First, a parody video about the upcoming teenage boy blockbusters. The ending lines are the best, so wait through it.



On a related note, lucius_t has a review of Iron Man on his groupblog that makes me laugh with how true it is, even though I'll probably see and enjoy the movie. He infrequently posts such reviews (since he, y'know, usually sells them to magazines), but they're always worth it.

Yet more relations: McSweeney's has an amazing piece: BACK FROM YET ANOTHER GLOBETROTTING ADVENTURE, INDIANA JONES CHECKS HIS MAIL AND DISCOVERS THAT HIS BID FOR TENURE HAS BEEN DENIED. Have an excerpt:

The committee concurred that Dr. Jones does seem to possess a nearly superhuman breadth of linguistic knowledge and an uncanny familiarity with the history and material culture of the occult. However, his understanding and practice of archaeology gave the committee the greatest cause for alarm. Criticisms of Dr. Jones ranged from "possessing a perceptible methodological deficiency" to "practicing archaeology with a complete lack of, disregard for, and colossal ignorance of current methodology, theory, and ethics" to "unabashed grave-robbing." Given such appraisals, perhaps it isn't surprising to learn that several Central and South American countries recently assembled to enact legislation aimed at permanently prohibiting his entry.

Next, a trailer for a game that features first-person freerunning that you control as the protag. As cool as that is, what interests me is the heroic shot of the female protag at the end: she is female, ethnic, and has a realistic body type with clothes that are equally reasonable. And she looks cool. Seriously. Since I've been chatting about this recently on LJ, it's nice to see that there are game dev's who have a clue.

The game is Mirror's Edge. A quick look at the Wikipedia entry suggests that the game's plot taps into some themes that are definitely on people's minds (look up "Little Brother" and see the huge push it's getting in the book/blog world).

Heck, I'll probably buy it based off that alone.

(h/t ben_peek, debunkingwhite, and vjnightshade in that order)

My windshield wipers are broken. Everyday I need to drive, it rains. Without fail. You do the mystical math.

Most recently, I had an adventure with this on the Mass Pike. That was special. I reaffirmed my understanding of physics: you must drive fast enough so that the water clears itself if you want any visibility. If you drive at sane speeds, you will lose visibility and die.

When gearing up for an upcoming project, somebody mentioned the Hero's Journey as a model for the type of story we want to tell. This is, to my mind, an unequivocal mistake when it comes to Alternate Reality Games (ARGs). The HJ is a great pattern for telling stories young men want to interact with (thus its stultifying effect on the video game industry), but like any traditional narrative it relies on linear storytelling processes to effectively control the overall experience of the story as the user interacts with it. Obviously ARGs don't really have that level of control.

But, more than that, ARGs don't have the same kind of pacing and flow that we're used to in our traditional media, either. ARGs, by their player-driven nature, can pass by incredibly quickly or incredibly slowly at any given time. Yet a well-designed ARG doesn't lose players regardless of this pacing irregularity, partly because the sense of drama is enacted in real time. In more traditional forms, there is some measure of predictability in the amount of time it takes to move from crisis to catharsis. If the protag's love interest has kicked him out of her house on page 24, then they'll be married by page 155. Alternatively, if the protag's love interest has died by minute 17, then vengeance shall be wreaked by minute 107.

Not so with an ARG. There is no reliable way to determine when the drama will hit or when it will die. So often what creates emotional tension in an ARG is the long suspense between a key reveal and completion of the next particularly difficult challenge. In pop music, it'd be like holding a high note for a minute and a half in a four minute long song. In film, it'd be like a half hour slow-motion love scene. But because ARGs are an immersive experience, this sort of drama is precisely what creators hope to cultivate; it's precisely the sort of drama that's anti-thetical to the traditional HJ style story.

At its most abstract, loosest definition, a HJ is a narrative form where the normalized good guy (typically an iconic example of what any particular society's ideals are) goes and undergoes a transformational experience by beating up the clearly evil bad guy and returning with special knowledge/power/status. Most people ascribe its allure to 13-35 year old males to a self-identification factor. What teenage boy doesn't want to be the Cool Badass who Saves the Universe?

Self-identification can be a powerful draw for any story, but it has to suit the form of the story you're telling. In ARGs, that self-identification has more often been for a female protagonist who does not undergo a harrowing transformational evil-stomping journey. If the world is saved, it's usually through the efforts of the players-as-themselves working collaboratively, not through the actions of the protagonist or the players taking on the role of individual heroes.

The closest analogue to an ARG in terms of storytelling form is the serialized story, either televised or in print, but even then there are major differences. These stem from the fact that serialized stories are episodic in nature -- they are discrete story packets, and each episode has its own needs to fulfill for it to be successful both as an independent story and to be a part of a whole. ARGs are like continuous serialized stories (to use the mathematic meaning of "discrete" and "continuous"); the rules of serialized drama do and do not apply.

Stated simply, trying to model an ARG story on the HJ is misunderstanding what drives an ARG in the first place, and the shape the narrative form takes. The story might seem cool after the fact (especially if you railroad your players), but the experience of the game will almost certainly fall flat.

I'm, of course, open to being proven wrong.

