If you're someone (like me) whose life is largely taken up by what's on the Internet, chances are good you've heard of a game on Adult Swim's website called Robot Unicorn Attack. It's a simple little game wherein you control of a robot unicorn who is ceaselessly running from the left side of the screen to the right. You can't change its direction, you can only tell it to jump over pits or smash through obstacles. While you run, a counter steadily ticks upwards until you inevitably fall to your doom or crash and explode against a wall. You get three chances to accumulate as many points as possible, and then you post your high score and laugh at all the people who aren't as good as you. It's simple, fast, and easy to pick up. And it's one of the most relentlessly addicting games you'll ever play.
The game has exploded in popularity since its release, particularly amongst Drury's theatre department; almost all of them have at least tried this game once, and almost everyone who tried hasn't stopped playing since. But why is it so addicting? For that matter, what makes any addicting game addicting? Why are games like this, and games like World of Warcraft so easily able to suck our lives out through our fingers?
Well, like I said, Robot Unicorn Attack is a very accessible game, very easy to pick up, and the average playing round won't last more than three minutes. But what about a game like World of Warcraft, or, really, any online role-playing game? These games are so full of complexities and intricacies that only people who really like gaming will have the patience to pick up. But these games are legendary for their ability to suck the time away and leave us hollow-eyed, drooling shells who've forgotten what day it is or even when we last showered. So, something isn't addicting just based on how easy it is to play. What's the other factor?
The answer isn't all that complicated. It's a very simple psychological trick to get us to come back again and again.
Humans love accomplishment. They love the feeling they get when they're rewarded for something. And that's what these games do. They give you constant reward. When you start a role-playing game, it's almost insultingly easy to level up. Every five minutes or so, you're either getting more money, or getting stronger, or getting better armor and weapons. So you think, "Oh, well, that was easy. I'll just keep playing and see how much stronger I can get." So you keep playing. Gradually, the amount of time you spend between each level-up increases. It suddenly takes you ten minutes to get to the next level. Then fifteen. Then twenty. Thirty. An hour. Before you know it, you're spending five hours at a time doing nothing but casting fire spells at trees, or bonking wild wolves on the head with your sword just so you can try to recapture that feeling of accomplishment you had in the beginning. And Robot Unicorn Attack, with its constantly ticking timer, gives you endless incentive to keep trying over and over again.
You can play the game here. Be warned: your soul belongs to it as soon as you start playing.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Thursday, September 23, 2010
The ESRB Has No Obligation to Your Kids
http://www.escapistmagazine.com/news/view/103423-72-Percent-of-Adults-Support-California-Game-Law-UPDATED
Idiots.
For those of you who don't know what the article above means, I'll explain.
A while back, California attempted to pass new legislation that would bypass the ESRB (the ratings system for video games) and make it completely illegal for video games to be sold to minors. As in, fined and/or arrested.
Of course, the legislation was shot down because it's completely stupid, but not only is the state of California appealing the case to the Supreme Court, a good chunk of the American people think this legislation should be instated, as the article says. The people's logic is that their children need to be protected from the big bad Grand Theft Auto, and the only way to do that is by, instead of taking personal responsibility for their children, forcing the gaming industry to do it for them.
Are you kidding me? Why should the gaming industry be forced to do your job because you're too incompetent to do it yourselves? There aren't any laws preventing the sale of mature movies to children. Any. Not one. Any punishments regarding the sale of mature material to minors is something handled at a local level, by Wal-Mart managers and theatre employees. I worked at a movie theatre in high school. You know what happens if a kid sneaks into an R-rated movie? Nothing. NOTHING. Imagine if you had to pay hundreds of dollars because some prick kid got past you in the ticket line.
And if you try to say, "Well, the system they have to keep minors away from violent videogames doesn't work," you know what I have to say to that? This.
BAM. Graph'd.
It's HARDER to get ahold of adult games than movies.
If you need more proof, on a more personal side, I still get carded when I buy an M-rated game, and I've been of legal age for three years. Every time. I've never been able to get an M-rated without having to show my ID.
The system in place now works just fine. It's the same system that's been in place for years. Of course stuff's bound to slip through the cracks, but an 80 percent success rate obviously means something is working. Any claims that they need to do more to protect your precious children are just wrong. Why don't you try being parents, you assholes, instead of blaming others for what you're incompetent at doing?
Idiots.
For those of you who don't know what the article above means, I'll explain.
A while back, California attempted to pass new legislation that would bypass the ESRB (the ratings system for video games) and make it completely illegal for video games to be sold to minors. As in, fined and/or arrested.
