Thoughts on Dollhouse

Most Joss Whedon fans have come down pretty hard on his new series. And understandably so. Much of what made his previous series, Buffy and Firefly, so great was the witty dialog and the amount of attention given to the characters. Dollhouse, in comparison, doesn't have that, and seems to have a similar production style to Terminator and Fringe.

Unlike most Whedonites, I won't say this is a bad series.

One thing that helped me enjoy the first three episodes has been that I did expect something different. Expectations can mean everything, and I think many (but hopefully not all, or even most) Whedonites expected more of the wit and character than this series has offered.

My actual thoughts:

The good: The actual plot. The idea that Dollhouse puts forth, that the main character can be reprogrammed to be anyone, memories and all, has some legs and depth to it. The pilot put down rules and perameters that normally wouldn't be set until seasons later. The first episode used it rather well for that main storyline.

The bad: Yeah, that FBI guy plot doesn't work at all. It's set down as a long running storyline, but we've gone nowhere fast, and even breaks rules of storytelling. First, he basicly knows everything about The Dollhouse before the series even starts. How? We don't know. All we know is that he can't prove it, for some strange reason.
More over, at the beginning of the second episode, he comes onto a crime scene, fully knowing what happened. Again, we don't know how he knows. Actually, his "deductions" just make it so then he appears where he needs to be, not how he actually got there. This is one story that needs to be ditched, or severely retrofitted.

Needs work: The compelete lack of a point or theme. Now, the third episode showed that it was possible, and hopefully it's moving towards that direction. However, that story only applied to Echo, not her handler, not the corporation itself, and certainly not the FBI agent. And the other story arch, revolving around the mysterious Alpha, has barely been tapped; with only background given.

So, do these make Dollhouse a bad series. Not really, especially when comparing to how Fringe starts. If anything, Fringe and Terminator showed that even with a bad start, things can get good and make it worth watching. Hopefully Joss Whedon can fix all the problems sooner.

Bush's Presidency: What Went Wrong

Without a doubt, Bush has gone through a cluster-frack of controversies throughout his presidency. From torture, to political firings, to Iraq, and an overall lack of oversight. Of course, it has been this lack of real oversight that has been the core problem. If enough had been there, all the controversies would have more appropriate consequences to them, rather then the apparent promotion that went on.

Some have been calling for Obama to investigate, and possible prosecute, members of the Bush Administration over those controversies. I would hope that this would create rules within the government to stop all this from happening again. But I see a blantant flaw in that: many of those rules existed before Bush came into office; he just ignored them.

It would be nice to say it's the politicians fault; that having a Republican president along with a Republican congress hindered oversight. The problem: the Democrats didn't do much either. The "I" word (impeachment) was never used, because of the political overtones it gained when Clinton was impeached.

So, I've come to one conclusion: the fault lies in all our hands.

After 9/11, we gave our trust to this president to do the right thing. Not just a little, or most, all our trust.

Because of the high aproval Bush had after 9/11, the news media didn't look, didn't question what was happening behind the scenes. And we didn't ask them to either.

There was a reason that freedom of speach was part of the First Amendment. That desent should be part of the political discussion. Without desent, government is far more prone to mistakes; and not minor ones.

The reality is that the problem with the Bush Presidency lies in our society rather than politics. By having a us vs. them mentality (as we most definately had these past four years), solutions are never found. Conversly, solutions aren't found when we are one either. We need many voices in the debate, all without any hate, anger or desperateness to it.

So, as much as I would like to hand my trust over to the Obama Administration to solve many of the grave problems before all of us, I won't hand it all. It is my hope that the news media, and we all, continue to question, continue to ask: Is this the best course for our United States?

Being in an excessively large WoW guild

I am part of alea iacta est on Earthen Ring (aka, the guild from The Instance). For the past year and a half, this was my guild of choice, going into no other. Thus far, I've submitted four toons to the guild, (all current) a level 77 druid, 72 mage, 62 death knight, and a 25 paladin (which turned into my bank alt).

