Imagine This: A Medium Divided

This article can also be found on One Hit Pixel, here.

I want you to imagine something for a moment. Picture a film industry where each film company had their own brand of DVD player, that would only play discs produced under their own publishing label. To be able to watch, say, Scott Pilgrim vs. The World or The Dark Knight Rises at home, you would have to purchase separate Universal and Warner Bros. brand players.

This, of course, sounds abjectly ridiculous. Yet it’s more or less how the games console industry operates. To the consumer it’s an annoyance – to experience more of the medium, you’re expected to pay a lot of money in extra hardware. However, Nintendo, Microsoft and Sony absolutely crave brand loyalty; it’s what brings in the largest revenue. To ensure that customers pick their hardware over competitors, these guys will try all sorts of tactics.

Means for the Market Share

Nintendo is very committed to selling hardware designed exclusively for gaming, and little else. This gives them a lot of creative freedom with hardware designs that can’t be easily transplanted to other hardware (we’re used to it now, but the design of the DS was really out there back in 2004). Of all possible tactics to fight for exclusivity, I don’t mind this one. A prompt for developers to design games of worth with new and interesting hardware encourages interesting results. They also have an illustrious history of iconic franchises on their side, requiring very little maintenance. The Pokémon franchise alone will have me putting money into their wallets for a long time to come.

Sony invests a whole lot of money in developers producing exclusive content just for their hardware. The occasional big titles that they have all to themselves are quite the customer draw. Because of Sony’s long and established  connection with the Japanese game development scene, a lot of titles developed in the country end up being Sony exclusives. But in terms of hardware functions, there’s nothing, currently, that requires it to be exclusive to one kind of hardware. If those new IPs don’t gain traction with the consumers, all is lost.

These days, Microsoft is generally blasé about software exclusivity; realising that in terms of hardware, the Xbox 360 wasn’t really outstanding from the PS3, and definitely not from the ever-improving standards of the PC. Instead the draw is unique utility options, like the Kinect and Xbox SmartGlass technology – both of which can be considered underwhelming to date. I can respect the movement away from focusing on exclusives, but the push towards more peripheral hardware doesn’t help make gaming more affordable or accessible.

It’s The Same, But Different

So bearing in mind the present standards for how our three console giants handle themselves, how will this impact the new generation of consoles? We already have the Wii U following Nintendo’s Modus Operandi to the letter, but it’s the approach of the new Sony and Microsoft machines that have people speculating. Though honestly, it’s hard to think that their business practices will significantly change.

Sony, while they remain stony silent about the technical specs on their new games console (which everyone is calling the Playstation 4 for convenience’s sake) until February 20, we do know that many of Sony’s game development studios are also suspiciously quiet. What this most likely means is a line-up of Sony’s exclusive IPs – Uncharted, God of War, Killzone, LittleBigPlanet, Gran Turismo and some new from MotorStorm developers Evolution Studios all potentially in the pipeline. Studios are already making playful references to new titles on the horizon. It would be nice to take the presence of characters in Playstation All Stars as hints for releases, but I sadly doubt that game’s marketing ploys extend beyond DmC and Metal Gear Rising.

As for Microsoft, a little bit more of the Xbox 360 successor’s (referred to as the Xbox 720 in a few circles but we’re just calling in the next Xbox for now) technical specs available. There are a lot of words regarding the types of processors that may be used, but I struggle to find that especially interesting. That the use of a Kinect might be mandatory falls in line with Microsoft’s focus on peripherals, at the least. What raised my eyebrows was a mention of a patent by Microsoft being filed regarding ’3D projection’ back in September 2012, turning the entire room into a game screen – which was then demoed as IllumiRoom last month. It feels ridiculous, but that step towards virtual reality is a tantalising prospect for a new direction of game development, moreso than graphical fidelity.

For both of these, there’s a personal concern of backwards compatibility. Neither the PS3 or the 360 made much of playing old works; but allowing previous software to be played will let the companies wring the last few dollars out of the previous generation, and allow the consumers to keep their collection without having two consoles hooked up.

The Coming of the Uber Console?

If you’ll allow me one more thought experiment, could you actually imagine an industry where there’s only a single brand of household console? From a development perspective, it would be a godsend. While at present it’s generally desirable to have a game released on multiple platforms, it requires a lot of work for developers to create such ports, generally due to differences in hardware specifications, but sometimes it’s just a matter of politics.

As such, development for a single platform allows maximum running optimisation. An industry with only the one home console would seriously cut down on development times, since development tools like physics or particle effect engines would be useful to everyone.

In a way you could say that the Ouya is trying to be this Uber Console, as the barrier to entry for developing it is intentionally very low. But it will never have the kind of major software development support our resident Big Three do – nor does it help that, on Android, there’s already a fractured install base. There would have to be a near collapse of the games industry as we know it before such a unified movement could be feasible…

So who wants to cause an industry collapse with me?

The Too Spooky Shopping Trip

This article has been written as part of the Critical Distance October Blogs of the Round Table. It can also be read at Digital Heaven Entertainment, here.

The scariest moment in gaming I've experienced? Accidentally saving over a near-endgame file of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. I've not really played any horror games. Not because I don't want to, I've just never really gotten around to it.

Hopefully not having played the first 3 Silent Hills won't invalidate my opinions as a Person Wot Writes About Games; but until I eventually play them, there are a few times where a game has been successfully unsettling. The one that's still stuck with me is from Shin Megami Tensei: Strange Journey.

