Things I’ve Learned From Video Games Part II

You all knew that this day would come. Perhaps, however, it's a little detrimental to my cause to note that the prequel to this blog was posted over six months ago.

But that doesn't mean that there are not a lot of things to learn in video games. It's kind of like any other form of art, most things that you experience in a video game can't really be shared by explaining what happened, but by going through the experience yourself. I've kinda stopped telling the genereal public (although I'm admitting it here) that I cried when Aeris died in FF7. Because although we can all understand someone getting a little teary eyed after reading a book like "Where the Red Fern Grows", or a person who cried in the final minutes of Titanic, nobody can seem to understand the concept of becoming just as emotionaly involved with a video game.

But I digress...

The point is, it's not hard to find artistic beauty in video games, or any other medium I should mention. The challenge is finding snidbits of video games that can be recognized as contributions to the human race without having to go through the whole experience.

So I think one of the most influential video games for me may be the Metal Gear Solid series. Metal Gear Solid is described on the cover as "Tactical Espionage Action" and involves sneaking around. The storyline is mindblowing, and spans from the 1960's to 2014, and involves giant robots that can shoot nuclear missles, clones, possesions through arm transplants, and secret societies that run at least three of the major world governments. Believe me, it sounds silly, but really, amazing game.

So how could something that sounds so... incredible?... be of any significant value to our society? Well, I think one of the most important aspects is that it has a sort of respect for life. In most of Snake and Raiden's Missions they are usually encouraged to sneak past the enemy in order to avoid being discovered, rather than shooting everybody in the head. Your inventory does not only include AKs and C4, but you usually have the option of using a traquilizer gun, or a stun grenade, rather than a video game's usual tools of distruction. But a tranquilizer is so much slower and harder to use, why would anybody want to use that?

I think for me, the answer to that was demonstrated in Metal Gear Solid 3: SnakeEater.

One of my favorite things to do in SnakeEater when I first started playing it was to sneak up behing an enemy, grab him and slit his throat... yeah... again sounds detrimental to my cause right? Just wait a moment. Anyway, I would go out of my way to do this move, even though it's harder to do than to shoot an enemy, or even just to break his neck. So needless to say, I had done this to a lot of poor unsuspecting Russian gaurds.

Near the end of the game, you run into a guy named The Sorrow. He's already dead, but when he was alive he acted as a medium between the world of the living and the world of the dead. As you are forced to walk slowly towards him down a river, every single enemy that you have killed in the game walks down the river towards you, screaming about the pain, head rolling on their shoulder if their neck was broken, hanging by the skin if their throat was slit. I suddenly realized that by killing so many people, I had made it harder for myself here at this point of the game. Then as the scientists began walking down the river towards me I realized that most of these people I didn't even need to kill. Almost amusingly, and perhaps because I'm a "sensitive guy" I began to think to myself that in real life, when wars are fought, the "bad guys" that we fight against are only fighting for their country. They may not even be fighting for the same cause as their leaders, but only becasue they believed in their homelands, just as we do. Back home, they have friends, family, religions, goals, dreams. Those are the kind of people fighting on the battle field, on both sides. When they die, somebody back home is sad.

I'm not sure if that is what Hideo Kojima, the creator of the Metal Gear series really had in mind when he wrote that aspect of the game, but I wouldn't be surprised if he did. To me, he's like the Steven Speilburg of video games, because not only does he intend to enterertain, but he intends to make us think. Becauae of Kojima, evertime I raise a gun in a video game I instinctively think about that soldier's family. I suddenly think of it as a person, and I try to come up with other ways to get past the situation... even if it means losing a little bit of health. (that sounds ridiculous... what a sacrifice, huh? lol)( come to think of it, however, I don't play very many game in which the enemies are human beings)(Metal gear Solid may be the only game I own in which the enemies are human... and as I'm explaining, there are plenty of ways to get out of killing).

But then again... what do I know. Jack Thompson will tell you all I'm doing is "training" by playing my "Murder Simulators." Be careful, I may be the next one to break, as scary as I am.

But this is what I am trying to get to. This is why I want to make video games, becasue games are another medium in which feelings, emotions, and beliefs can be expressed. In my literature class in high school, my teacher distilled upon me the idea of immortality in a way I had never thought of it before. Everybody wants to be immortal, but we all die. All that we can hope for is to be remembered. William Shakespeare is immortal in the sense that everybody knows who he is, and what he did, although perhaps only a few of us have enjoyed his work as we should. Perhaps the rising generation of gamers will not play Final Fantasy 7 becuase the 1997 state of the art graphics are now considered obsolete, and perhaps the next generation of gamers will never play Metal Gear Solid for the same reason. Or perhaps there are people who have played these games and only enjoyed them for their gameplay. But somewhere, when Kojima, of Sakaguchi and many others die, hopefully they will live on through their contributions. That's why I want to be a game designer. Silly as it sounds, I hope to someday touch someone for the better, the way that some of these games have had a small positive impact on myself.

In closing, I want to leave with you the quote that inspired this blog. It's a monologue given by Snake at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2: The Sons of Liberty. A major theme of the game was the passing on of information, and how do we know what should or shouldn't be passed on. Snake talks about the importance of "Passing on the Torch" or in my own words, passing on our immortality.

"Life isn't just about passing on your genes. We can leave behind much more than just DNA. Through speech, music, literature and movies... what we've seen, heard, felt ...anger, joy and sorrow... these are the things I will pass on. That's what I live for.

