turn-based battles, I’m a little saddened, though Square Enix has made it pretty clear that they intend Bravely Default to continue fulfilling that niche for at least the immediate future.

I’m also intrigued by the bundled demo of Final Fantasy XV which comes with it. Again, I haven’t been following the development of XV in great depth, but I feel it’s got a great concept: the idea of a game taking inspiration from road trip movies is an inspired one, and eminently suitable for the always-on-the-go nature of most role-playing games. The demo, known as Episode Duscae, sounds like it’s an enjoyable, impressive time, and it gives me happy flashbacks to the PlayStation 1 era, where a number of Square Enix games were well-known almost as much for the demos they came with as for the games themselves. (I remember buying Brave Fencer Musashi largely for the Final Fantasy VIII demo, only to be delighted to discover that Brave Fencer Musashi was actually a great game in its own right.) Sadly, the flip-side of this is that there are people out there — including journalists — who are whingeing about the demo being an exclusive bundle deal with Type-0, and others still who are fleecing others by selling on demo codes, or buying the game purely for the demo and then selling the game on without giving it a chance.

Outside of Final Fantasy territory, it seems that some of my favourite developers and publishers — most notably Compile Heart/Idea Factory and Nippon Ichi Software — are finally going all-in on the PlayStation 4. A localised version of Compile Heart’s adorable-looking idol-themed RPG Omega Quintet is coming soon, and the latest Hyperdimension Neptunia game, Victory II (or V-II) is on the way to Japan, with a localisation announcement surely not far off. Then there’s smaller games that I’d very much like to play, like Resogun, and I’m sure there’s plenty more goodness coming down the pipe too, even discounting the impressive, big-budget end of the spectrum typified by most Western publishers these days.

The timing here is unfortunate, then, but as I’ve said recently, I have a couple of irons in the fire that will hopefully lead to something a bit more meaningful in the near future. It remains to be seen if any of them will prove fruitful, but at least this newly awakened desire for a PS4 at least provides some sort of incentive to get things sorted sooner rather than later, I guess.

1883: Social Justice, Public Shaming and Why I Want My Friends Back

I’m probably going to upset a few people with this post, but this is something that has been festering inside me for quite some time; something that I need to release by talking about it. I hope doing so will help me feel a little better, as well as make the people who care about me aware of the way certain increasingly prevalent attitudes in popular culture make me — and, I’m sure, others like me — feel.

I’ll kick off with an immediately contentious statement: I completely understand why the term “social justice warrior” is used as a pejorative.

I will immediately qualify this by saying that I do not think the concept of social justice is unimportant, nor that it is something that should be swept under the carpet and ignored. There are still problems with attitudes towards marginalised groups in society. There are still groups out there whose sole reason for existence is an irrational, burning hatred of certain people. There are subsets of passionate fans in all interest groups — be it video games, sports, movies, books, anything — who do not have a positive influence on the community as a whole.

However, I believe that for the most part, human beings are fundamentally decent people. I’ve met my share of assholes, sure, and seen evidence of people being mistreated, insulted and even threatened online — although, on that note, I will also say that we’re collectively a little hasty to jump to the descriptor “death threat” when it isn’t always particularly accurate. But I’ve also met enough decent people in my time in this world and on the Internet to find it difficult to believe that the world is the seething morass of hatred and prejudice that the most passionate advocates of social justice — the aforementioned “social justice warriors” — believe it is.

Let me clarify my earlier statement. The term “social justice warrior”, as I see it — and as many others see it, too — does not simply apply to anyone who believes in social justice, otherwise there would be no need for it; it would simply be a means of describing pretty much everyone who isn’t an asshole. Rather, it describes, as noted above, a particularly passionate and outspoken advocate for social justice — and someone who is not above using particularly unpleasant tactics to try and get their point across. Tactics like public shaming; insulting; “othering”; discrimination; ignoring opinions based on socioeconomic, ethnic, gender or sexuality groups; dogpiling… the list goes on, and, you’ll notice, these are all things that anyone who truly stands for social justice should really be against the use of, regardless of who they’re aimed at. A “social justice warrior” would discount my opinion on all this, for example, because I’m a white, straight, heterosexual, cissexual male: the very definition of the concept of “male privilege” that many of them cling to so very desperately.

