[BoRT Sep. 2015] The Bear's Dilema: Exploration and Abstraction

The bear went over the mountain,
The bear went over the mountain,
The bear went over the mountain,
And what do you think he saw? 

 

Fallout 4 threatens down upon us like the face of an unsmiling god, menacing gamers with hours upon hours of the free-form exploration Bethseda Game Studios has perfected. Bethseda, of course, is the war criminal responsible for Fallout 3 and the Elder Scrolls series, which have destroyed more hours of human productivity than Solitaire and Power Point combined. 

 

Bethseda is extremely skillful at creating Open Worlds, wherein the player can merrily skip over any mountain on the horizon like the bear of the song. Don't like any of the quests you currently have? Not interested in the main storyline? Endless adventures are no further than the next mountain over. 

 

While this sort of open-ended exploration can be very enjoyable, it is not without its issues. The open world is usually navigated by floating arrows which turn questing across fantasy worlds and post-apocalypses alike into navigating a modern city via GPS. 



This. Take this, mighty adventurer. We'll wait.

 

These arrows are the Siris of Tamriel, the immersion-breaking Navis of the nuclear wasteland. "Turn right at the moldering remains of a dead civilization. Turn right. REROUTING. REROUTING. U-TURN AT MONUMENT TO MANKIND'S HUBRIS IN 1 MILE." 



Our pointy overlords, IRL.

 

 Worse, perhaps, than the mood-killing navigation arrows is the Dilemma of the Bear. After all, once the bear went over the mountain, what do you think he saw? 

 

He saw another mountain, 

He saw another mountain, 

He saw another mountain, 

So what do you think he did? 

 

The bear goes over the mountain, only to see another mountain on the horizon. Another cave of spiders. Another town overrun by bandits. If the bear is in a Bethseda game, it will be an excellent mountain full of interesting side-paths and challenges, but alas, another mountain all the same. 

 

As we all know, the bear will proceed to the next mountain and do it again. And again. And again, until the children tire of the song. And while I look forward to Bethseda's upcoming romp through the wilderness, I realize that the mountains I scale will ultimately lead to nothing but more mountains. Completeing the main quest will not heal the world; it will leave its mountains unchanged for all my scrambling over. 

 

If Fallout and Skyrim and their like are GPS games, what does a Map game look like? 

 

While GPS faithfully reproduces every detail of the landscape to a fraction of Longitude and Latitude, a Map must abstract. A map cannot show every tree in the forest or every bend in the river, just the general contours and where the cities and towns lie. 

 

I am currently playing Grandia,which is perhaps as far from an Open World game as you can get without taking place in a single location. The world map is a literal map. The player does not wander around an overworld, as in Final Fantasy games, but rather select locations with a cursor:

 

 

Grandia's world map is a literal map.

 

 

Grandia's story is also very much linear. You progress from location to location, from event to event, without any say in the main character's decisions or morality. Justin is not a cipher, a voiceless protagonist for the player to project into, but a boy with a very distinct personality. You do not choose what he does or where he goes; you just help him get there. 

 

Angst-ridden protagonists need not apply.

 

I have found this extreme linearity very refreshing. It is an old game, but so different from most of what I have seen recently that it feels strangely new. I am reminded of Jim Sterling's video on Spencer Mansion and the importance of Small Spaces. Small spaces and a linear plots may not allow for as much organic gameplay, but sometimes that's okay. I will remember Justin's liner, abstracted journey across the continents much longer than I will remember Silent Protagonist #4,328 cresting over Mountain #98,657. 

 

Skyrim/Fallout let me piece together whatever story I can. Grandia tells me a story. Neither thing is inherently better, but both things are better at delivering different experiences. 

 

As I said, I am looking forward to Fallout 4 and plan on sandboxing it up for endless hours of mountain after city after factory after mountain after so on. But I'm also going to forget all of the inconsequential poking about. I'm going to be as un-involved in the central plot as I was in every other Open World GPS-fest I've ever played. 

 

Grandia, I'm going to remember. Its story is linear, a map. It does not bog me down in meaningless details and endless side-paths, but rather presents me with an abstraction of a world that I can enjoy. Sometimes it's better to leave the edges of the map to the player's imagination. 

