Hidden collectibles cont.

In my previous post I discussed how the 2010 game Limbo incorporated a clever game within the game involving the search for hidden items. By using the Xbox achievement system the developers at Playdead gave the player descriptive hints for locating each item. I argued this particular hint system transformed what might otherwise have been an exhaustive time sink of an activity into an enjoyable and intuitive scavenger hunt.

One thing I didn’t come around to discussing in my earlier review of Alan Wake was the game’s obsession with hidden collectibles. Here’s a game that invites the player to locate hidden manuscript pages, hidden weapons caches, hidden beverage can pyramids, hidden readable signs, hidden radio shows, hidden TV shows, and—my personal favorite—hidden coffee thermoses. Finding these items is not a requirement for completing the main game, but as with Limbo it's an activity that can earn achievement points. The player can consult an in-game “statistics” screen to observe their progress toward locating each of these items.


While most of the items end up being pretty easy to spot through the regular course of play, there remain some proverbial needles in the haystack. This game presents a lot of virtual ground to cover.

The TV and radio shows are relatively easy to locate and worthwhile to find because they lend interest and a sense of authenticity to the game world. The manuscript pages basically do the same, adding narrative subtext, although these items are more scattered and much more numerous. The signs offer a little bit of subtext but it seems pointless to make a collectible game out of them.

The inclusion of weapons caches make the most sense from an actual game-playing perspective, as they contain useful items that bolster the player’s inventory and ability to combat enemies. The game also employs a helpful marker system for spotting and guiding the player toward these nearby caches. The player character’s flashlight will reveal painted golden splotches and arrows—previously unseen—leading to treasure. Even better, this aspect of the game is tied fittingly into the overarching storyline of the game (there's a character in the game who the player later discovers has actually gone around and supposedly set up these hidden caches for a reason). I like that. But, again, does the game need to turn these caches into part of a collect-a-thon?

The Alan Wake collectibles that make the least amount of sense would be the can pyramids and coffee thermoses. The can pyramids serve as a kind of quirky Easter egg. Find them and knock them over to unlock the item. Why include it? Well, why not?

The thermoses don’t seem to add anything to the game either. And yet there are 100 of them spread throughout the six episodes. That’s a lot! Their presence is never explained, let alone acknowledged. They serve no mechanical purpose. And while most can be located with minimal exploration, by their very inclusion it creates a situation in which the obsessive player will wander off the beaten trail time and time again simply because there might be a stray thermos just around the corner.

This type of feature throws the entire pacing of Alan Wake completely out of whack. From a narrative role-playing perspective, why would a protagonist who is in complete mortal peril—not to mention a time crunch—go off on a wild goose chase every other minute to look for coffee thermoses? I’m not saying everything in a game has to add up to neat narrative logic (although that wouldn’t be so bad), but it all comes back to the point that looking for a needle in a haystack is, most of the time, decidedly not enjoyable.

Another game that went heavy on the collectibles was 2009's Batman: Arkham Asylum from Rocksteady Studios. Similar to Limbo, one could reasonably argue the existence of multiple play-through modes in Arkham Asylum. There’s the main storyline with its clear chain of events, objectives, boss fights and other combat encounters leading to eventual narrative conclusion. There’s also a wealth of hidden collectibles associated with various Riddler challenges, and finding these can be a mode of game playing seemingly all its own.


On the one hand, there was some satisfaction to be had in seeking out these sundry secrets. Here's another game that employed a clever hint system—or in this case, appropriately, a riddle system—that involved thinking and analysis rather than mindless wandering around (although there was plenty of that too). It nevertheless bothered me thinking I could have otherwise charged through the game in a nice, action-packed eight-hour-or-so push.

When I played through the game I found it somewhat annoying how these two basic modes—the so-called “main game” and the Riddler treasure hunt—were operating at odds with one another. The entire course of the game is supposed to occur in one epic night (although there is no actual time limit or consequence for taking too long to complete objectives). Everything in the main storyline of the game communicated urgency. Why then was the game simultaneously encouraging me to spend precious hours retracing my steps and exploring every corner of the island to find statues, tape recordings, hidden painted question marks and more?

The idea of incorporating hidden and/or collectible items within a video game world goes way back. I don't need to bother trying to identify the earliest examples, because the type of game element I'm talking about isn't easily defined. Super Mario Bros. incorporated all manner of hidden coins, power ups and extra lives. What's interesting to me, however, are the types of hidden collectibles that are in place to add another layer of player motivation, secondary to the main objective of simply finishing the game.

It think there was a time—particularly during the transitional years when game worlds became predominantly three-dimensional—when this notion of finding hidden or scattered items really had its heyday. I'm thinking of the Nintendo 64 era and the cutesy platformer games wherein this sort of activity served as a placeholder for keeping players occupied and goal-oriented. Forward progress in Super Mario 64 was tied to finding hidden or sometimes hard-to-reach stars within game levels to unlock new levels. Similar to Limbo, the game gave players helpful hints to finding these stars. This collecting business seemed to do the trick for a number of years until games like Donkey Kong 64 came along and turned us all insane (for brevity's sake, let it simply be said there was too much collecting, and it wasn't fun). And the cutesy-platformer genre went the way of the buffalo.

Nevertheless, the concept of hidden collectibles remained and persists—mostly as an afterthought. It's long seemed to me that scattering hidden items has to do with giving players an excuse to explore and interact with a large game world. In other words, the space is there. The developers went through a lot of trouble making it big and pretty. Incorporating combat only goes so far. Why let all that pretty space go to waste?

My point is there are good methods and bad methods for addressing this problem. If a game developer is going to include an activity into their game, hidden collectibles included, it should be deliberate and with purpose. I'm tired of these pointless hidden items being plopped down or tucked behind random corners with little reason or consideration for the player's sense of logic or intuition. I'm tired of wandering aimlessly without a clue. And I'm tired of doing this for no other reason than to get that 100%-unlocked statistic or achievement point.

If I'm going to be looking for something, I want it to be a game and not a random, time-wasting task. But I also want to play games that maintain their tension-heavy forward progress. Backtracking for the sake of collecting breaks the overall experience.

Does any of this rambling make sense? If anyone has any thoughts on this subject feel free to leave a comment.

The three play-through modes of Limbo and a lesson on hidden collectibles

Sometimes it's the simple things that matter. It really is. Take Limbo for example.

Have you played Limbo? Oh, man, you've got to play Limbo.


Don't watch any trailers. Don't YouTube any walkthrough videos. Just download it and play it. Turn the volume up. Keep the screen brightness relatively dark. And just go in cold. Experience it. I don't think you'll regret it.

