1144: A Life Without Nerd-Rage

I haven't even contemplated going back to Twitter yet, but not because I have no desire to run into the scumbuckets who drove me off it in the first place. No, my lack of desire to go back to Twitter stems from my dislike of irrational table-thumping arguments on the most ridiculous of subjects, usually video game-related.

Mr Craig Bamford said it best back in February:

CAN WE PLEASE STOP TRYING TO HAVE SERIOUS DEBATES ON TWITTER OF ALL THINGS?

See title.

No, really. See title. I’m enormously, impossibly tired of how everybody who writes about games seems to think that the best-or-only way to have debates on serious, often wrenchingly-personal issues is on Twitter.

Yes, I’m guilty of this myself. I know. But every single time it happens, I feel like I’ve made a mistake. I’m just reminded of how Twitter is an incredibly dumb way to handle these things. The posts are too short, there’s no proper threading, you can’t follow the discussion properly unless you follow everybody involved, expanding the size of the group makes it even worse, you can barely mention people without drawing them in…

…it’s just a gigantic dog’s breakfast that makes absolutely everybody involved look bad.

Worse, it elevates bad arguments. It seems custom-tailored for dumb appeals to authority/popularity and thrashing of strawmen and misquotation and pretty much everything OTHER than an actual grownup discussion of issues. It’s absolutely one-hundred-percent boosting the arguments that are “simple, straightforward, and wrong”, as the saying goes. That likely has a lot to do with why everybody seems to rush to the most extreme interpretation of arguments and positions. Extreme arguments tend to be straightforward ones.

Sure, there’s worse. Facebook, for example. But every day I’m more and more convinced that Twitter should really be used to link to arguments, instead of make arguments. It’s not working. So, please, stop.

I agree with him entirely. Too many times over the last year in particular have we seen game journalists and critics with disproportionately loud online "voices" telling us what to think. Usually these loudmouths are attempting to address the issues of sexism and misogyny in the industry — a noble goal, for sure, as few can deny that women still get treated like shit at times through no fault of their own — but more often than not they get so embroiled in beating their fists on their desk that they lose all track of their arguments and end up coming across as… well, a bit childish really. Often these rants come about when the full information on a given situation isn't available, either — they're a kneejerk response to things which often aren't the "problem" they appear to be at first glance.

Let's take the recently-released Tomb Raider reboot as an example. I haven't played it yet, but I've been discussing it with a friend who has this evening. He's an intelligent sort of chap with a keen critical eye, and he has found himself very impressed with the depiction of the young Lara Croft as a vulnerable young woman caught up in a situation that she isn't entirely comfortable with, and having to do things that she finds difficult or scary. The tale of Tomb Raider is as much one of Lara overcoming her own difficulties at dealing with particular things as it is about… whatever the overarching plot of the new game is. (I'm intending to "go in blind" when I eventually play it, so I have no idea what the actual story is about.) My friend compared it to the movie The Descent, with which it sounds like it shares many of its themes and much of its tone. This means that Lara is frequently put in various types of danger — from the environment, from wild animals, and from other people. This also means that there are times when the wet-behind-the-ears young Lara is absolutely fucking terrified of what is happening to her, and justifiably so.

Is this sexist? No, not really; it's a perfectly human response to shit your pants (not literally… I don't think) at the prospect of having various forms of unpleasantness inflicted upon you, regardless of whether you're male or female. Likewise, as much as we would like to forget it happens, violence and sexual assaults do happen to women — and men too, for that matter — because there are certain portions of human society who are complete scumbags who have no regard for human life, male or female.

Lara happens to be female, which means that the situations she is put in over the course of Tomb Raider have been under a disproportionately greater amount of scrutiny than if she was a male hero — regardless of whether or not said male hero is a realistically-rendered character (as Lara is intended to be in this reboot) or a muscle-bound caricature. Lara is put into some difficult situations over the course of the game, including at least one scene where she appears to be at risk of sexual assault. Much was made of this scene when it was first revealed — particularly comments from the development team that it would make players "want to protect Lara". This was immediately interpreted by the aforementioned loudmouths as being misogynistic and in a sense they're correct to say that — the characters in the game are misogynists who don't care about Lara's wellbeing. But — and here's the thing — this doesn't mean that the developers share these attitudes just because they put these characters in the game. You have to have conflict and tension for something to be exciting. Did it have to be the implied threat of sexual assault? No, of course it didn't, but equally that doesn't mean we should shy away from such subjects in our entertainment — to do so can actually be pretty harmful, as it makes genuine victims of this sort of thing feel like their suffering is something to be ashamed of. It's also just plain insulting to grown-ups who want their entertainment to acknowledge that Sometimes Bad Shit Happens to Good People.

I don't want to get too bogged down in Tomb Raider because it's just one example of this sort of thing going on. I happened to sneak a glance at Twitter earlier out of curiosity and it seemed that the latest controversy to hit the Intertubes related to Sony's new God of War game, which features an automatically-attained story-related Trophy awarded to the player the moment after the lead character Kratos stomps on the face of a Fury following what, I assume, is one of the series lengthy combat sequences. The trophy is called "Bros Before Hos", which is arguably somewhat in bad taste, but we're talking about a series full of a muscle-bound man ripping the eyeballs out of mythological creatures the size of your average Ikea while shouting incoherently, so I think we can agree that subtlety went out of the window a long time ago.