Why is this a problem, though? It’s easy enough to ignore and filter out other bile-spewing groups based on hatred — when was the last time you accidentally stumbled across neo-Nazi ravings without deliberately going looking for them, for example? — so why not just tune out these people? Well, the answer to that is simple: unlike other hate-spewing groups, these loudmouths are increasingly infiltrating mainstream popular culture having positioned their approach as being “correct” from a moral perspective. My experience of them has largely been in the video games sector, but from what I understand, they’ve had a fair crack at numerous other communities over the last few years, too.

Let me explain why they bother me so much, and hopefully, my dislike of their tactics will become a little clearer.

A few years back, a games journo friend of mine — Jeff Grubb of GamesBeat — wrote a news story. I forget the exact details of the story (and can’t seem to find the original since GamesBeat’s numerous refreshes over the last few years), but it involved, as I recall, Twisted Metal creator David Jaffe making some contentious statements that involved the hypothetical punching of a woman in the face. Jaffe wasn’t advocating for violence against women, of course; doing something like that directly would be tantamount to career suicide; if I remember correctly, the context was something to do with playing multiplayer games and reactions to winning and losing. The details of the story itself are somewhat unimportant, anyway; what I’m really concerned with here is the reaction to it.

Jeff wrote the piece on Jaffe’s statements from a factual perspective — as a reporter, without editorialising. Different publications approach this sort of thing in different ways: more blog-style sites like Kotaku have no problem with their authors saying exactly what they think about a particular issue, whereas GamesBeat’s parent site VentureBeat is more of a business-centric publication that is less concerned with drama and more with simply reporting what has been going on.

Because Jeff didn’t condemn Jaffe’s statements in the article, however, he attracted the ire of an early incarnation of the “social justice warriors”. The situation became worse as he attempted to defend himself on Twitter; as time passed, more and more people, including high-profile games journalists with large followings, started attacking him — rather than Jaffe, who arguably should have been the subject of their ire, though even that’s debatable, given what I recall of the context surrounding his comments — and publicly shaming him, denouncing him as an “example of white male privilege” and effectively setting hordes of followers on him. I became seriously worried for his safety and wellbeing while this was going on.

This wasn’t an isolated incident, either. Numerous times over the last few years we’ve seen outspoken members of the industry with social justice leanings adopt the tactic of publicly shaming and bullying, even going so far as to threaten people with ending their career. Most recently, we’ve seen Polygon’s Ben Kuchera attacking a member of EA’s customer engagement team over the latter’s concern over community-made Twitter “blacklists”; in previous months we’ve seen the widely celebrated writer Leigh Alexander threatening to end people’s careers, feminist critic Mattie Brice throwing a hissy fit when someone called her out on a sexist joke and all manner of other atrocious behaviour. It simply isn’t acceptable.

All this isn’t to say that these people can’t voice their concerns. What I do find myself violently disliking about this culture of public shaming that has been growing over the last few years, however, is that there’s little to no “right of reply” in most cases. Once someone is branded as a misogynist, sexist, transphobe, racist or whatever by these self-appointed crusaders of morality, there’s no recovery from it. They have no opportunity to say “well, hang on a minute, here’s why you’re not quite right there…” and no opportunity to criticise the arguments being levelled against them. More often than not, critics of Kuchera, Alexander et al are swiftly blocked, silenced and/or mocked, simply because the “social justice warrior” position has been successfully positioned as the “correct” attitude. The same thing happens when anyone attempts to start a conversation surrounding feminist critic Anita Sarkeesian’s Tropes vs Women video series; while she does attract plenty of hate-filled bile — and that, let’s be clear, is always unacceptable — she and her team appear unwilling to engage with or discuss legitimate criticisms of her work, and often post deliberately provocative statements seemingly with the sole intention of drawing the trolls out to point and laugh at them.

Now, I’ve been standing on the sidelines throughout all of this. I have, thankfully, never been attacked by these people, even when I was working in the mainstream games press on GamePro and USgamer, even when I was writing about notoriously provocative and controversial games such as Senran Kagura and other titles from Japan. Perhaps I was just too small fry for industry “megaphones” (as Alexander calls herself) to bother with, and I’m not complaining; the fact I made a point of remaining positive while acknowledging these titles weren’t for everyone helped me build up a decent audience who appreciated the work I did, particularly as it was in stark contrast to the majority of other sites out there.

