Games with Friends on a Saturday Night

With much excitement I received this CD key to a closed alpha online game. It’s part of a franchise I’ve loved, with a brand that cares about its impact. The alpha is very, very good. Even without the leveling system. Even without the unlockables, consumables, or the customizables. It might eventually hearken back to Counter-Strike or AVP2, a place to meet friends on a Saturday night. The problem is it’s difficult to stop. Part of that is me. In 30 years I’ve played too much, about every way you can play too much. So I’m going to be susceptible. There are also a few ways (I’ve argued for almost a decade) that games can challenge our self-control. That distinction between what a game does, and what a person does, is important. There’s only so much a designer can worry about, with an individual’s susceptibilities. It’s why Blizzard, just before their Burning Crusade expansion, talked at a GDC roundtable about not ruining gameplay for the players without issues. And then they phased out 40-person raids. It was a good change. In some of my research, a preference for that grittier, more hardcore raiding held a statistically-significant relationship with reported behaviors like loss of sleep, missing meals, jeopardizing a job or relationship. That is, the functional problems that typically come to mind when we’re talking addiction. World of Warcraft launched with another feature, probably the most emblematic, of how designers can reward players for breaking up their play. In their rested XP system, the longer you’re logged out, the more you build up a bonus to experience gain. It’s effective because of the direct contextual link between the “work” of adventure and rest. What’s surprising to me isn’t how successful or lauded it was by players or developers, but why we don’t see creative extensions of it everywhere. Granted I don’t focus on phone games, so totally might not know good examples, but I’m surprised never to have seen a focused rest system (rewards for getting in and getting out quickly), or a deep rest system (rewarding players for not visiting too often in a given day). If you can keep players from feeling obliged to check a game every few minutes, or from feeling forced into huge daily binge visits, in certain reward contexts this is going to help players to have a much improved experience of your brand. If you can get context that explains why we powerlevel a certain game, or constantly check a specific app, you can design in rewards that cushion that. You can - like Warcraft - make elegant changes to encourage balance. So then, very promising F2P Game, some thoughts: 1. You don’t need to use the World-of-Tanks-style tiered meta leveling. Leveling can happen in game (WoW), in the meta (WoT) or as a hybrid (LoL), but I’m not sure that WoT’s flashy green dress fits on you. Like WoT, not all of your tiered grinds are very fun. Unlocking some of your stuff gives me these cold flashbacks to grinding the AMX 40. Just google that grind, and you’ll get page after page of bitter. What kills me is that your actual game parts are a joy. When you use that tiered meta and tie in months worth of compulsive design? Those will be some painful grinds. Upcoming F2P Game has a proven track record of making fun, balanced games. Chess, say, doesn’t have the same strategic depth if you can buy a slightly better pawn. 2. You already designed in the kinds of customizable characters that are the bread and butter for games like League of Legends. For just one example, those could all be unlockable champions with themed customizations. You’ve already designed those elements into the alpha. Making characters the foundation, rather than unforgiving grinds, it’s a path that’s been proven. 3. There are also already systems in place for customizing the unlocked stuff at different tiers. Aesthetic equippable items aren’t exactly built in to your meta chart yet, but identical pieces are in your game. It would be a significant, but not a monumental graphics/programming task to add them. At very conservative estimates it takes 750 hours of gameplay for one single top-tier tank in the World-of-Tanks-style meta. By comparison, I’m used to spending maybe 25-40 on the other games in your franchise. And besides, there's stellar content in the low tiers that a meta would bury. That would be a shame. There’s one last reason not to bring some of this into your beta. A healthy majority of the players I know take one look at grinds this invested and say, “I know what that is. No thanks.” As is, Upcoming F2P Game might still be the next CS, or AVP2, or LoL. Something I want to play with friends on a Saturday night. So long as my friends can grind.

