March 2011 – Page 2 – Blue Ink Alchemy

Month: March 2011 (page 2 of 5)

It’s Just Too Easy

I know this is an issue that has been addressed elsewhere. In the majority of modern first-person shooters, even ones touted for their realism, all you have to do in order to survive a firefight in which you’ve been wounded is crouch behind a chest-high wall. Your health regenerates by itself. I’m not entirely sure when this trend began, but it’s removed an element of risk from those games and made them easier than they necessarily need to be.

A similar problem crops up in storytelling from time to time. Rather than carefully constructing the narrative with disparate and possibly contradictory plot threads in the beginning to be woven together at the end, some stories have no qualms about stating everything for the audience as plainly as possible. And some of these tales become embarassingly popular, as the bland plotlines and flat characters spoon-feed ‘entertainment’ to the waiting masses. Go back and watch how many times Anakin & Padme say they’re in love in comparison to the times when they actually show it. Watch Shia LeBouf project danger and tension by yelling a lot instead of wearing an expression other than dull surprise. Listen to the delivery of lines in a Gears of War, God of War or Call of Duty sequel and see if you can discern emotions other than those related to macho swagger.

Now, I’m not saying every game has to be a Killer7 or a BioShock. Not every film will be able to match The Usual Suspects or Inception. Few novels will measure up to A Game Of Thrones or Oryx and Crake. Consider me to be of the opinion that writers who make an attempt to show what’s going on instead of just telling, who opt to challenge their audience rather than making things easier on them, are going to be met with more success and repeat business. Let doubts linger in the shadows of the narrative and characters keep their agendas hidden until the last possible moment. This will engage the audience and make them invested in seeing the story through until the end.

Going back to the bit about regenerating health, the point I’m trying to make is that the player should be empowered to determine how much they risk and how often. If I’m playing Half-Life 2, I might pass up a health station because I know there’s a hard firefight right around the corner. In Dragon Age I churn out health poultices and study Spirit Healer spells to keep my party alive during combat. Some forethought has to be invested, but the end result is a more rewarding experience that I’m interested in repeating.

Writing really isn’t all that different.

Ninety-Nine Cent Round-Up

March 23, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 1 Comment

I support $1 coins, incidentally.

There’s been a debate going on amongst some of my fellow writers, and it’s past time I put in my two cents on the subject. Before I get to my thoughts on the matter, though, I highly recommend you do two things.

First, go on over to Terribleminds’ “The Care And Feeding Of Your Favorite Authors” and follow the instructions encased therein. Don’t worry, it just involves reading a few posts, nothing involving shotguns or whiskey or hobos or 4 D-cell powered vibrators.

Second, read this Mess Of Free Words On The Whole 99 Cent Thing on Going Ballistic. Come on back here when you’re done.

Lots of good stuff, there. I especially like Cat’s point that folks willing to spend $5.99 on a latte should be okay spending it on a book (just in case you missed it in Chuck’s post). And an anthology of short fiction shouldn’t differ in price too much from a novel; it can be just as tough to write one coherent 80,000 word narrative as it can be to write 8 10,000 shorts. Still, I have to admit I’m in agreement with most of my peers: $0.99 is too little for full-length fiction.

Don’t get me wrong, I understand the economical reasoning for wanting to spend less for more. Me and my ilk are not called starving artists because we’re flush with disposable income. So any opportunity we have to keep from going under while drawing in entertainment to help maintain our sanity is a good one. That doesn’t necessarily mean that dollar book on the e-store is a decent read, however.

The few e-books I’ve picked up for that low a price have been promotional or sale items from known quantities. Chuck and Seth Godin have established reputations, at least in the circles I travel through. It’s the unknown that makes me leery, the as-yet-unpublished authors tossing full-length novels on the Kindle store for less than a dollar with one five-star review from their mothers. I know this might seem like a nasty, negative attitude to have towards my fellow burgeoning bards, but the fact of the matter is my time is as precious as my money, and there’s only slightly more time than money for me to spread around. I’d like to avoid wasting it, if I can, which means being discerning about what and when I read.

