An Introspective Tank

Tank was at hospital last night punching car when puny survivors show up and set tank on fire. Maybe you no know, but fire hurt. Fire hurt bad. Why everyone try to set tank on fire, tank ask you. For wanting to punch car and mash brains between gigantic fingers? You no know tank. You no know his struggle.

You want to know why tank so mad? Tank mad because worldwide economic crisis.

Tank not always rip cement out of ground and throw at you. Tank once work at big office with paper and chair. Tank have diverse portfolio before infection. Tank always put money into tank’s savings. And now tank have tiny head and watch government flush tank’s retirement money down crapper.

Tank lose college savings for kids. But tank also punch kids to death.

IT ALL MAKE TANK SO ANGRY.

Tank no vote in election. Tank too busy writing ‘HELP’ on roof of building to vote. Tank no scared of much, but tank wary of big government, unless big government use helicopter to save tank when he stranded on roof. But that no happen.

Tank hear something. Puny humans?

No. Stupid Boomer.

(Sigh.)

Maybe he understand bailout.

-Chris Littler

On the weekends, HardCasual hands over their keys to friends. We encourage them to share their rants, raves, or groans about whatever they feel fit–the podium’s theirs. We only ask they stay on topic, don’t incite revolution, and vacuum the living room.

This week marks the swift return of local NYC playwright and musician, Chris Littler. He loves Nintendo products, but like my relationship with SEGA, he can’t help but crack them open and figure out what’s going on inside. This is Chris Littler on “Mario Party and the Trouble with Chance.” 

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Critical (It’s Critical!)

I don’t like Mario Party. This is something that I can only admit in print. To be fair, I’ve only played games 1 through 5, but I think it’s unlikely that the latter three would have swayed me. It is the only game I can think of where I have actually thrown my controller in anger, and definitely the only game I’ve ever let see me cry (post Everquest)

These games genuinely drive me crazy. Not Hulk crazy, but I certainly get angrier than a man should get at anything that involves magical mushrooms. Thankfully, those who I play the game with are gracious enough to listen while I explain how the very concept of a “Mario Party” is broken. Then I eat their food and leave.

Yeah. I’m that guy.

It wasn’t until recently that I came to understand the real problem. In fact, it isn’t so much the game’s problem as it is my own.

I simply have a profound lack of patience for what I consider ‘games of chance.’

Each time I played, I asked myself if what I was feeling was any different than the disappointment a gambler feels when the dice don’t roll his way. Or when a tourist is conned at a shell-game. I decided that they were all one and the same, except that what I was feeling was far less painful.

The feeling is helplessness. I felt that the outcome of the game was completely out of my hands, that I was more observer than active participant.

Then I asked myself, “If I had the chance to play this game again, would I change the way I played?” Probably not. And could I have won? It’s possible.

So what the hell was so fun about a game that could basically play itself?

Risk, Dungeons Masters, and that one McDonald’s Monopoly piece you can never find–all after the jump…

It’s worth noting that – at least among the people I know – very few people play Mario Party on a regular basis. It’s a ‘party’ game. It’s meant for parties. You can pop it in the console and avoid having actual human interaction at a get-together. It’s brilliant. And it’s probably why it remains such a successful series. It fills that niche.

But that doesn’t explain why this game drives me up a wall, while crappier games leave relatively fulfilled.

So I asked myself this question: Are all board games – after all, that’s what Mario Party is, right? – simply ‘games of chance’?

It’s a difficult question. A good game – a game worth playing – is the balancing act of chance versus strategy. The variable versus the constant. Situation versus the mind.

A game like Monopoly seems frustrating to me because there is a hell of a lot more chance involved than there is strategy. The participants are practically enslaved to the dice for the first few rounds and then forced to work within the confines of their piss-poor land empires. A strategy can be used, but waiting until your friends are apathetic enough to hand over their land for dirt cheap isn’t anywhere in the rulebook. In other words, you’re stuck.

A game like RISK is called a ‘strategy game’ because it seemingly has few variables in play. But there’s a lot: random countries at the start, random risk cards, and random army deaths. So Risk is definitely a far cry from chess, a game that leaves very little up to chance, and what I would call the ultimate “strategy game”. Man, that game is intense.