Hawt Grrls, Dick Pics and Sexy Beards

Triggers: online harassment, sexism, rape

Here is a snapshot of a chat I received in the League of Legends, earlier this week:

I often play as "Hawtgrrlirl," although the person sitting here typing this is a rather unsexy bearded male. I first picked the name almost a decade ago - in WoW - as a 23-year-old grad student. Not a few hours into that character, a charming paladin (10 levels higher than me) took me under his wing! Neat! He followed me everywhere, offering me gifts, killing all my enemies, never acknowledging that I really just wanted to quest alone, and only very occasionally making awkward commentary about his possession of me.

So, yeah. I'm well aware that the name invites a variety of interactions, from the weird and not-so-fun, to the amazing. When people ask if I'm "rly a girl?" I usually answer honestly, and say no.

Tonight's exchange was typical, and ended in literally adding a new friend:

Summoner1: Hey, so... Are you a hawtgrrrlll?
Summoner2: garen ban plz
Hawtgrrlirl: Nope.
Hawtgrrlirl: I'm a dude with a beard.
Summoner1: Sexy
Summoner1: This is better than i though
Summoner1: thought
Hawtgrrlirl: Right?
Summoner1: Can i run my fingers through your beard?
Hawtgrrlirl: I'd really need to get to know you first.
Summoner3: can i jungle?
Summoner1: Well let's go out on a date then
Summoner1: I'm cheap enough
Summoner1: You like italian food?
Hawtgrrlirl: More of a teriyaki guy.
Summoner1: I'm cool with that, i'll eat about anything
Summoner1: Know any good places?
Hawtgrrlirl: I know a couple.
Summoner1: It'll be a bromance
Summoner1: i think i get paid here soon, so i'll even pick up the tab
Hawtgrrlirl: Right on. It's a date.
Hawtgrrlirl: Bromance is on the menu.
Summoner1: Sweeeeet
Summoner1: Added broski
Hawtgrrlirl: Same deal brohanna montana

I used to want to say that, at least in League of Legends, I got classy, humorous commentary and solid banter far more often than trolls. I'm not sure what changed, or if it was a steady shift, but now over half (at least) of my games now have some kind of intense, deeply disturbing commentary that directly relates to the fact that a "grrl" is in the game.

It cues off awkward rape talk,

Weird anatomical remarks,

Hawtgrrlirl: lololaf
Summoner1: Do you have a hawt beard, like Olaf?
Summoner1: irl, of course
Hawtgrrlirl: i do
Summoner1: Nice
Hawtgrrlirl: though its not red
Summoner1: Long as the carpet matches

And sometimes acts as a lightning rod for hardcore raging, blunt force ignorance, or the persistent homophobia:

Summoner2: i mean like
Summoner3: plz ban fagits
Summoner2: are you gonna play for real
Summoner3: ban all the fagits
Summoner2: or are you gonna be a little crybaby
Summoner2: if you are for real
Summoner2: then we can fuck them up
Summoner3: im down for mid or support
Summoner2: and maybe make babies
Summoner3: but I can fill if needed
Summoner2: if you are a fagit then we cannot make babies
Summoner1: are you really a hawt girl
Summoner2: ya seriously tho
Summoner2: whats open
Summoner2: besides hawtgirls legs
Summoner2: hohoho
Summoner2: see what i did tharrrrx2

And on and on. But back to subject 1: "nude for a dik pik"

After the GDC's brilliant talks this last week, by Brenda Romero, Jennifer Allaway, Zoe Quinn, Nika Harper, and many others, I have decided to start calling out other players, when their behavior gets weird, or violently discrimanatory. Regardless of whether it costs me games, goodwill, or even jobs.

This was what I said to the kind offer of "nude for a dik pik:

It's not perfect, but there's not a great script for this sort of thing. 

It's a work in progress. 

But let's do this thing. If legitimate harassment is happening - especially if it's not to you - speak up. 

Dickwolves

(trigger warning: rape) (skip it)

I vaguely remember dinner with Corvus Elrod, a smart indie game developer who sports a monocle and finely-waxed mustache. More than that, I remember him getting hit on by a muscular African American transvestite while waiting to be seated, outside the Taphouse Grill.