Because a Fury is a woman, this scene (and by extension the Trophy) is now misogynistic. Again, it might well be in the context of the game — I haven't played any of them so I don't know what sort of person Kratos is (besides "the angriest man in Greece") and what his attitudes towards women are — but in the case of the game's development, God of War is based on established mythology (or an interpretation thereof, anyway) in which the Furies were (are?) female, and not very nice things to encounter to boot. If you had the opportunity and the means, you would probably want to stamp on their face too, and that's nothing to do with the fact they are women — it is, however, everything to do with the fact that they are infernal goddesses of much unpleasantness. Do we now have to disregard established mythology because of concerns over violence against women? No, that's ridiculous; that's wrapping the world in cotton wool, which helps no-one.

Note that in all of these cases I am not advocating for people to be free to promote things that are harmful to society. I would feel deeply uncomfortable playing a game in which you were somehow rewarded for inflicting domestic violence on someone, for example — although if tackled with sensitivity and care (which many triple-A developers lack, but which many smaller-scale or indie developers have proven themselves to possess in abundance) it could be possible to create an interesting, if distressing sort of interactive story about domestic violence. (In fact, it has sort of been done at least once, to an extent anyway: for a fascinating and challenging exploration of an abusive relationship through the use of allegory, play the game Magical Diary — which was written by a woman — and pursue the romance with Damien.)

What I am instead saying is that getting outraged any time a female character (or, for that matter, a non-white, young, elderly, homosexual, trans or other "non-white twentysomething cis male" character) is placed in peril, regardless of the circumstances, is counter-productive. It diminishes the value of the arguments as a whole, and distracts attention from content that genuinely is a problem. After the controversy over the Hitman trailer with all its leather-clad nuns and other assorted ridiculousness dreamed up by the 14-year olds in Square Enix's marketing department, I confess I found myself blocking most of the people involved in the "discussions" around the issue on Twitter not because I wanted to deny there was a problem, but because I couldn't deal with the way people were arguing about it. There was no debate, no discussion — nothing but "I'm Right, You're Wrong" for day after day. And as soon as one controversy subsided, another appeared. And so it continued for month after month after month. It made me stop caring completely, which is the complete opposite of what these people presumably intended.

Rage like this doesn't even have to be directed at a sociological issue, though; just recently everyone has been getting extremely angry at EA because of SimCity's online requirement, just like they did with Diablo III. Again, very few people are considering all the facts at play here, which I won't get into now, and instead resorting to kneejerk rage which, if you disagree with, you're somehow an asshole. There always has to be something to be angry about. And it's exhausting.

So, in summary, I am very happy to have now, for the most part, taken a step back from the seething masses — and while said masses are still seething I have very little intention of heading back in a Twitterly direction unless absolutely necessary.

I'll let Irina sum up how I feel about all this with the Understatement of the Century.

Quite.

1143: Kilo-Commuter

My brother posted a link on Facebook earlier about "mega-commuters" — a relatively small number of Americans (about 600,000) who travel more than 50 miles each way to get to work each day. He's one of them.

Sounds hellish, doesn't it? But it doesn't necessarily have to be that bad.

I can't make a claim to be a "mega-commuter" as the longest commute I've done on a daily basis was about 35 miles each way — I guess that makes me a kilo-commuter? — but that was plenty to potentially drive me insane. As it happened, it was the job itself I was doing at the time that did a much better job of driving me insane, but I digress; my distaste for the teaching profession and reluctance to return to it ever again is well-documented elsewhere on this blog. (In fact, it was my growing sense of discomfort at an ill-advised return to the profession that spurred me on to start writing on this 'ere site every day in the first place, so I guess I can't complain too much.)

No, believe it or not that's actually sort of relevant, because my daily 70 mile round trip to get to and from work actually became something of a haven of calm amid the chaos of my professional existence. While I was in my car, no-one could "get" me. (Well, technically, I suppose they could; someone could have crashed into me and injured or killed me. But… oh, shush.) It was some time I had to myself to spend as I pleased… sort of, anyway — I mean, obviously I still had to do the driving bit.

Consequently, I found myself spending my commute doing things that I don't really do any more as a "work from home" person. I listened to the radio. I listened to podcasts. I listened to a lot of music. I sometimes phoned people. (Hands-free, obviously.) I phoned people. Jesus Christ, I never do that now, largely because the telephone tends to fill me with an uncommonly-large amount of dread, but nope, the sheer tedium of driving down the M3 (or sometimes, for variety, the A31) every day was occasionally mitigated by actually talking to someone other than myself. But more often than not it was mitigated by listening to the radio or podcasts. I attribute the fact that I can tolerate (and even enjoy) Chris Moyles' brand of comedy — something that it appears to be fashionable to hate — to the fact he accompanied me to work and made me laugh every morning through what turned out to be a very difficult period of my life. I'm not sure I would have stuck out a job that eventually pretty much gave me a nervous breakdown had I not had something like that to help me mentally prepare myself each morning. (Obviously ultimately it didn't really work, but still.)

While it was nice to spend that zombified period of time driving in a straight line for about 50 minutes, the prospect of doing so every day isn't really the sort of thing that makes you want to get out of bed each morning. You have to really like your job to be able to stick it out for longer than a few months. I somehow managed to convince myself to do it for a total of two and a bit years altogether — eventually I moved closer to the job that eventually saw me escaping the teaching profession, which is probably something I should have done sooner — but that commute was probably one of the contributing factors that made me come over all queer, as a grandmother might say.

Despite that, though, I do sort of miss it. I don't have my own car at all any more — Andie and I share one, as I have no real need for my own now — and so long drives accompanied by the radio or podcasts are now an increasingly-distant, wistful memory for the most part.

