On 'Adult Wednesday Addams'

This may be a little unrelated to the video games or education that I tend to riff on, but I just want to take a minute to dissect a character. I really like the Addams family and after seeing the great Wednesday vs. Catcallers I finally sat down and watched the rest of the series so far. I think both the little progression in finding whats compelling about the character and where she seems to have settled are interesting, and while the ideas here may not be new I just want to try and articulate what I see happening.

Just a normal Monday morning? No?

Ok, so first we're definitely dealing with a version drawing more from the movie versions of Wednesday than the original show, where Wednesday was a happy little girl who happened to like creepy things. Going for the unflappable, super competent creepiness is fine, I liked the movies too.
In that first episode, there's the little bit of backstory and establishing the character and how she relates to others. Most of the humor here is just about how she's different and about misunderstandings;  the gag bickering with her dead gran, misinterpreting 'night owls', the one roommates' obliviousness to the 'shit where I eat' comment, etc. Its situational comedy it every sense.

Its the second episode with the job interview that it gets more interesting. I mean there's the mildly forced 'maggot gets the corpse' and the nice little touches like the unsettling in its mundanity 'I love being tested'. Handling the phone interview is the first taste of where things seem headed though; here's an interviewer in a nominal position of power over her and has a casual disdain and lack of respect, as most people are very familiar with. Theres that dismissive manner, questioning of abilities, and attempts to maintain control. Through it all, it slides off Wednesday and then, when the interviewer is at her most annoying and demanding, she firmly demonstrates she can do the job. Specifically, that she is unmoved by petty insults and concerns and is willing to address deeper issues its not polite to talk about as well as grounding them in her larger, morbid perspective.

Much of humor is about breaking expectations after all,
and hers are broken

This is where this recurring pattern starts; this situation of Wednesday being confronted by some mundane annoyance or unpleasant person and responding confidently and decisively in a way rooted in her unique perspective. I mean, sure her consistent triumphs could be a bit Mary Sue, but the manner in which she succeeds is what is interesting. Sure, she does use whistle ex machine to deal with the dog walker, but generally whether its someone actively hostile, like at planned parenthood, or she is trying to reassure someone, such as when babysitting or getting a haircut, we see her brooch unsettling topics, uncompromisingly stick to her principles, take a broad perspective, and, beyond drawing her own strength from certainty in that view, attempt to use that perspective to reassure others.

"Everyone is destined to die alone"

I think she's interesting as a character because her sense of empowerment isn't in just dealing with these issues, but in the way she is immediately clearly not 'normal' yet is sure of herself and succeeds on her terms. Wednesday isn't perfect (though perhaps super competent in certain areas) but a person with her own values, opinions, rules, and preferences like everyone else. Its just that hers a clearly different from what's considered normal, and this helps us identify with her and makes it satisfying when she does stick to her principles. She unapologetic in the ways she's different and uses it to solve her problems. She draws strength from her differences rather than questioning herself.

Even more so than the power fantasy of things like have the resources to respond to the catcallers, I think its this self assurance and insight and quick witted...ness that make her a satisfying protagonist to follow and project on to. You look at the immediate, clear way she deals with things like the internet date and see someone secure in themselves and pursuing their own goals an not putting up with other people's nonsense or flawed perceptions of her.

"I thought you were one of those...suicide girls."
"I'm not that kind of girl, Kyle; I don't take my life on the first date"

I think its this certainty and strength that more people wish they had.

A few final thoughts:
The continuing morbid flavor over everything is still great and adds to the humor, I don't want to dismiss that. Moreover, looking at what most people in this society consider the darkest, most depressing, and most uncomfortable to discuss topics and not only reveling in them but finding them reassuring only reinforces all of this.

Its nice to see the subversion of expectations more recently with the reality star.

The types of issues shes dealing with also says something about the demographic of the audience, so theres a discussion to be had over if this kind of confidence power fantasy is more or less appealing to them than other potential audiences...



Anyway, maybe I'm just projecting too much or other people find something else appealing here.
Let me know what you think in the comments.

