[NOVEMBER] Shooter edited by Reid McCarter and Patrick Lindsey

[Liz England]

Our November reading is Shooter by edited by Reid McCarter and Patrick Lindsey

Overview:

SHOOTER is an anthology of critical essays about first-person shooters. The 15 chapters explore the genre from a variety of cultural, social, political, and historical perspectives. Featuring chapters from some of the best minds in game criticism, custom hand-drawn illustrations, and a foreword by Clint Hocking, lead designer on Far Cry 2 and Splinter Cell.

http://www.shooterbook.com/

You can get it on Amazon or through their link to gumroad but it only exists as an ebook. If you don't have an ereader, they provide .pdf format too. I don't know if the Amazon link includes pdf though since Amazon normally uses .mobi files, so I might recommend the gumroad link if you're unsure.

(The storybundle just ended so... I hope some of you picked that up when you could!).

[Matthew Gallant]

If you did grab it in the Story Bundle, their website has a really nice interface for uploading the entire bundle to your Kindle / Amazon Cloud.

[Christian Selbrede]

Although this is a shorter book than usual, it contains essays that are effectively off limits for me since they discuss games that I want to play but haven't finished yet. Specifically Far Cry 2 and Wolfenstein: The New Order. Maybe someone who's played through these games and read the essays can comment on how "safe" it is to read these. Until then, I'll be skipping them. 

[Liz England]

I just read the Far Cry 2 essay (chapter 3) and it definitely has major story spoilers.

I'll let you know about Wolfenstein when I get to it.

If anyone else wants a spoiler check for one of the other chapters, let me know!

[Megan Vokal]

I'd like a spoiler check for DCOE if you could.

Also, being new to this, should we discuss as we go, or wait until we've finished before diving in?

[Liz England]

Which game is DCOE?

Normally replies start coming in after the 15th, usually after someone has finished it or at least gotten halfway. You're welcome to start discussion any time though.

I guess we should be cognizant of spoilers, so just label the essay you're discussing really clearly if your comments also involve spoilers!

[Megan Vokal]

Sorry, Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. And sounds good!

[Liz England]

The Wolfenstein: The New Order essay also has major spoilers - definitely avoid it.

On Monday, November 2, 2015 at 7:34:35 AM UTC-8, Christian Selbrede wrote:

[Liz England]

Call of Cthulhu doesn't have any major story spoilers. It talks a lot about the role of guns in the game, which includes possible minor spoilers for the sanity system and minor setting spoilers (but nothing, I think, that would be too surprising about a Lovecraft game).

[Liz England]

So I finished this one today. It is a pretty short read, and maybe took me four evenings, and felt a bit of a break compared to last month's book (which I am still slowly reading). I'm writing a really extensive review of it for my blog but figured I'd just share some of my thoughts here. The full index of essays is all the way at the back of the book if you're trying to skip around or look one up.

(the below is spoiler-free)

I liked all the essays, though obviously some of them more than others. I'll say that my favorite was Truth vs. Propaganda: Fighting through the Haze, arguing that the game Haze was a precursor to Spec Ops: The Line in how it address player (and developer) complicity in video game violence. One of the reasons I liked it is because it took a game I had previously disregarded and showed how it contributed something valuable to the medium.

I also really liked Fallout 3: If You Can't Join 'Em, Beat 'Em by Holly Green where she talked about how she used the game in order to learn first person shooter gameplay - it mirrors almost exactly my experience (except for me the game I learned on was Deus Ex). The Joys of Projectiles: What We've Forgotten About Doom seemed to have a good point about physics projectiles vs. instant hit detection and how that affords for a different play style, though I think he might be exaggerating the impact of it. There's no denying that fps's have changed a lot in terms of how players move through them, i.e. Quake vs. Gears, but I am not sure that projectile design is necessarily the root of it. 