As a series, the Shin Megami Tensei games (this is excluding Persona and other spinoffs, mind) are very thematically similar. You, a lowly human have been gifted with the technology to summon demons to fight by your side, while a ridiculous catastrophic event goes on around you. Depending on how you react to certain story choices, you gain a Chaotic/Lawful alignment (intentionally not just 'good/evil', though often it pans out to be the same).

Where Strange Journey differs is its setting - a series of twisted worlds called the Schwarzwelt. Created by demons, it represents the ills of the human condition. You play as a soldier of a global army, investigating the Schwarzwelt in an attempt to destroy it; though you quickly find yourself unable to escape.

Welcome to Sector Carina

Up to a point, each location in the game plays up a problem with humanity, with a surreal twist. A lot of these areas don't have the impact they should (which I will discuss later), but the third area, Sector Carina is meant to represent humanity's greed, being a gigantic demon shopping mall.

And you know what? It really creeped me out. Sadly, not entirely due to the game's aesthetics, but at least partially! Sector Carina was clever in being uncanny. At first look, everything does look like an ordinary shopping mall (through the filter of low-quality textures on a DS screen), but then you talk to the first NPC:

And then you look at the posters and the shop windows:

And then you pay attention to the slow, militaristic waltz used as background music:

And it settles in that this is a shopping mall with all of the pretence stripped away. Everything you could ever want is within these walls (along with a whole lot of stuff you don't), and your only company are towering urges to BUY, EAT, and CONSUME.

Relevance in a Riot

I was playing Strange Journey in August 2011, and reached Sector Carina during the time when the England Riots occurred. For those who aren't familiar, a riot broke out in Tottenham, a district of London, on the 7th of August. What had started out as a protest against police corruption and brutality in the area took a turn for the violent once someone decided to throw a bottle when the police arrived to suppress the protest. Things escalated quickly, with shops smashed and ransacked, and arson attempts. Once it started, similar riots sprang up all across London, and then into other, unrelated cities of England.

On the day they had started, I happened to already be in the centre of town, watching Croydon slowly go up in flames on BBC News. Had I not gone home when I did, the underground and bus services would have closed, leaving me stranded on Tottenham Court Road. I get home by sundown and find through Twitter that even my local high street had rioters.

While the area where I lived wasn't especially wealthy, it didn't have economic and police problems as severe as the ones in Tottenham. As I found out more about the event, it became woefully apparent that the majority of the rioters weren't causing anarchy for any kind of cause, other than their own pockets.

In a way, even though what happened is incredibly sad, I empathise. People riot in pursuit of aspirations, and ideally you'd want those aspirations to be political. However, many of us (and I'm including myself here) have aspirations that don't extend too far beyond our economic status, the next pair of shoes, the next luxury meal, the next tablet computer.

That some of us are willing to go to the lengths of destruction just to get it (along with the vague promise that you won't get caught) is actually pretty scary! It weighed on my mind, as I progressed through Carina, being told that the area was run by the demon Horkos, a glutton so dedicated, it ate an entire space craft, filled with the protagonist's comrades. Drawing a parallel between materialism and violence is heavy-handed, but it's not exactly incorrect.

It is later implied through some side-NPC dialogue that the layout of the Sector was based on a human shopping mall. This kind of M. Night Shyamalan twist made me roll my eyes, but then, the Westfield shopping mall in Stratford opened.

Retail Therapy & Theming Consistency

It's hardly likely to be the largest shopping complex out there, but I felt dwarfed by Westfield Stratford's size when I visited in its opening week. It had a casino. It had a 10-screen cinema. It had a food court that took up almost a third of the whole complex, with every kind of regional cooking speciality. It's the kind of place that would get anti-capitalists and anti-consumerists feeling violently ill, but I actually, honestly enjoy that kind of thing.

As I walk around, I recall Sector Carina and suddenly feel awkward. I make a realisation. For once, the moral soapboxing in a piece of media is about me. Funnily enough, by being very faithfully tied to the rules of what makes an Atlus JRPG, Strange Journey keeps its theme and its gameplay woefully separated. It hamstrings the entire game, really.

While I couldn't get emotionally invested with the themes of war or lust, if they'd taken the time to do something to make those ideas relevant to the player, they'd have more impact. It makes Sector Carina's effectiveness something of an accident. While the stage itself didn't do anything to make you think about greed via the game mechanics, materialistic greed is something that I can admit to having done in the past, way more than bloodthirstiness or careless environmental destruction or (sadly) wanton hedonism. Sector Carina was effective because the setting has (at least for me) some real-life parallels; not just a strawman argument of humanity.

While my experience with Strange Journey is very much down to circumstance, the aesthetic and theme of Sector Carina could still be used in other games. Commerce as Horror is something not really explored, unless you count Dead Rising (you shouldn't) or one of the stages in Illbleed (which does use greed as a mechanic, impressively). No one should experience their neighbourhood being torn apart in the pursuit of goods in real life, but they can damn sure could see it done in a game.

N.B.: You can read about the finer details of the 2011 riots at the Guardian here. The information is surprisingly extensive.

Games Retail: A Love Story

When I was 8, working in a games shop was my dream job. You could play all the newest games for free, and you could tell other people what the good games were! Finally people would listen to me when I said Crash Bandicoot totally sucked, and Spyro was way better.

Over twelve years later, and my childhood dream of video game retail has been met with two years working as a Christmas Sales Assistant at GAME. It obviously wasn't going to match up to my younger aspirations; and a knowledge of just how greedy retail industries can be jaded my outlook; but it wasn't a bad experience by any means. But either way, it's good I got to have the experience when I did - the games retail industry has changed.