Limbo, of course, is pretty much old news by now. It had its moment in the spotlight, but it's basically one of those relatively short games that you go through once and that's pretty much it.

Or is it?

I found myself going back to the puzzle-platformer this past weekend. It had been about a year since I'd played through. I had thought at the time that the puzzles were clever. They were logical, but not too obvious at first glance. Challenge increased with progress. And while the game relied on plenty of trial and error, the learning curve proved more intuitive than skull-bashing. Limbo also avoided repetition. Each successive puzzle, even if it contained elements from previous puzzles, threw clever new tricks into the mix.

Aesthetically, Limbo also was a beautiful game that offered no narrative explanations and instead welcomed any and all interpretations. And when it was over it was over. Fin.

So why return?


It comes back to those stupid Xbox achievement points. They're just points, I know. They don't do anything. And yet playing a game doesn't necessarily do anything either. The games are what we make of them. And so the best achievement points, as I see it, are the ones that steer the player toward approaching the game in a new kind of way. It could be like writing a new, completely optional set of rules to a pre-established game.

On the one hand, these optional points can be an irritating thorn in the side of players who happen to be obsessive “completionists,” sort of like those insane folks addicted to maintaining as many Guinness world records as possible, but on a smaller scale. On the other hand, it bears repeating these points are optional. Pursue the most challenging and time-consuming achievements at your own risk.

In Limbo there is one major achievement that nets 100 points for simply completing the game. And while neither the name nor description of the achievement (“Where Credit is due — Persistence has its own reward”) makes this explicitly clear, that’s what it is. Anyone who makes it through to the end—whether they look up the puzzle solutions online or rely on their own brainpower all the way through—will earn this achievement.

Then there is a series of ten rather cryptic achievements, two offering 5 points each and the other eight each worth 10—making for a combined total of 90 points. During my first time through the game I had assumed these referred to progress-based mileposts that would automatically unlock for solving the main puzzles. That’s not the case, but I'll talk about these more in a second.

Finally, there is one dastardly achievement for Limbo that tasks the player with completing the game in one sitting and dying no more than five times. Considering the swiftness and frequency of death in a typical player’s first run through the game, that's a pretty tall order. And frankly, for only 10 achievement points, not too many people are going to try for it. That’s okay.

So when I loaded the game over the weekend I did so in the interest of unlocking those ten cryptic achievements. Without actively trying, I actually had managed to nab one during my first run. I had been attempting to figure out a timing-based puzzle close to the end of the game (I didn’t know at the time it was close to the end) when I happened to go exploring in a particular direction at a particular moment, suddenly finding my player avatar in a particular spot of the two-dimensional playing area that I hadn’t realized was accessible a moment earlier. I thought I had found the location of the key to advancing the puzzle. Instead I found a strange egg-like item (a Limbo Easter egg?) that unlocked an achievement. It had nothing to do with solving the puzzle at hand.

It then became clear the remaining nine cryptic achievements each referred to more of these hidden items. The names and descriptions of the achievements were clues:

• Wrong Way — That’s not right (5 points)


• Altitude is Attitude — Exploration off the ground (5 points)


• It’s Stuck — Prepare a dry landing (10 points)


• Urban Exploration — Involves heavy lifting (10 points)


• Alone in the Dark — Beneath the arthropod (10 points)


• Climbing the Cog — Don’t pull the lever just because you can (10 points)


• Backtracking — Ride the Crates (10 points)


• Guided by Sparks — The crate is key (10 points)


• Under Ground — Vertical passageway (10 points)


• Going Up — Don’t let gravity keep you down (10 points)

By re-reading these clues, I had a pretty good idea where some of the other hidden items might be located. So that’s what I focused on for my most recent play through, finding those remaining items. Well, I found them, and I had a good time doing it.

In a sense, I would argue these Limbo achievements encourage three basic play-through modes. The first and most important play through is all about completing the basic game. It’s about figuring out how to do it and doing it. This may or may not involve finding some of the hidden eggs, but the second play-through mode is to locate either all of or the remainder of the collectibles. It’s about the player referencing their memory and knowledge from their first play through and discovering the rather elegantly hidden game within the game—little puzzles contained inside the big puzzle. The third play through is to master the game by completing with minimal deaths—no more than five for the achievement. I can’t speak too much about the latter because I haven’t made any attempts to play through according to that set of rules.

So … what’s my point in all of this?

The point is this. It’s the simple things that matter. I encourage everyone to experience Limbo’s first play-through mode. That’s a given. I was surprisingly impressed, however, with the second mode as well. Finding hidden items simply for the sake of finding hidden items can actually be quite satisfying—when done smartly!

It would be quite possible to find each of the hidden Limbo eggs without any hints. It’s also possible to go through and not stumble upon any of them at all (as I almost did). Sometimes all it takes is a little bit of exploration, or paying close attention when noticing an area of the traversable screen that seems disconnected from the more visible path of forward progress. In a game such as Limbo, where every interactive element is in its place for a specific reason, that inexplicable object or open area would be a red flag.

But anyone who has ever tried to locate hidden video game items without cheating can probably tell you what an exhausting and maddening experience it can be. Sure, the completion-obsessed player may find some or even most of the items in a given game, but more likely than not there will always be those elusive needles in the proverbial haystack. Finding needles is great, but looking for them with no hot/cold feedback or helpful navigation often frustrates. In lieu of spending more potentially wasted time and energy poking through a level or game world, the player will eventually resign to seeking the answer online. From a game-playing perspective, this defeats the entire purpose of hiding whatever item is being sought after in the first place.

For this reason, Limbo’s clues function brilliantly. For one—and I don’t mean to spoil anything by revealing this—they are listed chronologically in relation to the linear progress of the game. The first listed achievement ("Wrong Way") is obtained before the second ("Altitude is Attitude"), the second before the third and so on. Second, each achievement name and description work together to point out types of landmarks or indicators. The “It’s Stuck” achievement description implies water. “Climbing the Cog” implies both a cog and a lever. They’re great hints, and in this case developer Playdead just happened to use the Xbox achievements system for presenting them. Instead of looking for a needle in a haystack, the activity becomes a scavenger hunt. It’s still about discovery and exploration, but it’s a type of exploration—it's a type of game!—that respects your time and energy.

In my next post I'll continue this train of thought further and discuss how Limbo's treatment of hidden collectibles informs and compares to similar features in other game titles. Stay tuned!


(Images for this post were borrowed from http://tig.wikia.com/wiki/Limbo and http://strategywiki.org/wiki/LIMBO.)