Creating creators and critics

Originally, this was going to be the Part 2 of the community post; last week's post was originally longer, but I couldn't figure out how to articulate everything by my self-imposed deadline so I split it up. A significant chunk of the followup was going to be talking about Jim Gee's thoughts on 'affinity groups'.

...but then I saw this this video (as part of my continuing effort to watch every vlogbrothers video in the archive) and now this post is going to be about Gee's more recent thoughts and how they're related.


Uh...yay?

 Ok, in order to get there, lets start off talking about "consumers" and specifically about consuming media, be that TV, movies, music, video games, comics books, book books, newspapers, what-have-you. Except for video games, people generally think of "consuming media" as a passive experience; you're reading or watching something others have made. You're really not participating or interacting with it, but just kind of absorbing it.

or at least advertisers hope you are.

This kind of view is really clear  in the language; vegging out in front of the boobtube, or the idiot box, zoning out. All this imagery of being super passive.

However, this is not the only way of 'consuming media'; you can also consume it reflectively, considering the deeper levels of meaning or context in the media. What does this symbol mean? What is the creator trying to say and how? How does this relate to other similar pieces of media?



What does this dick joke say about the environment?

Gee calls this 'being a critical consumer', and the vlogbrothers call it thinking complexly, and its a parallel theme that's very important to both of them. For the vlogbrothers, its how you start to make sense of the world, and they extend this into science, too. To them this idea is about finding some way of more deeply understanding the world, be it through literary analysis or scientific quantifying and statistics, and using it.  To find some way to help yourself better understand the world you are in, meaningfully discuss it with others, increase that understanding, and act based on it.

And that's where we come back to Gee.
If you're not familiar with James Paul Gee,
he's a professor who was trained as a linguist, then became focused the potential of video games as a medium, then started really looking at how video games teach and engage, and how people interact with them and each other around them, then wrote a book about it...

That I'm a fan of.

...and has been an influential thinker in the academic space around games since. (If that phrasing seemed odd, I'm using "academic space around games" to go general and avoid the whole serious games/educational/games for impact/games for good etc. naming issue.)

Now, that's the revised edition, because he wrote it years ago. More recently, Gee's been talking more about critical consumption and a "modding attitude". So critical consumption is similar to what we were just discussing, but from there things go slightly differently. See for Gee its not just about being able to discuss creations meaningfully, but about discussing things in the manner of a creator and from there creating things yourself as part of  larger discussions.

For example, in literature, this could look like someone reading Fahrenheit 451, discussing in classes or online the themes of how man relates to technology, and how they're expressed in the book and whether they agree or not, and eventually writing something themselves, to express their feelings and thoughts on that same topic. Or other topics that became more important to them during that journey.



Like how awesome and terrifying robot hounds can be.

Gee refers to this shift to identifying as a creator as a "modding attitude" because he was focused on games, and there you can plot a nice pregression of person who plays games, to "gamer", to modder, and perhaps from there to game creator.

Though, to be clear, modding is creating something new, the same way a short video , or essay, or parody of a song is creating something new and contributing something to larger cultural discussions of issues. You don't have to be making  full movies or games, or books to be contributing.



A single image can be enough.

And this is where I think the vlogbrothers and Gee's feelings converge; its important to be able to reflectively consume media, because if you can't do that you won't really be able to engage with the issues within or behind those media or meaningfully contribute to larger discussions. And having more people meaningfully contributing makes those discussions richer, bringing new perspectives or ideas that others hadn't thought of. And when someone engages with those discussions its also usually good for them, helping them feel capable, feel like they belong to something, and helping them be better able to deal with their lives in some way.

This was one of the things I was groping for a way to express in the community post, and cut; one of the things good communities do is support this transition. They welcoming novices,  help them develop skills of critical analysis, provide aspirational and instructive examples of higher level discourse, and create safe areas to try out new ideas and ways of expressing them. These communities enrich themselves, and enrich the people involved in them.

