Red 5 Standing By…

Not too long ago I told the Twitternets that I was moving to California, but I didn’t quite explain why. I figured that I didn’t want to jump the gun and announce it before I had even packed a single box. Well, I still haven’t packed a single box, but I have less than a week so I may as well throw it out there.

Starting on September 10th, I will be the new Web Content Editor for Red 5 Studios. For the uninitiated, Red 5 is the developer that’s working on the upcoming free-to-play FireFall. Since I signed a non-disclosure agreement I’m fairly certain that I can’t go into details, but what I can tell you from my time playing the internal build… yeah. Yeah. It’s shaping up to be freakin’ awesome. That, to me, was a huge relief.

One of the things that you don’t really hear about is that when you’re starting work at a new game studio (or even worse, your first game studio), one of your biggest fears is that the game you’re about to work on won’t be very good. Oh, sure, you tell yourself that you’re going to do everything in your power to improve the title, but when you’re coming to a studio that is already mid-way through the project, there’s only so much you can do. Luckily, between Star Wars: The Old Republic and (soon) FireFall, I can say with certainty that, so far, I’ve been able to avoid the dreaded “lost project”.

And, as was the policy when I worked at BioWare, this is the last you’ll ever see me talk about the game I’m working on at my blog.

It also helps that everybody I met at Red 5 is awesome, and I will be working alongside some of the most talented Community, Marketing, PR, and eSports professionals in the business (not to mention the insanely creative and skilled designers, programmers, artists, video team, etc. that I’ll also be working with from time to time). Yet as I suppress my excitement for this new chapter of my personal and professional life, I can’t help but also feel the weight of dread tugging at my very soul. You see, amidst the anticipation of working for a spectacular new group of people on a remarkable title at an amazing company, I also face a grim realization: I must move to Orange County.

Goddammit.

Posted on September 4, 2012 by James in Gaming

Misogyny, ‘Fake Geek Girls’, and the State of “Geek Culture”

Image Source: Los Angeles Times. Word Source: Me. I’m sorry.

Goddammit.

I didn’t want to write about this. In fact, I swore to myself that I would avoid this topic. It’s been addressed by a number of people already, most of whom are far more equipped to discuss the matter than I am. But, you know, it just keeps coming up. I am referring, of course, to this trend of misogyny, sexism, and overall douche-baggery that has done nothing but cast an unfortunate light on the gaming industry, and all of “geek culture” at large.

In the past year, a small minority of immature but incessantly loud people have made it known that they don’t like change. Their niche is no longer theirs alone, and hiding behind the banner of anonymity these people have taken to various gaming blogs and other public forums to vent their angers, frustrations, and ultimately, their fear of this impending change. For the uninitiated, this latest wave of geeky misogyny began with Anita Sarkeesian of Feminist Frequency, and her Kickstarter for a video series entitled “Tropes vs. Women in Video Games”. A seemingly innocent and harmless video series exploring the five major tropes that female game characters find themselves in, the backlash to the mere concept of the series was loud, angry, and utterly disgusting. It seems that many of the most egregious comments were removed from the project’s Kickstarter page, but Anita compiled a small collection of the worst offenders on her website.

Now, just as the vitriol surrounding Sarkeesian’s project was starting to die down, Ryan Perez (formerly of Destructoid) committed career suicide (as I said, formerly of Destructoid) by calling out Felicia Day on Twitter to ask her, no joke, “do you matter at all?” before going on to ask her if she could be considered anything but a glorified booth babe. When the Internet came down on him like a pack of hungry lions pouncing on a limping gazelle, Perez doubled-down on his initial stance – going so far as say to Wil Wheaton (yes, that Wil Wheaton), and I quote…

Go fuck yourself, you opportunistic puddle of miscarriage soup.

…full disclosure: I laughed. I laughed hard. It was inappropriate and grotesquely unprofessional, but I’ll be damned if that isn’t a funny cut-down in and of itself.