The other one that stood out to me was The Lurking Fear: Firearms in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth. It's difficult to balance horror games with giving players guns - when you do that, you empower the player with a way of defeating the enemy and take away the fear. Alien Isolation dealt with this really well, in that using a gun was more dangerous than avoiding it. The way Call of Cthulhu seems to handle it is even more extreme - limited, deliberately poor usability, physically dangerous to yourself. I'll probably look into this game soon to experience it for myself.

I think the ones I liked least - Brothers in Arms: Hell's Highway: German Representation in World War II and Perfect Dark: A Bundle of Bones - just didn't resonate with me as much because I've already read really extensively on those topics. There just wasn't much I personally could take away from either that I didn't already know. I also thought it was hard to follow along in Paths of Contact: Narrative Friction in Gears of War without prior experience with the game. The argument felt a bit unfocused the way it was written.

I've only played a couple of the games covered in the book, but the Gears of War essay was the only one I had trouble following along with. The one on STALKER might have been harder to follow if I hadn't just watched the film before reading it.

[Christian Selbrede]

Thanks for letting me know about those two essays. Hoping to finish playing them before the year's up, but with all the exciting new games coming out lately, they have a hard time staying at the top of my backlog.

I also really liked Holly Green's Fallout essay. It's interesting that the idea still surrounding FPS today so closely resembles that of the MOBA, where "l33t skillz" is the end-all, be-all of the genre. You see this attitude a lot in the casual dismissal of games like Call of Duty (or even the new Wolfenstein!) by people who should really know better. But the fact is that the genre has largely moved on to far more interesting places since the late '90s. Deathmatch has been obsolete for over a decade now.

Holly begins with this assumption but then ends up uncovering a treasure far greater than anything that could be found within the brutal corridors of a Counter-Strike match. It was a great read, and I really enjoyed the account of her discovering the heart of the genre. Best essay in the book so far.

[Christian Selbrede]

Did not care for the Gears of War essay at all. Gears is one of my favorite series, so I had high expectations for this one. But instead, the author spends the majority of the essay picking away at Judgment's narrative. Since he perceives its literary ambitions, he takes it to task for not being literary enough for his tastes.

Judgment has little to teach us about the human condition.

 

At least he lays bare his assumption for why he believes such ambitions are out of place in a Gears game:

The chainsaw-gun is where Gears of War begins and ends.

In other words, the presence of such a gun, and the ability to use it with extreme prejudice makes a "vision for a sophisticated Gears game built on introspection and hard truths" impossible. 

Well what about the sophistication of the original games?

https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/status/635974096392716288

Maria was my personal statement on Terri Schaivo and my belief in right to death...through a dudebro shooter with lizard men. #GearsFacts

https://twitter.com/therealcliffyb/status/635975833061064704

The torture the Locust did in Gears was my thinly veiled statement about Gitmo...through a dudebro shooter with lizardmen. #GearsFacts 

These facts are startling in their implications. Aren't "dudebro shooters" supposed to be void of stuff like this? And yet here they are, despite the author having called the original Gears games "simple and childish" meatgrinders. Oops. Maybe there's more going on in these games than we thought, and a quick categorization like that isn't doing the game justice. And all because he couldn't look beyond the chainsaw-gun. It reminds me of the casual critics back in the day who never saw past the nudity in Duke Nukem 3D.

As for his "amputated" shooter, which he alludes to in his conclusion, I expect it might look something like Tales from the Borderlands.

[Christian Selbrede]

The worst essay so far would have to be David S. Heineman's chapter on Battle Garegga. First of all, it's very strange for this game to even be considered for a discussion topic in a book like this. I can't help but think that it was chosen simply to show off that the author knew that it exists (since he probably supposes few, if any, FPS players have ever heard of it) and to publicly display his refined taste in shooters.

Why not have chosen to discuss Space Invaders instead? Or discuss further in-depth the fascinating history in which "videogame" was synonymous with shooting game? Just like it is now becoming synonymous with FPS. An analysis of that shift could have been very interesting and would have made for a more appropriate opening to the book.