Alan Wake's American Nightmare review - a rough draft

I'll admit, this is weird. I was just wandering around my apartment today, trying to figure out what to do with my blog. All of a sudden I started picking up these random glowing pages to a video game review that I don't remember writing. The pages were everywhere. In the kitchen sink. On the bathroom mirror. Anyway, I apologize for the terrible writing, but I figured I just had to transcribe them and share...


Title Screen
I could see when I booted up the game that something was different. The nature of the series was changing. It was apparent from the word go.

The words on the opening title screen read Alan Wake's American Nightmare, and although it bore the namesake of the original game from 2010, the overall image conveyed something undoubtedly pulpier in tone.

The title character appeared to be standing on the precipice of a desert cliff, flashlight in one hand and a nail gun in the other. He stood tall and held up the makeshift weapon confidently. Gone was the dark forest motif from the first game. No longer was Alan Wake just a name, a figure in silhouette behind a white beam of light. It was as if the character from that first game had re-written himself onto the cover of a comic book.

Whereas Wake's previous adventures had left him mysteriously stranded beneath the dark waters of Cauldron Lake, fighting for survival and sanity, this Alan Wake had emerged stronger and more powerful. Like a superhero.

Exploring the Space
As I progressed further into the main adventure, I began to see more clearly the game's overall structure. The Arizona setting presented itself as a series of small open-world environments that I was free to explore. I moved the player character around these bite-size locations, using a kind of on-screen radar device that pointed as a map and compass toward various objectives.

I knew that were I a stronger man I could cut straight to the main business, probably zip through the whole game in a few short hours. I could use those spared hours to do something productive and meaningful with my life. But I also knew that scattered around that digital landscape were collectible manuscript pages, and with those pages, Xbox achievement points.

I was not a strong man.

The Giving Game
Even as the waves of enemies intensified, I never broke a sweat. I dispatched them with ease and precision. For being in a so-called “nightmare,” Alan Wake controlled like an absolute dream. His footwork was nimble. His aim was impeccable. And his ability to hold a flashlight steady on a moving target while reloading a pump-action shotgun? Effortless.

When it came to weapons and supplies, the game was more giving than Santa Claus. No matter the number of monsters that swarmed in a given moment, it simply didn't matter. A full or partial resupply of batteries, bullets and health was rarely more than a few hundred feet away.

On the one hand I could appreciate a game with a more buffed up protagonist. Easier combat meant less frustration. Less frustration meant less cursing at the television set. On the other hand, I couldn't help but feel the game lacked a certain tension because of this.

Words Words Words
Within the game world I picked up page after page after page. Each time I did so I listened as the voice actor narrated. A few pages described plot events that had yet to transpire. Some filled in bits and pieces of backstory or brief subtext involving the game's minor characters. Most pages read like a boring, sentimental memoir. Alan had a loving wife. His agent Barry was a good friend. I wanted to shout at the TV. “I get it already!”

Alan Wake’s words had the power to reshape reality, but they also had the power to induce sleep.

In my own written review I had more-or-less forgiven the first game's sub-par prose, but this was getting ridiculous.


Déjà Vu
My wife had warned me that the game was recursive, requiring the player to repeat the same basic tasks in the same three locations, only with subtle storyline shifts.

Was this laziness on behalf of the developer, a way in which to recycle the same locations? Or was there a purpose? Did the storytelling communicate something significant through the use of this Groundhog Day setup?

Did developer Remedy leave room for surprises? Or did they merely throw in new weapons and enemy types with each recursive play through? It was hard to tell.

Paging Mr. Scratch
The premise of American Nightmare held promise. Alan Wake was hot on the trail of his nemesis Mr. Scratch, a doppelganger that was released into the world like an evil reflection when Alan plunged into the waters of Cauldron Lake at the end of the first game. Alan had written himself into some kind of vaguely remembered Night Springs television story in which he finally catches up to and corners Mr. Scratch.

Mr. Scratch had just wreaked strange havoc on this mysterious Arizona town. He had charmed many of the townspeople before turning violent and psychotic. He'd even recorded a series of taunting video messages, sometimes murdering random victims on camera while he waxed poetic to Alan about being nothing more than an unshackled version of Alan's true self.

There were other suggestions that this evil twin represented Alan's character flaws exaggerated to the extreme. The bad drinking habits. Alan's temper. But Mr. Scratch was also a serial killer, a concept all too morbid for such a lightly treated game.

Show or Tell
Aside from those few drawn-out Mr. Scratch videos, most of the overarching story was simply implied. Alan encountered some non-player characters who briefly described the events that happened before his arrival. Events mostly disconnected from the player's rather straightforward experience of running around an empty game world and battling nameless dark creatures.

There was nothing wrong with the idea of a game bringing the player character into the aftermath of a calamity. BioShock and its spiritual predecessors were evidence enough of that. But American Nightmare violated one of the supreme rules of good narrative. Instead of showing, it mostly told.


The Taken
When Alan Wake battled through the Pacific Northwest setting in the first game, the Taken had represented individuals who had been kidnapped by the elusive and unknowable Dark Presence. Loggers had been transformed into axe-wielding, chainsaw-revving murderers. Most of the Taken served as anonymous fodder that existed for the purpose of creating an obstacle to the protagonist's forward progress. But while their precise origins and identities may have presented a logical conundrum, they made enough aesthetic sense that it didn't really matter.

Their presence in American Nightmare felt more arbitrary. The enemies looked like cartoon characters in a cartoon setting. Alan's journey through the forests, farms, mills and mines of Bright Falls, Washington, had felt deeply authentic. The settings in American Nightmare—a generic motel, a mountain-top observatory, and a drive-in movie theater—felt haphazard by comparison.

A Critical Choice
Writing a game review is no easy task. People may think it's just words on a screen or a magazine page but it's not. There are considerations to be made. Will the review be a glorified consumer's guide? A think piece? Will it have a score or rating? A reviewer must identify a game's crucial components and determine either how well or poorly those components co-function to create an engaging or otherwise meaningful experience for the player.

I pored over the words I had written. My thoughts were as scattered and divided as the pages of Alan Wake's story. I had made a bold decision. I would try to write the review in the style of the author himself. I imagined Alan reading the prose as if it was his own. I searched in my memory for the rhythm and cadence of Alan's in-game narration.

Even as I struggled with the piece, I knew I was sacrificing the opportunity to put forth coherent criticism. My precious few readers would scoff. I might never be allowed to write for a respectable game publication because of it. It might not work. But I had made my decision. I'd gone all in. My chips were on the table and there was no turning back.

That Sinking Feeling
I started in on the third and final cycle of the game's narrative. The Alan Wake character had woken up once again on the shore of a small desert lake. In front of the character was the famous cabin from the island on Cauldron Lake. Like the Kansas farmhouse from The Wizard of Oz, it had been transported to a distant world. Only now it was partially submerged, sinking slowly into the dark sludgy waters.