Then I remember that I don't have to get up before 6am any more and I don't miss it nearly as much.

1142: Hello

So after publishing last night's post (which, I'll be honest, was composed somewhat in haste after a lengthy Ridge Racer Unbounded session prompted it, immediately before my bedtime) I was rather surprised to receive an email from someone named Michelle at WordPress, who informed me that my post was going to be featured in the Freshly Pressed section of WordPress.com. Thank you, Michelle, that was very nice of you, and it was even nicer to receive an email that was clearly from an actual person rather than an automated robot. Big love to all of the WordPress team.

Taking Michelle's email to heart, though, it's entirely possible that there might be a few new visitors around here in the immediate future, so I thought I'd take today to (re)introduce myself for the umpteenth time, and explain a little about what this blog is for and why I number all my posts.

So, then. Hello. I'm Pete. I'm a 31-year old bloke from the grey and miserable isle that is Great Britain. I live in Southampton, which is a city that has been the focal point of my life ever since I left home in 1999 to go to university there. Over the years, I've flitted around a bit for various reasons (mostly work) but always ended up coming back to Southampton either temporarily (to see friends) or, as happened just before Christmas, permanently. Or as "permanently" as any place I've lived since 1999 has been.

I live in a nice flat with my girlfriend Andie. Technically I'm married to someone else, though the circumstances of why the person I'm living with is not the person I'm married to are terribly complicated and not something I feel particularly inclined to go into here. Suffice to say, if you look at blog posts from around May of 2010 you'll get a general idea of how I was feeling when that all went down, and besides, all of that will be resolved this year. (I will also note that there is no bad blood there — forgive and forget and all that — it's just something I have found difficult to deal with until quite recently. And no, I don't want to talk about it further.)

The above sort of brings me onto the subject of this blog, which you may have noticed I update on a daily basis. I actually posted a number of pieces on this site before beginning to post daily, but it was in January of 2010 (the 19th, to be exact) that I started a personal tradition that I still keep to this day: daily blog posts. Originally, these daily posts were part of a Twitter-based movement known as "#oneaday". This was a group who banded together in an attempt to post something — anything — once per day as a means of continually flexing our collective writing muscles. Many of the original participants — including the person who started the whole thing — dropped out of the running very quickly, but there were a number of us who kept it up all the way through 2010. In 2011, I attempted to coordinate a larger effort to get as many people posting regularly on their blogs and encouraging their readers to donate to charity. It was moderately successful — we raised about £200 or so, I think, which wasn't too bad considering the number of people involved — but ultimately most writers lost interest. It also became a bit too much work for me to manage by myself, but I'm not ruling out the possibility of organising something along the same lines again in the future.

Anyway, all that aside, I'm still going, and this post you're reading right now is my 1,142nd daily post in a row. I cover a variety of different topics on this blog according to what I'm thinking about at any given moment and, to a lesser extent, whether or not my girlfriend has complained that I'm being "boring". My strongest interests are video games (particularly Japanese role-playing games and visual novels, though if you mention TrackMania to me I can go for hours); music (I play the piano, clarinet and saxophone and occasionally compose stuff); board games; and, as 1,141 previous posts will attest, writing. I also use this blog as an "outlet" when I need to get some raw, honest words or thoughts out of my head and onto the page. I suffer with depression and anxiety (personified by the big black cloud "Des" in the header image) and find it helpful to talk about these things.

If this blog and its crudely-drawn stickmen aren't enough Pete for you, then you can check out my professional work every day at Inside Social Games and Inside Mobile Apps, and my "pet project" at Games Are Evil. I also hang out a lot with my video gaming buddies the Squadron of Shame on Google+, and if you either 1) would like to hear my delicious, fruity, full-bodied English accent or 2) are interested in "underappreciated" video games , then I suggest you have a listen to the Squad's irregularly-occurring podcast, the Squadron of Shame SquadCast. You can find the archives here, and a new episode on the subject of Spec Ops: The Line is coming soon.

1141: Give Me A Reason to Race

Why are there no racing games with stories? No, wait, scratch that, why are there no racing games with good stories? Or at the very least well-told stories?

It is surely not a difficult thing to do. You take the basic game structure from Wing Commander and replace all the space combat with racing cars around tracks and/or city streets. Then you profit. Why has no-one done this?

The few racing games out there that do have storylines of sort are generally half-assed efforts where all the plot is delivered through badly-written text put into the game as an afterthought, or they simply don't carry their potential through far enough.

I can think of a few recent examples. Motorstorm Apocalypse, though I didn't play it, reportedly had a plot of sorts, but it fell into the former category above. Motorstorm Apocalypse, lest you're unfamiliar, had you racing around a city that was blowing up and falling to pieces — surely an ideal situation for a rudimentary Michael Bay-style plot with some characters and shouting. It wouldn't have to be a complex plot, just something to break up the racing with some motivational scenes that gave it some meaning.

Split/Second had a go, too, with its TV show-style presentation, incredible electro-orchestral cinematic soundtrack and episodic structure. It stopped short of actually giving the game's antagonists, the "Elite Racers", any degree of personality (or indeed faces), though it did end on a cliffhanger (which will now never be resolved — thanks a lot, Disney).

Recent Need for Speed games have taken a pop at it too, but tend to lose interest after the introductory sequences. The closest example I've seen to what I'm looking for is Need for Speed The Run, but apparently — again, I haven't played it — neither the racing nor the plot are particularly up to much. (I must say, I am curious to try it, though, purely to see how close they get to what I'm imagining in my head.)