But instead he reduces an entire genre (at its "apogee", he says) to exhibitionism and says there's now "little incentive to immerse oneself in thick systems with steep, costly learning curves" in "empty arcades". What's so great about Battle Garegga again? Oh, you have to suicide in order to get a high score? That's the only thing he mentions that's unique about it. Everything else positive he says is just as true for any other game in the genre, which has still been producing arcade masterpieces for almost two decades since Battle Garegga.

It's no secret that you can't put a game like Half-Life in the arcades (or can you?). But I think he misses the boat big time by saying that story, character, graphics and gore were "largely incidental to the development of a shooting game." 

From the designer of Xevious - http://shmuplations.com/xevious

What I wanted to try doing with Xevious was, for the first time, to give a video game a consistent world and setting. Also, within the limitations of the existing hardware, I wanted to create high-quality sprites. Finally, I wanted a story that wouldn’t just be some tacked-on extra, but could actually stand on its own merits.

 

This “experiment”, if you will, was a totally new way to approach making a game. It was closer to the way anime and movie creators think. 

The exhibitionism analysis mentioned above is similar to the "l33t deathmatching skillz" analysis of the FPS genre. It's superficial, and, dare I say, bone-headed. 

[Catalin Zima-Zegreanu]

My favourites were Haze, Dark Corners of the Earth and STALKER. These three made me appreciate just how deep you can integrate a theme into the mechanics. Often with these kind of essays I'm not sure if the designers actually had all these things in mind when designing the game, or if it just seems that way to the critical eye. Usually the truth is somewhere in the middle, but for these three games, I'm leaning pretty strongly towards the "designer intent" side.
I'll need to re-read them in a few weeks to get a better handle on them.

The least liked ones for me were the Perfect Dark one and the Gears of War, which seemed unfocused and rather subjective.

[Cameron Kunzelman]

I reviewed this book for Paste when it came out! http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/06/shooter-15-critical-essays-about-games-with-guns-e.html

I think this is probably the most operative thing: 

I have two quibbles with the book, and I think it would be disingenuous of me to not at least mention them. The first is that I was shocked to find that there was nothing dedicated to the Haloseries in the book. Those games operate on a number of interesting levels, and I think that a comprehensive volume on the act of shooting could have really been bolstered with an essay about aliens, genetic superheroes, and space shooting.

The other quibble is that Shooter tends to lean toward the single-player spaces and stories of games that often have strong multiplayer components to them. It is strangely absent despite multiple allusions to this multiplayer dominance in the world, and Steven Wright’s “The Joys of Projectiles” as well as Jackson’s piece above both hinge on the reality of multiplayer shooting; more than this, Clint Hocking’s foreword doesn’t even make sense if you don’t take multiplayer shooting seriously. The collection would feel much more comprehensive if that topic had been included.

[Nick Lalone]

That leads into something i've been thinking about. Throughout this discussion, there have been numerous folks worrying about spoilers. This is all well and good for a variety of things but worrying about spoilers for shooting games gave me a bit of pause. I don't know that any of the narratives of the games suggested are actually worth the worry given that most of them are just Joseph Conrad, ...forever. Regardless of that, who am I to make such distinctions. To each their own, etc, etc...but I'm still curious. 

What would a spoiler for these games really take away from the experience they provide?

Nick LaLone
Penn State University

Information Science and Technology
ist.psu.edu

www.nicklalone.com

www.beforegamedesign.com

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[Megan Vokal]

I pay attention to the narratives of single-player shooter campaigns I play, and generally I believe (and I think this book has shown) that shooters have strong capabilities to communicate narrative themes through their scenarios and encounters. While stuff like dialogue and cutscenes may not be the primary draw of shooters, they flavor the encounters in a meaningful way. First-person games in general are all about putting the player in the role of the story's main actor, and generally the more compelling the story and the protagonist's motivation, the more the player is motivated to play through the game as well (which is why I think so many shooters focus on revenge stories, 'cause it provides easy motivation). So even if you wouldn't read a novel about the average shooter's narrative, I think the context that narrative provides is a meaningful part of the experience that is probably overlooked. But I like to focus on games as a storytelling medium, so of course I'm biased that way. :P