A waitlist and a week later, I got into Odyssey, thanks to some glowing reviews from hazliya and dark_towhead. This throws a wrench into my future plans (as I was not really expecting to get in), but is ultimately a good thing. Now I've just got to find some money.

It did wonders for my disposition, though, as I head for the trainwreck that is graduation.

Also, I'm pretty sure I lent out my copy of LeGuin's "Language of the Night." Any of you folks have it?

On that note, this is the music that I listen to when I want to laugh and then laugh at myself for laughing at it, locked in my little room and writing too much too poorly. Is it bad that I enjoy listening to it?

The premise: much like the vaunted painting that everyone in America enjoys that's completely bland (featuring a family in nature with George Washington), a couple of musicians made a study of the music most people in America most hated. Then made a song out of it.

Rapping sopranos, cowboy music with accordians, and random atonal children's choirs singing holiday jingles.

Listen. Listen!

"For me, those kinds of films are ridiculous. It doesn't make sense. It is American way, because they are for American audience, I think. The American audience is more interested in this kind of film, this kind of movie," says Jackie Chan of the upcoming Forbidden Kingdom.

It's an interesting insight, but I'm not sure it's 100% a cultural thing (though I do think he's right on when it comes to Rush Hour later in the article). Hong Kong has been producing enough Kung Fu Fantasy films for the last decade for it to be its own genre now. From my perspective, the films are often non-sensical, bordering on the absurd in some cases. That's partly why I love them.

Zu Warriors is one of the benchmarks of the genre, and it's pretty much the most surreal film I've ever seen. The writers created their own mythology for the film which is a curious blend of Eastern and Western mystical varnish, added in a bit of, "What if we had kung fu with SUPER POWERS?" and away you go.

For example: On the one hand, you have a tiny temptress fairie in a red dress. On the other, the villain is the ill will of the Universe made manifest. And then we have a dude with metal wings doing kung fu with demon things. It's crazy.

If you want to make sense of what you're watching, and experience the full emotional punch the writer/director (I think) wants you to experience, you really need an Edith Hamilton's Mythology specifically for the universe. Since nobody has one of those handy, you basically have to figure it out as you go. It's not too bad to do, but the plot isn't just Hero's Journey, so Western audiences have to unpack a little more than they're used to. And, frankly, it probably isn't worth it. Just watch the bedazzling shiny and cheesy CGI (which was pretty state-of-the-art for the time), and enjoy your trip sans acid.

So, again, I don't think Chan is perfectly correct to ascribe enjoyment of fantasy in film to American culture -- but then again, he might not have been talking about that. It's hard to tell from the direct quotes in the article. If he is, though, I don't think he's entirely wrong either, given that the plot seems pretty cookie cutter Hero's Journey for the honkie among mystical Asians. I suppose we'll see this Friday.

hazliya and I are involved in local theatre festival New Voices 26. Together, we're involved in nearly half of the festival, and wrote a full quarter of it by number of plays. In terms of page count, our writing is nearly half of it.

If you'd like to see some (relatively) good student theatre, this is the place to do it.

(I've seen a lot of student theatre in a variety of venues, so I feel I have some capacity to judge here)

We have three show days:

Thursday, 7pm
Friday, 5pm matinee, 8pm evening
Saturday, 7pm

If you go on Thursday or Saturday, you get to see all the shows. Friday has the festival broken in half, so you'll have to go to both showings if you want to see them all.

All showings are in the Little Theatre on WPI campus.

Oh, yes, I got an email this morning from brouhaha telling me that my name was in the Boston Globe.

"What for?" I ask. "Homicide? I won a contest?"

"Yes," says she. "You won the Homicide Contest!"

"Yay!" I proclaim with much joy. Then, "Wait, was I the victim?"

The point was that I was mentioned because somebody (not me) has been on the ball with publicity, and so the reading/signing I'm doing a week from today at Pandemonium Books is in the paper.

In fact, it's listed as "A. Nakama and others," which makes me go all, "Whoa!" Since when was I important enough to not get lumped in with the "and others," much less make mention in the Boston Globe for something other than winning the Homicide Contest?

Of course, I'm not one the writers. I just slush read and copy edited and all that jazz. But still!

Here's the quick facts on the event:

What: Book signing/reading for Desolate Places
When: Saturday, Apr. 12, 2pm
Where: Pandemonium Books and Games
Who: Me! And four of the writers in the book.

It'll be a reading, followed by a panel discussion and a chit-chat session, probably 2 hours max. It's a nice way to spend a Saturday afternoon, I think.

I just joined the International Game Developer's Association while I still could at student prices, joined a couple of Special Interest Groups, and am hoping not to make a fool of myself.

Nothing motivates me quite so well as failure. I've gotten a lot of writing done since I dragged myself out of that pit of existential despair, made progress on my MQP, and am generally determined yet again to not-suck.

Random aside: my family thinks it's a good idea to move to Japan all of a sudden, and they want to take me with them. Unfortunately (as cool as that actually sounds) I recently re-signed my lease.

Hi. How are you?

Somebody translated the whole poem into lolcat speak.

I have no words, but many squeals of joy.