Misc.

Finished Ninja Gaiden DS just in time for the English-language version to come out. Great. As far as I can tell, I didn’t miss out on much of a plot. The verdict: I had pretty low standards for a hack-n-slash on the DS, so I was pleasantly surprised by how well the input and the visuals worked. It’s pretty slick. Sadly, at about 7 hours or so for my first (and only) playthrough, it’s a few hours too long to basically do the same hacking and slashing against different backgrounds. Not enough variety. On the plus side, I’m ranked 210th on normal difficulty. Woooo.

Played a few minutes of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles: Ring of Fates. I’ve never played any of the FFCC games before, so I didn’t really know what to expect. Seems like it’s worth a little more of my time, at least - I just finished the second dungeon, and the level design seems to be a little more inspired than I anticipated. Certainly more inspired than that Dungeon Explorer DS game I sunk a decent amount of time into a few weeks ago. I don’t know what I was thinking. I loved Diablo II more than I’d care to admit, but Dungeon Explorer DS was no Diablo II.

In other news, a blog on Asian Americans and Popular Culture, which, as far as I can gather, is a class project somewhere, linked to my now-infamous discussions of Indigo Prophecy. I still get people coming in and telling me I’m too sensitive, racist, etc. on those posts. Anyway, the blog post had an interesting take on things:

However, I have a problem with this reading, since this reading rests on the assumption that Lucas Kane is a white male. You see, for the whole time I was playing this game, I was under the distinct impression that Lucas Kane was Asian.

It’s an interesting post, though I disagree with the reading - to be frank, it sounds to me like the author got stuck with a case of wishful thinking. (I hate to say it, but we Asian American men aren’t stereotyped as kickboxing rock gods quite yet. YET.) The writer also thought I was a woman named Pam Miller. Anyway, the really interesting part came in the discussion we had in the comments:

Because I was actually a French history specialist in undergrad, this game just struck me as quintessentially French in the way it handled race. The official government policy of racial equality means for them that race is rarely officially acknowledged.

It’s a huge controversy right now whether or not they would they will take ethnic statistics in the next census. The drive towards that is led by the right wingers under Sarkozy, who want to use it to clamp down on immigrants.

I know absolutely nothing about race in France other than Zidane’s legendary Headbutt Super Combo…

… so this struck me as another interesting example of how poorly one country’s racial common sense can translate incredibly poorly into another country. Or, alternately, as an example of how utterly ridiculous “colorblind” attitudes are.

pat m.

P.S.: Today we got a visitor who searched for “Why black people don’t like Resident Evil”. I never really asked myself that question, but frankly, if I had to guess, it would have to be related to a healthy aversion to white people with guns. That one I can understand.

Stuff I’ve Been Playing Lately

I haven’t had the attention span to sit down and play a whole PS2 game lately - I think the pick-up-and-play nature of most Nintendo DS titles sits right with me these days. And, sadly, while there are plenty of DS games out there that do interesting things with games as a medium, there aren’t a whole lot out there that tangle with race and gender in any particularly interesting ways. (Not that I know of, anyway - feel free to comment with some suggestions!) So while I haven’t had a whole lot of directly topical material for the blog, I have been playing a few things worth mentioning.

On the PS2 side, I’ve been playing around with the NiGHTS Into Dreams remake. I actually have the original for my semi-functional-but-no-memory-card Sega Saturn, so I was stoked to play a visually updated version with the Dual Shock analog sticks because I never shelled out for the NiGHTS 3D pad back in the day. I haven’t played it very seriously - just a level here and there when I feel like picking it up - but the way it feels to fly in that game, to bounce and careen and soar in its oddly 2.5D space, is completely unrivaled. It’s very Sega - in fact, it feels like a perfect SAT analogy. NiGHTS is to flying in Super Mario World what Sonic the Hedgehog is to walking Super Mario Bros.

Also making a brief appearance on the PS2 is Tori No Hoshi: Aerial Planet, though only for one fairly short session. For some reason, my R1 button doesn’t seem to be accelerating like I’m supposed to be, meaning that flying is kind of a pain. The game is supposed to be relaxing, largely - you fly around a planet that’s mostly forest and ocean on a fairly quiet little glider, and you look for birds, eventually coming to mimic their calls and such. I don’t know if I’m actually going to play it much, but the flying and admiring the scenery alone is worth some time every now and then, if only to mellow out a little bit. I bet it’d be fun stoned, especially if you muted the music and played your own instead.

On the DS side I’ve been a little more active. I played through Apollo Justice, of course, and my love for the Ace Attorney series has not abated in the slightest. I won’t spoil it for anyone, but suffice to say that the writing just keeps getting better, and the storytelling gets ever more interesting. As the title indicates, Phoenix is not the main character, but he ends up being quite significant nevertheless. He also starts looking surprisingly grown and sexy with the hoodie, beanie, and five-o’clock-shadow.