“Got any coins for Hot Chocolate?” Asked the transvestite, referring to himself in the third person. 

After Corvus politely deferred, Hot Chocolate could not help but persist.

Hot Chocolate whispered, “I want to see you twitch.”

Neither Corvus nor his wife, present, obliged Hot Chocolate. This left me with the impression that if something were to get under the skin of this man, that it’d need to be pretty fucking bad.

Enter the Dickwolf, a fictional wolflike character with phalluses for arms and legs. In an otherwise incisive comic, making fun of the sorts of quests which only allow heroes to save five slaves, though there are clearly more, we’re presented with the “sixth slave.”

“Hero!” says the chained slave. “Please, take me with you! Release me from this hell unending!

“Every morning, we are roused by savage blows.

“Every night, we are raped to sleep by the dickwolves.”

The hero looks anxious. “I only needed to save five slaves. Alright? Quest complete.”

“But…” Says the slave.

“Hey. Pal. Don’t make this weird.” Says the hero.

The response, via Twitter, tumblr, and other social media, was enormous. In a large part, because this wasn’t just some backwater webcomic making rape jokes. This was Penny Arcade, the franchise responsible for what gamers saw as one of the theretofore safest, most inclusive gamer gatherings: PAX. Where for four days, almost a hundred thousand gamers flood downtown Seattle. To address that, the next comic featured Penny Arcade’s two main characters, Gabe and Tycho (meant to represent Mike Krahulik and Jerry Holkins, the cartoon’s artist and writer) sitting, talking about Dickwolves.

Gabe says, “We want to state in clear language, without ambiguity or room for interpretation: we hate rapers, and all the rapes they do.

“Seriously, though. Rapists are really the worst.”

Tycho says, “It’s possible you read our cartoon, and became a rapist as a direct result. If you’re raping someone right now, stop. Apologize. And leave.

“Go, and rape no more.”

Some responses were deep, thoughtful, and academic. Even the most disappointed critics seemed to care deeply that these gaming icons (who sponsor a float in the Seattle Pride parade, and run a massive charity for sick kids) understand what was at stake. Maddy Meyers probably best captured why the response comic was so awkward, writing “It’s almost impossible to tell Penny Arcade’s apology from a parody of an apology.”

Not everyone on the internet was so calm, and things escalated. One Twitter user posted, “A Funney Joke: Go to Mike Krahulik / @cwgabriel ‘s house, Literally Murder His Wife and Child #jokes #funny #murderwolves”

Fresh from the death threats, Jerry Holkins posted his On the Matter of Dickwolves. He cites a talk given by the science fiction author Philip K. Dick called How to Build a Universe that Doesn’t Fall Apart Two Days Later. Jerry suspects that no conversation is possible because, “The perspectives in play, the lenses, are too different.” Holkins’ frame is that of the creator, “…that when it comes to expression nothing is off the table. It is the creator’s prerogative to create something - even something grotesque - out of anything they can find.” Philip K. Dick’s thoughts do work for that, sort of.

Maybe each human being lives in a unique world, a private world, a world different from those inhabited and experienced by all other humans. And that led me wonder, If reality differs from person to person, can we speak of reality singular, or shouldn't we really be talking about plural realities?

Philip K. Dick, in How to Create a Universe, ultimately decided that, "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."

One in thirteen college-aged men report committing rape, or attempted rape. Read that twice. One in thirteen. In 2012, the FBI tracked 84,376 reported rapes in the United States, though even the US National Crime Victimization Survey (which was shown – in late 2013 – to be undercounting) estimated 346,830 rapes and sexual assaults in 2012. We can say this chilling pattern of human indignity exists in a bizarro dimension that doesn’t affect reality, that the perspectives and lenses “are too different,” but that sounds suspiciously like an excuse not to listen.