Perhaps it was a metaphor for the character, trapped as he was in some metaphysical limbo of his own psyche. But it was more telling than that. To me the sinking cabin was symbolic of the Alan Wake series itself. The game that had begun with such potential had suddenly stagnated. The game developers had taken their narrative in a certain direction and now they were creatively stuck.

Conclusions
There was a time not long ago when I believed Alan Wake was on the cutting edge of some great shift in interactive storytelling. The first game had spun a gripping supernatural narrative that rivaled the best of high-concept television. Its linear level design worked brilliantly in episodic format, as each segment brought the game's protagonist ever closer to solving the mystery of his wife's disappearance. It was exciting.

American Nightmare felt like a video game. And an average one at that. It was possible this was just a diversion. A quick stopover on the way to a true sequel in which the developers at Remedy would pick up the pieces and continue the main storyline that had culminated to such great effect with their last downloadable episode. Only time would tell.

For now there was nothing to do but fudge around with American Nightmare's arcade action mode. As I preceded to play a thought came to me. “Hey,” I told myself. “This arcade action mode will really boost the game's replay-value score in my review.”

Alan Wake's American Nightmare gets 2.5 out of 4 stars. You can download this game on Xbox LIVE Arcade for 1200 Microsoft Points ($15).

Images were borrowed from alanwake.wikia.com.

Alan Wake review - heading toward the light

It seems so obvious after the fact and yet I never would have conceived of the idea myself. Model a video game on the pacing, structure and logic of a high-concept television series.

For example, what if we make a game about a famous writer who travels to the Pacific Northwest and stumbles upon a dark mysterious power that makes his words come to life? Or, perhaps more simply, what if Stephen King and J.J. Abrams got together and made a video game?

That, in a nutshell, is the high concept of Alan Wake on the Xbox 360, developed by Remedy Entertainment. And doggone if it doesn’t make for an interesting game.


It’s quite possible I’m just out of touch. I didn’t enter the current console generation until the very end of 2009, and I still have a lot of catching up to do. But I’d say more than any other current-gen game I’ve played, Alan Wake feels like it has the stirrings of something genuinely new.

Mechanically, it’s not. What the player’s got in his or her hands essentially is a linear third-person shooter with a flashlight thrown in to mix up the action. Shoot the bad guys first with light. Finish ’em off with the Second Amendment. Plus you can execute a cool slow-motion dodge maneuver. It’s clever. It’s tense. It can be a bit of a juggling act trying to fend off a pack of swarming specters and poltergeist logging equipment.

What makes Alan Wake really fresh, I think, has to do with a combination of the game’s setting, narrative structure and incredible production values.


Let’s talk about narrative. Specifically, let’s address some criticisms. I’ve come across some opinions regarding Alan Wake as a lousy protagonist. People say he’s kind of a jerk. He’s rude to his fans. He’s got a bad temper. I’d say that’s what makes him a complex character. These slightly embarrassing traits pop up pretty quickly and help establish some of the foreboding. We see that all is not quite well with the internal character. Through the course of the game we see this internal drama manifest in the external environment of the game as the protagonist works toward redemption. And I think Alan Wake has a lot of unmentioned redeeming qualities, i.e. his loyalty and determination. It sounds like L.A. Noire (which I haven’t played) received similar criticism for its central Cole Phelps character. So did Grand Theft Auto IV. My guess is that narrative-heavy games will likely continue to challenge players with this sort of set-up. Flawed characters have long been a part of literature and film. Some readers and filmgoers today still have a hard time engaging with books and movies dominated by what they might see as unlikeable or unredeemed protagonists. Video games introduce that other awkward dimension of direct player control and interaction, sometimes interrupted by bits of action—perhaps in cutscenes—where the protagonist might act in unsavory ways outside of that control or input.

There’s a pretty fun interview with Tom Bissell where he talks about the many ways Remedy misses the reality-check mark in developing a writer protagonist. No international bestselling author, he says, should have his best friend for an agent. No major publisher would let a writer’s spouse design the writer's official book jacket. These are all valid points, and yet obviously this is what happens in the realm of high-concept entertainment. Indiana Jones isn’t a typical archaeologist either. Barry Wheeler may not represent an actual New York agent, but he makes for a damn good sidekick character.

I like how the game introduces its characters, mostly without fanfare, and comes back to them in sometimes unexpected ways. I like how it slips in little storyline hints and clues that you might not at first realize are hints and clues. I like the game world's backwoods setting—its authenticity, consistency, its nods to Twin Peaks and that it doesn't rely on hyperbolic set pieces. I like the game’s measured plot reveals and, in particular, its TV-inspired episodic breakdown. I like that the game left me with lingering questions even at the end of the game, just as the opening narration more or less suggested was going to happen.


I like all of these things and yet I don’t necessarily like what it all portends—a future of episodic, download-only game releases being one likely possibility. I worry that I like Alan Wake probably more than I should, that I forgive too easily its faults and absurdities. It’s been suggested elsewhere and it bears repeating here that the actual writing in the game—as in the manuscript pages collected throughout each segment of the game—does not impress as great writing. The easy excuse, of course, comes back to the high-concept notion. It doesn't need to be Hemingway prose. It's a plot gimmick.

But this all leads me to wonder: Would I put up with cheesy narration and similar gimmickry in film or television? Does standard quality entertainment in one medium equate greatness when replicated in a video game, simply because it's novel to the medium?

Popular video games have long relied on their own version of the high concept, some cliché examples of which have been repeated with rapidly improving technology but slower-building narrative sophistication and/or creativity. You have the typically Western theme of the lone space marine battling vast armies of aliens, demons, etc. Japanese games have often maintained high concepts (A.K.A. absolute bizarreness) all their own. Ultimately, Alan Wake represents a positive step forward. I'll take the thought-provoking TV-style narrative incoherence of Alan Wake over the traditional video game incoherence of Bayonetta any day.

Sometimes I'm convinced that Alan Wake represents a type of game that wouldn't have been able to exist in a previous hardware generation, that its success hinges on the aforementioned production values. One game I have yet to play, however, is the sleeper hit Deadly Premonition, another 2010 Xbox 360 game that—oddly enough—also takes inspiration from the Twin Peaks series. How does a Japanese-developed game with a similar setting but notoriously low-budget production values test this particular theory?

I guess I'll let you know when I find out.

Alan Wake gets 3.5 out of 4 stars.

Images were borrowed from alanwake.wikia.com.

This game brought to you by...

Partly in honor of CorporateAmericaDay, A.K.A. Super Bowl Sunday, I wanted to take a break from my super serious memoir series to talk about a topic near and dear to all of our hearts.

