#seriously though if you think that creating a narratively empty online game will provide something to build a foundation on for the future

[aesopjones]

Thoughts on Fallout 76 and Genre Shifts

So, after an endless twitch stream of puppets and dabbing, Bethesda revealed that a new Fallout game is coming out!

Fans were cautiously optimistic, would it be another full fledged title or a spin off of some kind? Would it reflect a return to story-driven rpg mechanics that defined the older games or would this signal a more pronounced mass-market appeal to triple AAA trends? Was it set in New York or the American south or somewhere completely different? 

And then Kotaku put this article out. 

Now it is important to note that this comes from anonymous sources, and has not, at this stage, been backed up by Bethesda.  That said, according to the article Fallout 76 will be an online survival rpg in the vein of Rust or Dayz, set 20 years after the bombs fell and expanding on the settlement mechanics seen in Fallout 4. 

Now I have some thoughts on this, and while I don’t think it’s the most encouraging news for the future of the franchise, I’m open to seeing where they go with it. And for fans who are incandescent with rage that a story based rpg with some important and intelligent things to say on poisonous nostalgia and destructive consumption is now being turned into a typical AAA cash grab, you have every right to be angry at that, and depending on how the game turns out I might end up agreeing that you were right to be dismayed. 

But the reason this fails to trigger any outrage on my part is the same reason I’ve come to reconcile myself with Fallout 4, after years spent violently raging against it, and I’ve been meaning to write on that for a while. 

When Fallout 4 was announced, I was incredibly optimistic. By that stage I had played all the main series titles, and while I’d been distinctly underwhelmed by Fallout 3 ever since I first played it, I also held hope that Bethesda might have improved their story skills and found a balance between the complex and sometimes clunky design of the original games and the kinetic game-play that they had been much more successful in perfecting. 

And then the game came out. 

Fallout 4 is a lot of things, a well balanced shooter, a tepid role-playing experience, an intrusive settlement building simulator; but above all it’s a mess. And while it was easy to get outraged about the clumsy story, the unpolished interface, the dialogue tree...

A lot of that frustration was made worse by the obvious passion and enthusiasm put into so much of the game. The art design is amazing, the crafting system is rewarding and staggeringly complex, the combat is enormous fun and often a real challenge as well, and the thematic focus on venturing into the wasteland is well realised through several game-play mechanics. 

To pilfer from Noah Caldwell Gervais, a critic whose work I admire greatly, the ‘Survivial Mode’ completely recontextualises the game in a way that is brilliant and which even addresses several common complaints about the narrative.  On this difficulty setting, you take double damage and deal double damage, you need to be constantly drinking and eating and getting rest, and you’re only able to save your progress by sleeping in a bed. If you aren’t careful in your playstyle, if you don’t prepare and load up with supplies before going anywhere, if you don’t build up a chain of reliable settlements and pit stops along your journey, then you will die about as surely and as quickly as you would in an actual nuclear wasteland. 

A lot of fans questioned why the player character would bother building up settlements and doing faction quests when their son is missing, and Survival mode provides an answer: “If you want to save your son, you have to start small and build up enough power to take on the wasteland.” And in that context, it’s actually amazing to see the Settlement mechanic in action. You get to create several important, even life saving hubs, and strike an important thematic and mechanical victory in the process. 

Now I’m not saying this makes the game great, or that settlement building and the various quests associated with it are secretly brilliant, only that they reflect a great deal of passion and seem to provide an interesting perspective on what draws a lot of Bethesda’s staff to the Fallout franchise.  Maybe the focus on these settlement mechanics and crafting mechanics and the rather disposable approach to interacting with the story and characters was an executive mandate, maybe they concluded it was what prospective customers were interested in seeing, or maybe they just found these elements to be the most compelling aspects of the game.  But however they decided on placing emphasis on these mechanics, it’s clear that they threw a lot of work and care into developing them. 