 

Has the gaming world tired of mountains? I doubt it. The central mechanic of free roaming will always be attractive. But in a world filled with samey sandboxes, a developer who wants to stand out would do well to consider the value of linearity and abstraction. 

 

The bear went over the mountain, 

The bear went over the mountain, 

The bear went over the mountain, 

And what do you think he saw? 

[OE007] What We Could Do: The Pushed Pusher

Previous: [OE006] The Game Mechanic: Choiceless Choices

What We Could Do

                I suppose to ask “what we could do” is to fly in the face of Pandoran morality. For that matter, there really isn’t much else that game designers could do either. When using Pandoran morality the Prime Pusher, the designer who forces the player to make poor moral choices, becomes the Pushed. There isn’t anything else to be done – to Push the player, you must Push.

                Games like Infinifactory shake things up by changing the actions we are forced to take. Instead of shooting others with guns, we design the factories that make the guns (that will then be used to shoot others). Other games raise the stakes by pushing the player to commit exciting new atrocities - Modern Warfare 2's airport civilian massacre or Grand Theft Auto 5's torture simulator. The 'Oh Shit' moments must be regularly ratcheted up.

I suppose the most boring thing about Pandoran games is that they turn evil into one more mission objective, one more box to tick. An evil that the player must commit in order to continue just isn't that interesting. Call it "The Banality of Evil" or "The Banality of ‘Oh Shit’ Moments," but the effect is the same.

Yawn.

A Pandoran game may be necessary from time to time as new dominant genres and tropes emerge (SpecOps does it well), but the more of these subversions exist, they less impact they have. I love discussions of Free Will and Fate as much as the next person (rather more, I dare say), but it’s hard to get excited about games being all like “you had no choice but to shoot that one guy! Oooooohhhhhh! Okay, that was fun. Now go shoot another squadron of thinking, feeling beings.”

Next: [OE008] The Story: Oedipus

On EGS Without Baskets

Me IRL

                Today I’d like to talk a little about something that I don’t like to talk about at all: my ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation. Specifically, I’d like to talk about why I don’t talk about them.
 

                There’s really no good way to say this, but I am more than my gender. I am more than my race. Sexual orientation is part of who I am, but it is not all of who I am.  I have an ethnicity, gender, and sexual orientation in real life, and I am comfortable with them. But they are incidental. They’re things that exist, not things that I particularly care about.

                When I don’t talk about my EGS, what I’m trying to avoid is being boxed in and defined by things that I do not consider very important. “You’re just saying that because you’re Gay.” “You’re just saying that because you’re White.” “You wouldn’t think that if you were a Man.” If I say “I am a Gay White Woman,” then folks on all sides will line up to tell me what Gay White Women should think, do think, can only think. And that’s bullshit.

                Don’t get me wrong, there is a place for people who speak up and talk about their EGS and how it affects them. Those are voices that we need to hear. We need gender studies, ethnic studies, gay studies, so on, and ad infinitum. Those are things I love to read about – but I don’t want to get shuffled off to an intellectual ghetto by revealing that information about myself.

                It’s unfortunate, but revealing my EGS would almost certainly ghettoize my content. I would be expected to talk about “X issues” or to say that “as a X, I…” Mind, it could also potentially boost my site traffic – there are plenty of platforms actively looking for people like me as alternative voices. But I am more than the sum of my EGS.

                There are exceptions, of course; issues where my EGS does influence my positions. Growing up as a multi-ethnic in the South greatly informs my position on what racism is and isn’t. It’s why I’m fascinated with the subject and why I’ve read so much White Supremacist literature. I know what it is like to literally be discriminated against for nothing more than the color of your skin.

                I don’t talk about this as much, but I am also a Christian. This doesn’t do much to change my opinion on Hegel’s stages of history or video games, so I don’t bring it up much. Insisting that “such and such is the truth because God said so” doesn’t go very far as an argument unless you’re arguing with co-religionists. I’m a video game blogger who happens to be a Christian, not a Christian Video Game Blogger™.

                But as much as I do not want to end up in the Christian blog ghetto, it is a much more important part of my identity than EGS. I will bring it up when it’s relevant, and will not when it is not.