If in the last post I had asked "How do you make games that spawn good communities?" rather than focusing on 'positive impact', this would have been part of the definition of "good".



Not taking yourself too seriously all the time would likely have been another part.

Gee highlights facilitating this transition as something the education system needs to be doing and is currently bad at. The vlogbrothers highlight this as a reason they like youtube: because the weak barrier between creators and consumers allows for more interaction and (and this part may be more implicit) a very easy transition from one to the other.

So what do you think about the importance of shifting your identity from the audience of a message to a participant in a discourse?  Is it important? Why?
How about its importance in terms of the media we're bombarded with everyday, and being able process and contextualize it all rather than being buffeted about?

Leave your thoughts in the comments,
or if you have a story of making this kind of transition in some area, whether its how you went from watching films to making them or how it felt doing a young authors contest or science fair, leave that too. It seems that these can be some of the most interesting experiences to share or to hear about.

photo credits: yaelol.wordpress.com, hhhuuuhhh125 on deviantart, , sophiedaveyphoto.wordpress.com, semi-rad.com

How the collapse of AAA games would be good for women and marriages (and games)

Ok, that may be overstating it, but if you think about trends in the games industry and their consequences (both in the industry and for consumers) I think there could be some real opportunities ahead. Full disclosure: my background isn’t in business and I’m not really in the industry, but I follow industry news and commentators like other people follow sports and the things they’re saying are very interesting when taken together.

"Well Bob, considering the player stats and design
history, this MMO looks like a big win for Bartle's model

of player behavior"

"...who are you and how did you get in here?"

Games makers big and small
So starting with the triple A games, theres been allot of buzz lately about the “failures” of some AAA games according to their makers that would’ve been great success for anyone else. This was the story for Tomb Raider and Resident Evil 6 and was covered nicely by the Jimquisition. To summarize, 1) companies try to make more impressive game to get higher sales, 2) so they invest more in games and create huge teams, 3) and with those huge production costs, the games need more sales to break even, and 4) to hit those sales goals the games have to appeal to the broadest audience. So companies making the biggest, shiniest games also make the least risky games they can, and need those big sales numbers to break even. Meaning they produce very pretty, but increasingly tired (cause new things are risky) games, and can be a loss even with millions of sales. And this can become a cycle where when they don't "flop" they reinvest in a bigger team for the next game, which has to be more broadly appealing and safe, until the "flop" is catastrophic.

"So according to these numbers, as long as everyone in the country
not working for this company buys a copy of
Generica: War of Battle this quarter, we'll be ok."

Now, thats the worst case when this cycle gets out of control. Its not what all big games are looking like, but it is pattern people are seeing, are worried about. Theres talk about  "unsustainable models" and other gloomy terminology. Some big companies are trying to avoid these issues there with additional revenue like microtransactions or making only franchises, but this story isn’t just about the big companies; at the other end of the budget spectrum, allot of exciting things are happening in the indie or smaller studio spaces at the same time. 

There’s been a building narrative about the rise of smaller game makers, from having more access to consumers with Steam (and other digital distribution) to being able to get funding from Kickstarter. Its been helped by indie hits like Minecraft, where a small group (or one person) makes something that’s way too risky for big companies but finds a huge audience and provides a massive return to its producers.

So there’s a stew of articles floating around about the flawed model of larger studios and the increasing relevance of “the indie scene” and smaller studios. This is great news for getting more interesting games, but I think the really interesting opportunity for smaller studios isn’t just in creative or technical risks, but cultural and institutional “risks”.

What does that even...oh right, I forgot the title of the post.

Current problems
The huge investments aren’t the only factor homogenizing games; at a more basic level the same kinds of people ("childless 31 year old white men") tend to be making games targeting the same audience (boys; see below) no matter what kind of game you’re trying to make. Now, that’s not good creatively, since diverse perspectives and approaches should produce more diverse and richer games, but its actually worse than it seems for two reasons: 1) In the linked article (which I highly recommend you read and will be riffing off of for the rest of this post) one thing you'll notice is that the issue isn’t just the exclusion of women, but the turnover rate. With few notable exceptions, if you want a stable life or family, you get out of the game industry rather than actually staying, so it lacks the benefits of having more experienced veterans. 2) The kinds of people being excluded from production and market targeting ARE MOST OF THE PEOPLE ACTUALLY PLAYING VIDEO GAMES.