It was not an enthusiasm that many long-time fans would share.  The general consensus was that the developers (or Bethesda, or Todd Howard) either didn’t care about the franchise or cared about the wrong things within that franchise.  It didn’t help that for all the care and attention lavished on aspects like the settlement mechanics, they were still often buggy and needlessly obtuse. 

However with the benefit of hindsight, I wonder if the argument of ‘these are the wrong priorities to focus on in a Fallout game’ holds up in context.  Back in the first two Fallout games, there was a skill you could invest in called ‘Throwing’. It allowed you to throw things, mostly grenades and flairs. And outside of role playing opportunities, it was near totally worthless. And it’s excision from later titles was hardly mourned by the fanbase, who all agreed that it was a pretty limited mechanic and not important to the Fallout experience. 

Now I hope to make it clear that I’m not arguing that we should just cast off design priorities like focused narratives and functional dialogue trees, rather I’m trying to emphasise that in a franchise with multiple instalments, new design elements and choices will be made. Sometimes out of necessity, sometimes out of a desire to try something new.  And while that doesn’t excuse the inability or unwillingness of the game developers working at Bethesda to craft a story that maintains a consistent level of quality...

It does mean that it’s maybe not a bad idea to remain open to new mechanics or design priorities. Fallout 4 is full of interesting diversions and experiments and ideas, and I think it ultimately does provide a new perspective on ideas and themes that have been present in the franchise for years. It has some serious problems, but that doesn’t mean they can’t be addressed going forward and that there can’t be good Fallout games in the future.  And I retain some hope that this new Fallout game, whatever it is, might continue to do the same. 

Given that Bethesda seems to have an enthusiasm for natural environments and bare-bones storytelling without much nuance, this genre shift actually seems to play to a lot of their strengths. Perhaps they’ll take care in fine-tuning the game until it’s both functional and genuinely compelling, providing a unique experience that is totally distinct from other Fallout titles.  It’s impossible to say at this stage, but conceptually, I can see how this might be the beginning of something really special. 

Or it will be an instantly dated and barely playable mess that will attract derision and apathy from long term fans and momentary attention from everyday consumers. 

[jonboudposts]

The Tyranny of Opinion Part 1: I Demand You Debate Me

There are some people you cannot debate with because quite simply, they do not debate.  They just talk.

Such people have a list of issues they want to talk about and have already formed un-movable opinions on. Like being on a bad date, they will try to steer any conversation toward a subject they know about – or think they do – then try to outdo their ‘opponent’ on the subject.  However, when they can’t, the switch comes in quick to either the next subject or sometimes full-on conspiracy theory.

They also like being offensive, at least to a certain type of person.  They imagine pissing off ‘the Libs’ makes them edgy and rebellious (still don’t get the girl though).  It is of top consideration to be offensive to minorities and those least likely to fight back.  Being offensive is the goal; having good reason to be is irrelevant.

One example in my life was someone I used to see through work.  We would discuss various bits about films or games (his interest, not mine) and occasionally serious stuff like emotions.  After this person moved routes, a few months passed before I saw them again.  The next meeting was quite a shock; they had become preoccupied with alt-right talking points and hating the usual tropes (feminism, Islam) and proclaiming the need for violent action to protect ‘our’ (Christian) values.

In our following meetings, this person displayed classic traits – throwing a ‘point’ at me, shouting with faux-anger, interrupting mid-answer, uncomfortably putting up with my response that completely defeated their argument; then ignoring it and jumping to the next claim. Most of these claims were ludicrous; for instance it was claimed that in the Labour Party manifesto of 2015, there was a proposal that gay males would be forcibly paired up with single fertile women in order to produce the future labour force.  Now, in all seriousness; please tell me how to ‘debate’ with that.

My initial response was to speak to some mutual friends of ours and ask if they could explain this behaviour, before suggesting we should perhaps stage an intervention or call Prevent. I have still not decided.