There's a reason you and I love to play video games. It's the same reason we love watching action movies and reading the newspaper and listening to talk radio. It's the true reason for why we watch professional sports, including the Super Bowl.

I'm talking about advertising.

On the rare occasion I'm not being bombarded with logos, slogans, jingles and billboard ads—or basically any moment when I realize it's been longer than two minutes since I've purchased something from an online retailer, big box store, franchise restaurant chain or international beverage company—I just get depressed. I panic. I get this dreadful feeling like my life has no purpose, that I have no purpose. Then I'll check my computer or I'll turn on the radio. Or I'll look up at the frighteningly calm blue sky and—to my relief—see a sponsored blimp flying by, and I'll remember my place in this world as some mega corporation's valued consumer.

I had one of these life-saving moments yesterday while playing Alan Wake on the Xbox 360 [pick yours up today!]. My character Alan had woken up in some kind of therapy lodge for troubled artists (crazy individuals who create things for life-fulfilling purposes). Out of the blue this nice rustic lodge started turning into something out of a Stephen King novel [available from Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell Publishing Group, Inc.]. Poltergeist objects started chasing me through the halls, and this dark howling presence was taking over. The orchestral score was swirling at high crescendo as my character fled into a small room with a suspended television set. Curious, I turned on the television. And this happened...

I've seen some blatant product placement in video games, but this has got to be the most bizarre example I have ever encountered. Two commercials, sixty seconds long, one for Mustang Drift and another for Verizon.

How did this happen? How much money did Verizon pay to have this commercial inserted in the middle of the game? Did Ford pay more money to have their commercial come on before the Verizon commercial?

What's even more incredible is the game gives the player a “Boob Tube” gamerscore achievement for turning on this particular television set. An achievement for watching a third-party product advertisement! I say “this particular television set” because there are several others throughout the game. Some TVs turn on automatically and show short segments of the game's paranoid character in an isolated writing study and narrating to the camera, and it's part of the psychological mystery of the game. There also are a few other TV sets the player can manually turn on, and these sets air short film clips from a fictional TV series called Night Springs, a clear parody of The Twilight Zone. They're clever little diversions that bring some humorous comic relief to a high-action thriller of a game. That's what makes this mid-game advertisement so jarring. It's unexpected and initially confusing, and then it's over. The player realizes it was just a generic advertisement. There's nothing tongue-in-cheek about it. One might say it's an out-of-game or real life advertisement, and yet it's playing on that virtual in-game TV screen!

Product placement is kind of a funny topic. It's been in film for decades, made notably famous in 1982's E.T. and the young Elliott character's predilection for Reese's Pieces candy. It's become an omnipresent trend in blockbusters ever since, but not without some backlash. There are people on the side of director Michael Bay, perhaps the king of Hollywood product placement, who argues that brand bombardment is a reflection of reality. Then there are critics more on the side of David Lynch, who describes product placement as having a putrefying effect on the filming environment.

At any rate, it should come as no surprise product placement has become an embedded practice in our precious video games medium as well. Where there's a large enough audience, there are corporate sponsors willing to pony up for a piece of the space, be it physical or virtual. Some video games are barely more than product advertisements to begin with. Anyone else remember the comic book ads for Yo! Noid on the Nintendo?

The first in-game advertisement I can remember was, oddly enough, in King's Quest II: Romancing the Throne. It was an Easter Egg trailer for the same developer Sierra OnLine's Space Quest game. Midway through the game King Graham comes upon a screen where there is a large rock with a conspicuous hole. This being a King's Quest game, the astute player will be curious and—much like an Alan Wake player switching on the TV set—type “look in hole.” A humorous diversion commences.

The first time I really remember seeing blatant third-party product placement, however, happened several years later. It occurred in the Nintendo 64 version of Rush 2: Extreme Racing USA. The racing genre has probably always been among the most prone to potential product placement, simply because players enjoy the simulative aspect of being able to drive replica cars from name-brand auto manufacturers. The use of auto brands fits pretty comfortably and inconspicuously into the virtual universe of the game. It makes a certain amount of sense (as a counter example, the Nintendo 64 also had Beetle Adventure Racing!, which was a bit more conspicuous and came out shortly after initial production of the Volkswagen New Beetle). But it wasn't the car brands in Rush 2 that I noticed. It was the collectible Mountain Dew can icons scattered around the various tracks. This was obviously some paid soda-company placement, one of many examples of Mountain Dew cashing in on the “extreme” sports and lifestyle marketing blitz that permeated so much of youth pop culture during the late 1990s.

A couple years later I played Crazy Taxi for the Sega Dreamcast. In addition to the licensed music soundtrack (a feature that was becoming more and more commonplace for CD-based games) the game featured full-on product advertising for Pizza Hut, KFC, Tower Records, FILA and Levi's. This was more noticeable than ever as the advertising wove directly into the fabric of the central game-playing experience. Whereas some in-game taxi passengers had to get to some generic destination like the church or the sports stadium, others would spout out something like, “I need to get to the Levi's store!” I remember thinking this was pretty cool at the time. Not only did it lend the game environment a more familiar-to-life quality, it was just novel seeing an actual Pizza Hut restaurant rendered with such high-resolution (at the time) detail in a virtual open environment.

Since then the practice has become quite a bit more commonplace. Splinter Cell games from Ubisoft had players interacting with virtual Sony Ericsson phones (not to mention zip-lining past giant Axe deodorant billboards, among other things). The titular character of Alan Wake uses Energizer batteries, drives a Ford automobile and has Verizon cellphone service. There are many examples to be found.

I'm not going to necessarily take some high and righteous stand against in-game advertising and its affront on the artistic integrity of the medium. Well, all right, maybe I sort of am. The thing is I don't work in the games industry. It's not really my call. It's the game developers and publishers that have to make their own decisions both about the business and the artistic integrity (or lack thereof) of their individual projects. I've had a hard time tracking down concrete numbers for the amount of revenue generated from the practice of in-game advertising, but one group previously estimated the amount to be about $370 million in 2006 and growing to $2 billion by this year. I would imagine much of the current growth of the in-game advertising market has to do with social and mobile gaming, in addition to console games.

I will say that some games have been able to make great artistic statements about consumer culture through the parody of corporate branding. I've already alluded to the Space Quest series so I might as well do it again. The third game in the old adventure game series introduced a fictional space-age fast food franchise called Monolith Burger where the player character has to stop and fulfill some quest-triggering tasks. The experience at the burger joint involves waiting in line and ordering from a huge menu of products, then sitting at a window-side booth and eating the meal. If the player eats too much the character will later have to stop and vomit before re-boarding the docked spaceship. Developer Rockstar's Grand Theft Auto IV makes mind-boggling use of corporate parody through fake Internet ads, fake company billboards and all kinds of parodied franchises, including fast food restaurants. I'm not sure there is anything funnier than walking into a virtual GTA IV Burger Shot joint restaurant and having the customer service kid behind the counter greet the player with … well, watch this video (profanity).