We need to pass the torch, and let our children read our messy and sad history by its light. We have all the magic of the digital age to do that with. The human race will probably come to an end some time, and new species may rule over this planet. Earth may not be forever, but we still have the responsibility to leave
what traces of life we can. Building the future and keeping the past alive are one and the same thing." Solid Snake, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty

Things I've learned From Video Games... Part I

Things I've learned From Video Games... Part I
Current mood: contemplative
Cause I'm sure this won't be the last.

So I'm a nerd. We had a reception today at the hotel while I was at work. It was an old... I shoudl say acquaintence of mine... Nobody that I've ever really talked to all that much, but her family goes to our ward. Anyway, she's like younger than my little sister, and getting married. That and the fact that I will be going to church tomorrow and sitting with my family... and I will be the only one there without a spouse and either a child or one on the way. All these things caused me to pause and reflect upon my current life, Dicisions I've made in my past and where I am because of it, and what I plan to do about it. So what do I do? I look up a translation of the Final Fantasy VII Ultimania Omega. A book that tries to explain all thing Final Fantasy VII.

Through my search I found a few various quotes from the producers and writers of the game. From them, this is what I have learned.

Quoted from the below site Tetsuya Nomura, the greatest Character Designer in the world (although Kai thinks that he puts on way to many buckles on his characater)(but I think the more the marrier.)(in fact many of my drawings have been inspired by Tetsuya Nomura, the first one that comes to my mind is Kali) Anyway so Tetsuysa Nomura, the greates Character Designer in the world and Yoshinori Kitase, the Director and Co-Scenario writer of FFVII said this concerning Aeris's death and revival:

Nomura said :"Back at the time we were designing the game, I was frustrated with the perennial cliche where the protagonist loves someone very much and so has to sacrifice himself and die in a dramatic fashion to express that love. We found this was the case in both games and movies, both eastern and western. But I wanted to say something different, something realistic. I mean, is it right to set such an example to people?"

Kitase's follow up to Nomura's comments: "In the real world, things are very different. You just need to look around you. Nobody wants to die that way. People die of disease and accident. Death comes suddenly and there is no notion of good or bad attached to it. It leaves, not a dramatic feeling, but a feeling of emptiness. When you lose someone you loved very much you feel this big empty space and think 'If I had known this was coming I would have done things differently.' These are the feelings I wanted to arouse in the players with Aerith's death relatively early in the game. Feelings of reality and not Hollywood."

I was once told by my literary teacher that literature is the study of human behavior. Why else would you think that it would be important to study it in high school? It gives us a greater understanding of people's opinions of how one should react to different situations. Apparently Science Fiction was used as a tool to make a moral point that was best emphasized by showing characters in extreme sitiations. So why do video games not fit into that same category that literature does? A majority of today's "gamers" do not play video games only for the game experience, any more than most people don't see a movie just for the special effects. Sure, they're nice, but what really makes a movie or a video game great is the story that is behind it.

Would you believe me if I told you that I have played games that have inspired me to do and be someting more?

On that note, I just want to leave you with a quote, again from the writer of the above mentioned article wich is linked below:

"If you take anything from any of this stuff to heart, take the one ideal of
Final Fantasy that its creator sought to illustrate: Life's about experiences,
about making memories. The more you do and experience, the more you grow, and the more the world around you grows. We're all part of a big interrelated environment that's about that: Growth. Call it a web, or a ship, or a zoo if you want to, but just do it. The most important thing in life is showing up for it."

http://db.gamefaqs.com/portable/psp/file/final_fantasy_vii_ac_plot.txt

Well, anyway, on that note, I will take my leave as one of the biggest nerds I know...

Opening the Vortex

Like most people, I'm full of opinions that I think the world should be aware of. Of course, similar to most people's experience with their opinions, I've found that everybody else in the world is too preoccupied expressing their own opinions that they don't take the time to listen to mine. Fortunately there's a solution for people like us. Blogging! Thanks to blogging I can type out my opinions and submit them to the ether of the internet with the firm belief that -- while not highly probable, still possible -- my writings will actually be read by some random slider who stumbles across them while careening through wormholes of Google in search of inappropriate pictures of anime characters.*

(Oh, and friends and family, too. Thanks guys! ^_^)

Welcome to The Virtual Vortex!

The hope of this blog is to share with you my thoughts and feelings on the subject of video games within the scope of my experience. This includes game reviews, game development, game art, game moments and just having game in general. If it doesn't remotely fit into any of these categories then it will appear on the family blog that I have started working on for my wife months ago and was still preceded by this one which I started tonight.

I realize of course, that there are plenty of gaming blogs already in existence on the internet. The secret ingredient of this blog will be a strong emphasis on the good or bad contributions that games individually or specifically have on our society. Lets face it, we are now living in a generation in which games are no longer just for nerds**, but have become a mainstream media outlet in which opinions, beliefs and ideals can be expressed and suggested. Our children will be growing up in a world where video games are already common place, and as a result will be a greater and more accepted part of their lives that they were in ours. In short, video games have become to our generation what tv was to our parents generation, a source of not only entertainment, but of expression that was not readily accepted by the previous generation. Isn't it about time that we as a society -- as we did with tv, radio and literature in the past -- acknowledge the real effects this media can have on our society and augment the attributes that can have a greater positive effect?

I do hope that you're not expecting every post to be a deep insightful look at the philosophy of video games... more then likely they will be shallow insightful looks at best. But I will ask of every game that is reviewed on this blog "What contributions has this game contributed to our society?"

Plus I hope to have some fun and interesting comments to make along the way.

But to kick things off, I thought I could start by sharing some old posts from my old MySpace that I felt epitomize the goals of this blog that I outlined above. Enjoy!

Spacefly

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*Well you won't find them here!

**But don't worry, the term nerd still applies to anybody who claims they've just "pwned" you.