If you want us to respect your creative rights, respect our reactions. Melissa McEwan, on the feminist blog Shakesville, writes, “To say, “I was triggered” is not to say, “I got my delicate fee-fees hurt.”. . . A survivor of sexual violence who experiences a trigger is experiencing the same thing as a soldier who experiences a trigger, potentially even including flashbacks. Like many soldiers who return from war, many survivors of sexual violence are left with post-traumatic stress disorder. Unlike soldiers, however, they are not likely to receive much sympathy, or benefit from attempts to understand, when they are triggered. Instead, triggered survivors of sexual violence are dismissed as oversensitive, as hysterics, as humorless, as weak.”

The second comic leaves a weird aftertaste, for we gamers who hear the word thrown around nightly. By dilapidated trolls who aren’t plying any constitutionally-protected art. In the heat of the win, when passion and adrenaline are running at peak levels, there’s apparently no word more potent, more devaluing of another player, than “rape.” I was surprised, at one academic conference, to hear it defended by a well-respected, middle-aged woman who works as a games professor. She took a break from signing her textbooks, and came to sit outside the USC Film School with our group of younger educators. She claimed that it was part of our culture.

Saying with a grin, “I rape my husband all the time, the noob.”

The games journalist Patricia Hernandez, a rape survivor, discusses an evening in an online shooter game in her incisive piece Three Words I Said to the Man I defeated in Gears of War That I’ll Never Say Again.

She writes, “Once the pre-game banter made it obvious that I was a woman, it was like Sam, my character, now had a bullseye painted across her forehead.”

They didn’t just force her teammates out, and then kill her.

“When you don’t fully kill someone, they go into a state called ‘Down But Not Out.’ This state is when a character model goes on all fours…a new, unintended dynamic arose in multiplayer: players would take down characters and pretend to rape them.”

They tried to get her to leave, sent taunting messages. See, the more players they could wedge out, the more the game would replace them with mindless AI, easy kills to make their scores look great. A tidy reward being assholes. Their ringleader sent Hernandez an audio message of himself cackling. She focused up, found him, “and, screw it all, I wanted to make it clear to him that he would not hold power over me. I downed him, and instead of mercifully killing him, my character raped his.”

Alone, she won the match.

“I raped you. I fuckin’ raped you.” She said.

They just laughed. As if for them the word, seeing it acted out, had no weight at all.

Gamers often wonder aloud whether the word ‘rape’ is worth enshrining as an indispensable cultural artifact, elevating it from out of the muck of private conversations and the routines of crass comedians.

The answer is no. This word represents one of the most caustic, dehumanizing acts that can be inflicted on a person short of killing them. If you’re raping face all over your husband, in the privacy of your own home, I have no beef. In random rooms, where you could be playing with just about anyone? Hell no. It’s the last thing we need to normalize. Nobody has carte blanche to flaunt words – whether racism, sexism, or homophobia – which will trigger some players. That makes games less fun.

To say nothing of what it does to games gatherings.

In the midst of the Dickwolves debacle Corvus Elrod wrote, in his Yes Virginia, There Are Nice Guys, that, “the majority of rape isn't done by raving lunatics in alleys. And that makes it tough. Tough to be a nice guy? Perhaps. But even tougher, for a rape victim, to accept nice guys at face value.” Conferences like PAX, where words like rape get thrown around with casual ease, are consequently not easy.

So-called Nice Guys know that they aren’t rapists, so they don’t understand the big deal with making the jokes. In fact, as a matter of personal freedom, they feel a certain obligation to make them as loudly and as often as possible. I suspect such champions of artistic freedom have never comforted their female friend, or sister, or girlfriend, or wife, when she’s asking questions like, “Do I get a rape kit?” or “Do I go to the police?” Though a number of women I’m close to have been raped, their stories aren’t mine. I just sit on the sidelines, hearing about the incurable STDs and the anxiety.