There's also a Japanese eroge called Moero Downhill Night Blaze that reportedly combines a visual novel with racing action, but judging by its required system specifications, I'm not counting on it being an especially spectacular offering on the racing front. (I do intend to play it, though, as the whole series sounds like fun in story terms, even if the racing ends up sucking.)

And then there's Midnight Club Los Angeles, which occasionally has Grand Theft Auto-style cutscenes, but not nearly enough to carry a coherent plot.

I'm honestly bewildered as to why no-one has tried this properly yet. We live in an age where video games are more "cinematic" than ever, and yet the racing game genre is still following the same old conventions it's been using since the PlayStation 1 era — and possibly before. I would pay good money for a racing game with a good, well-written plot — given that I never, ever complete racing games (Split/Second is, to date, the only exception), an unfolding narrative with interesting characters and a degree of overblown drama would be just the incentive I need to up my game and see the experience through to its conclusion.

If I had any clue how to make such a game — or indeed access to a team to make such a game — I would do so in a heartbeat. Sadly, though, I have a sneaking suspicion my desire to see a game like this will remain nothing but a far-off dream.

1140: Another Valley Without Wind

I really liked A Valley Without Wind, even though I never came anywhere near to "finishing" it, for want of a better word. (I say that because once you beat the "Overlord" who was supposed to be your antagonist throughout the game, you simply moved on to another randomly-generated continent that was being threatened by another Overlord.) It was a really interesting, if somewhat flawed game that obviously had a lot of love thrown into it. It was a game clearly put together by people who had a vision of what they wanted to achieve and were willing to experiment in order to realise that vision.

For those who are unaware of A Valley Without Wind, I wrote about it a few times approximately three hundred days ago. Here's one post, here's another, and here's a bit of creative writing inspired by the game's emergent narrative.

I was intrigued and excited to hear that the developer was putting together a sequel to the game, and that said sequel would be provided free to everyone who owned a copy of the first game. (You don't see that sort of generosity in the triple-A sector, that's for sure!) Details were relatively scarce to begin with, but it sounded like the intention was to completely overhaul the game and make it a more focused experience. The reason it was being developed as a sequel and not as another one of the many updates that the first game saw is that it involved a fundamental rethinking of the game structure in particular — rather than being potentially endless and rather freeform like the first game, A Valley Without Wind 2 was to have much clearer victory and loss conditions, making for a game which felt much more like it had a "point".

I spent a little while playing A Valley Without Wind 2 today and I'm intrigued by what I see so far. Here's the gist: rather than playing the role of a series of adventurers given magical powers by a "glyph" like in the first one, in this game you play a single character who is immortal thanks to a crystal given to them by the big evil demon overlord dude whose dark forces you've infiltrated. This means that you can't technically die — well, you can, but it's more of an inconvenience than a tragedy, since you can just come back again afterwards.

You're thrown into command of a ragtag group of survivors on the planet of Environ as they attempt to scavenge resources, build up their defences and eventually take down the big evil demon overlord dude. The game unfolds in two distinctive components — a turn-based strategy game and a 2D side-scrolling platform game. This is a similar structure to the first game, though the overworld map in the first game didn't involve much strategy and was more a means of simply exploring rather than anything else.

Each turn, you can move any of the survivors in your group to any of the "purified" squares in your domain. If they're already in a suitable location, they can perform an action such as working a farm to produce food, working a factory to produce scrap metal or building a new structure. Occasionally, monsters emerge from the overlord's lair on the map and the survivors must deal with them. Eventually, after 15 turns, the overlord comes out to play and starts stomping around the map, and the survivors must avoid his unwanted attentions as much as possible while you build up your power to a strong enough level to take down His Demonicness.

To end a turn, you move yourself into a space next to your currently-controlled area and begin a 2D platform game mission in which the aim is to get from left to right and destroy a generator to "purify" that square and its surroundings. Beating the level ends the turn, causing time to advance. Each level has a different theme according to its terrain type, and many have special buildings and structures to explore. Within the levels, you'll find various types of enemy and pieces of equipment, many of which have peculiar randomly-generated special effects — how does a pair of boots that makes you run faster but sets you on fire in the process sound?

Your character is highly customizable, and you can tweak your "loadout" each turn if you want — though not once you're into a mission. Several different classes are available at the outset of the game, each of which has their own set of four spells. Additional classes become available as you explore, and defeating bosses in special "Level Up" towers unlocks new perks that improve your abilities in various ways. You have to find a good balance between expanding your territory so the survivors have space to run away from the overlord when he comes out to play; finding Level Up towers to improve your own abilities; and ensuring your forces have enough resources to survive. As soon as your last survivor dies, you lose the game, so it's in your interest to keep expanding and recruiting new members to your forces.

I really like what I've seen so far. It's much more "focused", though this has come at the expense of the wonderfully complex randomly-generated levels of the original game. One thing I really liked about the first A Valley Without Wind was the sheer amount of stuff there was to do. You could wander into pretty much every building and explore it to try and find cool stuff. You'd never get anywhere if you did that, of course, but the fact it was possible was really cool. By contrast, A Valley Without Wind 2's levels are much shorter and more linear, and traipses through buildings are linear shortcuts between two parts of the level rather than sprawling, mysterious structures to explore. On the whole, it's a change for the better — as I say, though, it does make me miss some of the first game's idiosyncrasies.