What is wrong with you!?

 Sorry for the caps, but this boggles my mind every time I think about it. According to the ESA, the average age of a gamer is 30 and  45% of video gamers are women. Why why why is everyone still marketing to adolescent boys?

 

Don't give me that look; you are and you know it.
This horse is beaten enough.

I’m not saying that the non-inclusive culture in production isn’t at least as big an issue, and I’ll come back to that, but the aggressiveness of this particular stupidity gets me every time. It isn't doing something bad (both in terms of development of the medium and perceptions of it as juvenile) in order to make more money. I wouldn't like that but I'd understand it. This irritates me because it seems to be hurting everyone involved for no reason. (Yes, technically there may be historical reasons and inertia, but its persistence seems dumb). 

You even get stories about how standard focus tests don't include women though we just said they're 45% of the audience of video games in general. Setting aside larger moral issues, I don't understand this financially. Why discount that much of your potential audience, your potential paying customers? From soulless economics perspective its bad, and with a soul that cares about alienating others and stunting the medium, its even worse.

The generous interpretation is that its simple incompetence rather than maliciousness outdated prejudices.

Ok, we get it, its bad, moving on.

The bigger issue is the culture behind those kind of marketing and design decisions, though. A culture where 5% of the programmers and 10% of the designers are female . Where theres no time for family, and the average person leaves after 5 years for another industries (not job, but a different industry). And reportedly the workers' industry advocates don't actually advocate to actually help.
Maybe culture isn't the right word, but something like mindset or institutional expectations. Theres even stories from QA professionals who note the massive shift in environment between games companies and other software (spoiler: other software is a more stable gig).

Thats not a healthy work environment, and its not a good creative environment. 

Its especially bad when it even trickles down to the high school level, and crushes the dreams of female enthusiasts. That story breaks my heart. (After seeing bad cases of burnout in grad school, anytime someone's passion gets crushed out of them it tugs the heartstrings)

Sorry, its about to get more optimistic, I promise.

Ok, so as the links attest, all that badness has been covered other places (and I'm a fan of PAR). 

Putting it together

But how does this relate to the original trend for smaller developers? 

Because again, smaller projects can take more risks, and its important to make sure we're not just talking about creative risks here (though those are important too).

Because challenging these short-sighted, biased practices is seen as a risk. Part of the reason you see the difficulty in focus testing and stories like this (about how games with female protagonists get less marketing money and don't do as well commercially, but those two variables are confounded, confound it!) is because big companies and their investors see changes to those practices as risky. 

Women? I don't know about this.

Changing things at smaller companies or studios is easier (because theres less invested money at stake) and if they're successful, its more likely other small companies will change too. This is the opportunity I think is getting left out of the conversation about big companies and indies right now; its not just that indies have the freedom to take risks creatively, but have  the freedom to take risks organizationally.
The freedom to try to make things there better as well as to make better things. 

Its...so...beautiful....

Ok, maybe it wouldn't be that good, but it wouldn't take much to be better than it is currently.

And you can even see it in some places now: Indies with more diverse protagonists and perspectives. Those encouraging stories are coming out: like the people at Hawken being open and supportive about discussing gender, and places like Nine Dots trying to have a new model of making games without burnout, and allowing its people to have lives outside of work.

So in short, if there is a shift toward smaller budgets and smaller teams making games, it could set the stage for big improvements in how games are made, as well as the games themselves. There will always be a market for some AAA games, but hopefully if the current model for making them does start crashing, some great things could grow out of the wreckage.

Preferably great things that aren't poisonous.

Let me know what you make of all this in the comments.

photocredit: DarkangelX, buttercup festival, advancedaquarist