Let's face it. Grand Theft Auto games would not be what they are if they had to kowtow to demands of corporate sponsors. Financial independence means creative independence. This sort of parody has a way of holding a mirror up to society and thus exposing its foibles and absurdities. Corporate product placement in games, I would argue, has more of a numbing, normalizing effect, further acclimating the masses to the ubiquity of public relations in every facet of our daily lives.

There's an interesting niche of post-modern philosophy and rhetorical criticism called hyperreality. Hyperreality deals with the concept of the human consciousness and its hypothetical inability to distinguish reality from simulated reality. Mass media and technology play a huge role in this discussion. For example, say a child grows up in a suburban home watching television shows that portray other suburban homes of similar décor and substance. A critical-minded child might grow up to question which came first, the so-called “real-life” suburban home or the simulated suburban reality depicted through the television—sort of a chicken/egg scenario. Does the TV living room look like the real-life living room or is the real-life living room made to look like the TV living room? What exactly is imitating what? Which is the copy? What is authentic? That's probably a poor description, but hopefully it points to something worth thinking about.

Sometimes I shudder at the conditioning effect of ubiquitous trends, be it in technology, advertising—you name it. Isn't our culture saturated enough with crazy consumerist mindsets and false implanted needs for certain goods and services? Did anyone happen to notice how many outraged Wall Street occupiers went around equipped with Apple iPhones and their high-cost service plans? I don't mean to judge, but are smart phones the new entitlement (just like bubble-priced, debt-mounting houses and college tuitions during the 2000s)? It seems to me the human race has precious few battlegrounds left to fight off the perception, if not the reality, of mega-corporate dominance. Why continue to normalize this practice if we can help it? How far removed are we from the world of Network, where everything we do—whether we acknowledge it or not—is for the glory of Dow Chemical, Starbucks and NBC Universal and their subsidiaries?

Or, as David Lynch asks, "What kind of a world is this?"

Final Disclaimer: I did not spend money to play Alan Wake. I'm borrowing it from a friend. (I'm not sure if that makes me a bad person.)

Poor Boy's Complaint — a video game memoir [Vol. 3]

THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE
An interesting thing happened in our family that directly related to my dad's mid-life career as a freelance graphic designer. Sometime around 1987 my family got a home computer. Yes, a home computer. The kind of home computer that showed letters and images on a screen. The kind that emitted beeping-blooping electromagnetic sounds through built-in speakers. The kind of home computer that ran licensed computer games!

Well, sort of.

I mean, yes, it was a legitimate home computer and it played some games but … well … you see, Doctor, it wasn't just any old computer. It was … a Macintosh. An Apple Macintosh SE to be specific.


I guess you could say my dad was a man ahead of his time. He was so ahead of the times he didn't HAVE time to waste on convoluted operating systems that required the knowledge of entire secret languages just to run programs. DOS prompts? We haven't got any DOS prompts. We don't have to show you any stinking DOS prompts! No, really. It's super easy. Just use this thing called the mouse—drag it around with your hand on its cute little mouse pad and watch it correspond to your on-screen cursor. Yeah. Now move your cursor over to this “folder” and double click this button on your mouse to open this … ahem … “window.” Now just double click on the little icon thingy for whatever it is you want to run. That's it. Oh yeah, it's got a keyboard too, you know, for WRITING WORDS AND SENTENCES! Seriously, why didn't this Mac OS baby catch on with the rest of the consumer base? Okay, okay. That was obviously a trick question. It did catch on—as a bastardized version sold by a different company under a different name.

But that's neither here nor there. The point is that even when I somehow caught a break as a video game-deprived child I caught the most laughable break possible. First of all, this was a monochrome computer. In place of greens, reds, purples and blues, this monitor had gray, lighter gray, darker gray and slightly lighter or moderately darker gray. Secondly, this was a Macintosh. Companies didn't make games for the Macintosh! And when they did it was only out of sheer pity for moping people like me, sometimes months, if not years, after first releasing on the PC. Remember what I said about sloppy seconds? I mean, there were the exceptions. Prince of Persia? Classic game. Incredible game. Developed on an Apple II. You want other examples? Well, I haven't got any others off hand.

Here's my point, Doctor. Let's use an analogy. Imagine there's a kid who grows up and who just really loves professional sports. This kid learns all about collecting sports cards and—most importantly—rooting for the professional sports teams based in the nearest major city. This kid just pines and yearns for the day his nearest-major-city professional sports team has a killer season and makes it all the way to the national championship—and wins! Now, imagine this kid grows up in the greater metropolitan area of … I don't know … Seattle, Washington. What do you know? It's a city with three professional sports teams. Count 'em. You've got football, baseball and (this is still the 1990s) basketball. It could be worse, right? Those Supersonics actually won a championship, albeit before the kid was even born. The Seahawks made it to the playoffs that one time in the late 80s. The Mariners … well, they had a pretty amazing run in 1995. BEAT THE YANKEES IN FIVE GAMES OF THE FIRST ROUND OF POSTSEASON … before losing the American League pennant to Cleveland. Surely, one of those teams is bound to win a championship SOME DAY. I mean, come on, the odds! And yet, what year is this now? 2012! I'm sorry, I need to go … I've ... I've just got something caught in my eye.

* * *
Okay, maybe I got a little sidetracked. Macintosh or not, to a five-year-old kid who didn't know any better this computer was a big deal. We were talking about games right? Well, this thing had 'em. Loads of 'em. My dad, bless his heart, got hold of some floppy disks that held like 20 freeware games each! You would be amazed at the stupid things a little boy can content himself with when his experience can't comprehend anything more advanced. It was like giving a Christmas present to an infant who can't get over playing with the wrapping paper. It was like a Facebook game to a bored/retired housewife. This computer had a backgammon simulator, a Hearts card game simulator. One of the disks had a Missile Command knockoff. There was a simple turn-based strategy Daleks game where a tiny little avatar man had to avoid these advancing, randomly place Doctor Who cyborgs and get them to crash into one another. The player had a cool one-time-use force blast that disintegrated any bad guys in the player character's immediate vicinity. Or if the player was essentially stalemated, they could call upon the teleport function, which would respawn the character to any random tile on the screen—perhaps directly next to an advancing Dalek! That's what we call tension, ladies and gentleman. I remember another game involving a helicopter and clicking a button to make a skydiving stuntman try and land into a moving horse-drawn hay cart. The animation of that little stick man flailing its limbs as it fell toward the earth. Unforgettable. And the smooshing sound that resulted when the poor jumper landed on the earth—or the horse or the cart driver—so satisfying.