AIE right now has more then 4000 characters. To get a perspective, that's larger then all of the Penny Arcade Alliance guilds put together. Heck, the amount of characters at my druid's level all could run an old world instance.

So what is it like? First, this is a casual guild. We all talk casually,making jokes, cheering about acomplishments (not nessisarily Achievements) and progress however we can in whatever area we want.

Because we're a large guild, that green text is ever crawling. It almost never stops, people are on all the time. It got so big, we had to build two seperate channels for people looking for a group or an officer.

The forums turned into one of the most important organizational tools, probably more so than in other guilds. Because we're so large, to build any pve or pvp raiding groups requires everyone be on the same page. Heck, we organize events like the Running of the Beef and crafting fairs through the forums. In part because those events can be larger than a raid will allow.

I think because our guild is more casual means our progression is not too quick. The groups vary in how quickly they progress, although I don't think any of our groups was running Black Temple or Mt. Hyjal regularly before 3.0.

The thing was, our guild was a kind of mini-realm. There was all sorts of people in it, some very good players while others didn't compete at all. Some people could be seen playing almost all the time, others (like me) play every so often. We've had people who needed to take a break (or like Leo Laporte, needed to quit) for one reason or another, but most have been able to balance WoW with the other aspects of their lives.

And heck, we got great officers who make sure no drama of any kind pops up. We have no hate in the guild. Except for the Alliance. Especially gnomes. We all could punt gnomes all day and never get tired.

If there's one problem with the guild of our size, it really is like being on a realm without a guild at times. Notably, when looking for tanks and especially healers. 5-man guild runs are often a friendlier form of PUG.

I can also imagine people not liking a large guild. It becomes a bit tough to really get to know other members when there's 100+ others on at the same time. If you consistantly run with people, that's one thing. But the use of the addon Identity is almost required, since people often have two or more characters in the guild, especially the officers.

But I have been enjoying the experience. Heck, I don't think I would still be playing WoW if it wasn't for this guild.

How the News is Supposed to Work

Last night's Cold Case had a storyline that took place in a broadcast newsroom in the early 80's, about when the news was getting to be profitable, not just a service for television stations. While I highly doubt the problems shown were that severe, even back then, it still plays off of misconceptions about the news (sometimes real, but often not).

So I felt that it would be important to let people know just how advertising and the actual newsroom interact, or not.

(Blogger's note: I may not have worked professionally in a newsroom, but I have worked in a few, and have experienced a few possible controversies based on the subject of PR vs. News).

To start out with, there are two sections for news organizations, basically of any kind: the newsroom and advertising. As long as the news is completely or partially reliant on advertising, those two sections will exist.

However, for all intents and purposes, those two don't interact all that often. Before any page layout or broadcast is done, the advertising section takes out what it needs (ideally without showing the ads, but due to time constraints this may not be done), then the news people take what is left for the actual news.

For a mass market, this isn't bad deal. If a story or another forces an advertiser out, another can come up or they may just eat the small loss.

The problem mostly happens in a niche market, like video games or technology journalism. There are fewer advertisers, which are often in the same subject as the news organization (which makes sense, because if gamers are watching, you'd want to sell games there). If an advertiser threatens to stop advertising, the loss is much greater. This is one of the major reasons that Gertsmann-gate happened, and why some other game journalists say they get plenty of pressure from the advertising department to fudge reviews.

I've experienced personally one other possible problem with PR vs news: when a press release becomes a news story.

And there are times that without any doubt a story that originated from a press release is news worthy. And because of this, reporters of any type are often get press releases shoved into their face, hoping that it would become a story (or as the PR side would see it, free advertising).

A reporter has to filter those press releases, and figure out what is news worthy. And more over, figure out an angle to that story that isn't a) biased for the company and b) is actually giving information that the audience wants. There are times that this can be hard, and reporters do make mistakes (or worse, just post the stupid press release in whole, IGN).

I do believe that most, if not all, reporters at least try to keep some objectivity in their news. If there's one thing that people should know, is that journalists are aware of possible problems and try to avoid them.