One thing I'm not sure how I feel about is the change to the soundtrack. The original game featured a rather wonderful score that had more than a touch of chiptune about it, giving the retro-style gameplay an even greater sense of retro flair. The new game features a number of recognisable themes from the first game, but a much more "realistic" sound to its score. It's good — but is it as charming as the bleepy chiptunes from the original? I'm not sure. One thing I will say, though; the title screen music is absolutely gobsmacking and well worth just sitting and listening to for a bit.

I'll be checking this game out a bit more in the coming days, and I'll be intrigued to see if it can hold my attention. I liked the first game a lot, but the fact I never really felt like I was getting anywhere put me off playing a long way into it. This new version appears to have fixed that particular problem with a much more focused experience, so I'm keen to see how it plays out. Knowing my general abilities in the strategic department, I am anticipating a complete loss at the hands of the overlord within 20 turns, but we'll just have to wait and see about that, won't we?

1139: Just Shut Up

I think I'm "over" social media. Allow me to clarify that bold statement, however, as it's perhaps not entirely accurate as is. I think I am over social media as it exists today — a sprawling, disorganised mess of ill-defined concepts that contribute very little to the people's understanding of one another, and more often than not is about vanity rather than actual socialisation.

In other words, I yearn for the days when social media was simple and straightforward — when its sole intended purpose was to allow people to stay in touch with each other and perhaps, occasionally, share a photograph or two with them.

Looking back on this blog, I see I have written about this subject at least twice in the past, and my disillusionment with it has only grown over the last year or so — perhaps due in part to the fact that as part of my job I come into contact with some of the most utterly pointless examples of social media that I've ever seen.

These days, there are social media apps to share anything you can think of. I mean, there are literally (YES LITERALLY) apps and services that allow you to share anything you can think of. There are also more specialised ones with questionable usefulness to society as a whole. I reviewed one recently where the entire purpose was to share what your current mood was — you couldn't add any text explaining said mood, only an emoticon — and another where you could share the weather in your local area, then "like" or comment on the weather in other places. Another still allowed you to send a video or photo to someone, but they were only allowed to look at it for ten seconds, after which it locked itself and became useless (I swear I'm not making this up).

The trouble with these things is that despite their pretensions towards being "social media," they're not actually all that social at all in terms of the way in which people use them. They're a means of broadcasting things and seeking approval of other people rather than a means of actually engaging in conversation with anyone. Take a look at the average comments thread on an Instagram picture of a moderately-attractive person (usually a woman) and you'll see what I mean. No-one's actually talking to each other — everyone's just dropping an asinine opinion bomb and then never coming back. The poster of the selfie is seeking approval from commenters telling them how attractive they are; meanwhile, the commenters are seeking approval from the poster and hoping that their specific compliment is the one that will get them some specific attention.

This isn't the case universally, obviously. There are still some actual conversations that go on on Facebook, for example, but these can easily be lost in the torrent of people resharing crap from pages like "I fucking love science" (do you? Then go do some rather than recycling endless fucking memes) and "LIKE AND SHARE!!" (NO!!). Twitter is a reasonable platform for discussion at times, but conversations are easily derailed and, as has been proven hundreds of times in the past year alone, 140 characters is really not enough to make a coherent argument about a complex issue. It's also incredibly easy to be taken out of context on Twitter.

Google+ perhaps fares the best out of all of these services in my experience, though even that's variable. Join a good, small community that has a clear focus and whose moderators keep a tight leash on discussion and you'll have a good experience chewing the fat with people who may well become good friends. Follow Felicia Day or Wil Wheaton and you might see some interesting content, but the quality of discussion goes out of the window. Follow Google+'s own page and all you get are blithering idiots making ill-informed political rants any time the team behind the page even dare to mention the President.

I think the thing that's been striking me most heavily recently is "do I really need to share this? Do people really need to know this?" And more often than not, the answer is "no". I don't feel the need to collect an arbitrary set of "Likes" with services like CircleMe or GetGlue. I don't feel the need to "check in" to places with Foursquare. I don't even really need to use stuff like Raptr to broadcast my gaming activity, but that has, on occasion, sparked some good discussions — as, I'm sure, the other services do in some cases. Just not mine. Not any more. Perhaps once in the past — I met some good friends through Foursquare's now-defunct competitor Gowalla — but not now.

Consequently, since quitting Twitter a while back (and not really missing it, to be honest — though I do miss some of the people) I've been paring back my personal social media use hugely. I've closed my Tumblr account — I never really understood the point of that site, and these days all it seems to be used for is white people shouting about how guilty they are about being white and how we should all stop being such racists/misogynists/fedora-wearing perverts — and I've unistalled the vast majority of social apps from my phone, including Twitter and Instagram. Facebook made the cut, because as much as I dislike it at times, it's still a good way of staying in touch with a lot of people, and Google+ also survived, as it's the new home of the Squadron of Shame and serving our needs well.

Obviously this blog is still going, too (and will be for a long time to come, hopefully!) and I still comment on friends' blogs — but I don't really count that as "social media" in the same way, particularly as the discussions had tend to be (for the most part, anyway) wordy and thought-provoking rather than inspiring little more than a knee-jerk "lol".

Everything else, though? Out the window. And life is much calmer and more pleasant as a result.

1138: Song Magic

Been playing some more Ar Tonelico 2 this evening, and I'm liking it a great deal. Like its predecessor, it has a very pleasing system of "feature creep" whereby it starts out feeling rather straightforward but gradually, over the course of the early stages of the game, introduces more and more new and interesting mechanics until you have something that is very, very distinctive.