It’s not just that the first comic used rape as a humorous zing. The second Dickwolves comic very personally pokes fun at readers for reacting a certain way. A reaction they cannot help, and whose catalyst was chosen for them. This in an atmosphere saturated with gamers who are quite attached to throwing the word around, because it has shock value.

Gamers need to realize that for a large, often silent population, the voltage is too high. They turn off the game, or stop reading the comic, and feel unwelcome to enjoy a thing that had figured into their identity. Whether or not a joke perpetuates rape isn’t knowable. What’s completely fucking obvious is that it makes games, and certain games gatherings, less welcoming places to be.

That’s the reality. That, even if you stop believing it, doesn’t go away.

--

Back to chapter introduction

Next: Othering>>

--

(2/26/14) I'll post most of the chapter where the above appears, eventually. I wanted to post this out of order, and early, because I still hear it in games once a week. Used lightly, by perfect strangers who think it's 1000% hilarious. If asking them to stop isn't yet a thing, it really should be.

(3/7/14) Gee, I happened to rant about just that in the chapter introduction. And all it took was a few straight hours of abuse. Go figure. 

A Wild Book Appears!

Print copies are here: https://www.createspace.com/4617177

And on Amazon in 5-7 days. 

And the kindle copies are here: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00I3X7MRK

Crossing the Ts and dotting the Is took, like, effort.


(edit) Happy birthday to me, rohoho. The paperback is up on amazon! The LOOK INSIDE even shows the back cover's clever red devil.

Breathing Machine(s)

Reading early responses to Leigh Alexander’s Breathing Machine, it looks like a lot of folks couldn’t help but reminisce.

It’s the mark of a particularly powerful work, like a dish whose heady spices remind you of childhood.

Invoking things like HyperCard, and mazes of twisty passages, she mentions a “primitive voice program” on an old powerbook. That certainly shakes the rust off the old memory machine. I think of 7th grade typing class where I fed some boxy school mac a spontaneously-concocted and hugely offensive story, then set it to play during “quiet typing time.” I remember Mr. Frank (with his horrible lisp) infuriated, demanding to know “Whosse responssible for thiss?” And everyone shamelessly points to me.

I laughed most of the way to the principal's office.

In places, Breathing Machine feels like a book typed in a haze, when suddenly out of the mist Alexander’s surreal half-memories give way to vividly-painted “cool” disc jockeys and porn site promoters. It's part of what makes the book evocative. For me, that adolescent internet fog blends together like so many nights in bars. It is, I suspect, a mix of fog and memory that defines childhood for so many of us.

Too few books talk about that, let alone capture it.

Back then they really were breathing machines, for some of us.

AOL had a button to randomly contact any other user. And it was not completely unexpected or unwelcome to get such a message. One night you could be telling flirtatious Australian ladies that you were a 24 year old hunk (with a monstrous and efficacious… pickup truck) the next a New York poker champion just rarin’ to give a 15-year-old The Lady Advice. It was in that atmosphere, and on the clunky Mirabilis chat program “I seek you” that I fell in love for the very first time.

And so, because of Leigh’s book, I thought I would share that story with you now.

Then I thought again. 

I was struck by the imagery, from her book, of sushi being served from the torso of a vivisected woman, who blushes. We're handing out our stories like so many ice-bathed kidneys, and I already plan to put plenty of my life on the rotating sushi bar of this new internet.

So I'll keep that one to myself. 

But thank the book, for a healthy little stroll down memory lane. 

This is happening

Why, hello!

I'm Neils.

Over the last three or so years, I have been quietly writing a second book. It's about videogames: weird adventures inside, and little conversations about what those taught me. I'm calling it In Play: Tales of the Gaming Netherworld. 

I sort of wish that I could just write blogs, and articles, and sell those like a normal games journalist. That's hard for me. Like, my brain literally doesn't function that way. I need to see the whole system. Writing one part of this book fundamentally changed other parts, for instance taking a few months to study oppression, or having studied compulsive gaming for the last decade.

This ultimately became a sort of letter, to my younger self. Things I wish I'd known, and stories that I hope will resonate and entertain.