The Days Without Print Media

Being someone on the receiving end of the print journalism (which now officially includes gaming magazines, not just newspapers), I've been thinking of just how this would affect the political environment.

The problem lies in the formatting of print and newspapers that doesn't exist in other media. Print allows longer articles, with as much detail as space allows. Online, in theory, has the same format, but in reality people don't sit and read as much. Too often, links are given for more information, which enhances the already short-attention readers have. Television and radio: both very short and reliant on pictures and on focusing on one major element of a story.

I think the most detailed analysis of politics will go to the online space. And moreover, where stories will be made and broken. Television, especially when you go into larger and larger markets, relies on taking stories broken from newspapers, and doing their own research on it. So, with online being instant, rather than waiting until the next morning for the newspaper, how can that be bad?

Two things:
1) The need to get the stories out is already, in my opinion, too fast. By breaking a news story, they may the initial ratings for it, but also won't do as much due diligence for the accuracy and detail the story needs.

2) There may not be as many stories broken by professional reporters, who have the skills to do the research (at least in general) and influence to have those in power actually answer any needed questions.

In politics, having online be the primary source of news means more people will try to take control of a story, rather than find the reality in it.

If you think the New York Times and Washington Post are biased, they have nothing on what online blogs have (and online blogs are now just as much part of the journalism space as news organizations). You have already seen what kind of poo is being thrown by both the left and the right on the Internets, think of what would happen without any kind of moderator. Even if the way each news organization's objectivity may be flawed in some way (usually not in a politically biased manner), at least they try to be objective.

Newspapers have been the best source of professional reporters, who are objective and look for as much detail in the stories as possible. While things may change for online and print, it's my hope that someplace will exist that those reporters can exist and do their jobs right, especially in the realm of politics.

On Review Scores for Games

Adam Sessler sent out a recent rant about scores, and that he doesn't like to include them. Which got me thinking: what's the purpose of those scores.

Now, there's the obvious, and can easily be translated to be problematic, answer: they are the shortest and clearest means of conveying how much one likes a game.

Sessler and many others don't like their reviews being bogged down to just a number. That number doesn't give the full story, and can be misleading under some systems.

But the more I thought about it, the more I think scores are important. One reason is the format in which we get our reviews.

X-Play is in one of the few formats where if someone wants a review, they are there to listen to everything. Television is where someone sits down, and watches what is in front of them. Even with video on the internet, they watch the entire video. However, the video HAS to be short online; no one is going to sit through half-hour reviews of even AAA titles.

Which gets to my point: most reviews for games are internet based. And when people surf the internet, they don't' often read entire articles. At best, they skim longer articles. And being most reviews do take up several pages, they only read so much before just skipping to the number.

The attention span of people while surfing is much shorter than if they read a paper for a movie review. While both formats get a very short time for the reader to decide if he/she will read the whole thing, with a paper the reader WILL read the entire review. The same is not true of the Internet, in which people will stop reading and go look at something else.

Scores are especially important for games because of time and money commitment. Think about it: with movies, you have around 2 hours committed toward watching the movie, and max of $20 to buy a DVD. Video games: 30 minutes per session (possibly more, not many have shorter to progress), and many more hours total, and $30-60 to buy it, depending on the system.

So, people need to know more which games are worth getting over others than other media. You can watch quite a few movies in the time span to play even the shortest of games. The time/price value may be better for games, but both are much higher. And people need prioritization.

If there is one problem with scores that I can't disagree with, it is sites like Gamerankings and Metacritic trying to combine all the scores. The reason is that most major web sites have different scales for the review scores. X-Play has a 5-star review (with 3-star being average), while IGN has 100-point (with 70 average), and 1 Up having letter grades (C average). Numrically translating those into one universal score often misses how much that review likes that game.

If anything, I'd like to see a site like Rotten Tomatoes, which only asks one question for each reviewer: did they like the product or not. It still isn't perfect (like it doesn't ask about prioritization), but on average it has a better numrical translation.

So as much as many of game journalists like Sessler do not like review scores, they're there for a reason and I don't see them going away anytime soon.