So why does all this bother me so much? Well, because it’s deeply, deeply frustrating, and because the culture of fear that these people are perpetuating online makes me very nervous about speaking on certain topics for fear of being ostracised. More important than that, however, is the feeling that it’s driven a wedge between me and a number of friends whom I no longer feel particularly comfortable talking to because I know they’ve drifted more towards the social justice side of the fence — or, in some cases, become outright zealots. I miss those friends greatly, and it makes me extremely sad that I can’t talk to them any more simply because I don’t share their ideological viewpoint — or, rather, I do, but I fundamentally disagree with the methods through which they go about expressing that viewpoint.

What should people do instead? Simple. Champion the things that you’re fond of and believe in, without putting down other people for what they enjoy. Diversity isn’t just about creating experiences that “everyone” can enjoy, though that’s part of it. Diversity is also about creating experiences that appeal to specific audiences. There’s nothing wrong with that; in fact, it makes for more interesting, more focused pieces of entertainment that feel personal and relatable. Cater to men, women, heterosexual people, homosexual people, cissexual people, transgender or transsexual people, white people, black people, Asian people, anyone you like. Accept that some things are not “for” you — though that doesn’t need to stop you from finding enjoyment in them, as the number of otome games I’ve enjoyed over the last few years will attest — and celebrate the things that are. If you believe that there aren’t enough works catering to the groups you consider yourself to fall into, throw your support behind those that do or even make your own. Just, for God’s sake, don’t ever position yourself as The One Correct Attitude and point the finger of shame at anyone who doesn’t fall within your own specific worldview, because that’s where the majority of this nonsense is coming from.

I’m not a misogynist. I’m not a sexist. I’m not a racist. I’m not a transphobe. I’m not even an anti-feminist or a men’s rights advocate. I just want these “social justice warriors” to understand that what they are doing is not, in fact, championing diversity; it’s stifling conversation and creating a culture of mistrust between developers, players and press — and between friends.

I hate it. And I wish it would go away. And I want my friends back.

1882: More Golden Time

I’ve watched a few more episodes of Golden Time this evening. I was planning on only watching one, but, well, they got interesting and exciting and, at the time of writing, I’ve watched three in succession and am very much considering watching another one before I go to bed.

For those who missed my previous post on the subject, Golden Time is an interesting slice-of-life anime focused on the relationship between amnesiac protagonist Tada Banri and heroine Kaga Koko. I suppose technically it’s a “romance” anime, but there are elements of comedy and ghost stories in there, too, and so far it’s been a thoroughly compelling watch.

There are a number of elements contributing to this. Firstly, Banri is an interesting protagonist. While visually very much fitting in to the usual generic floppy-haired anime protagonist mould, his amnesia, while something of a narrative cliche, makes for a compelling hook. As snippets of his past are revealed over the course of the show’s run — both through him remembering them and through the explicit depiction of the “ghost” of his past life — we start to get a picture of who he really is, what he’s really feeling and, this being a show that very much enjoys a bit of drama, how these feelings conflict with how his current self is living its life.

Koko is the more fascinating of the two central characters, however. Far from being a typical tropetacular anime heroine, she’s a deeply complex character who is initially introduced as being a possibly unstable stalker-type whom Banri’s friend Mitsuo just can’t seem to shake off. As she and Banri get together, though, we start to discover more about her. The word “unstable” still applies somewhat, given her violent mood swings and occasional inability to deal with the world in a rational manner, but it becomes apparent over time that she’s not unstable just for the sake of it: it’s not her defining characteristic. Rather, it’s a symptom of something that runs a little deeper: her dissatisfaction with her life and her place in the world, and her difficulty coming to terms with living as an “adult”.

With two characters as complex as this making up the central couple of the story, you’d expect their relationship to be somewhat troubled, and indeed it is. This isn’t your standard, neat anime romance by any means; it’s not even the apparently-rocky-but-actually-still-pretty-solid tsundere romance you get with some heroines. No; Banri and Koko have a rocky path ahead of them, and things frequently comer to rather violent heads whenever Koko’s stress over her existence becomes too much to bear, or when Banri starts recalling things that are fundamentally incompatible with his new life. They have, so far, managed to stay strong, however, though not without some heartbreaking scenes along the way.