But to answer the question of board games, I had to boil the games down to their general key parts: a board, a couple playable pieces, and the world’s first random number generator, dice.

Any game that hinges on the outcome of dice rolls is inherently a game of chance. To me, this is inarguable. There is no strategy to rolling dice, so don’t fool yourself into thinking that you’re actually playing any part in the outcome. You’re merely a spectator at this point. It’s up to “God” or “physics”, whatever fictional creation you like.

With dice, “Chance” is what’s really playing for you. And to some people, that’s just fine. They don’t care. They like to spectate. I can appreciate that – now that I understand it. But what I wanted to know is where my brain draws the line. And how does that line jive with the games I enjoy? Really: how much do I want my games to be Chess and how much do I want them to be Monopoly?

I prefer Monopoly. Surprisingly. But it took Dungeons and Dragons for me to figure that out.

It is usually through Dungeons and Dragons that I come to understand everything, so figuring this one out because of it came as no surprise. Thanks again, Gary!

Dungeons and Dragons is a game that I find practically flawless because it appears to be 99% based on what the players bring to the table. It seems that the two sides – the Dungeon Master and the players – are seemingly unbound to any rules that they do not wish to abide by.

But this isn’t true. What is required of them is to listen to the dice. Like Two-Face, no decision is made without communing with the spirit of chance, and even then, sometimes chance is tossed out the window in favor of a ‘good story’.

To me, Dungeons and Dragons always seemed like the perfect mix of chance and strategy. It appears that way because of the sheer number of possibilities surrounding the outcome of the dice rolls outweigh any restrictions they might cause. To be succinct, it isn’t a slot machine, it isn’t a Monopoly board, and it isn’t Mario Party. The conceit of the game is that it is completely up to you.

Trickery!

You see, the games that I enjoy – and probably you, reader as well – are extremely complicated games of chance. But they are games of chance that are presented in such a way that the players are fooled into thinking there are limitless possibilities.

I thought about this as I played Team Fortress 2. There are a lot of servers where ‘critical hits’ have been removed. At first, this made me angry. What is it about critical hits that pisses people off so much? As long as every player has the opportunity, all is fair, no?

I think people dislike it because they feel powerless to it, just as I feel powerless to Monopoly. After all, both games are highly influenced by the outcomes of random number generators.

Players on the other, regular servers don’t seem to mind critical hits. I certainly don’t. I don’t see it as ‘anti-strategy’, but necessary to provide a variable in how the game can be played. After all, a game like Team Fortress can quickly become as nuanced as a game of chess to the most extreme players, which only alienates those who are not as interested or experienced. I know it would certainly alienate me.

What I realized is that I enjoy Team Fortress 2 and not Mario Party because the former is a game with a much better Dungeon Master. The divider is up, instilling in me a sense of mystery. I can’t see the gears working. It is a game that makes all its rolls in private, keeps hidden the most important secret of all: how many dice are behind the screen.

-ctl

edit & image: ct

Are you a chess person or a monopoly person? Why do you play games: thrills, exploration, completion, something entirely different? As always, we love comments.

On the weekends, HardCasual hands over their keys to friends. We encourage them to share their rants, raves, or groans about whatever they feel fit–the podium’s theirs. We only ask they stay on topic, don’t incite revolution, and vacuum the living room.

This week, a local NYC playwright and musician, Chris Littler, takes time away from the high arts to bless us with a revelation: Super Smash Bros. is the first Jukebox Game. If SVGL’s blasphemous SSBB comments made your blood boil, I warn you, beware. For what follows digs deep into the nether regions of Nintendo, Broadway musicals, and ABBA.

Proceed with Caution.

The Jukebox Video Game

Mr. Plante and I are currently trudging through the seemingly endless single-player mode of Super Smash Bros. Brawl. He does most of the grunt work. The camera follows him as he bounces around while I do my best to comprehend what the hell is happening on screen and stay alive.

Since the majority of my time is spent waiting to respawn, I have plenty of time to consider the big question that Subspace Emissary begs be asked of itself. Namely, WHAT IN HIGH HOLY SHITBALL ISLAND IS HAPPENING?

Why are Diddy Kong and Star Fox wandering the jungle, looking for a fight?