To be fair, brick-and-mortar stores have been suffering for a while when it comes to digital entertainment. Competing with the behemoth that is e-commerce; and then digital download services, consumers were able to consume media faster and cheaper than ever before. Roll on services like Steam and suddenly no one is interested in going to their nearest shopping district to buy PC games any more. HMV had long been sweating bullets over their future, and in the last two years or so GAME has been feeling the pressure far more overtly.

It was something I noticed first-hand as I worked there. I've never been one for forcing a sales pitch down someone's throat, but it's disheartening to offer legitimate purchase suggestions and be told time and time again "Never mind, it's cheaper online." The higher-ups sent e-mails almost every other day demanding for harder pushes for items that netted us the most profit: preowned games, loyalty cards, preorders and gift cards. It was shrewdly penny-pinching; every lost gift card was free profit for the company, 100% of a preowned game's price went straight to GAME with nothing to the publishers, and the number of people who put a deposit on a preorder and then entirely forget to retrieve it on release is stunning.

But it wasn't enough - back in February the Game Group saw fit to downsize to staunch a bleeding wound, closing 39 European stores. Unfortunately, that didn't slow things down. Last month EA resolved to deny GAME and sister chain Gamestation from stocking EA titles, most notably Mass Effect 3. The explanation for this is rather unclear - maybe it's because their sales of new EA titles had been dropping in light of cheaper online options, or maybe due to the financial issues, GAME was no longer capable of paying whatever selling costs EA imposed. Either way, it was the kiss of death - after that bomb; other publishers started to pull out. GAME could no longer sell Street Fighter x Tekken, Kid Icarus Uprising, Mario Party 9...

Despite fire sales to shift as much stock as possible to recoup losses, it was over. GAME went into administration, the company was removed from the stock market, and the number of functioning GAME and Gamestation branches was roughly cut in half. The store I used to work at was one of those that didn't make it; and it saddens me. Not because I was a huge supporter of the company - I readily recognised that its practices were outdated and barely in the consumer's best interest - but because the presence of games retail was a huge part of my childhood, and UK nerd culture; not to mention that the staff I worked with were wonderful people, and seeing people you care about have to seek new jobs is heartbreaking.

Things are looking up for the survival of the remaining shops though - on April 1st Opcapita, an investment group, agreed to buy out the Game Group, saving it from administration. I argue that it's a little too late, considering an offer was made before the company had to cause a loss of over 2000 jobs, but if the purchase can save the remaining 300 stores and their staff then that's at least something of a positive outcome.

If nothing else, I hope that these tribulations for the company will result in the games retail industry seeing a change - with fewer worries about surviving until the new financial year and more direct competition (or embracing?) of media through digital distribution.

Location: Always the Urbanite

This article is a Destructoid Bloggers Request, found here.

I love living in the city - while many resent the crowded streets, the tall buildings and the subtle background notes of consumerism and pollution, it's what I grew up around, and I couldn't live any differently.

What's more, no two cities are the same - From London to Leeds to Bridgetown to Paris, they're all diverse and contain an essence you won't get somewhere else. It's something that's hardly ever reflected in video games. When designing an 'expansive, immersible world' many games seem to think on a scale way too large to be detailed. Games are enamoured with the overworld, travel times between important locations and large rolling landscapes filled with not-very-much. I don't doubt that this form of escapism works perfectly for those who tire of the modern urban environment, but I just can't get into a setting like that. You can keep your Skyrims and Shadows of the Colossi, thanks.

No, what I love in a video game setting is a smaller scale and a focus on the details. A city rendered so even if there aren't a huge number of places to go, where you can go is lovingly crafted. You can almost feel what it's like to live there. GTA and Saints Row series get the location, but not the intimacy. Many have noted that the city of Steelport in Saints Row: The Third is expansive, but same-y and lacking a pulse.

Games like the Yakuza series do it better. You really get the sense of daily city life, interspersed among your regular duty of cracking skulls. You get to know the seedy back alleys and the frighteningly expensive manors, along with the kinds of people who inhabit them. What's more, the decision in the first Yakuza game to have the city explorable over different periods in time give you an impression of how things change - both architecturally and socially. Wonderful!

You can imagine the hustle and bustle easily. Who wants to hit the Pachinko parlour?

But my favourite urban setting has to be The World Ends With You's take on Shibuya. Classified as the trendiest district in Tokyo, TWEWY takes that concept and goes all-out. Every aspect of the game world is given a solid coat of subculture, from the shopping districts to the sewers.

Each of the locations are stylised from real spots in Shibuya, with the names changed to protect the innocent. Fashion and music are major aspects of the local culture, so how could they not have HMV, Tower Records and department store 109 take pride of place?

That's 104 (TWEWY's take on 109) in the distance. The weird perspectives in the battle scenes are great for making the city look imposing and twisted when it needs to be.

But what is a city without its people? The main characters in TWEWY all have the ability to read the minds of nearby people - a smart move both mechanically and aesthetically. You're playing as people who can quite literally see the pulse of the city, and know what's on everyone's mind. They're not just faceless obstructions, they're also people with senses of style and matters on their mind. Even the shopkeepers you visit have their own personalities and remember you as you return. Everyone who's played TWEWY will have their own favourite shop and shopkeeper.

It still impresses me how the game mechanics are so closely tied with the setting and themes. This is a city where the clothes you wear are your battle armour. The monsters that you face are brought about through negative emotions. Your sense of creativity and what you wear says so much about you and how you handle the problems you face. It doesn't matter if you're into elegant Gothic, punk rock, or the imported and exotic, you get by in this Shibuya by being yourself; aggressively and unrepentantly.