In the original Ar Tonelico, we were introduced to the basic combat system; then the way it worked when you have the magic-using Reyvateil characters in your party; the Dive system, in which you could explore the inner recesses of the heroine's mental "cosmosphere" worlds; the "bedtime conversations" system whereby the protagonist and the heroines could get to know each other a bit better (and subsequently unlock deeper levels in the cosmosphere); the "Grathmeld" crafting system, whereby you could take all the junk you'd acquired from the hundreds of NYO?!s you'd killed and turn them into various items, then enjoy some amusing scenes as the heroines try and convince you to let them name the item something ridiculous; and the "Install" system, whereby you're able to insert crystals into the heroines (and yes, they relish the opportunity for innuendo inherent in this process) to power up their various abilities and customise the effect of their spells.

In Ar Tonelico 2, meanwhile, we're first of all introduced to a new and rather odd combat system in which the two sides in the combat alternate attacking and defending for a set period of time — when attacking, you have to press buttons corresponding to the party member you'd like to attack and combine it with a directional button to do a specific move; when defending, you have to time button presses carefully to protect the back-line Reyvateil "mages" from attack, if they're present. The way the Reyvateils work is then introduced — a weird meter in the corner of the screen reflects what they want the front line to do, and fulfilling their demands provides bonuses, helping them to cast more effective spells more quickly. Then, once again, we have the Dive system, which works largely as it did before, albeit with a lot more multiple-choice bits where you have to say the right thing to proceed. Then we have the "I.P.D." system, whereby part of the plot dictates that you have to subdue and capture Reyvateils that are infected with I.P.D., which hasn't been explained yet. Then we have a slightly different crafting system, whereby certain items can only be crafted in certain places (you can only make food in a restaurant kitchen, for example), and the same recipe has different outcomes depending on which heroine you get to help.

Then things get a little odd. "Dualstalling" replaces the "Install" system from the previous game, and is the only way of levelling up Reyvateils, who no longer gain experience normally. Instead, at regular opportunities, you have to let them take a bath in water infused with crystals you've collected or purchased. During the bath (which looks rather large and luxurious, I must say), they wander around a bit, and if they pass over one of the crystals they dropped in, they gain a temporary special effect until the next time they bathe. And if you drop in toys (bath toys, you pervert) and scented oils, different effects might emerge. Oh, and if both heroines are bathing together, they'll often chat about things, too, which helps improve their "sync" value, which in turn helps them fight more effectively together in combat.

Then we have the "Dive Therapy" system, which I was introduced to in tonight's session. Now the subdued I.P.D.-infected Reyvateils have a purpose — they can be "cured" by one of the characters, who is a Dive therapist. Indulging in Dive Therapy involves talking to the Reyvateil and attempting to manipulate her mood to its ideal level on a meter at the top of the screen. Administering various treatments can affect the rate at which this meter changes with each response you give to their statements. Some responses increase the meter, others drop it, and each infected Reyvateil has a "sweet spot" where the meter needs to be in order to be cured.

That's not all you can do with them, though. The cured Reyvateils then bugger off and scatter themselves around the world to form a fan club for one of the heroines, and their affection for her increases as they see her doing cool stuff. When their affection maxes out, they will help out — exactly how, I'm not sure yet, but we'll see.

Oh, and also through the "Girl Power" system you can "equip" rescued Reyvateils to help the protagonist out in various ways. They then level up and improve their abilities and… waah, my head hurts.

All these weird and wonderful mechanics may sound overwhelming, but they're introduced at just the right rate. You're shown a new concept, then given a period of time in which to explore it in practical terms. Then another one comes along, and you can explore that. And so it continues. The nice thing is that only a few of these mechanics are "spoiled" in the game's manual, meaning the existence of things like the Dive Therapy system and various other bits and pieces are a nice surprise when you come across them for the first time. (Unless you've read this post first, of course.)

On the one hand, it's nice to be ready for all the game's mechanics and be able to refer back to a manual when you need to. But on the other, it's quite interesting (and oddly liberating) to play a game that trusts you to experiment a bit and figure out what on Earth (Metafalss?) is going on. Take the Dualstalling system, for example — while the help menu in the game explains roughly how it works, it's only by fiddling around with various arrangements of bathtime goodies that you'll figure out the most effective means of letting your mage-ladies wash their stinky bits and level up.

Basically, Ar Tonelico 2's more esoteric features are something you'll either be on board with or not. As you've probably gathered, I love them — and besides, are they really any more weird than summoning giant chariot-riding penis demons by fusing cards together, or sucking the magic out of monsters to somehow attach to your own strength? No. No they're not. So shush.

1137: Animal Magic

I could sit and watch animals for hours, and have done on numerous occasions in the past. It can be pretty much any animal, too, so long as it's not a scary one like a big hairy spider or a snake that could kill you or a shark with frickin' lasers on its head. The majority of my animal-watching over the years has been taken up by the observation of cats (both live when I was younger — including one memorable occasion when I was hanging out with my friend Woody, we both got absolutely munted and found my family's cat inexplicably hilarious — and more recently on the Internet courtesy of Maru) but I also often find myself oddly enraptured by a friend's tortoise any time I go to visit and have an idle moment (seeing him munching nonchalantly on lettuce is oddly hilarious — the tortoise, not my friend, obviously). Most recently, though, I find myself spending an altogether healthy, reasonable and perfectly normal amount of time staring at our pet rats Lara and Lucy and have absolutely never got up in the middle of the night if I can't sleep purely to go and see them.