This was the era of fun. The era of innocence. An era when computer games and education really could go hand-in-hand. We played Math Blaster. We played Where in the World is Carmen SanDiego? Good God, my sister was a master sleuth at that game. Again, there was tension! Following a trail and apprehending the suspect, hoping to God almighty you had nabbed the right person. And if you were really good and solved like fifty cases—finally bringing to justice Ms. SanDiego herself!

But even these games, Doctor—talking about them is only like enjoying the cartoon short before the main feature. Our humble Macintosh may have served many purposes, but I will always remember it as the computer that played King's Quest. Wikipedia and other wonderful online resources will describe the King's Quest series as a seminal collection of titles in the graphic-adventure computer game genre. That wouldn't have meant anything to me back in 1987. To me, King's Quest was pure survival horror—text-based survival horror, yes, but survival horror nonetheless. I mean, here was this vulnerable Graham character wandering around a monster-infested medieval land with absolutely no means of defense (until, perhaps, you acquire the magic shield, but … never mind). Step into the wrong screen and risk being torn to shreds by a wolf, bludgeoned by an ogre, ransacked by a dwarf, enchanted by a sorcerer or kidnapped by a witch. The game had this wicked little musical cue signifying when a monster was present. It sounded like pipe organ. And it wouldn't have been so bad if it wasn't for the fact that this would happen seemingly at random. You would just be walking around the forest, trying to get to the next screen and—BAM!—there was that music. Dum-dum-dum-dum-dum-duuuuuuuum! At first I literally could not watch this game. Maybe I wasn't yet able to disassociate fictional danger from real danger. When I got older and began playing the game by myself, I was a nervous wreck. I would sweat. I would have to pump myself up just to traverse from one screen to the next. Eventually my parents purchased the official game map and hint-book, and I discovered how to beat the game without having to cross any of the potential monster screens.

Then a funny thing happened. I fell in love. It probably helped that this period of Macintosh gaming corresponded to the same period of my life when I learned to read and write. King's Quest was like a high-tech fairy tale. It had a dragon's lair, a Leprechaun kingdom and a land in the clouds—all in the same 30-minute-or-less adventure. It didn't matter that I'd played through the game before, because playing through again was like re-reading a favorite storybook.

King's Quest was just the gateway drug. Then there was King's Quest II. Then I discovered Space Quest, and oh how I loved Space Quest. If my King's Quest devotion was like going to church every Sunday, then I became a bonafide Space Quest evangelist! This game was so incredible, it's about a janitor saving the universe—how could I not share it with others? My poor friend Jon. It hadn't been that much earlier that I had been the poor boy being subjected to manipulative two-player Super Mario Bros. games on other people's Nintendos. Here I was inviting my new best friend over to our house to play a text-based adventure game. The whole game! Now, there was no easy way to accomplish this sort of task. One person would get to sit up front in the comfortable office chair and control the keyboard and all of the typing—me. The other person would have to sit in the hard kitchen chair and try to watch from about five feet back. It's a miracle I ever kept Jon as a friend. I'm sure I must have gone through every nook and cranny of that game. I know myself too well. It wouldn't have been enough for me to just plow through the screens, showing my friend the basic concept of the game before going outside and tossing around a softball, or anything interactive. I would have stopped to “look at...” every description of every pixel on every screen—because that's how I played.


What am I saying, Doctor? That's how I still play games! What's wrong with me? I can barely get through a modern Grand Theft Auto game without making myself practically role-play every stupid minute of the experience. I mean, here's an example of my neurosis. Say my GTA IV Niko Bellic character watches a few programs of an in-game television show—like one of those stand-up comedy bits with Ricky Gervais. Then Niko goes out on a mission and—oops!—dies. “Oh crap!” I inwardly tell myself. I didn't save my progress before going out on that mission, meaning my Niko Bellic character just lost that in-game experience of watching that TV show. This doesn't necessarily mean I will go and rewatch that program, but I would be lying if I said it didn't bug me. I feel guilty for skipping through ten-minute cab rides. I practically have to discipline myself! Thank God the game doesn't give me the option of watching the character sleep!

Poor Boy's Complaint — a video game memoir [Vol. 2]

It's not enough just to say I never got my own Nintendo. I mean, isn't it absurd, doctor, for a child of single-digit years to covet so badly something that will cost his struggling parents—I don't know—three days' wages? That's three days of stressful, perhaps backbreaking labor that will contribute neither to the family dinner nor the property taxes, not to any pending car repairs, back-to-school clothes or—God forbid—to something for their own happiness and pleasure. We're talking $200 for a glorified toy, and that's not including sales tax! What was I thinking being so selfish? And yet—what do you know?—other kids' parents saw fit to buy Nintendos for their families! That's right, I'm in school now. I can start complaining to my mom about how the other kids at school get to do this and that. No, it's not enough just to say I never got a Nintendo, because the reality of not having something does not diminish the desire for wanting it. Quite the opposite.

I was surrounded by Nintendo everywhere I looked! My first friend from kindergarten was an only child and—let me tell you, doctor—he had a Nintendo. I mean he had everything else in the world, too, but the Nintendo! I'd played Super Mario Bros. a few times but I don't think I had any idea there were so many other freaking games until I went to his house and beheld that glorious cartridge rack. The thing must have held close to 25 games in its five-by-five arrangement, and this kid was just 5-years-old!



In 1989 my mother took me to see The Wizard. Do you remember that one, the feature-length Nintendo advertisement with the kid from The Wonder Years? The “I love the Power Glove, it's so bad” movie with the autistic kid playing Super Mario Bros. 3 on a TV screen bigger than God? Did she have a clue what kind of torture this kind of indulgence put me through?

Nintendo in the late 1980s was like asbestos in the '50s. You couldn't not breath it if you tried. After Mouse Trap I'd learned to be a bit suspicious of commercials, sure, but I was still a kid. Do you understand what it did to my brain the first time I watched a TV spot for Marble Madness, doctor? There it was again, that magical land of chutes and hazards, only this time what you saw in video was pretty much what you got. This was too much! I needed an outlet for this stuff, and so one day in Mrs. Stanley's first-grade class I wrote a one-page short story about Marble Madness. For fun! Marble Madness fan fiction, doctor.