Of course, the legislation was shot down because it's completely stupid, but not only is the state of California appealing the case to the Supreme Court, a good chunk of the American people think this legislation should be instated, as the article says. The people's logic is that their children need to be protected from the big bad Grand Theft Auto, and the only way to do that is by, instead of taking personal responsibility for their children, forcing the gaming industry to do it for them.
Are you kidding me? Why should the gaming industry be forced to do your job because you're too incompetent to do it yourselves? There aren't any laws preventing the sale of mature movies to children. Any. Not one. Any punishments regarding the sale of mature material to minors is something handled at a local level, by Wal-Mart managers and theatre employees. I worked at a movie theatre in high school. You know what happens if a kid sneaks into an R-rated movie? Nothing. NOTHING. Imagine if you had to pay hundreds of dollars because some prick kid got past you in the ticket line.
And if you try to say, "Well, the system they have to keep minors away from violent videogames doesn't work," you know what I have to say to that? This.
BAM. Graph'd.
It's HARDER to get ahold of adult games than movies.
If you need more proof, on a more personal side, I still get carded when I buy an M-rated game, and I've been of legal age for three years. Every time. I've never been able to get an M-rated without having to show my ID.
The system in place now works just fine. It's the same system that's been in place for years. Of course stuff's bound to slip through the cracks, but an 80 percent success rate obviously means something is working. Any claims that they need to do more to protect your precious children are just wrong. Why don't you try being parents, you assholes, instead of blaming others for what you're incompetent at doing?
Monday, September 13, 2010
Voice Actors Still Act, You Know
Voice actors are like the untouchables of the acting world. There's an unspoken class system to acting, with movie actors at the top, followed by TV actors, then stage actors, with voice actors at the very bottom. Whenever people talk about acting in cartoons or video games, they do so with a smirk and maybe a dismissive gesture. I remember one time where I was talking to a friend about Up and I asked him, "So, who was the main character? Someone famous, right?" And he responded with, "Yeah, Ed Asner played him...I mean, did the voice for him," and scoffed to himself. Or another time when a different friend and I were playing a game where we came up with really bad actors who would play us in movies about our lives. Laughing, my friend said, "You know who should play you? Haley Joel Osment."
"Um, you mean the guy who got nominated for an Oscar as a kid?"
"Yeah, nominated, and what's he doing now?"
"I think he's the main character in Kingdom Hearts."
"Yeah. Voice acting!"
So, why exactly is voice acting less legitimate than any other kind? You're still playing a character, aren't you? You're still portraying a person with their own thoughts, feelings, goals, wants, needs, and experiences, aren't you? But for some reason, no one cares about it. Not even the people who hire voice actors, generally. I mean, you can usually count on quality acting from big budget productions like Disney or Pixar movies; or, on the television side, there's Family Guy, which has great voice acting, regardless of how shitty the show itself is. But in something like, say, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the acting just....isn't good. All the actors, main and supporting, are flat and stilted, and the title character in particular has a bad case of the mushmouth. Now, the show itself is pretty fantastic, and the actors do get better as they go, but it isn't nearly the level of quality of something like Family Guy.
It's focused on even less in video games. Voice acting is usually the very last step in the game-making process. The game is worked on for months, maybe years, and then they shuttle a couple actors in a dark studio, have them recite the lines for two days, and they're done. This is why in most games the characters' mouth movements don't match the words being said.
Translated games are the absolute worst. They don't even try sometimes. I mean, obviously something is bound to get lost in the translation, but if you've ever watched a Hayao Miyazaki movie in English then you know that quality acting can still be taken from a dubbed work. The most horrifying example is Final Fantasy X, an otherwise fantastic game that was almost ruined by how shitty the voicework was. Take this, the most infamous scene of the game, for example.
The whole game is like that.
Or how about this, from the original Resident Evil?
But I digress. So, why is voice acting such a disrespected branch of the craft? The only real reason I can think of is that since we're such visual creatures, there's a certain disconnect that occurs when we hear a voice, but we aren't seeing the speaker. When we think of iconic cartoon or game characters, the first thing we go to is what they look like. If I were to go up to you and say, "Winnie-the-Pooh," the first thing that'd pop into your head wouldn't be one of his trademark phrases, like, "Oh, bother," or, "Think-think-think-think," but rather a silent image of the Disney icon.
But the memorable image isn't the only thing that makes him an icon. It's his raspy voice, the way he speaks, the inflections he makes, the way he interacts with the people and animals around him. Dug from Up isn't remembered simply because he's a talking dog. It's the lovable, dumb-guy delivery of every line that makes him so very quotable.