I've had an interesting time trying to sell it. While I'd love to find an agent, for The Future, right now my plan is to release most of it on my blog over the coming months. This also lets me offer a print version, maybe with a few exclusive choice bits, for the price of inexpensive (something Game Addiction's publisher would never even dialogue about). But for whatever reason, I'm really excited about putting most of it up for free, at least for a good while.

I'm also semi-tempted to - at some point soon - make a pdf available for a few hours. Mostly for the friends who've snuck me into expensive conferences, given me places to stay, and generally make this book worth writing.

So, yeah!

Dear God I need some kind of elevator pitch!

Let's Talk Balance

(here's the slides PDF: Tools to Keep Play Balanced!)

At this last PAX I got to sit next to a clinician who I have tremendous respect for, (the very soon-to-be-Dr.) Anna DiNoto, and we got to tell a room of gamers some of our tools for balancing play. I thought that I would share that talk with you here.

We forward the whole thing by making it clear our talk isn’t about addiction, or “Internet Gaming Disorder,” as it’s labeled in an appendix of the DSM-V. We just wanted to cover tools, simple things people could do, if they were playing and/or internetting a little more than they’d like.

step one: assess

The first thing you’ll want to do is assess your play (or internet use, if that’s your deal) as accurately as possible. It’s not easy. In going back and forth about this, we talked about some tools we could use, and I made a handout which basically tracked the duration of your stay in these places. I think it’s slide 8/37. It lists maybe “facebook from 5:55 to 7pm,” then “Skyrim from 10pm to 1:13am,” and so on. Then we mark how intense it was on a scale of one to ten, one being that you were mostly focused on something else, cooking dinner, some paperwork, scintillating television drama. Ten would be that you were so focused that you left a pizza in the oven for roughly two hours.

I have some funny stories about burnt pizzas.

This is a good place to mention (again, I know) none of this piece is clinical advice. In person, Anna is extremely good, really professional about making that clear when she speaks. And I’m not a mental health professional; I’m just a gamer. I co-wrote a book on gaming addictions, but don't have treatment experience.

Back to tracking your play, and tracking that every day. Keyloggers might help, roommates might help (though some of us get defensive). You need to figure out where you’re at, so you have an accurate idea of what you’re trying to balance.

Next, before doing anything else, figure out where your stress is. If we notice that arguments with the husband usually lead to longer sessions of play, useful info. Sometimes games stress us out. The point here is to figure out what our “triggers” are. Figuring out what cues us off is essential to “hacking” those patterns, and being able to eventually redirect those to something we’d rather be doing.

(to jump ahead here: Post it notes are Anna’s go-to. If you interrupt your usual patterns with post-it notes, say one near the hook where you set your keys, or on the kitchen counter, you can stop your usual routines. Put one on your laptop, on your bedroom door.)

step two: plan

After assessing play, the second step is to make a plan. There are three kinds of plan, in general. Abstinence is breaking from games, temporarily or permanently. Harm reduction is switching to games or behaviors that might be less problematic. Play reduction is taking a favorite game – say League of Legends – and playing it less.

I actually do enjoy the occasional abstinence from games, altogether. Sometimes, when I have a big project or just need a break, I’ll drop games voluntarily for awhile. Hilarie Cash mentioned that at ReSTART, she typically sees even the worst withdrawal symptoms wash off of hardcore gamers after a few weeks. Abstinence can be useful, but Anna was quick to point out the number of times a parent would decide it was time to simply remove a game (without understanding why they’re playing it – it’s just a game after all). The graphic descriptions she’s given me of the consequences are startling even for me (she changed identifying patient details, exactingly, every time – she’s a pro). But we’re talking hundreds of thousands in dramatic property damage, and some pretty tragic self-damage. Just throwing that in there.