In fact, one might have thought school was a relatively safe haven, but would you have guessed our elementary library had a subscription to Nintendo Power magazine? On Monday mornings after the kooky librarian released us from the semi-circle story-time hostage zone, all of the boys would flock to the shelves to drool over the latest glitzy issue. I, of course, would content myself with some perfectly fine two-month-old edition and suckle unbothered upon the centerfold spread of, say, the entire Metroid level design. Hence I acclimated myself to what would become the pattern for the rest of my childhood and adult life, forever settling for the sloppy seconds of the greater video game culture, the flotsam and jetsam of all the seaward passengers who hopped from sinking ship to sinking ship like drivers changing freeway lanes.

Little did my innocent mind yet comprehend how fickle were the hearts and fingers of gamers. There’s a reason I have no memory of seeing Atari 2600 boxes on store shelves. That era had come and gone before I was old enough to form a coherent thought (Also, I happened to be born during the same year as—ahem—E.T.). Before I knew it the great Nintendo I never had was dead. Because in its place was something so new and so stupidly better than the Nintendo you wouldn't know why the hell you had ever even bothered to waste your time with that dumb machine's cramp-inducing rectangle of a controller in the first place. That's right. Nobody wants a Nintendo anymore, not when YOU CAN HAS … wait for it … SUPER NINTENDO? And actually, doctor, I did get a chance to play one of these bad boys hot off the factory line when my only-child friend from school got to rent one—from the grocery store of all places (I told you this stuff was inescapable). Would you believe it? And it really was like a million times cooler than the old Nintendo. I think I experienced some legitimate vertigo playing the third level of Contra III, our two characters blasting away at alien invaders above that magnificent 16-bit industrial landscape. What a trip! It seemed the sky was the limit.

BUT AS FOR ME AND MY HOUSE...

Let me pause here, however, and return to the subject of my household environment. In case you hadn't already gotten the impression, I grew up in a good Christian home. I'd say the most pagan thing we ever practiced as a family was to erect and decorate a Douglas fir tree in our living room each December to celebrate the birth of our savior. And we did dress up in costumes on October 31, but it wasn't for Halloween—no, no, no—and it certainly wasn't for trick-or-treating! My mom dressed me up like a cowboy so I could go to church and celebrate something totally different called the Autumn Festival or, better yet, All Saints Day!

Our household had its own version of the Hays production code—my dad. He was usually the one to either red-light or green-light whatever my sister and I watched on TV, but also the music we listened to and the types of items we got to take home from Toys-R-Us. In other words, whatever was going to be absorbed into our impressionable young brains better not have too much sex, violence or foul language. Understandable. But it also better not glorify witchcraft, magic or any business remotely demonic—meaning ghosts, goblins, gargoyles and I'm sure plenty of other things beginning with the letter G. Let's just say I never watched Beetlejuice as a kid—the cartoon or the film. We never had cable, so that excluded any of the smut on MTV. But we also weren't supposed to watch Scooby Doo because it had monsters? Well, dad, my sister and I watched Scooby Doo regardless (when you weren’t home), and let me tell you, none of the ghosts and monsters were ever actually ghosts or monsters. They were crooked masked adults trying to scare away those meddling kids! I mean, maybe the monster issue was just my dad’s excuse because he really didn't want to tell us what the crackpot sleuths were obviously smoking inside the Mystery Machine, or the real reason why Velma got off on getting into dangerous scrapes all the time with the Fred and Daphne (Hint: It wasn’t Fred). I’m sure my dad would have locked away the television if we'd grown up in the era of Harry Potter.

That’s all well and good, mom and dad. You’re the boss(es). But my first experience with your charismatic church was pretty traumatizing in its own right. I remember when I was five years old being dragged against my will to a series of evening family events at dad’s new church where the people put on some kind of good-versus-evil, God-versus-Satan puppet show. All I remember were these periodic noise contests where members of the audience, sometimes the boys and sometimes the girls, were supposed to scream at the top of their lungs in order to thwart evil and—ultimately—send puppet Satan back into the Lake of Fire. I was not a scream-in-public kind of kid, barely old enough to understand what was going on. That crap scared the hell out of me, which I suppose was the point to a certain extent. I don’t know, maybe it wasn’t quite as bad as I remember it.

I know I didn’t have it as bad as that kid James who lived in the tiny house right off the main bus route to school and whose sweetheart of a dad (who looked liked he was 90) waved like a parade Santa Claus to every God-forsaken driver speeding by. I’m pretty sure James had to wear bifocals in kindergarten, the poor kid. Unfortunately, it didn’t win him any makeup points coming to school in a neon orange Jesus hat (well before it was the ironic thing to do). Anyway, those nasty kids at school sure made fun of him for being the resident Bible Boy. One time in fifth grade our teacher had to stop reading to us a series of young-adult fiction books called the Witch Sister series because some undisclosed student’s religious parent complained to the school about it. Those post-recess reading sessions were like crack to us! Poor, poor James. The intimidation he withstood! Everyone knew who was to blame. I mean, who else’s parents lit up a Christmas-lights cross on the front of their house 365 days a year? Lord knows I always tried to be nice to James, but this kid was defenseless. Talk about having no sense of humor—I can still picture that blank stare! I’d love to read his memoir. Do these parents ever have any clue as to the backfiring effects of their insane interventionism? Anyway, I don’t think James played any Nintendo growing up either.

I guess you can't blame parents for trying. My dad went through a lot of different jobs growing up. He swept chimneys. He sold Amway products. He sold spas and stoves. He also did some freelance ad-design for local businesses, sometimes getting paid in traded goods and services (such as about 200 free skating sessions at the roller rink, one time). Around 1990 he got ahold of a lead to do some graphic layout for this startup company called Wizards of the Coast, basically a bunch of geeks who worked out of their basement—actually, maybe you've heard of them. I guess my dad went to one of those geek's house where they had just tons of Dungeons and Dragons type of memorabilia (surprise, surprise) and they dressed all gothy. “Some pretty dark stuff,” according to my dad. Well, dad did a little ad work for them, some kind of graphic with a dragon and a globe. Turns out the wizards liked it and wanted him to do some more work—although, here's the catch. They were a pretty new company so they kind of didn't have much actual money yet, and so maybe he would have to work for something else, like some company shares? I can only imagine what must have run through my dad's head. Could anyone in 1990 really have imagined what unbelievable global market share these passionate nerds would manage to dominate over the next 10 years and beyond. Who knew there was such profit to be had in spells and sorcery? Wizards of the Coast company shares, huh? Hmm. Sounds pretty good, but ... you know what, guys? I'm afraid I'm gonna have to pass. I've got a request for some ad work from the guy who runs that hotdog stand over there. He's offered to pay me in bratwursts. So … maybe some other time.