It’s one thing to undercut the competition, like the big-name publishing houses asking $13 for the e-book version of a $12.99 hardcover when the $6,99 paperback is about to be released. It’s another to do it to the degree of seeming desperate. You have to sell your work, sure, but you don’t want to sell yourself short.

Self-publication on the electronic market seems more and more like the business model of freelancing in general. You won’t be charging as much as the big guys, but you need to be realistic in just how little you can charge. In order to earn, you need to set both your price points and end-user expectations appropriately. You want people to feel like they’ve made a worthy investment, that the services or entertainment they’ve paid for was worth the money. At the same time, we want to be paid what we’re worth and keep ourselves fed to do more work and, you know, keep on living.

It really boils down to a matter beyond market research and profit analysis, to one of personal confidence: How much to you stand behind your work? How much would you expect to pay for something similar? How willing are you to market it, to get out there and sell it? What are you offering that nobody else on the Kindle store can, and how much do people need it even if they don’t know they do until they see your listing?

I don’t think e-books are going to replace the real thing any time soon, and I’m going to continue to pursue many ways of getting my words in front of fresh new eyeballs. This might be another way of doing it, but I’d like to try and do it right, without selling myself short in the process.

Perception

March 22, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

In the broadest possible terms, Jungian psychology divides the self into three parts, much like Freud does, but Jung’s divisions have less to do with urges than they do with perception. There is the self we are, the self we believe ourselves to be, and the self perceived by others. With sufficient observation and self-awareness, it’s possible to discern how others perceive us and even alter that perception. Naturally, it’s something we can apply to our characters as much as ourselves.

“William Wallace is seven feet tall!”
“Yes, I’ve heard! Kills men by the hundreds, and if he were here he’d consume the English with fireballs from his eyes and bolts o’ lightning from his arse!”

Heroes, protagonists and so-called ‘good guys’ rarely pay much attention to how they’re perceived. We accept and, on some level, expect a level of humility from most heroes that precludes them from worrying about what others think overmuch. Occasionally, you’ll have somebody like Tony Stark, who uses the media’s perception of his persona not only to call attention to the evils he fights against but also to obfuscate the true depth of his character.

For the most part, though, our heroes tend to be more like John McClain or Aragorn, avoiding undue attention as much as possible so they can focus on the task at hand. The perceptions others have of them grow of their own accord, and things that they do in the pursuit of their goal become legendary tales to those who hear of their feats. It’s how the humble policeman and the reluctant ranger become heroes and kings.

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist.”

Villains, on the other hand, make use of their perceptions often. Most of the time, it’s in the course of playing up their menace. The more scared you are of someone, the less likely you are to stand up to them. Some of them go beyond mere intimdation to craft a perception of themselves in the minds of others so powerful that they don’t need to look, say or do anything out of the ordinary.

Sure, messing with Megatron or Skeletor is a bad idea. You don’t assume, however, that picking on the little guy in the running crew could land you in big trouble. Many true villains cultivate perceptions of quiet, introverted advisors even as they steer the course of the world around them through quiet manipulation.

“So… I’m chasing this guy. Wait… wait, no, he’s chasing me.”

Finally there are those with conditions that might color the perception of others regardless of any moral stance they have. When they become aware of these perceptions, and the expectations that can come along with them, they can be just as manipulative of those perceptions as the canniest, most insidious villain. It causes other characters to question what they know and how they’ve come to know it.

“The dwarf’s a major threat? The psychopathic murder’s polite and cultured? The apologetic man with the short-term memory loss has ice water for blood?”

And let us not forget the perceptions of the audience. A character might seem to be utterly irredeemable in their eyes, until you allow them into that character’s point of view or expand upon their background. Let the audience spend time with them, fill in some of the blanks they might have populated with their preconceptions, and watch their perceptions change. When it happens, the audience will often take a moment to realize and appreciate the shift, then proceed to seek more story. And we, as storytellers, should not hesitate to oblige.

Game Review: Dungeon Overlord beta

March 21, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

Sometimes, you just want to be the bad guy. Quite a few games cater to these tastes and moods, from being able to select the ‘evil’ characters in a fighting game to full Villain Protagonist games such as Legacy of Kain and Overlord. Even games in the style of The Sims are not immune to this. A while back there was a game called Dungeon Keeper, in which the player builds, populates and militarizes a malicious, mountainous lair in order to terrorize the countryside and bring doom upon the heads of would-be heroes looking to steal hard-earned treasure mined from deep within the earth. That style of game is alive and well, now, in a little SoE Facebook game called Dungeon Overlord.