                That’s about it. I want people to consider my ideas, not my relative oppression level. I want to be free of my EGS, not defined by it. I’m interested in the discussion, not the exact demographic makeup of the discussers. No one has the right to speak for me, but me.

                If you do talk about your EGS, good! I look forward to reading about it. But please, don’t expect me to do the same.

---

Dammit, Guys

Dammit, guys, you're going to get me kicked out of the warren:

McChuck September 4, 2015 at 8:36 AM

What wonderful, delicious, unintended irony. Rev said:

" If we can return to a place where the author's personal politics are no longer what matters most, then de-escalation has occurred.

I'm not saying that anyone should vote for anything other than the best piece - I'm saying that everyone should only vote for the piece they think is the best work of Science Fiction."

Do you not understand that this is the goal of the Sad Puppies movement? That this is our clearly stated victory condition? This is what Sad Puppies is all about!

The Rev September 4, 2015 at 10:34 AM

"Do you not understand that this is the goal of the Sad Puppies movement?"

Yes, and I think it's a goal that works for everyone but the true SJWs. It works for the Left, it works for the Right, it works for the people who just want all of the politically motivate people to shut up so they can read Sci-Fi.

As you say, the Sad Puppies are not the Rabid Puppies. The Sad Puppies are reasonable, and can be negotiated with - and their primary demand is quite frankly something that anyone who believes in free speech should support...oh God, I think I just realized I'm a Sad Puppy.

 

 

SJWs Always Lie: A Non-Review

I first became acquainted with Vox Day from an article about what a terrible person he is. I won’t waste anyone’s time be repeating the list of evils Vox has been accused of. In the popular imagination, Vox is an inverted Jesus Loves the Little Children:

Vox Day hates the little children
Little children of the world
Red and Yellow, Black and Brown
He will run them out of town
Vox Day hates the little children of the world

Now, White Supremacists are something of a hobby of mine (a side effect of growing up as an “ethnic” in the South), so I immediately started reading his blog Vox Popoli for los llulz.

A year later, I wrote a series of posts summarizing what I had learned about Vox Day and how to fight back against him. To my dismay, the only people who had anything positive to say about the series were Puppies of the Sad and Rabid variety. The essence of their response was “I cannot believe a SJW is capable of understanding us.”

Now bear in mind, the essence of my argument was that the best way to deal with Vox Day is to treat him and the Puppies with kindness and humility. Disagree with them, but on the level of vigorous intellectual debate, not back-room sniping. One thing that I have in common with Vox is the belief that the Truth – the big Truth – can withstand public scrutiny.

Perhaps because of this positive Puppy response, Vox was kind enough to send me a review copy of his latest book: SJWs Always Lie: Taking Down the Thought Police. In truth, I was going to buy it anyway – the First Law of Vox Day is that Vox Day is never boring. Except for maybe those soccer stories.

Now, I have posted a traditional review on Amazon (three stars, for those wondering), but I would also like to criticize it from a more unusual angle. My thesis here is that SJWs resembles nothing so much as a piece of PUA literature. We’re going to look at three reasons why.

First, SJWs is not what outsiders assume it is (thought that goes for pretty much for the literature of any movement). I think many on the Left will assume that it is nothing more than a polemic; a preaching to the Aryan Choir or else a rant about how Vox was not hugged enough as a child. The author of John Scalzi Is Not A Very Popular Author And I Myself Am Quite Popular: How SJWs Always Lie About Our Comparative Popularity Levels certainly seems to think this is the case.

Outsiders tend to be familiar with a movement’s external trappings, but not its internal logic. In the case of PUAs, people know only their most visible external attributes: “peacocking” outfits, “negging” women with insults or indeed, an obsession with sexual conquest.

But this is not the core of PUA literature or other Neo-Masculine movements. PUA literature starts out with the promise of seducing women, but quickly moves to indoctrinating the reader into a new system of thinking. Indeed, seasoned PUAs will insist that the new system of thinking is the whole point. You will never get better at attracting women until you adopt the correct mindset.

This is the second point of commonality with PUA literature. The mindset taught in SJWs includes many things that have nothing to do with the original goal. It is a book that purports to teach you how to respond to SJW attacks, but it is at the same time building support for a new system of thinking. A system of thinking in which peaceful racial coexistence is impossible and no one on the Left is capable of coherent logical thought.