In the span of a few ill-thought tweets, Perez torpedoed any hopes he has of having a fortuitous career covering video games or “geek culture”. While some call him a misogynist, I am of the mindset that he was simply stupid beyond comprehension and didn’t have the forethought to either put the phone down until he sobered up (by his own admission, he was intoxicated when he tweeted her), or take the time to type “Felicia Day” into Wikipedia.

After these events, as well as other, smaller blips on the radar such as the Hitman: Absolution trailer (the one with the bondage nuns), the gaming industry and the cult of geek at large has become very aware, and somewhat sensitive, of the prevalent misogyny that has been bubbling under the surface for far longer than it should have.

And then a blogger for CNN inadvertantly implied that women need to pass some kind of smell test before they can be taken seriously within geekdom, while simultaneously throwing one of the most historically important and influential groups of women in the gaming industry under the bus.

…Goddammit.

Posted on July 26, 2012 by James in Gaming

Video Games are Going in the Toilet

Even with games like Angry Birds and the dozens of properties that Zynga ~~shamelessly rips off~~ takes inspiration from making millions upon millions of dollars, there there is still a sizable chunk of people out there who will argue that social/mobile gaming isn’t “real gaming”, whatever the hell that means. I think it’s safe to say that, in 2012, people who have this mindset are blithering idiots. The truth of the matter is that social games and mobile games are here for the long-haul, and I argue that a sizable part of their success can be traced directly to where you do your business. After all, we’re all guilty of taking our Game Boy, or our DS, or our PSP, or our iPad (for the sake of this post, “iPad” includes any tablet), or phone into the bathroom to squeeze in one or two rounds of Bejeweled or Fruit Ninja. Sure, it’s one of those things we don’t talk about, but we’ve all done it once or twice in our lives.

I believe that Toilet Gaming (admittedly not the sexiest or most marketable term) is largely responsible for the rise of social and mobile games in the past few years. It hasn’t been a conscious effort, of course — I doubt anyone has perused the iTunes App Store while thinking “what’s a great game to play while I’m dropping the kids off at the pool?”. But at the same time, the truth of the matter is that people want and, in many instances, expect to be entertained all the time. This is why most people listen to the music in the shower. This is why a lot of people surf Facebook or Twitter when at work, and this is why an overwhelming majority of smartphone owners actually own a smartphone.

Now, some people are going to roll their eyes at me, or say that the entire notion of the existence of a “toilet gamer” demographic is silly. To them, and to everyone else, I pose this question: how many times have you gone into the bathroom and emerged ten, fifteen, twenty or more minutes later because you were immersed in a game of Fruit Ninja, or Tetris?

Posted on May 15, 2012 by James in Gaming

The Real Cost of Being a Gamer…

…because no self-respecting player of video games calls themselves a “video gamer.”

If you’re a follower of gaming blogs, or indeed are reading this blog and therefore know who the hell I am, you’ve probably seen this piece from Bloomberg. In it, writer Jennifer Prince calculates the “true cost” of being a ~~video~~ gamer. SPOILER ALERT: her final tally was $17,077. Her “calculations” were based on a family of four living in the San Francisco bay area, and this is highlighted a number of times throughout the piece. Unfortunately, prices don’t fluctuate from San Francisco to, say, Des Moines. An Xbox 360 costs the same amount of money in the Mission District as it does in Omaha, Nebraska or Austin, Texas (represent!).

Regardless of that, I found the concept of the “real cost” of gaming to be an intriguing one. Unfortunately, once I started reading the article it quickly became apparent that Ms. (or Mrs., I don’t know) Prince had published something that didn’t represent the “real” gaming community in the least. Rather than rail against Ms. Prince, however, I think it’d be far more productive to correct her math. So that’s what I’m going to do. After the break, I’ll do a page-by-page breakdown of Ms. Prince’s calculations, with the occasional explanation of why my numbers are the way they are.

Posted on January 30, 2012 by James in Gaming