However, some people make a career out of this kind of bullshit and not just Alex Jones.  A well-know name at the moment is Jordan Petersen, a Hackademic who likes to clothe his woman-hate and disgust with a world not interested in praising the mediocre white man constantly with a sheen of pseudo-intellectualism and big concept waffle.  Plus, as many articles written by far more intelligent and academic people tan me will tell you, his theories are bunk; mostly based on intentional misinterpretation of Marx or Derrida, coupled with the resentment only a rich white man can cultivate toward anyone with alternative ideas that are directly threatening to privilege.

He has decided cultural Marxism is why we are all so miserable and those obnoxious and tiresome young men like my example above are just misunderstood and alienated because of post-modernism and feminism.  Sadly, organisations like the BBC and Channel 4 think him worthy of attention too.  As he does not really have an argument but he does have loads of confidence and is able to speak for long periods, this makes him, in the modern interpretation, a good debater.  For the desperate need within the media for something not overtly murderous or obviously racist from the right, he gets taken seriously.  Some may complain I am only making a personal attack – I am, because there is nothing else there.

There is a big difference between free speech and people who just shout for attention.  At the risk of cutting people out of public life, there is no morale imperative to provide a platform to hate mongers and cranks and we know perfectly well this weakens society rather than strengthens it.

Petersen appeals to my friend because he is one of those figureheads who produces easy answers to complex problems, gives them back their hero narrative and tells them there is not need to change, while also backing up the nation that those who fail at the system should be condemned – so their adulation of him amounts to pure self-hatred really.  What they most strongly have in common is their convenient outrage and complete disinterest in answers or alternative opinions.  They just want someone to notice them.

Also, there is no work done here.  There is simply the expressing of opinion without footnotes.  No research, just feeling.  Those hating immigrants or women or trans people rarely quote from analysis and when such analysis is put to them, with all the facts that contradict their negative opinion of immigrants’ or women or trans people, they often just resort to denying the validity of the research with no evidence to back this up (seeing any themes here?).  Evidence is who Dave had in his cab last week or the ‘fact’ that one midwife at the hospital during the birth of their child was rude – and bloody foreign.

This kind of behaviour is simply not worthy of attention or contemplation (it is also dangerous). The lack of willingness to do any work but imagine you can just elbow into the same sphere is deplorable.  Derrida developed deconstruction; Petersen wrote an opinion book called 12 Rules for Life.  I read about both on the internet.

If anyone thinks I am suggesting ‘excluding some people’ from public life, let me ask you this; have you ever really spend time listening (online, TV or in life) to anyone jabbering conspiracy theories or just re-writing history, all for the sake of free speech?  If you have heard such people, how long did you listen?

If you were sitting at dinner and someone started ranting about 9/11 being an inside job, the moon landing not really happening, or no one dying in the Grenfell Tower, would you really just sit there?  Or would you prefer to see this person given a platform at a university?  Should we all engage for the sake of ‘preserving free speech’?

Well, you can if you want to but I have better things to do.  Plus, I do not think this shows any dedication to ideals of freedom; it shows a society falling apart, with no idea which direction to go.  With a lazy media looking for content and damaged people looking for someone to blame, this just creates a toxic public life filled with broken men and self-hating women screaming at the youth and calling it engagement.  In the absence of any new culture or forward momentum, this is the kind of thing that occurs – a faux sense of pride in your emptiness; a conviction life was better before Group A showed up (even though you were not born before Group A showed up); or more simply, old wives tales gone mad.  It really comes down to resentment toward anyone with the guts and tenacity to not put up with the shit deal given to them and to strive to make things better for everyone; rather than stand back while late-period capitalism implodes and hope they do not get any rain down on their house.

Now more than ever in my lifetime, there is an opportunity to change the present; a time characterised by insecurity and fear.  More working class people are beginning to realise they can stand up for themselves through trade unions or co-ops of various types and in the process, learn real working class history while doing the best thing you can with history – using it to construct a better future for yourself and those around you.  Let’s ditch the snake oil salesman and conspiracy theories and put our shoulder into this; then you will have some real power.

(In future articles I will write about hate speech, attention seeking-verses-argument and why taking the piss out of people is legitimate).