That’s not to say that Vox is being dishonest, or even that he does this intentionally. For Vox, his system of thought is what allows him to stand up against the bullies of the Left. Nonetheless, potential readers should be warned that the worldview they will be encouraged to accept is one in which racial equality is as impossible as a square circle. Equality and Progress are given as antonyms.

Third, SJWs is primarily a series of Scripts. For PUA manuals, these Scripts are opening lines, moving from one phase to another, shifting venues, et al. In SJWs, the first Script is the anatomy of a SJW attack (Point and Shriek and so on) and the second Script is the proper response (Don’t Apologize and so on).

There is, of course, more to this book than the two Scripts, but as with PUA literature, it is mostly there either to explain and support the Scripts or to explain and support the Worldview. There are calls to arms and sections on how to SJW-proof an organization, but this is so much window dressing. What really matters are the Scripts and canned routines.

The breakdown of dialectic vs. rhetoric is a good one, although it does claim that Leftists are incapable of dialectic reason. Again, this may be somewhat justified. After a year of following Vox, I have not yet seen an opponent attack him with a dialectic argument, for whatever reason.

At the end of the day, SJWs Always Lie will likely do exactly what it set out to do. The culture wars within fandom will escalate, the disqualification arms race will heat up, and both sides will steadily lose the ability to see the other side as human beings. I will never say that both sides are the same, but they do have one thing in common: the constant dehumanization of the other side.

Vox Day suggests that the only way to combat the intellectual policing of the Left is for the Right to engage in intellectual policing. This is what we have come to, and why I find Vox’s posturing as a hero of free speech disingenuous. Apparently the Hugo SJWs are not the only ones willing to burn down the city to save it.

Because SJWs Always Lie is a PUA manual, I expect to see many mini-Voxes running around in the near future, using its Scripts and techniques. Might I offer a suggested counter-script?

1). Accept that your opponent is a human being.
2). Attack ideas, never attack individuals.
3). Address specific statements with credible evidence.

You don’t defeat an insurgency by spreading chaos and you don’t restore stability by attacking innocent civilians. If you want to end the culture war before it turns into an actual war, you must start by loving your enemies and treating them as you would want to be treated. Bottom line, full stop.

Killing Vox Day: Conclusions

Part Three: What Type of Victory? 

 

If Liberals and Left-leaning folk have a blind spot, it lies in the assumption that everyone thinks like us - or rather, that everyone will think like us. For all of the Left's talk of subjectivity and the equal value of all worldviews, many of us have a nasty tendency to assume that everyone will think and behave like us in the end.  

 

When you enshrine science and logic as your ultimate goods, it is easy to slide into the assumption that your beliefs are inherently scientific and logical. When you assume your beliefs are scientific and logical, it is easy to slide into the assumption that no decent person can forever resist them. Worse, you slide into the assumption that they are the only scientific and logical beliefs. 

 

If the first law of Philosophy is "Know Thyself" and the first law of War is "Know Thy Enemy," then the assumption of superiority is surely the best way to lose a Philosophical War. Ideas must be tested, tried, and refined before they can even be said to be Useful, let alone Superior. Concepts drop out of the Bacchanalian Revel all of the time. There is no evil in this; it is simply part of the dance.  

 

Naturally, Conservatives have problems of their own when it comes to uncritical assumptions. On paper, we might even say that they have more problems with uncritical assumptions. However, once a Conservative steps into the public sphere, something strange happens. 

 

Everyone in the public sphere gets attacked, but Conservatives gets attacked by a much higher class of critic. The Academy leans towards the Left, whether you think that is because reality has a Liberal bias or because of a Leftist conspiracy. 

 

The result is, public Conservatives face opponents that are on average more logical, better read, more experienced with intellectual combat. Conservatives must either back down or create ever-more destructive, ever more refined intellectual weapons.  

 

The educated Liberal, on the other hand, can get away with only debating cowed Conservatives and other varieties of Liberals. On the rare occasion that they meet a truly dangerous Conservative, one can always fall back on the assumption of superiority followed by dismissal. As a result, we rarely engage in serious debate with an opponent that represents a truly existential threat.  