After Apollo Justice I dithered around with Professor Layton and the Curious Village, but it hasn’t really held my interest quite so much. Since then I’ve been playing around with Ninja Gaiden DS (only in Japan so far, sorry), which is awesome in control and visuals and a little bit boring in terms of level design. Seriously, each level has a bunch of fights, maybe a puzzle, and then a boss fight - and the boss fights, puzzles, and fights in each room are largely identical. If the combat itself weren’t so darn fun (stylus input) and surprisingly precise then it would never get away with it. Grrrr. The other game that has caught my eyes lately is Bangai-O Spirits, the DS version of the cult shooter hit Bangai-O, which I never played. I think Tim Rogers says it better than I could, though - “Brain Training for God”.

That’s about all I got for now. Any recommendations? PS2, DS, and (shhhh) emulated systems only! Thanks.

pat m.

Internet Activism and Information Violence: “This Is Gonna Be A Match To Remember!”

My new favorite pastime is following the latest exploits of Anonymous, a group of loosely affiliated internet people that, when not posting terabytes and terabytes of LOLCats, decide to pick e-fights with the Church of Scientology. While I am by no means a regular, I associate with enough online communities (Insert Credit, Select Button, Shoryuken.com, The Fighting 44s) to be familiar with the kinds of people found in places like SomethingAwful, Fark, 4chan image boards, and YTMND. I know full well the power of bored, technologically literate young people. And after researching for Another Rape in Cyberspace (Cerise Magazine), I made a mental note to pay occasional attention to 4chan. Well, it’s back, and this time, it’s rather fascinating. I’ve been following the news coverage, Anon’s Project Chanology Wiki, and lurking in a few of the IRC channels. While it’s too close to tell exactly what will come - if anything - from all of this, a few points have caught my attention.

I imagine plenty of you out there have seen “internet activism” in some form or another. Sometimes it’s people using PetitionOnline, or maybe it’s a Facebook group centered around advocating a particular cause. Freerice.com is a pretty good example of some more advanced activism - it uses advertising revenue, and a game, to fund rice donations through the United Nations. At its darker side, however, internet activism can come to include actions that are considered within the domain of “hacking” - things like Distributed Denial of Service attacks, where a lot of computers send waves of meaningless garbage traffic at a set of servers, keeping them too busy to do things they’re supposed to do, like show web pages. Generally speaking, Facebook groups don’t seem to do much more than spread awareness, and DDoS attacks are incredibly inconvenient but also most likely illegal and probably not the kind of methods that nonviolent activists would condone. Anonymous has no problem with this and any other kind of computer-based subterfuge - not surprising considering their background - but at the same time, it seems like things are being kept in line when it comes to real-world violence. The Project Chanology Wiki had all kinds of instructions for vandalism ranging from annoying (prank calls that are segued into the song from The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air ) to downright destructive (something about flushing rubber gloves down the toilet that wreak havoc on the building’s sewage system) and even dangerous (cutting wires underneath cars parked in the lot). However, it doesn’t seem that anyone has actually tried to do anything like this, and most of the “IRL Raid” discussions seem to be centered around peaceful protest and information. Anonymous is careful to avoid being seen as religious persecutors (they protest that Scientology charges for religious information, not the beliefs themselves), makes efforts to avoid going after the rank-and-file Scientologists, and in general seems to be very reluctant to take any significant illegal action. Not bad for a group of “disorganized, bored teenagers”.

This might be just what it takes to take on the Church of Scientology, which seems to use lawsuits and money and intense individual pressure to suppress their critics. While this works to get things like sensitive Tom Cruise videos off of YouTube, or reach tax-exempt status in the US (by suing the IRS, apparently), it’s unclear exactly who they’ll have to target to get at Anonymous. If Anonymous really is regularly shutting down phone lines, sending infinite black faxes, and attacking any IP address they can get their hands on, I imagine they’ll be able to do so with impunity for as long as they want with little cost to themselves, as long as (and this is key) none of Anonymous compromises themselves in any real-world interactions with the Church of Scientology, and thereby incurs the wrath of their legal army. However, aside from being a pain in the ass, it’s unclear exactly how much long-term effect they’d be able to have. While the Internet is indeed serious business, it’s not serious enough by itself.
In concert with other activists, though, things get interesting again. It’s unclear exactly what (if anything) is organizing Anonymous, and their insistence on “information violence” make it hard for the CoS’s other vocal critics to support them. This video, from an independent Scientology critic, offers a few suggestions for Anonymous, the most interesting of which is to look at attacking the institution of the Church of Scientology itself (things like tax-exempt status) through legal means. This kind of action, and attention from other individuals and organizations, is significant because it means that Anonymous is, however informally, part of a team - a game-piece rather than a full, self-contained movement. It is organizing, it is acting, it is building coalitions and trying to form alliances. And whether it succeeds or fails at its goals (if it has any tangible, short-or-long-term goals?), it guarantees to be an interesting case study of Internet Activism.