Not available on iPod, iPad or iAnything until they make nice with Flash.

Yeah, it’s a Facebook game. Eventually, gamers are going to have to face the fact that this sort of venue for gaming is growing, just as consoles did back in the mid-80s. Before the PS3 and X-Box, there was the SNES and the Genesis, like the NES and Atari 2600 before them. With things like FarmVille and Mafia Wars being the first tentative steps forward in using social networking sites as a platform for games, I think it’s a more productive attitude to consider those early titles relics of the past best left in the annals of history, Dungeon Overlord may end up a footnote as well, but as it stands, it’s head and shoulders above any old farm or any number of trips to the East Side for Uncle Vito. It’s the Legend of Zelda to Farmville’s Breakout.

Anyway, Dungeon Overlord’s premise is that of its similarly titled ancestor. You, as the Overlord of the title, begin with a small dungeon at the base of a mountain, a couple resources to mine and a handful of loyal goblin minions to do your bidding. They’ll need places to sleep and eat between shifts in the mine, so you need to build these things, as well as a means to generate food and a place to keep your stuff. Eventually, you’ll be recruiting orcs to carry out raids as well as protect your investment, warlocks to conduct research and so on. Once you’ve built up enough of a force and upgraded several rooms, you can expand to a new dungeon, raise hell on the do-gooders in the land and otherwise amuse yourself in ways Skeletor could only dream of, and without the constant threat of some blond-haired beefcake smashing your face in.

I feel a bit like The Monarch from Venture Brothers. “MINIONS!!”

One of the things that differentiates Dungeon Overlord from other games of its ilk is the simple ways it enhances the established experiences of such things. The creatures, rooms and features are rendered and shaded in a way that gives them weight that the simplistic styles of FarmVille and the like use; and the fact that all theses things have unique animations definitely give Dungeon Overlord the graphical edge on games like Mafia Wars. A series of ‘quests’ at the beginning guide the new player through basic construction tasks and establish goals in a very smooth way without imposing too much structure upon the build process.

While it’s nice to have this freedom, Dungeon Overlord doesn’t seem to operate under the premise that your victims can, in fact, retaliate if they get raided too often. Sure, there are no ultra-male hero protagonists that will demolish everything in sight to pillage your dungeons, but the occasional sortie of footmen and high elves might pay you a visit with swords and bows. You might not know about it until you check in after a few hours. Thankfully, it’s not too difficult to build and set up defenses, and I have yet to see a truly overwhelming force breach my gates. It also bears mentioning that, being a Facebook game, SOE provides a variety of services through the medium of microtransactions.

Hmm. Who would I like to pillage today?

However, at the time of this writing, I’ve yet to drop a single dime on Sony’s in-game cash, and I doubt I’ll be doing so. Provided you upgrade rooms like your mine, vault and workshop adequately, you’ll generate income and materials steadily enough that it should not be necessary for you to spend real money on fake resources and crafting queues. Unless you absolutely, positively cannot live without an ogre hammock in your den. Even then, somebody might have already built one and put it up in the Auction H- sorry, Regional Market for purchase. And if your goblins are mining gold like crazy but you just don’t have enough leather or what have you, buying stuff from other players within the game is a better alternative than breaking out the credit card.

Dungeon Overlord is still in beta. It will occasionally throw up a maintenance screen, refuse to load properly or misinterpret your clicks. I can’t shake the feeling, through, that SOE has the right idea. If you have a Facebook account and are even remotely interested in something like this, I’d say give it a look. It’ll be interesting to see what changes are made once the beta period ends. Whenever that will be.

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The Naked Gun

March 18, 2011 / BlueInkAlchemist / 0 Comments

[audio:http://www.blueinkalchemy.com/uploads/naked_gun.mp3]

The parody is hardly a new form of artistic expression. People have been making fun of things other people do since time immemorial. I’m sure there are some cave drawings that, in context, are downright hilarious. For a few years the premiere comedy team for cinematic parody were David Zucker, Jim Abrahams and Jerry Zucker. One of the finest examples of their work came about in the form of a series of films that have been mercilessly pursued, copied and mined for ideas. It all began with The Naked Gun.