 

This constant hammering shuts down debate, or rather, limits what can be debated. Sometimes this is good - I for one and am glad we no longer have to debate slavery. But it can also weaken us.  

 

It undermines our ability to engage with those who are not like us. It muddies our vision of the state of the world around us and prevents us from grappling with the issues of the day. Sure, we can get away with not talking about slavery now - but to ignore pro-Slavery arguments in 1850 would have been suicide. 

 

Most Conservatives will respond by dancing along just enough to scrape by. Pay enough lip service to pass as normal. Keep your head down and shuffle along. But every now and then, a Bad One emerges.  

 

In my opinion, that is the Origin Story of Vox Day. For a time, he got hammered and did the dance. Dance enough to pass as normal. Dance enough to not have your opinions rejected out of hand. Dance a little more, and maybe you can be a part of civilized society.

 

Maybe one day the dance was not enough to hide him or maybe one day he just got sick of it. But the result was turning the full brunt of his intellectual energy against the other dancers. Whether the dancer of Egalitarianism or the dancer of Feminism, the dancer of Racial Unity or the dancer of Social Convention, he turned against them all. He will dance no more, lest the dance be moshing.

 

Many on the Left claim that Vox is not a threat. And maybe they're right. Maybe the gated community and the ivory tower can stave off the Puppies he is whipping into a frenzy. Maybe there really are more Liberals in the world, and their triumph is historically inevitable.  

 

Yet they claim this while we live in a world where Donald Trump became a front-running Presidential candidate by using much the same rhetoric as Vox. He is more popular with minority voters than Jeb Bush, despite the excellence with which Jeb dances the dance. Correction - Jeb seems to have messed up the steps.  

 

I am of the opinion that Vox is a legitimate threat. Other think he is not. Much of the argument revolves around whether or not Vox "won" at the 2015 Hugos. Naturally, Puppies say he did and non-Puppies say he did not. Since there may be a touch of bias on both sides, I propose the following tests for settling the issue:

 

[Note: This section was originally written on 08/26/15,  before the release of SJWs Always Lie, and before Vox was kind enough to send me a review copy. Due to the potential conflict of interest, it has not been modified in any way since 08/26, including grammar and punctuation.] 

 

1). If there are more Rabid Puppies in 2016 than 2015, Vox Day is a threat. If there are less Rabid Puppies,  Vox Day is not a threat.

 

2. If SJWs Always Lie expands Vox Day's reach, he is a threat. If SJWs Always Lie only sells to the usual suspects, Vox Day is not a threat. If it is a flop, Vox Day is a joke. 

 

3). If the 2016 Hugos are another round of No Awards, Vox Day is a threat. If the 2016 Hugos are awarded normally, Vox Day is not a threat. If an open Puppy wins a Rocket in 2016, Vox day is The Threat.  

 

[End of section.] 

 

If anyone can think of fairer, better criteria, please let me know. As for myself, I will comfort myself with the knowledge that even if Vox is not a threat, he is at least never boring.  

 

Then again, a Puppy winning a Rocket in 2016 could be a good thing - perhaps the best thing. It would naturally be contingent on a Puppy writing a Hugo-worthy piece that won fair and square, but it could also indicate that the Puppy Kerfuffle no longer mattered. If we can return to a place where the author's personal politics are no longer what matters most, then de-escalation has occurred.

 

I'm not saying that anyone should vote for anything other than the best piece - I'm saying that everyone should only vote for the piece they think is the best work of Science Fiction. 

 

Finally, and in closing, I would like to thank the Puppies who were drawn to this series for their input, criticisms, and polite discourse. I apologize for implying you were a bunch of braying sycophants, since that is not how you conducted yourselves. 

 

As thanks, here is a piece of advice: if your 4GW is successful, you will find yourselves in a position of power. Remember that all of the advice I have given my side about maintaining moral legitimacy will apply to you as well. David can get away with a lot more than Goliath, but once in power, David's sins brought Absalom upon him. 

 

I would have liked to be able to thank non-Puppies for their contributions as well, but unfortunately, none of them have commented as of the date of posting. Save a link for after the 2016 Hugos, y'all.