Look at that confident smile. She's dressed to kill the bad vibes for sure.

Urban living is a mixture of loving getting lost in the crowd and embracing a culture that lets you be yourself; something you're not going to find in an open expanse, or an insular rural community. On the surface everything may look busy and anonymous, but there is character and depth to be found if you take the time to take in the culture built up under the feet of a million people; and I've yet to find a game that reflects that sentiment better than The World End With You.

Dating Sims: Romance for those who don't know better

This article is hosted on The Yorker, found here.


Dating Simulators. It's a genre that's been around longer than you might think, surprisingly constrained to obscure Japanese titles, and even then, ones essentially indie developed and distributed for DOS. For the uninitiated, Dating Sims as a genre are twists on the Visual Novel genre, where your aim is to seduce one or more people; usually female, and usually to the ends of getting the (usually male) main character laid.

That's not to say that all games that deal with romance are Dating Sims, nor is it the same thing as dating in The Sims - it's all built around a core of player wish fulfilment, and with that in mind, the genre is something rather pathetic at best and downright creepy at worst.

Video games deal with a lot of wish-fulfilment - you don't get to fire shotguns, drift in sports cars or be a rock star in the day-to-day for most people, but fostering friends and relationships is something we all should be achieving without much prompting, however difficult and emotional that might be. Trying to condense the idea of a relationship to essentially a set of numbers or dialogue options is foolish. I want to say that it's so foolish that no one would take the sentiment of relationships being a quantifiable game to heart, but you can never overestimate the socially-awkward.

The most recent example of the Dating Sim would be Katawa Shoujo (Japanese for “Cripple Girls”); an indie project developed by team created through the image board and Internet Cesspool 4Chan; inspired by a lone piece of concept art depicting girls with various disabilities as anime stereotypes. Several years in the making, the final game was released recently. You play as Hisao, a boy with a severe heart condition, transferred to a high school for disabled students exclusively. The harem of girls you meet there have various emotional baggage often tied to your disabilities, and as a reward for picking a girl and helping her through her problems, you're rewarded with sex scenes.

Critically, the games have been derided as trash, with a cluster of vocal hangers-on who defend the writing as something of quality, in spite of the whole "solving women's problems with your penis" deal. It doesn't take much digging to see the problematic ideas behind Katawa Shoujo in particular, but alarmed me the most is the plot involving Hanako, a girl suffering from severe facial burns. As a result she is socially introverted, to the point of being written as immature. You, as a character celebrate her birthday with a friend by treating her like she's a child (though she's meant to be 18). That's both considered 'the right thing to do', and of course rewards you with a sex scene with her friend. Creepy.

Writing characters like these isn't difficult - and that's essentially what the problem is. Since the aim of Dating Sims is to make you care for the characters (because it's not going to be a convincing romance fantasy unless you personally fall for the cartoon babes), all it takes is a vulnerable personality (and a vulnerable physicality too in Katawa's case), enough mundane aspects to give a sense of conceivability, a pandering design and bam; instant emotional bait. It's not something solely confined to this genre, or even games as medium (I'm sure you can think of a romance film or 5 that do something similar), but it's rather stark in such a distilled form.

Oh, and if you think that Dating Sims are restricted to just Japan and creeps on the Internet, look no further than Bioware to set you straight. Bioware is a huge name in the Western RPG genre, but they have a consistent and annoying habit of inserting Dating Sim mechanics into their games; often at the behest of actual character development. The Dragon Age and Mass Effect series being the most recognisable examples, the player's relationships with his or her party members is inseparably tied to whether they've had sex or not. With Dragon Age 2, most party members are written as sexually attracted to the player (and only the player, mind) regardless of gender; something that could be argued as progressive, but personally rings rather hollow.

What worries me a little is that Dating Sims - either as a genre or a story-telling element - are becoming more common. It's the easiest and laziest way to write a character and try and eke some level of emotional involvement from a player. Video games have had a poor history of dealing with sexuality and relationships; and reducing those to fanservice 'rewards' is definitely not the right way to go about it. If games and visual novels are to be made about something like that - I'm holding out for a title that's more realistic:

Playing as a 20-something white male, unemployed and from a middle-class background, you meet many girls in your life, ready to be romanced. However, your only dialogue options are to stammer awkwardly, talk about your World of Warcraft character, or jump into an hour long diatribe about anime. The game is impossible to win.

The Language of Hip-Hop: A Lot More Than 'Ass'

This article was done for the Phonograph, can be found here.

Okay, so we live in a world where Big Sean can release a song called “Ass”, where the lyrics consist mostly of just that word. Granted, if you’ve been paying attention to Top-40s hip-hop for the past couple of years you would have already experienced The Black Eyed Peas‘ “I’mma Be”, but that hasn’t saved me from the bemusement I feel regarding “Ass” being a song that actually exists.

For those who were on the opposing side of the Rock vs. Rap petty dichotomy during the 90s and early 2000s, the stupidity of “Ass” is something ‘expected’ for the world of Hip-Hop. At surface level (i.e. that awful club you and your friends go to, you know the one), Rap and Hip-Hop exclusively consist of self-aggrandizing and partying hard; designed to move your feet, but not move you.

Of course, that’s never been the whole story Hip-Hop as an initial concept was heavily focused in telling stories of day-to-day life and struggles; but very little of that sentiment seems to escape outside the bubble of long-established fans of the genre. It only takes a little digging to strike a vein of honest insight and clever topics packaged up in dope rhymes and sick beats.

