Into the Deep

Storytelling Robots Have Illogical Arguments with Sex

February 8, 2010 at 2:54 am (Bothered, Creativity, Infodump, Interests, Intrigued, Write, Writing) (360, Arguing Online, Arguments, Console Wars, Creativity, Edward Cheever, Frustration, Gamist Manifesto, Illogical, Jason Roher, Katie, Playstation 3, PS3, PS360, PSWii, PSWii60, Roxxxy, Sex-Bot, Sexbot, Stories, Story Telling, Video Games, Videogames, Wii, Wii60, Write, Writing, Xbox)

Okay, the blog post I thought I was going to do for the weekend is not happening yet. I still plan on finishing it for a future post, but that has officially become undetermined. So instead, I present you with a hodgepodge of yim-yam.

BEHOLD THE TERROR!!!!

Welcome to the seedy underbelly of the inevitable march of technology. The flag-bearer of this movement? The Sex-bot.
I first discovered this… thing… at This Humerous Blog Post, which has a sort of… review of the… product… thing….

What do I think of all this? Well, I have three primary reactions. First is sadness. There are people out there so desperate for sexual love, due to whatever you want to blame it on, that they’ll have sexual relations with things. Things. It’s a very similar feeling to what I think about blow-up dolls. This makes Masturbating look romantic and suave. Second of all, I feel somewhat resigned. As technology gets better sex-bots will become a simply reality. It will become less a sign of desperation and more a fetish, and eventually it won’t be as weird as it is now but… *SIGH* And my third reaction is…

Does anyone really find that thing attractive? Really? I mean, come on. It gets real bad when you got to put a paper bag over the head of your sex-bot.

Okay, moving on now…

I’m a proud owner of two consoles(PS3 and Wii) and a PC. Furthermore, my girlfriend, Katie, whom I love ( ^___^ ), owns a 360, and when the day comes that we tie the knot, we shall be owners of all 3 consoles. PSWii60 FTW! We own so many systems because, quite frankly, we love games. It doesn’t really matter what system they are on, or when they were made, if a game is/was/will-be good, I’m there. And that is why, like Rus McLaughlin at IGN.com says, I don’t understand the console war. It is stupid.

I understand why people do it. They are insecure about their console of choice. After all, if they can only have one console (due to finances or otherwise) then their choice must be the right one, and they’ll defend it as such. But quite frankly, they need to get over it. It’s childish.

But asking the interwebs to stop being childish is like asking a stone to float. It ain’t happenin’. A good example of the various ways such arguments go down on the internet can be found at this hilarious article, once again from Cracked.com And oh, boy, have I experienced those bad arguments. I might have even, to my chame, used one or two on various forums.

So what is the point of all this? All of my ranting against the console wars and against stupid arguments in general?
Merely to reinforce this statement: The Internet is a retched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious.

To wrap up, I recently Read a Blog by Michael Thomsen, in which he presents Jason Roher’s “New Gamist Manifesto” Which I’ve listed below –

“1. Games do not have spoilers.

2. Games cannot be finished.

3. Games do not have characters, except for the characters who play them.

4. Games do not have stories except for the stories that players tell through them.

5. Playing a new game is less like reading a new story, hearing a new song, or seeing a new film.

6. Playing a game is more like learning a new language.

7. Games are interfaces, not between minds and content, but between minds.”

Here is how I responded to it:

“I don’t know, I think the manifesto is kind of flaky. There are some general problems, such as the fact that it says more about what he disproves in the current game development scene than what he approves of or encourages, and there are a number of smaller, more specific problems.

“1. Games do not have spoilers.” – If a spoiler is the out-of-context revelation of any knowledge or experience that the audience wants to learn/experience in-context first, then even telling said audience what the gameplay is at all could be considered a spoiler. As gameplay is a part of any game, his first statement falls apart. If the only thing I said of Zelda was that the player uses progressively discovered tools to unlock new portions of the game world, that could be called a spoiler. Technically.

Of course what he really means is that there are no “story” spoilers, which he obviously thinks is a detriment. This, combined with number 4, indicates that he believes true “game stories” to be entirely constructed by the player.

This assertion contradicts number 7, which asserts that there is a second party in the process of the game (and the process is the story.) If 7 is true, then 1 cannot be true, for a second story-teller creates one half of the story which can be spoiled for the other story-teller; 4 must also be wrong, because the presence of another mind in the story-process means that there is story outside of the story of the player.

I have a problem with number 2 simply because he does not define his terms. What does he mean by “cannot be finished?” If he means that there are no concrete goals or accomplishments to be made outside of running around a virtual world, then I would argue that games cannot “begin” either. They would be like art. Static. If he means that there is never a point at which there is not something new to do, then I would argue that he has created something impossible, dare I say god-like, for (if you take the Big-Bang theory seriously) even the Universe becomes un-done and begins again. If he means that a game never ends because it sticks with the player in their mind and heart, then I would question why he must state the obvious, for anything that occurs can impress an audience and remain with them in memory, and it is obvious he is trying to draw distinctions between games and film or literature.

As for number 3, if we were to take it to be true, then anything short of another living being cannot be said to be a character, and thus literature and film are both media of emptiness. If he means that games simply do not have imaginary characters to interact with, then once again he is dealing with something static. The more interaction a non-sentient facsimile has with a player the more like a character it becomes, if a very inhuman one. A Mario stage becomes a character that the player interacts with. Even if it were devoid of monstrosities, the halls of Rapture are still very much their own character. Remove all forms of interaction, including visual stimuli, and the game ceases to be anything at all, besides a flailing sprite or model of the player.

“5. Playing a new game is less like reading a new story, hearing a new song, or seeing a new film.” – First, I wanted to ask “than…?” It is an incomplete thought, though I grasp his meaning. What he wants to say is that experiencing a new game involves participation from the audience, rather than passive enjoyment that defines the other media he mentioned. True enough, though I imagine he would quibble with me about the particulars of what I find to be a different experience (this opinion of mine is solely based on my view of his other assertions and how I react to them.)

“6. Playing a game is more like learning a new language.” – Ah, so he finished the thought. Well, in a sense I agree with him. However, I think he is confusing something very fundamental. He associates learning a language with learning a form of interaction, which is true. However, he would seem to draw very exact parallels, and this contradicts other elements of the manifesto. A language’s purpose is to interact, but not for the sake of one-way interaction. That is speaking to the wind. A language’s purpose is just as much for hearing. But the moment one begins to hear the words of others, the story is no longer theirs alone (contradicting number 4 and 3.)

I’ve already said I like 7, but it is also contradictory.

His fundamental flaw in the manifesto is that he cannot settle on a definition of gaming that works or is even consistent. Is it, as number 4 says, entirely the creation of the player, or is it as number 7 says, the product of multiple storytellers?

I go for number 7. Developers and Games are both telling the story together, and that means they both must have something to say. (Note: in the case of gamers, this often takes the form of either deconstruction, where breaking the game world is, in itself, a form of storytelling, or construction, where the player takes the pieces given to make a more complete whole.)

I appreciate his desire to get back to pure gameplay. Obviously, it is the most fundamental aspects of the medium. However, gameplay does not exist outside of a given virtual context, and that means that virtual context is just as important to games as gameplay.”

What say you, my fair readers?