Okay, I lie. It all began with Police Squad!, a television show aimed at taking the piss out of the hard-bitten noir detective shows like Dragnet. The Naked Gun is the full-length film that grew out of that show, starring Leslie Neilsen as Detective Lieutenant Frank Drebin. Drebin’s a decent cop in a bad town, narrating the particulars of the case at hand and his feelings for Jane, a beautiful woman who seems to keep getting mixed up with slick corporate villains. With this somewhat loose outline of a plot, the writers worry less about the drama inherent to noir crime yarns and more about the right timing of a sight gag, the best snappy comeback and the most over-the-top way in which they can tackle a pop culture target.

When Leslie Neilsen passed away I was among those who mourned. His sense of comedic timing and elastic facial expressions were coupled with a fine form of gravitas which allowed him to deliver punchlines with the sort of straight-faced stoniness that’d put the detectives on Law & Order to shame. I consider the Naked Gun films to be among his finest work, though he also really shined in Airplane! to the point that “Don’t call me Shirley” creeped into the common parlance of anybody fashioning themselves as a top-tier wiseass.

I dare you not to laugh at this great man.

There are two reasons I feel the comedy in these movies work as well as it does. First, the characters aren’t in on the joke. While the actions that take place and the circumstances in which these people find themselves might be ridiculous, the characters themselves very rarely nudge or even wink at the audience to make sure they get the punchline. The things that are clearly ludicrous to us as observers is unlikely to be commented upon by the characters in the scene, as if they’re oblivious to things like odd chalk outlines or the particular detail given by sculptors to the genitals of the statues outside the high floor of an apartment building. The characters might not comment on these things, but there they are, for the audience to behold and laugh at.

Which leads me to the other reason the Naked Gun movies are rightfully considered go-to examples of well-done parodies. The movie assumes the audience is observant, if not smart. Instead of inserting pregnant pauses, obvious musical stings or other shallow means of calling attention to a moment the writers fell all over themselves laughing, the gags and bits play out in a very smooth, almost breakneck manner in terms of pace and execution. You might be wondering what the difference is between The Naked Gun and, say, one of those Scary Movie sequels.

There’s a joke about the Wayans Brothers in here somewhere…

It seems to me the many of those sequels and spin-off movies act a bit like carbon copies of The Naked Gun. While the content has been dutifully duplicated and updated with even more pop culture references and gross bodily humor, the intelligence behind that humor, the ability of the actors to play their scenes straight and the assumption that the audience doesn’t need their metaphorical hands held to know when to laugh are all absent. Due to this, the humor suffers, and if the comedy in your comedy movie isn’t funny, you haven’t got much left, have you?

That said, comedy is largely a subjective thing. It’s a case of one man’s meat being another man’s poison. I mean, there are people out there who find Grandma’s Boy or Trapped in Paradise hilarious, I’m sure. Still, I’m going to go out on a limb here, and say that The Naked Gun and its sequels have a sort of timeless, universal appeal. They can find a place on just about any Netflix queue. I mean my wife, who typically isn’t a fan of comedies, found them to be pretty funny. And this is the reason I’m tackling these films, you see, because this day, the 18th of March, is her birthday. She recently retooled her blog and there’s lots of content to come there, so why don’t you swing by and check her out? Let it not be said I forget my loved ones on their birthday, even if the only day-of present I can provide is a shameless plug.

Josh Loomis can’t always make it to the local megaplex, and thus must turn to alternative forms of cinematic entertainment. There might not be overpriced soda pop & over-buttered popcorn, and it’s unclear if this week’s film came in the mail or was delivered via the dark & mysterious tubes of the Internet. Only one thing is certain… IT CAME FROM NETFLIX.

Month: March 2011 (page 2 of 5)

It’s Just Too Easy

Ninety-Nine Cent Round-Up

Perception

Game Review: Dungeon Overlord beta

IT CAME FROM NETFLIX! The Naked Gun

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