Taking on the idea that a lot of old-school Hip-Hop had an aim to inform – it might not be too out there to think of some works as educational. And why not? Just because the information imparted is set to some 808s doesn’t mean that it’s not valid. I don’t see there being a University course entitled “Hip-Hop and Philosophical Theory” any time soon (though I would definitely take it if such a thing existed); but academic insight can become apparent in unlikely ways.

I’m presently doing a linguistics degree, my personal area of interest is Language and Identity. Consider for a moment, the concept of ‘Authenticity’. It’s where you (consciously or otherwise) affect your speech so something about you is more obvious to the people you’re speaking to. I for one, take pride in my Londoner accent. And upon listening to “Country Cousins” by Talib Kweli, he became a really good example for me to cite:

I walk and talk kinda fast and thought of as a New York kinda rhymer

But most New Yorkers got family in South and North Carolina

L.A. is ‘Little Alabama’

They walk and they talk with a country grammar

And you think everybody else sound country

So they started callin’ ‘em ‘Bamas

It’s not every day that you’d expect someone to spit lyrics about sociolinguistics, but more than that, it’s something interesting and relevant.

Lupe Fiasco definitely has a corner marked out for sending a message, his second album, The Cool, was all about how a careless pursuit of a gangsta lifestyle, the titular Cool, was nothing but destructive. Not that you would know that from listening to the single that made it to the radio, “Superstar” struggled to pull that kind of sentiment.

Even with his most recent album, Lasers, the public saw Lupe at his self-confessed low-point – “The Show Goes On” was not the kind of story he wanted to tell. Instead, the cleverest track was buried away as a Bonus track – “I’m Beamin’”:

You see I hood a lot, and yeah I nerd some

Hood’s where the heart is, nerd’s where the words from

Don’t represent either, because I merged them

While I can’t relate to a self-hype song about fat stacks of cash, I can definitely feel where Lupe’s coming from when he says he’s never stopped being a nerd, and how that’s never held him back in anything. It’s a message that a younger me really could have done with. Maybe not in the same way that Tupac’s “Keep Ya Head Up” and its messages about respecting women (why wasn’t any of that taken on board?); but still a sentiment worth hearing.

What’s more, I definitely need to give credit to indie hip-hop; running parallel to the grimy rap battle scene that was rendered as oh-so-glamorous in 8 Mile (ahem), are the artists heading for the socio-political angle. Since, deep-down rapping was never too distant from Beat Poetry, entirely powered by heartfelt social commentary. Take, for example, Akala, and his track “Find No Enemy”

But I don’t even believe my own prayers like you,

Chasing career going nowhere like you,

Lost in a fog of my own insecurities I hold myself up as a image of purity,

And I judge everybody else by the colour of their skin or the size of their wealth

But it’s not good for my health as the only one I ever really judge is my self

His flow goes everywhere, from social standings to self-reflection to what it means to be “urban”. He accepts and vocalises his flaws, and he really comes across as human and an equal. That it’s backed up with some deft lyricism and an arguably unusual choice of alternative rock instrumental style makes a track like this memorable; and the messages he imparts along with it.

The scope of socially-conscious and educated artists out there is vast, way more than I can reasonably describe here. So to give a starting point to those who want to find out more (and to hopefully appease the Hip-Hop fans whose favourite artists I’ve missed), give these a try:

Shad – Question Marks

Kenyan-born and living in Canada, Shad’s début album When This is Over is packed full of personal insight. “Question Marks” stands out as a favourite, a downtempo piece discussing the nature of God from a Christian perspective, and how the Bible is interpreted. It’s not necessarily an opinion I can agree with, but he makes a fair case.

Del tha Funkee Homosapien – Del’s Nightmare

Ever heard “Clint Eastwood” by the Gorillaz? Many people heard about Del that way, though he was also part of the rap group Heiroglyphics, and did a concept album as Deltron 3030 about cyberpunk cities (a must-listen for any Sci-Fi fan). His 1998 album,Future Development has “Del’s Nightmare” discussing 1850s slavery, and then making a sarcastic comparison to the music industry. Cheeky, but thought-provoking.

Khaled M -  Can’t Take Our Freedom

Previously interviewed on The Phonograph, Khaled M is a Libyan-born rapper, and an activist in Libyan politics, using his music to reach out to youths, and those who otherwise wouldn’t know the problems going on. His collaboration with Lowkey, “Can’t Take Our Freedom” is punchy and motivational, and made a significant contribution to the revolution.

Pete Philly & Perquisite – Hope

This duo from Amsterdam brought a lot of Jazz and Soul elements into their Hip-Hop beats; Perquisite is an accomplished cellist and regularly used entire string sets in his work. In the track “Hope” from the album Mindstate they team up with Talib Kweli to discuss that, although politics and businesses can be corrupt or greedy, the public still has the ability and the spirit to not just take things as given and work towards better.

Hip-Hop as a genre isn’t confined to being disposable party anthems, nor does it only exist as a soapbox for rappers. There are definitely days where I will put on Notorious B.I.G’s“One More Chance” and giggle like a schoolboy at how he has a 4-minute song entirely about his penis. But the more thought-provoking songs and artists out there could do with more time in the mainstream spotlight, so we can all have more social analysis, and less “Ass”.

Winter Cooking: Beer & Beef Stew

This article can also be found at The Yorker here.