I agree that The Lurking Fear: Firearms in Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth was my favorite; I love analyses on how mechanics are used to provide an emotional experience for the player and deliver narrative themes, and I'm always inspired when I hear/read about a game that does this well. This was already on my list of games to play, but now I definitely want to make sure I visit it sometime soon. Similarly, I liked The Joys of Projectiles: What We've Forgotten About Doom because of its emphasis on the different in player experiences that stem from use of projectiles or not. I also really enjoyed To Conquer Pripyat and how it drew a connection between the narrative of colonialism and the game's hostile setting and systems, and Gilded Splinters: BJ Blazkowicz and The New Order for its analysis of BJ as a tragic hero. Finally, The Disempowerment Fantasy of Red Orchestra 2: Rising Storm was interesting just 'cause I like reading about games that try to do something unconventional.

One thing that bothered me about this anthology though was the number of articles that all seemed to say very similar things about violence in shooters - every article that tackled the topic basically made the same point that it can be problematic when games portray violence as an act of "fun" and not of horror or consequence, and talked about a game that either acknowledged and played with (to varying degrees of success) or ignored the issues inherent in their violence. Even though I generally agree with that point and enjoyed most of the individual articles on the subject, it started to wear on me to read article after article about what was essentially the same topic, especially since it's a topic that has been the subject of much discussion in the games space already. I just feel like I didn't read any fresh takes on the dilemma that violent games present, which was a bit disappointing.

On Tuesday, 24 November 2015 16:19:24 UTC-6, Nick Lalone wrote:

That leads into something i've been thinking about. Throughout this discussion, there have been numerous folks worrying about spoilers. This is all well and good for a variety of things but worrying about spoilers for shooting games gave me a bit of pause. I don't know that any of the narratives of the games suggested are actually worth the worry given that most of them are just Joseph Conrad, ...forever. Regardless of that, who am I to make such distinctions. To each their own, etc, etc...but I'm still curious. 

What would a spoiler for these games really take away from the experience they provide?

Nick LaLone
Penn State University

Information Science and Technology
ist.psu.edu

www.nicklalone.com

www.beforegamedesign.com

On Tue, Nov 24, 2015 at 3:14 PM, Cameron Kunzelman <cameron....@gmail.com> wrote:

I reviewed this book for Paste when it came out! http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2015/06/shooter-15-critical-essays-about-games-with-guns-e.html

I think this is probably the most operative thing: 

I have two quibbles with the book, and I think it would be disingenuous of me to not at least mention them. The first is that I was shocked to find that there was nothing dedicated to the Haloseries in the book. Those games operate on a number of interesting levels, and I think that a comprehensive volume on the act of shooting could have really been bolstered with an essay about aliens, genetic superheroes, and space shooting.

The other quibble is that Shooter tends to lean toward the single-player spaces and stories of games that often have strong multiplayer components to them. It is strangely absent despite multiple allusions to this multiplayer dominance in the world, and Steven Wright’s “The Joys of Projectiles” as well as Jackson’s piece above both hinge on the reality of multiplayer shooting; more than this, Clint Hocking’s foreword doesn’t even make sense if you don’t take multiplayer shooting seriously. The collection would feel much more comprehensive if that topic had been included.

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[Liz England]

@Cameron

Good point, especially on the lack of an essay on multiplayer - I think you're right that it would have added a lot to the collection and is sorely missing. Red Orchestra and Counter-Strike might both be multiplayer but the essays did not really address the multiplayer aspect itself.

@Megan

I think your concern is pretty fair re: a lot of essays addressing violence in shooters but not bringing much new to the table. There's still a lingering history of the government and media using game violence to demonize the medium, and it's only been in the last few years that I feel critics have been getting more vocal about the topic. I think this is a case where it's just a very timely topic, and if Shooter had been compiled 10 years from now there'd be a different popular thread woven among many of the essays.