Search Queries I Don’t Want To Think Too Hard About

Apparently someone stopped by today looking for: ”indigo prophecy how to have sex with car” That must have been a part of the game I missed out on. 

I Wanted Better From The Boondocks

Hi everyone! It’s been a while.

Quick update: I haven’t posted for a while since I’ve been busy moving to Japan for a year on a Fulbright Fellowship, and I just got Internet access in the apartment. I have, however, had two more articles up at the Escapist (on Ambrosia Software and Mixed Martial Arts, respectively) as well as an article at Cerise Magazine called “Another Rape In Cyberspace”. Anyway, look forward to more updates coming, probably on the same infrequent basis it’s been on when I actually updated this. 

(Spoilers Ahead)

 This post isn’t actually on video games, but bear with me. No, I’m going to spend a moment to talk about one of my favorite TV shows, the Boondocks, which entered in its much-anticipated second season a few weeks ago. I’ve been addicted to the show since the first season, and during the year-and-a-half long break between the first and second season I’ve probably watched each episode at least five times, so it should go without saying that I’ve been waiting with bated breath for the second season to show up. However, in addition to the brilliant racial commentary, I’ve been curious to see how the show would handle gender. The first season left me kind of hanging on that respect - at best, it was an all-men show (out of the main characters, mixed-race Jazmine and her white mother Sarah are the only recurring female characters), and at worst, it shows women - particularly black women - as “hoes”, obnoxious ghetto-fabulous club-goers, and…not much else, really. While I adore the racial material, and I appreciate that the stereotypical images that show up in the Boondocks are part of McGruder’s project, I have to say, it’s really unfortunate that we haven’t seen more well-rounded representation of women. Yes, virtually every black man character in the Boondocks has some racialized character flaw - Tom and his, well, whiteness, Riley and his gangsta fetishization, the entire character of Uncle Ruckus - but when they stick around, they become endeared to us nonetheless. 

Sadly, the women haven’t done any better in season two. Sarah gets a larger role in one episode (previously she was known for making peach cobbler that looks like vomit, and not a lot else), where she basically falls apart from fandom upon meeting Usher during her and Tom’s anniversary dinner, and gets bonus points for being firm with Tom, but that’s about it - considering the episode’s major struggle focused on her, she didn’t get a whole lot of screen time. For black women, we have, well, several of A Pimp Named Slickback’s ‘bitches’ (which gets dropped a whole lot more often in this episode, incidentally), and we have Luna from the most recent episode, a kung-fu master who has been scarred from growing up in an abusive household and too many relationships with abusive men. I had hopes for her as a recurring character - she has an interesting character flaw and very apparent strength - but instead she just went batshit insane for the whole episode, and then comes around at the very end, deciding to take responsibility for herself. Except then she commits suicide by explosion in the Freemans’ driveway. Come on, people! What could it possibly take to get us a female character that isn’t a one-off? We’re creeping dangerously into misogyny, here.

pat m. 

Hello, what’s this?

E-props to Brendan Callum for sending this one along:

Race and Video Games

This call for papers is for a proposed panel to be held at (dis)junctions
2007: Malappropriation Nation, the University of California Riverside’s
14th Annual Humanities Graduate Conference on April 6-7, 2007.

This panel will explore race and video games with the intention of mapping
out some of the more pressing critical issues surrounding the inclusion or
exclusion of race in games. The game industry and game studies are both
interesting and exciting, but the discourse on race has been sparse and
focused primarily on forms of reductive representation.

Therefore, this panel is dedicated to critical works that push beyond a
focus on representation. Panelists are sought that attempt to describe and
analyze the visualization and political implications of race in games and
game cultures.

Potential contributions may involve, but are not limited to, some of the
following concepts:

1. Excessiveness
2. Invisibility/Visibility20
3. Minstrelsy
4. Political economy of games
5. Racial performance/passing
6. Logics of race at the interface and beyond
7. Default whiteness
8. Token representation
9. Blackness, Asianness, etc.
10. Masculinity and race
11. Race and gender
12. Orientalism
13. Character creation
14. Race in game design
15. Language issues
16. Cultural borrowing
17. Commodification

Submissions are encouraged that deal with any game, platform, genre,
theme, or era, as well as any aspect of game culture itself (fan networks,
review sites, manuals, peripherals, and so on).