Note, and Disclaimer: Standard cooking is really not my style - I feel that knowing some basic cooking theory (how to bake, how to season, how not to burn things) will supersede the need to follow very rigid instructions. To that end, I don't have precise measurements for this recipe. Go hog wild with different ratios - and if you have any alternate ingredients, I'd love to hear them!

This recipe was inspired by a visit to Trembling Madness, a fancy booze shop with a restaurant upstairs, the place is as quaint and rustic as one comes to expect from York's unique eateries, and the food they serve is hearty, warming and full of carbs. Just what you want on a winter's day. When I first visited there, I tried the Belgian Beer & Beef Stew. It was so rich I couldn't finish it, but it was delicious. I thought to myself "I have to try and make this myself!"

You Will Need (Serves a dinner party of 12, or all your meals for a week):

• Dark Beer. I used 2 bottles of Dark Arts Surreal Stout.
• Beef stock.
• A Leek.
• Butternut Squash (Pumpkin would be better, but that's a bit harder to get old of post-October)
• Sweet Potato (Or potato if you're boring)
• Carrots and Parsnips
• Chestnuts
• Barbecue Sauce/Marinade (Trust me.)
• Spicy seasoning! I used Ginger, Black Pepper and Chilli Powder
• Diced Beef. You could use Diced Pork instead - or both at once! I sure did.
• Cooking Oil and flour. You should already have these.
• Coconut Milk

• A large stew pot. Y'know, to keep the stew in.
• A frying pan. If you're a stir-fry addict and have a wok, even better.

The Fun Part First, you're gonna have to do some preparation. The most time consuming are the Chestnuts - they normally come shelled, and the shell is... rather inedible. What's worse, is that they're a pain to remove. However! If you take a knife to each one, putting clear grooves through each chestnut in an 'X' shape, then leave them to boil in simmering water for 20 minutes, the shells will soften and become much easier to peel off. Be sure to peel them the moment you take them out of the water - once they cool down the shells will harden again, and all your work will have gone to waste.

During the boiling feel free to chop up your veggies. Chop them up chunky and irregular pieces, but feel free to finely chop the leek. Dump it all in the stew pot once done. Also take the time to prepare your meat (heh), and roll it around in the flour. Get a frying pan on, oil it up, and proceed to fry your floured-up meat. You only need to get the outside looking cooked, the majority of the cooking will happen when it starts stewing. Once you're satisfied, dump that in the pot too.

Are your Chestnuts done and peeled? Great, add them to the stew pot! With all your big ingredients in there, it's time to give them a Beer Bath. Crack open the bottles (or cans? I wouldn't try this with Stella), and pour them into the pan with reckless abandon. Soak all those vegetables, they've been naughty.

Ahem. Follow that up with Coconut milk to taste. Less is better than more here - too much and it'll obscure the taste of the beer. Boil some water, and add it to the pot until everything is submerged. Put the stew pot on a very low heat, and get to stirring.

The boiling process is very finicky here. Leave the heat on too low, and hell will have frozen over by the time things start cooking properly. On the other hand, the coconut milk and beer will froth and burn if the heat gets too high. Keep an eye on the heat and keep stirring. Once the whole concoction has heated up, you can relax on the stirring - just keep the heat low and check every 20 minutes to half-hour.

During the stirring process, you can start to add your spices, stock and sauce. This is in no way a science, add as much as you like to round out the flavour of the beer, and to get it as spicy as you can tolerate. Even if you're not a fan of spicy foods, you'll thank me once you come home on a freezing evening and have this stew to warm you up. Bear in mind that the flavour will get stronger as the water boils off.

After an hour, the stew will be edible, but I wouldn't call it 'done'. The longer the stew cooks for the heartier it gets (and the easier it is for it to burn! Don't forget to stir if you have it on the burner!) If you're the kind of person to do forward planning, making the stew the day before, but leaving it to sit overnight will give the ingredients the chance to soften up and take in the flavour. Having the sweet potato and beef chunks melt in your mouth is incredible.

Culinary Lifestyle: Bubble Tea

I'm (partially) quoted in an article on The Yorker. My full entry is below.

I suppose what I dig about bubble tea is the uniqueness of it. To us, it's a weird and new thing, but it's like the cultural equivalent of getting a frappuchino. I first tried bubble tea at a place called the Candy Café, a tiny upstairs restaurant in London's Chinatown (I know that sounds incredibly hipster, but it's true, I swear). What stood out was the huge range of flavours they had (mostly fruit juices), with your choice of green or black tea as a base.

While some of the combinations are incredibly sweet (a chocolate milk tea will taste as saccharine as you'd expect), Cooling off in the summer with a lemon & green tea combo was refreshing, and arguably healthier than a large coke. A few of my friends I recommended the drink to were weirded out by the tapioca balls, but they have a neutral taste, so it doesn't spoil the flavour of the drink, and the chewiness reminds me of bubble gum or marshmallows.

While I wouldn't be craving one during the winter (and the unusual ethnicity of it would probably put off York locals); I definitely wouldn't mind having one around once summer rolls around.

Men's Lifestyle: Surviving Christmas Shopping

This article can also be found at The Yorker.


So it's December and the customary need to buy gifts for others has arrived. While going shopping isn't something alien to you (or at least, it shouldn't be), the idea of having to deal with increased crowds and the fear that you're going to be judged and scrutinised by your family and friends for not knowing anything about their interests is a scary thought.

But it's okay, you've been told by your friends that you're not expected to like or be good at shopping. After all, you're male and us lads don't know how to shop, right? Ha ha ha.

Congratulations, you have lazy and poisonous friends.