It's been oddly fascinating to watch their behaviour change over time, because both of them have absolutely developed their own personalities. Lara always used to be the dominant one over her original cagemate Willow (who sadly died a few months after we got her) but was always a lot more confident and friendly — Willow, meanwhile, was shy and nervous, and prone to biting if she felt threatened, which was quite often. She got out of the cage on one occasion and it was an absolute nightmare to get her back in, as she was too terrified to realise that we just wanted to help her get back home. (We did, eventually.)

After Willow died, Lara very obviously became very sad. She was much less energetic than she used to be, and spent a lot of time just sitting in her "saucer section" house that hung from the roof of the cage staring out rather pathetically. It was heartbreaking to see, so it wasn't long before we decided to get her a new playmate. We introduced the two of them to each other on "neutral ground" (the bathtub, where they couldn't escape and skitter off), they had a good sniff around each other and a bit of a poo, then both cooperated when we put them in their little carry box and subsequently back into the cage.

Lucy, who is a fair bit younger than Lara and consequently much smaller, seemed to have a difficult time adjusting to her new home initially, as Lara spent a lot of time fussing around her and seemingly frightening her. On one terrifying occasion, we found Lucy lying on her back completely motionless and were worried that she had suddenly died. Fortunately, we discovered a couple of minutes later that it was just a "submission" thing — it was her way of accepting Lara as the queen of the cage. She spent a few days cowering in the corner and not wanting to come out, and gradually built up her confidence. On one evening we put her in her carry box but in the cage so that Lara could get used to her scent without harassing her, and Lara got in an absolute panic, frantically scrabbling around and trying to get into the box because she thought she'd lost her new playmate. They were both fine the next day.

Fast forward to today, a number of months later — I forget how many exactly — and the two have settled into a healthy dynamic. Lara, as the older one, is for the most part a little more "careful" about what she does — though not always — while Lucy is clearly the "annoying younger sister", regularly sniffing around Lara and occasionally… well, all right, fairly regularly giving her a playful nip in an attempt to kick off a play-fight which she'll inevitably lose in a flurry of rolling around and screeching. (Rats can be very loud if they want to be, surprisingly — though it's mainly Lucy who makes all the noise, as Lara doesn't seem to squeak much at all.)

Lucy has also become the adventurous one — if we open up the cage, she's always the first one to come out, start exploring and want some fuss from us. Lara will come out and demand some attention, too, and will also go off and explore, but it's always Lucy who comes out first. She won't stand still. Lara, meanwhile, who is bigger, older and a bit more "world-weary" now — at least, those are the personality traits I attribute to her — is much more receptive to standing still and being petted, and will even sometimes come crawling up me to sit on my shoulder if I sit in a climb-friendly position.

Lara hurt her leg the other day — she was limping around and obviously didn't like putting weight on it, but didn't seem to be in too much pain. She certainly wasn't complaining, anyway, but it was clear that she wasn't quite as mobile as usual. (It transpires that rats are fairly prone to sprains — given the regularity with which they fall off things in an extremely amusing manner, I'm surprised this is the first time either of them have done it.) She spent a lot of time just resting, occasionally coming out for water or food, but for the most part just snuggling down in a comfy, warm spot and letting herself heal naturally. (Rats heal super-quickly.) Rather than being her usual irritating little sister self, Lucy seemed to know that something was wrong with her "adoptive sister" and left Lara alone for the most part, occasionally popping in to snuggle up and keep warm with her or help her groom herself. The two were obviously communicating somehow, and it was really heartwarming to see. After a couple of days of rest, Lara was back to her old self, and the pair were back to their usual dynamic.

When I think of all that time I spent alone and depressed back in 2010, I find myself wishing that I'd discovered how joyful it is to have your own pets sooner, as it would have probably saved a large degree of my sanity around that period — if not my money, of which I didn't really have any at the time. I mean, I always knew that having a cat around was awesome from my childhood, when our family pets Penny and Kitty were fixtures in the household, but somehow the thought of owning my own pets had never really crossed my mind. Largely because most rental properties specifically state that you're not supposed to have pets in them, of course, but seriously, the amount of damage a tiny rat can do is significantly different from the chaos a small dog can wreak!

Anyway. Yeah. Pets are awesome. 9/10. Get one.

1136: Thoughts on RPG Maker

I read this piece by Robert Boyd of Zeboyd Games earlier. Now, I normally agree with Mr. Werezompire on a lot of things, but I take issue with a few things he says about RPG Maker in this article, which was posted shortly after the latest version RPG Maker VX Ace hit the Steam store a while back.

Boyd is quite right to note that this is the first time a piece of software such as RPG Maker has hit a mainstream digital download storefront for PC — past iterations of the software were sold directly by the publisher via a rather cumbersome e-commerce solution, so to get it on Steam is a big step forward in both accessibility and visibility. Boyd is also right to note that lowering the barrier of entry to creating games through tools such as RPG Maker also encourages everyone to want to have a go — and that this can result in a glut of "incomplete, buggy, generic, or downright awful games". (It also results in people who are otherwise unable to get their heads around programming becoming empowered to realise their own digital dreams and creativity.)