Oh. Then why are the two Earthbound leads (totally the same person) bouncing around a decrepit old zoo together?

I see. Ancient Wizard, you say? Okay, well who let Ganondorf, one of the most inept villains in videogame history (watch your back, Bowser!), run the villains new ramshackle bureaucracy? Were there always this many R.O.B.’s zipping around the world, and if so, who decided that an outdated Nintendo accessory would make an acceptable henchman? By my estimates, the Virtual Boy has a decade on R.O.B. Does that not count for anything?

Okay. You already knew that the game makes no sense, and maybe you’ve already come to terms with it. And, I admit, my own gut instinct was to shut up, plow through it, and forget the whole thing ever happened once everything that could be unlocked was unlocked.

But I can’t do that. I’ve got fingers to point.

See where the finger pointing leads after jump…

For Brawl’s single-player mode, Nintendo brought in Kazushige Nojima. He is one of their most accomplished ’scenario writers’ (whatever that means). His job was to provide the backbone of Subspace Emissary’s plot. For the uninformed, a quick glance at Wikipedia details Mr. Nojima’s history with writing. He had a hand in writing the plot (though I’m not sure how much of a hand) for Final Fantasy VII, Final Fantasy VIII, Final Fantasy X, and Final Fantasy X-2 – as well as being the chief architect in those Kingdom Heart games.

Yes. Kingdom Hearts.

So this guy, this Nojima character, earns his marks in the industry on some very respectable projects, then – at least in my opinion – pisses it all away on writing ‘jukebox video games’. In fact, the man seems to have invented (or perhaps perfected) the very concept. Am I calling him a sell-out? No. But the man has created a genre – and not a very good one – and the least we can do is let him know what he has unleashed upon the world.

So what is a ‘jukebox video game’? To be honest, I just made it up. And now, my friends, I am going to rationalize the term.

A ‘jukebox musical’ is a musical that derives most, if not all, of its musical content from earlier works. A good example of this is the current Broadway hit Mamma Mia! – the story of which was constructed around previously-written ABBA hits. What this process entails I can not say for sure, but I can only imagine it involves a couple chain-smoking writers listening to the same CD over and over again while punching away at their laptops, occasionally taking a break to discuss what they plan to do with the egregious amounts of money they are receiving for their soulless task.

Okay, okay. Mamma Mia! isn’t all that bad. It’s a decent story held together by some okay 80’s anthems. And there are many other ‘jukebox musicals’ that have achieved the same – if not greater – success. A lot of people aren’t aware that Singing in the Rain is a prime example of a jukebox musical – and that’s a pretty great film, no? But for every Buddy, there’s a The Times They Are A-Changin’. For every Everyone Says I Love You, a Moulin Rouge waits in the wings. And for every Jersey Boys, there’s an All Shook Up, Xanadu, Good Vibrations, Lennon, etc. Kind of like horror movies, the “shit” to “not shit” ratio for ‘jukebox musicals’ is pretty awful.

I complain because many in the business will confuse generous store receipts on Super Smash Bros. Brawl with fans actually enjoying their story. Nothing could be further from the truth. Subspace Emissary is not story; it is an insult to our intelligence. The community is perfectly fine with the way it was, when Mario beat the shit out of Link without any attempt at rationalizing it.

I mean, shit!

Look no further than the previous incarnation of Smash Bros. It had a flimsy storyline. Kingdom Hearts, while much more complex, never seemed to take itself seriously. (That is, until the sequel.) For Christ’s sake, you flew from world to world in a ship made of ‘gummi’ that was piloted by two chipmunks. And it was acceptable because it was a game that knew what it was: an excuse to kick ass as Donald Duck.

What I implore the makers of these games to consider is this: we, as a community, understand that your game inherently destroys the credibility of your character’s universes. We will accept this fact because you provide us with countless hours of quality gaming. This is the trade-off, you see. We are willing to suspend our disbelief almost infinitely, as long as you do not bore us with a slapped-together story about an ancient wizard robot who works for a being named Tabuu.

Boiled down, if the point – or plot, I suppose – of Subspace Emmisary is about trying to ’save the universe’, shouldn’t the gamer feel that it is a universe worth saving?

-chris littler

-links: ctp