Would Gollum have made such a lasting impression if his voice wasn't the wet, gravelly, throat-killing snarl it was?
Would Mark Hamill's Joker from Batman: The Animated Series have scared the shit out of us as kids if his laugh wasn't the insane giggle it was?
Voice actors have the same job that all actors do: to play the part, and play it well. To make a memorable experience for the audience and to stick in people's minds long after the movie's ended. In a way, voice actors need to draw on even more skill than most since they must maintain good chemistry and interaction with the other characters while never actually speaking to or even seeing them. And it's not like voice acting is populated only by people who weren't lucky enough to make it in Hollywood; celebrities have also given their voices, including Christian Bale, David Spade, Patrick Stewart, and Ed Asner. Is Christian Bale less of an actor because he was in Howl's Moving Castle? Is David Spade less respectable because he appeared in the Spyro games?
Actually, don't answer that last one.
"Um, you mean the guy who got nominated for an Oscar as a kid?"
"Yeah, nominated, and what's he doing now?"
"I think he's the main character in Kingdom Hearts."
"Yeah. Voice acting!"
So, why exactly is voice acting less legitimate than any other kind? You're still playing a character, aren't you? You're still portraying a person with their own thoughts, feelings, goals, wants, needs, and experiences, aren't you? But for some reason, no one cares about it. Not even the people who hire voice actors, generally. I mean, you can usually count on quality acting from big budget productions like Disney or Pixar movies; or, on the television side, there's Family Guy, which has great voice acting, regardless of how shitty the show itself is. But in something like, say, Avatar: The Last Airbender, the acting just....isn't good. All the actors, main and supporting, are flat and stilted, and the title character in particular has a bad case of the mushmouth. Now, the show itself is pretty fantastic, and the actors do get better as they go, but it isn't nearly the level of quality of something like Family Guy.
It's focused on even less in video games. Voice acting is usually the very last step in the game-making process. The game is worked on for months, maybe years, and then they shuttle a couple actors in a dark studio, have them recite the lines for two days, and they're done. This is why in most games the characters' mouth movements don't match the words being said.
Translated games are the absolute worst. They don't even try sometimes. I mean, obviously something is bound to get lost in the translation, but if you've ever watched a Hayao Miyazaki movie in English then you know that quality acting can still be taken from a dubbed work. The most horrifying example is Final Fantasy X, an otherwise fantastic game that was almost ruined by how shitty the voicework was. Take this, the most infamous scene of the game, for example.
The whole game is like that.
Or how about this, from the original Resident Evil?
But I digress. So, why is voice acting such a disrespected branch of the craft? The only real reason I can think of is that since we're such visual creatures, there's a certain disconnect that occurs when we hear a voice, but we aren't seeing the speaker. When we think of iconic cartoon or game characters, the first thing we go to is what they look like. If I were to go up to you and say, "Winnie-the-Pooh," the first thing that'd pop into your head wouldn't be one of his trademark phrases, like, "Oh, bother," or, "Think-think-think-think," but rather a silent image of the Disney icon.
But the memorable image isn't the only thing that makes him an icon. It's his raspy voice, the way he speaks, the inflections he makes, the way he interacts with the people and animals around him. Dug from Up isn't remembered simply because he's a talking dog. It's the lovable, dumb-guy delivery of every line that makes him so very quotable.
Would Gollum have made such a lasting impression if his voice wasn't the wet, gravelly, throat-killing snarl it was?
Would Mark Hamill's Joker from Batman: The Animated Series have scared the shit out of us as kids if his laugh wasn't the insane giggle it was?
Voice actors have the same job that all actors do: to play the part, and play it well. To make a memorable experience for the audience and to stick in people's minds long after the movie's ended. In a way, voice actors need to draw on even more skill than most since they must maintain good chemistry and interaction with the other characters while never actually speaking to or even seeing them. And it's not like voice acting is populated only by people who weren't lucky enough to make it in Hollywood; celebrities have also given their voices, including Christian Bale, David Spade, Patrick Stewart, and Ed Asner. Is Christian Bale less of an actor because he was in Howl's Moving Castle? Is David Spade less respectable because he appeared in the Spyro games?
Actually, don't answer that last one.
Thursday, September 9, 2010
The Plan
I'll be writing mostly about video games that I'm playing. Sometimes they'll be reviews and sometimes they'll be retrospectives or nostalgia trips. Or, if I don't feel like doing that, I'll talk about cartoons, because I love cartoons.
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