Additionally, submissions that deal with race from different global
perspectives are of great interest.

Abstracts of 250-300 words should be e-mailed to Tanner Higgin at
thigg001@ucr.edu by February 16, 2007 (text in the body of the message;
please no attachments).

Jin tha MC Owns Rosie O’Donnell on his Xanga

Cop Jin tha MC’s latest track on his Xanga, feat. Donald Trump.

Fun stuff.

Search Queries

I’ve leafed through the search queries and decided that since some of you are coming here for very particular reasons, I might as well do you a favor and give you what you’re asking for. So, in order of popularity:

1) Carla Valenti Playboy Pics. Not really safe for work.

2) Street Fighter III Tier Listings. The top three are Ken, Chun-Li, and Yun, each as a soft counter to the other, as Ken can deal with Yun’s dive-kicks more readily than Chun-Li, and Chun-Li often has the advantage when it comes to pokes and footsies. After that, the tiers are fairly open for debate. I’d put Urien, Dudley, and Necro in the upper middle tier, Yang, Ryu, and Akuma in the middle tier, Alex, Twelve, and Elena in the lower middle tier, and Q and Sean at the bottom.

Now keep those hits coming!

Preview!

Hi everyone,

Classes and the holidays have been taking their toll on me lately, so don’t expect much in the way of substantive updating until after finals. However! I’m putting together two papers related to race and games for school, and hopefully they’ll find their way into a publication afterwards.

The first paper explores some of the musings I’ve had on Street Fighter II a little more deeply; specifically, I’m using forum posts from Shoryuken.com to examine how race is shaped in different competitive contexts (Asian American players being racialized as Asian in domestic tournaments and American in international competition against Japanese national players, for example). I never thought that I could get class credit for watching the Justin Wong - Daigo video from Evolution 2004.

The second paper is centered around Indigo Prophecy, and how Lucas Kane’s straight-white-maleness is what justifies his positioning as the protagonist of the movie. Fun stuff.

Race, Class, and Street Fighter, Part 1

Street Fighter II has one of the most interesting communities of game-players I’ve ever seen surrounding a video game. Go to Evolution next year and you’ll players of all colors, shapes, and sizes. Yes, other game arenas are gradually getting more and more diverse, but there’s something about the fighting game community that just feels different from other games. Lurk around the Shoryuken.com forums for a little bit and you’ll find this bizarre combination of nerdiness and street-savvy that, as far as I can tell, stands as unique to the fighting game scene.

First, my introduction: I started out playing SF2 when I was a wee youngun, spending my dollar-a-week-allowance on two games at the local 7-11 and eventually moving up to the SNES version. I didn’t really touch fighting games a whole lot after that, save for brief excursions into Mortal Kombat and Virtua Fighter, until I copped Gundam Wing: Endless Duel for the SNES while I was in high school, which led me to Street Fighter Alpha 3, which in turn led me to the BEARCade over at UC Berkeley - and the rest, as they say, is history. Since I’ve picked up the habit roughly six years ago, I’ve wandered arcades all over the world, from Northern and Southern California to Japan and the Philippines.

Throughout those years I’ve formulated my own personal hypothesis as to why the fighting game community has grown up the way it has. It goes something like this:

When Street Fighter II came out in 1991, video games were highly economically stratified. Computer gaming was still strictly the domain of “nerds”, as computers were incredibly expensive investments that were often bought as some kind of personal business investment rather than as a game machine first and foremost, and the kind of technical knowledge required to set up and support a computer as a gaming machine was highly specialized and therefore economically exclusive. Console gaming was more accessible in 1991, when the Super Nintendo had just made its debut, but it still wasn’t cheap. Personally, I remember having to pay upwards of $80 for SNES games in the mid-90s, where I recoil now at paying $50 for a brand-new PS2 game these days, and console games also required a television (at least another $100?) and the console itself ($250 for the SNES with Super Mario World and two controllers, I think).

So Street Fighter 2 entered the world with its cutting-edge flashy cartoon graphics, eight selectable characters, and adversarial arcade gameplay instead of the single-player score wars or co-op beat-’em-ups that arcades tended to specialize in pre-SF2, and took the world by storm. No doubt some of its success was due to the excellent execution and game design. But it was also due to the fact that it was perfect for the arcade game business model, which forces arcade operators to invest in an expensive piece of equipment and charges the players to play it, rather than have the players buy it themselves. In other words, in 1991 it probably cost about $2000 to play Commander Keen on your home/office computer, $400 to play Sonic the Hedgehog in your living room, and $.25 to play Street Fighter II while kicking back with your friends in an arcade. It’s comparisons like these that make me wonder why arcades ever died out.

To be continued…