Gaming's Problem with Narrative

One thing you probably have noticed through this political season was the heavy use of narrative to define the candidates. Obama especially emphasized "change" (using quotes as a point of narrative, not as a commentary on it) to put himself into a certain light.

So, one problem that the ESA has to tackle is the narratives that are surrounding video games to non-gamers. And there are several.

1) "Games are for kids." Probably came around during the classic area of games, the Atari and Nintendo (NES) era. Games at this time was marketed to kids, although there were attempts to break out of that mold. Nintendo, as part of their quality control, had limits on what content couldn't be in games, like blood or use of religous symbols.

2) "Games are violent." Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto are to blame for this.

3) "Games can be addictive, keeping the player in front of the screen at all times" This is a confusion of both perception and confusion over the term. For the term, gamers use it the same as "can't put a good book down." As for the perception problem, I think many parents would see that games put in as a regular activity, something akin to how sometimes a kid would "watch too much television."

As you can guess, problems arise when those narratives aren't just put in seperately, but in combinations. Rule 1 and 2 put together is often something that has been accused by video game critics.

So, how can the industry, or gamers themselves, break the narrative. Well, I would like to say factchecking journalism helps, but can just as often hurt. One problem that journalists can have is that they often compare percieved narratives of topics at hand (like the ones above).
Just repeating a narrative doesn't nessisarily mean it reenforces it. But if a journalist doesn't emerse him/herself into the community properly, they can misinterpret that their subjects into being an exception to the narrative, rather than the actual norm.

One thing I do think helps is the Penny Arcade Expo. There, you get a variety of people, all in a community setting having fun.
Even something like The Guild can help. Although it exploits some of the more negative narratives about MMO's (mostly for humorous effect), the actual themes of the series go to the heart of why we love those games, and why we are gamers.

It will be a very high hurdle. It took comic books decades to be accepted as an adult medium. However, even today, comics aren't considered a "serious" medium like books, movies or even art. Time isn't the answer. Having the gaming community branch outward, like what the Wii is doing, does help, but can be done wrong and might not reach everyone still.
The only real answer I see is to have some game that captures the non-gamer market in a way that they see it as a true means of expression and not a toy.

A Geek's Way of Celebrating Veteran's Day

Seeing plenty of Twitter posts on Veteran's Day put a thought into my head: what media (shows, movies, videogames, ect.) is most appropriate for this day.

On the gaming end, it's easy just to point to the WWII shooters. Call of Duty seems to be the pinnacle of those games, taking the player directly into the environment of combat. Most of the time, WWII shooters try to mix patriotic feelings with horrors that are inherent with war. Some go one end, some go the other way.

But the game that comes to mind for me on this day is Half Life 2. Specifically, late in the game there is a chapter in which you, as Gordan Freeman, is part of a rebellion against the Combine. In that rebellion, you know what costs you have to endure, and why you and everyone else is fighting. The only critique of the game as a whole is that chapter was the best, and probably should have ended there.

Then with movies, there's of course the Private Ryans and such. But here, I think Serenity has a note in it that's appropriate. Again, rebellion is key, as rebellion fights for a truly better world. If you haven't yet seen Serenity yet, stop reading right now, and you'll see why I mention it here.

A series I would have down is Battlestar Galactica. The entire series is based around what happens in times of war, and more over the price people have to pay during that time. BSG: Razor especially asks what a person on a individual level have to become in a time of war.

Anime has plenty of series that has war and fighting as a major topic. Pretty much anything Gundam has war in mind, often to a negative tone. The fist series I saw, the spinoff Gundam Wing, tries to ask why war happens, why people fight, and how to stop that.

But the one series that I say is best for this day: Gurren Laggan. It just aired on SciFi, and is one of the best anime series out there. It might be consider spoilers, but much of the series deals with what they call "fighting spirit." While Gundam and such had a different opinion on why nations fight, this series shows why veterans volenteered to fight. Again, if you haven't seen this, go do it now.

So, for anyone reading this: what's your show, movie, game or otherwise for this Veteran's Day?