I don't think I'm a particularly special case when I say I get a kick out of going shopping. Maybe it's because I'm an urbanite, and I take pleasure from being part of the hustle and bustle; maybe it's because being the neurotic, task-driven sort, I get a warm sense of accomplishment from finding what I set out for, and getting a good bargain; or maybe I'm just a consumerist bourgeoisie pig - but the bottom line is that I have some solid hints for getting over your stumbling blocks when it comes to shopping - male or not. If you absolutely must bring up gender stereotypes, men are supposed to be good at getting a plan together - so let's all be Modern Men here, and scheme our way to an easier shopping experience.

Actually Know About Who You're Buying For
This seems obvious, but it's something that needs saying. If you're going to be parting with your hard-earned cash (or Student Finance's hard-earned cash) to buy presents for people you could arguably have bought for them at any other time of the year; then it stands to reason that you actually like them, and know something about 'em. By knowing some basic questions (something my experience in retail at GAME has made me start dubbing as 'Invite' questions), you can start to form a pretty good idea of what they'd like. These are questions like:

• Do they have any hobbies? (This question makes nerds incredibly easy to buy for)
• What colours do they normally wear? (Clothes shopping has now become much simpler)
• Is there an author/artist/genre they follow? (They like Tim Burton movies? That's a huge clue... Defriend them.)
• Are they in need of specialist tools? (Cooking, sports goods, audio equipment...)

If you can't actually answer these questions, then you probably don't know them well enough for you to be buying them gifts. Awkward if that's a family member or your significant other, but don't let a holiday custom force you to spend money.

Research, Research, Research
Even if you don't intend to do your shopping on the internet, it's more valuable than just access to Facebook. Almost every magazine-site and blog that cover some form of merchandise are putting out Christmas lists of suggested purchases; you're spoilt for ideas. Amazon and similar sites have customer reviews, so you can get a rough idea if that pair of headphones you're getting will crumble into pieces in under a month.

Furthermore, if you're going clothes shopping, checking out the website of the brand is going to save you a lot of wandering around to see if they have a blouse with the correct colour and neckline your housemate wanted. Knowing what you want and where you can get it will save you the embarrassing moments where you stand stock-still looking confused and scared. The other customers will judge you if you do that - goodness knows you don't want the ire of people you will never meet.

When To Put Your Plan in Motion
Ideally, as far away from Christmas as possible, but you already knew that. Your most sensible bet would be when you know the shops you visit receive new stock; it lowers the odds of your target gift being sold-out.

If crowds aren't your thing, you're going to have to go shopping at either the very start or very end of the shopping day. People don't get the idea of getting up early for Retail Therapy until January Sales, so you'll be relatively safe. If you're lucky enough to be in York this December, the high road shops will be open until 8pm every Thursday up until Christmas.

And of course, if you really hate crowds, shop online. Don't be a hero.

Other Hints and Tips

• Accessory/Lingerie Shopping isn't Mandatory! - One concern/complaint I've heard regards dudes who are terrified and lost when it comes to buying certain items for their ladyfriends. I can sympathise with that, La Senza, Claires, and their ilk are some of the very few places where catering to men aren't at the top of their list. But think for a minute - were you expressly asked to get someone earrings or underwear? Mightn't they have some other interest that you can cater to without sticking out like a sore thumb? Getting a thong for your girlfriend might not go so well; and getting a thong for someone who isn't your partner definitely isn't going to go well.

• Don't be afraid to just ask what people want - Let's face it; for a lot of the people on your Christmas list, you wouldn't be spending money on them at any other time of the year; let's not have illusions of undue benevolence. Asking about what they want sounds taboo; but giving someone something they don't want will bruise that ego of yours far more. If they are also under the illusion of benevolence, they may even say "I don't want anything", at which point you've got it made.

Games and Fan Participation

This article can also be found at the Yorker and PixelxCore.

 

Video games as a medium have an advantage other media very rarely get - fan participation. Every so often - and especially in the current age of gaming where developers are increasingly open about their game design processes - fans of a game series or a publishing company will be called upon to offer their voice. It's a smart move on paper - it means developers can cater even more exclusively to a target audience, and almost guarantee a base number of sales. But there are many circumstances where it all goes wrong...

 

For a great example of Fan Participation gone awfully wrong, look no further than Capcom's Megaman Legends 3 project. While the Legends series are some of the most low-key entries in Megaman's history, the previous PS1 games had a gigantic following. So when Capcom announced that a sequel would be part of the 3DS' download service, the hype was intense. The main hook was that development staff asking for input from fans every step of the way - from character design, to side quests and Easter eggs.

However, Capcom had behind-the-scenes difficulties, and everything went downhill. The demo for Megaman Legends 3 was nowhere to be seen when the 3DS eShop went live, and new information on the development process was becoming more and more sparse; until one day an announcement was made that the project had been scrapped entirely. The blow to the fans was twofold - not only were they excited for a long-awaited sequel, by this point they had become emotionally invested in its design process. Some fans felt that it was as much 'their' game as it was Capcom's. When Capcom refused to give a statement in regards to why the project got shut down, things got a little heated. Some of the public shrugged their shoulders and moved on; but others still insist on making their voice heard, and are still trying to appeal to Capcom; a number of which are suffering from what can only be described as Fan Entitlement.

I'm sure this occurs in fans of other media types also; but video game enthusiasts can get down right nasty when they feel like, as the end user, they know better than the companies supplying them with media to consume. Some of the punters, jaded by the closure of the Megaman Legends 3 project closure have decided that they're boycotting Capcom as a whole, resolving to not giving the company a single penny until they get the game release they deserve, dammit.