I’m about seven or eight episodes off the end of the run now, and I’m thoroughly hooked. I’m interested to see where it goes; despite its often light-hearted nature, it’s the kind of show that I can see ending with heartbreaking tragedy, though being unfamiliar with the source material — the original manga — I can’t say for sure whether or not that will be the case. I’m looking forward to finding out, though, and feel I can pretty confidently recommend the show to anyone looking for an interesting, enjoyable and emotionally engaging drama.

1881: Path to Redemption

I’m in the process of finishing up Criminal Girls: Invite Only on Vita, and I’ve been really pleasantly surprised how good it ended up being. I’m planning on writing something a bit more in-depth for MoeGamer when I’ve beaten it properly, but I thought I’d share a few thoughts on here for those who don’t visit MoeGamer, or for those who just want to hear some disjointed ramblings about it now.

It’s easy to write Criminal Girls off as an oversexualised mess of an RPG, with a gratutiously exploitative minigame in which you spank, electrocute, drip liquid on and tickle a series of young women posing in suggestive positions. And indeed, even with the “pink mist” censorship introduced in the Western release of the game (and the loss of the girls’ voices in these sequences) these sequences are pretty clearly sexual in nature: everything from the poses they’re in to the provocative outfits they wear and their reactions after you’ve, uh, finished — all point to something that while it isn’t outright explicit, is certainly rather close to the, if you’ll pardon the expression, bone.

But, as with most material of this nature, it bears further exploration, and doing so reveals something a lot more interesting. Why are these sequences there in the first place? From a gameplay perspective, you’re expected to complete them in order to unlock the girls’ new abilities through five different “tiers”, with each tier involving a slight variation on the touchscreen-based minigame. From a narrative perspective, you’re “motivating” these girls — who are dead and in Hell, but being given a second chance — to try harder in their struggle for redemption, though in the original Japanese script, still audible through the Japanese-only voice acting, the wording was おしおき (oshioki: punishment) rather than “motivation”. If we’re being super-picky, we’re not actually spanking, electrocuting, dribbling on and tickling the girls themselves; in the minigame you’re removing “temptations” from their bodies via various means, and the removal of these “temptations” allows them to take a step closer to being free of sin and becoming “Blameless”.

Interestingly, the girls’ reactions to this treatment changes significantly throughout the course of the game. Early on, they react with fear and anger when you approach them with the intention of indulging in some “motivation time” and clench their teeth in pain afterwards; by the end of the game, however, they’re starting to sound like they’re actually enjoying themselves, even going so far as to praise you in some instances.

This can be interpreted in a number of different ways, not all of them positive, but given the themes of the game’s narrative as a whole, it’s pretty apparent that this is symbolic of the growing level of trust between these “delinquents” and the player-protagonist self-insert character. By the end of the game, they trust the player-protagonist completely, and are aware that the removal of their temptations brings them closer to redemption, in turn making them more powerful and more likely to succeed. A turning point in the story comes with all of the main cast confronting the sins that landed them in Hell in the first place, and it’s only through the bonds of trust they’ve built between one another and with the player-protagonist that they’re able to make it through this experience unscathed.

I’m yet to see how the story reaches its several conclusions, but I’m very interested to find out. It has been, for sure, one of the most unusual role-playing games I’ve played for a long time, both in gameplay and narrative terms, and one that I feel I’ll be remembering for quite some time after it’s left my Vita.

And no, not just for the kinky pictures.

1880: Better

Well, today was a somewhat more positive day. I took a trip for the interview I mentioned yesterday, and it was a very positive meeting. Remains to be seen whether anything will come of that, but in the meantime I also have some other business I can pursue. So we’ll have to wait and see on that for now.

Happy to reach another weekend, even though the concept is relatively meaningless for me at present. I’m still on something of a PAX comedown, I think; I had such a great time over in Boston that coming back to the stark realities of my current situation was somewhat… jarring, hence yesterday’s frustration. Onwards and upwards, though, I guess. Hopefully.

On an unrelated note, our Final Fantasy XIV Free Company is being fun at the moment. It seems that everyone has had the same idea as me — that they want to level all of the classes to 50 before the release of the expansion Heavensward in June of this year — and thus there are lots of people playing jobs they don’t normally play in lower-level dungeons. It’s fun to see people play stuff they’re less familiar with, and it’s also fun to get to know some of the other classes that I haven’t tried out quite so much.