@Nick

I think spoilers are very dependent upon the individual - I'm firmly in the strict no-spoilers category, but I've met others who find spoilers actually enrich their experience. In either case, spoilers changes the experience. Playing a game without spoilers is a different experience than playing with them, regardless of which experience is better (subjective). It's unfair to rob people of being able to choose which experience they want, so I definitely favor an opt-in approach.

I think we associate spoilers largely with narrative, but I tend to extend them to anything that could be classified as a surprise or rely on discovery for their full effect. So for example, take the sanity effects of Eternal Darkness. It's one thing to experience them for yourself for the first time in complete surprise, and another to read a full list of them before hand. In something like a Mario game, it probably isn't a spoiler to say he rescues a princess at the end - but it would be a spoiler to describe the final boss fight mechanics.

I pointed out before that the Wolfenstein essay contains major story spoilers. I don't think anyone plays Wolfenstein for the story (...maybe...) but the story itself still relies on that sense of player discovery I mentioned before, and not knowing the details means that players can still 'discover' them. I mean, when I saw Godzilla in theaters I asked for no spoilers and it's not like I didn't know how the movie was going to end or think it would be amazing writing. I just want to be spared the details so I can suspend my disbelief for a while.

[Christian Selbrede]

First-person shooters are all about power fantasy.

This quote is from the Red Orchestra 2 essay, but the same idea also pervades the Modern Warfare one. What it seems like he's actually saying though is that single player campaigns are power fantasies and multiplayer games (like Star Wars: Battlefront, Titanfall, and yes even Red Orchestra) aren't. This is because there are no heroes on the multiplayer battlefield, since everyone should theoretically have an equal chance of coming out the victor. In that respect, Red Orchestra isn't all that unique or even particularly well suited to support his thesis. PlanetSide 2 feels far more like a war than a 64 person skirmish does. And what about the Arma games? 

But are single player campaigns really power fantasies? The way he describes Call of Duty (in the usual demeaning manner), it almost sounds like he hasn't even played the games. I can go on here, but I realize this is a controversial opinion, so I'll just say that I don't think that they are, however, they can be played that way if you want (think about the description of selectable difficulties from last month's book as how often you'd like to win). 

Here's another interesting quote from the essay.  

What makes the genre so appealing isn't that you get to shoot guys; it's how shooting those guys makes you feel.

Now where have I heard that before? Oh that's right. From the Hatred developers: http://www.polygon.com/2014/10/17/6994921/hatred-the-polygon-interview

 Our target is basically a gamer that is coming home after a long, tiring and overall a shitty working day. So we give him the opportunity to just sit by his computer and let some of the steam go by shooting NPCs and destroying the level.

There's a reason he invokes the name of Doom in that interview. Historically, that kind of indiscriminate violence was what FPS games first reveled in. In Masters of Doom, John Romero is quoted as saying, "Blood! In a game! How fucking awesome is that?" You just didn't see that kind of thing before, and it was intoxicating, to say the least, to whip out a chaingun in Wolfenstein 3D and open fire on a Nazi soldier as he dances a bullet-riddled ballet of death, collapsing in a pool of blood. It's this realism that led the editor of Computer Gaming World, Johnny L. Wilson to say:

Believe it or not, I was uncomfortable with the original Wolfenstein 3D and the whole concept of first-person shooters. Somehow, that just felt wrong because it seemed like I was shooting real people—even if they were Nazis.

Now that's an interesting response! As shooters become more realistic, and consequently more violent, they should provoke such feelings as, "What would I do in this situation if this were actually me?" The key is immersion. Immersion to the point of forgetting you're playing a game. That's where the magic happens.

But power fantasies are not immersive. They are boring.

[Matthew Gallant]

Thought this was a nice collection of essays with a very loose "shooter" theme. The chapters that connected mechanics & narrative were my favourites (Red Orchestra, Wolfenstein, Call of Cthulu, Haze, etc.) I also wouldn't mind at all if Clint Hocking chose to write an entire book on shooters, his foreword was great.

[Christian Selbrede]

The Call of Cthulu: Dark Corners of the Earth essay got me to buy the game on Steam. It's on sale right now for only $2.49, for anyone else who might be interested.