'Operation Rainfall' is a campaign built entirely around Fan Entitlement. As Nintendo's Wii U slowly approaches, the number of big-name titles for the Wii is starting to decline. Three Japanese RPG titles - The Last Story, Pandora's Tower, and Xenoblade - had no plans for a US release, and project leader Chris Ward was not standing for that. He arranged a mass-mail session, getting Nintendo fans to write letters to Nintendo of America (NoA), pressing them for release details on these titles. The project caused quite a stir, and prompted NoA to sent letters in reply to the participants, but there is still no sign of NoA releasing these games stateside.

From a UK point of view, foreign games being delayed or outright cancelled for an EU release is absolutely nothing new. Atlus, one of the biggest-name Japanese-to-English publishers has a long list of games that were translated and released in the US, but did not see a UK release. Nintendo have been surprisingly kind about EU releases in the last few years, titles Disaster: Day of Crisis and Another Code R are Wii titles with an EU release, but no US one. In fact, Xenoblade, one of Operation Rainfall's target games was announced an EU release as far back as May! Not getting an anticipated title is annoying, but ultimately the decision is down to a publisher's sales team.

Nintendo, Capcom, and other games publishers are businesses first and foremost, and have to make difficult choices in deciding which titles will sell well enough to make a profit in a region. If the answer points to "no", then that is unfortunately that. Operation Rainfall has a large amount of numbers (8,126 on their Facebook page at time of writing; though not a patch on the 40,901 for Megaman Legends 3), but that may not be enough for Nintendo's sales figures.

Operation Rainfall's popularity (though not its success) has sparked other parties to start up their own Fan Participation projects, including the similarly-named Operation Moonfall – a petition to get Nintendo to release the N64 title Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask for 3DS.

Fan Participation can even affect advertising decisions. Recently, Bioware held a Facbook poll to decide the look for the protagonist of Mass Effect 3, Shepard. In the previous games, a male version of Shepard was used in the advertising and merchandise (The gender and looks of the protagonist is decided by the player), and Mass Effect 3 would be the first title to prominently feature the fairer sex foremost. There is some contention over the most popular choice being the blond haired, blue eyed option, when there were less common and ethic options present, but the attempt at inclusiveness at all is a step in the right direction.

Fan Participation is one of the best methods for companies to gauge the interest of consumers; and in situations where companies are doing something reprehensible, a fan voice can do wonders to put them on track. But it's a matter of trust – we trust in games companies and developers to not squander fan interest, and it's the responsibility of the fans to act like sensible adults and not whining children if we disagree with a decision.

Duke Nukem, and Girls in Gaming

 This article can also be found at The Yorker.

 

Duke Nukem Forever is a problematic game. Not just in how after 12 years of haphazard development it feels unfinished, or how the game has been critically slammed by both critics and consumers; but in how it's humour relies on parody - but reads as impossibly misogynistic.

 

For those not aware of the premise, Duke Nukem Forever is based around the titular Duke Nukem living off his acclaimed fame from his previous game. Anyone and everyone adores him - especially the ladies - regardless of how he treats them. Then the alien antagonists from the previous game return to kidnap the women of Earth to use as vessels for creepy alien babies.

It's been reasoned that Duke's persona of 'impossibly well-liked asshole' is a knowing prod at musclehead protagonists of the 90s. But as far as I can recall, none of them were defined by just how excessively they could objectify women. This comes to a disturbing zenith on the alien mothership stage (Warning: Video is rather explicit). The area is littered with naked women being ensnared by phalic-looking tentacles and writhing in pain. Duke can't free them, but the player is free to shoot them to put them out of their misery, backed up with one of Duke's one-liners. And that's the joke. The joke is rape. Are you laughing yet?

So where do we go from here? The presence of this in Duke Nukem Forever is surprisingly downplayed in much of the game's coverage, but I sincerely hope that the general public and other games developers who witness such a poor sentiment have the common sense to acknowledge that this kind of thing is not okay. Duke Nukem Forever's stunning failure at starring an identifiable or likeable character can hopefully be a lesson to other games that might go down the same route. It's entirely possible to have a protagonist that's a musclehead or a ladykiller and still entertaining. Bulletstorm manages it. Hell, even Johnny Bravo managed it.

Furthermore, with new games featuring legitimately well-rounded female protagonists, managing to get by on marginally less titilation is a pleasant thought. Lara Croft in Tomb Raider had her franchise form around her figure, but the new Tomb Raider title announced at this year's E3 focuses more on her adventuring competence. Hopefully that will stay a consistent theme throughout.

Jade from Beyond Good and Evil is an even better example; her work as a journalist and a freedom fighter against the opressive regime of the Alpha Section means the other characters respect and fight alongside her - her gender not mattering. Aside from that, the game is wonderfully crafted, despite its age. A HD release of the game is available for Xbox Live Arcade, and is a great exercise in how character development and interaction can be handled.

Games like Bayonetta straddle the line between empowering and and worrying. As a character, Bayonetta felt like she had freedom through her fighting ability and some surprisingly human interaction when things got rough; but the game's creator said some rather worrying things that soured the image I had for her. It's a shame, since the quality of the game is incredibly on-point otherwise, and delivering positive messages through quality games is by far the ideal situation.

Games as an artistic medium feel way too immature to handle concepts like sex, let alone character design equality based around gender. But the industry is still growing and changing - maybe in the future the Duke Nukem Forevers of the world will be a marginalised historical footnote.