Today I’ve been playing a bit of Warrior, which is a tank class, and Bard, which is a DPS class with some support elements. I’d held off on levelling Warrior in particular because I couldn’t think how it would feel that different from Paladin, which is my “main” class at present. It does have a distinctly different feel, though; just the animations and sound effects make this axe-wielding job feel a lot more cumbersome and hard-hitting than the relatively nimble, graceful-feeling swordplay of Paladins. The cooldown between skills is still the same, but it’s surprising quite what a difference just those elements make. It’s a more complex job overall, too, with a lot more possible actions to take at any given moment. Paladin is mostly about trying to mitigate damage as much as you can; as Warrior, you have a bit more flexibility and can put out some eminently respectable damage just by yourself. That flexibility means that there are a lot more abilities you use a lot more often, however; I’m not sure I love it, yet, but it’s interesting to see the contrast, and it gives me hope that Dark Knight will provide a unique experience again despite being another tank class.

Bard, meanwhile, is a joy to play, and a big contrast from Black Mage, my main DPS class to date. Bard’s ability to move while attacking is a complete change from the fixed-in-place heavy artillery nature of Black Mage, and it’s a lot of fun. Playing Bard feels very “technical”, for want of a better word; there’s lots of keeping an eye on your abilities and triggering the appropriate ones at the right time. There’s also a lot more “weaving” than other classes — i.e. slipping in extra skills that don’t use the “global cooldown” timer between your regular attacks — which makes for some satisfying improvised combos rather than the more fixed sequences that many other classes use.

There’s still plenty more to do to get to 50 — Warrior and Bard are both in the mid-30s so far, Pugilist (which later becomes Monk) is just level 15, as is Arcanist (which becomes Scholar and Summoner, arguably two of the most complex classes thanks to their use of pets) and I’m yet to try Lancer (later Dragoon) at all. Then there’s all the crafting and gathering stuff to do, as well… I’m going to be busy for a while, but I have confidence I’ll be well-placed by the time Heavensward comes out. And then it will be time for all-new adventures!

And what adventures they’ll be, if this preview video is anything to go by. Can’t wait.

1879: Progress, or the Lack Thereof

I am frustrated. I know I shouldn’t be, because fixing problems such as those I’m having with my life right now (i.e. not having a job) takes time. But that doesn’t stop it from being frustrating and anxiety-inducing, particularly when things like utility bills pop through the letterbox while I don’t have a meaningful income.

There are, at least, some things on the horizon. Tomorrow I’m going to an interview for a freelance, work-from-home opportunity that will hopefully provide something to do and some money coming in. Unfortunately, I don’t as yet know whether the money it might provide will be meaningful enough to make taking the opportunity worthwhile — particularly as it apparently requires a month of training in their offices in Watford, which is an hour and a half’s drive away — but I figured, at present, any opportunity is better than no opportunity, and attending an interview like this is at least a chance to get a feel for what is out there, what it might pay and whether it’s something worth pursuing.

Nothing has happened on the private music teaching front as yet. I’d like it to, and I’ve got some advertising out there, joined the Musicians’ Union and all manner of other business, but still nothing as yet. I have had some business cards made, too, which I will attempt to distribute via some means in the near future, likely to local music shops and possibly supermarkets if the facility is there to put community notices up.

Work for the local music service has been going a little better, though I’m painfully aware that the work I have been doing over the last couple of weeks is just sickness cover and consequently will likely dry up within another week or two. Still, it means I’ve had the opportunity to show my stuff and potentially open myself up for some further work in the future. Whether or not that will lead to anything meaningful, again, remains to be seen.

So you can probably see why I’m feeling a bit frustrated and anxious. There are several things going on that might prove worthwhile, but which also might end up being a total waste of time. It’s nigh-impossible to know what is actually worth pursuing, what will make me happy and what will bring in enough money to allow me to survive, and the whole business is stressing me out to a ridiculous degree. I just want it sorted, and I want it sorted now. I have plenty to offer the world, but it seems making the world pay attention is not a particularly easy task. And when it proves this difficult to be considered for even the most mundane of jobs, it leaves me questioning myself to an unpleasant degree: have I fucked things up beyond all hope?

Probably not, says the rational part of my brain. But it’s hard not to keep returning to that thought when all I see in my wake is a string of aborted — failed? — attempts at having a career. I’m running out of ideas.