What I take a certain degree of umbrage to is his assertion that it is a "general RPG maker" and thus ill-suited to producing anything more than the most generic JRPG possible. While it is true that the default art assets and music provided with the game are aimed at people who want to get a fairly generic JRPG up and running quickly, the very nature of the software is that it is completely customisable depending on how much "individuality" you want to give your project. You can have something fairly convincing up and running in a matter of minutes using the default assets… but with a bit of time and artistic talent (or at least creativity), you can completely revamp the default "look" to anything you please. Not only that, but by using its built-in Ruby-based scripting language, you can completely overhaul the way the game works — battle system, menus, method of moving around the game world, anything can be modified or added if you know what you're doing. And even if you don't, there's a lively and active community out there that has put together plenty of free scripts for anyone to make use of.

This isn't "trying to modify RPG Maker to do things it wasn't really intended to do," as Boyd asserts. This is, in fact, using RPG Maker in the manner in which it was intended for power users — and it also aptly demonstrates one of the most admirable things about the application: the fact that it is simple and accessible enough for beginners to use, yet powerful and flexible enough for more advanced users to take complete control of. You only have to look at examples like To The Moon and Cherry Tree High Comedy Club, both of which were created in RPG Maker XP (two versions previous to the current edition) to see what is possible — and to be fair to Boyd, he does at least mention these titles in his post.

Boyd makes some fair points in the article, but what I don't like much is the underlying tone that "if you're using RPG Maker rather than programming it yourself, you're doing it wrong." While it is undoubtedly more satisfying to program your own engine from scratch and see a complete game come together from literally nothing, not everyone has the time, ability and/or C#-speaking friends to be able to do that. Plus if there's a perfectly good tool already out there to realise what you want to do… why shouldn't you use it?

1135: Melody of... The Other Place

As I noted yesterday, I completed Ar Tonelico: Melody of Elemia. So naturally, having discovered a new RPG series that I like very much, what's a boy to do but to make an immediate start on the sequel, much to the delight of my Ar Tonelico-adoring friend who convinced me to play the damn things in the first place?

Ar Tonelico 2: Melody of Metafalica is a surprisingly different beast to its predecessor in many ways. Its Japanese incarnation came out in the same year as the first Ar Tonelico hit Western shores, but it wouldn't be until 2009 that North American and European players would get their hands on it. That actually makes it a surprisingly recent game, released in the twilight of the PS2 era. This might explain why I never really paid it much mind first time around (besides being unfamiliar with the prequel, obviously) — everyone (including me) was already well and truly enraptured by "next gen" by that point, though games like Persona 4 (which also came out in 2009 in Europe) had shown me that the previous generation still had plenty to offer.

The whole Ar Tonelico experience has had a complete overhaul in Ar Tonelico 2. Gone are the distinctly PS1-ish isometric-perspective graphics (though I actually sort of miss them now), replaced with hand-drawn backdrops in towns and a pleasing combination of polygons, flat objects and fixed camera angles to create "3D" dungeons. The sprites, too, have had a bit of a change in aesthetic — they have peculiar, stylised proportions now, which frankly has taken a little adjusting to, but the improved amount of emotive animation on them makes up for the fact that everyone has really, really distractingly massive hands.

The biggest change is in the battle system, however. I liked Ar Tonelico's battle system, as it combined conventional JRPG turn-based battling with an interesting magic system that encouraged you to find creative ways to finish battles "well" rather than quickly. It was a bit repetitive by the end, however, and it was consistently way too easy pretty much all the way through the entire game.

Ar Tonelico 2's battle system, meanwhile, is a completely different beast. It's still sort of turn-based, but not in the same way as its predecessor. Instead, the two sides in the conflict each take turns to attack and defend. When it's your turn to attack, you have a limited amount of time to use your two "vanguard" (front line) characters to attack; when it's your turn to defend you have to carefully time button presses to protect the back line Reyvateils from taking damage. The Reyvateils make demands on you during battle, too, requesting that you perform specific attack moves by pressing the button for the corresponding front line character and a particular direction. Fulfilling these demands gives you various bonuses that make the battle turn in your favour. It's interesting, as it means you have to really concentrate on every battle rather than just mashing the "attack" button, but I'm yet to have a significantly challenging battle to show its full potential just yet.

The "Dive" system makes a return, and is almost identical to its predecessor. You get to know the game's heroines in the real world by talking to them at campsites and inns, then "dive" into their mental "Cosmosphere" world to find out more about their various inner struggles and problems. Overcoming these problems helps them craft new Song Magic which you can then use in battle — plus these are entertaining mini-stories in their own right. Diving is mostly the same, though there are a lot more situations where you're given a choice of responses to a particular situation and must pick the correct one rather than simply following it through.

In "new, weird gameplay mechanics" news we have the new Dualstall system, which replaces the "Install" mechanic from the previous game (which allowed you to boost a Reyvateil's abilities by plugging various crystals into her… spells in a rather suggestive manner). Dualstalling essentially means flinging the game's two heroines into a bath infused with magic crystals, nice-smelling bath oils and bath toys and letting the attached abilities, uh, be absorbed. The heroines will also have a good chat in the bath, so this is a good way of building up their "Sync" gauge, which helps them work together better in battle.

So far I'm about four hours into the new game and enjoying it a lot so far. The change in aesthetic and gameplay style gave me a bit of "culture shock" initially but that thankfully soon faded, and I'm now enjoying the story and characters just as before. It's interesting to note that the game still feels recognisable as an Ar Tonelico game, yet has a different setting (albeit in the same overall world), different characters and different gameplay mechanics. I'm assuming that the third game (which is where the series made the jump to PS3) will be "similarly different", too, judging by a quick flick through the manual.

Further reports as events warrant.