Harm reduction is pretty easy. If you like the vast landscapes of Warcraft, try playing Proteus, or maybe Dear Esther. If you’re a hardcore raider, try switching to anything else. Convince your raid friends to come with you, if you can. Raiding – in my research – held one of the few statistically significant connections to patterns we didn’t actually enjoy very much, the job loss, sleep loss, depression, etc. Addiction, in other words.

Some games have play reduction tools built in. Warcraft’s parental controls have it. The Xbox has it.

As you start to plan, make a boredom list. A list of things – besides just the games that make you stumble – you like doing. Creating nontoxic food and getting sleep were on mine, though Anna rightly reminded me that at that point I’m going past “simple balance.” Still, taking walks and cooking well, shopping for good food, that sort of thing, I’d say that they fit. When you do start to decrease how much you’re playing, there’ll be a void in your schedule. There are a lot of good basics to fill that time with, and there are some great ones.

Writing, drawing, and the myriad forms of making art. Getting involved in city government. Designing your own games. Taking college courses on topics that interest you, be they marine biology, architecture, or (yay!) games.

We can use timers – whether it’s an egg timer, alarm clocks that shower the room with puzzle pieces, or the color-coded Time Timers – to make ourselves more mindful of how much we’ve played. To become aware. In general, following the plan should help you get to be more aware of how you’re using your time. The point is to build a general mindfulness. I’ve learned a lot of good things in all this time gaming, but mindfulness was one of the most important.

step three: maintain

The third step is maintainance. To hold your progress in the long term, you need to reinforce your progress in the short term. In other words, don’t forget to treat yourself.

You want to give yourself “dings” for your real progress at keeping things balanced. Even better if you can apply meaningful fun and engagement, to keep yourself to the plan you want. You can also take cheat days. Like, with most successful diets, there’s usually a day out of the week where you can have pizza and beer with some good company.

I do, anyway. I’m still working on all this, but I still enjoy games for longer than three hours at a time. I just – far more often than I used to – get meaningful things done at work, at home, or for my bad self before those mini-binges. Those sometimes turn into missed bedtimes and some mild regret, especially when I’m not with my good gaming buddies, so I have to be careful. Still it’s been awhile since I’ve vanished for a month straight. So that’s good.

step four: revise

Finally, remember that you’re human. This shit is a challenge if you haven’t exactly been the balance king, in the past. If that’s the case, some professional help, with a solid local therapist? Highly recommended.

You’ll need to reassess your plan, as life changes, and having someone whose job is to help you, is sort of like having a professional gamer coaching your gamerly prowresses. Most clinicians just charge a lot less than, say, the pros at Curse Gaming.

Anyway, those were a few suggestions we threw out, to deal with keeping things sane to begin with. I’m not a therapist, and I don’t know what you’re going through, but I do want you to be able to keep play balanced with everything else. Hope it helps.

The Secret World is not entirely grindy

It is still possible to play this game a lot. To binge it, even. Though in Secret World this feels much less about compulsion, gilt carrots or maliciously labyrinthine design. I'd compare it to Skyrim before I would Warcraft, in that the content feels like content.

One example I've been throwing around is of Sam Krieg, a bestselling New England author who's holed up in a lighthouse while zombies ravage the little island. I found this guy, my favorite character, after saying,

"Cool lighthouse. I wonder if anything's going on there."

Then braving the weird horrors in the fog, which take inspiration from Lovecraft, Poe, and pulpier American authors. Then being rewarded with a quest I'd describe as anti-grind.

All repetitive behavior as "destructive and unreasonable"? This guy is cool. He lambastes my sexy Illuminati superheroine, saying that as a writer he's got a damn good excuse to repeat himself: it makes him millions. But what's my excuse? What's the player's excuse?

The quest takes typical grindy mechanics, then adds little twists. For instance, we kill a set number of zombies by impaling rotting corpses (irresistible zombie bait, as we all know) at the edge of a bluff. The animations aren't perfect (especially clear in the more lightly funded Egypt and Transylvania expansions) but we get to watch zombies goofily launch themselves off cliffs. The game, sometimes by adding extra little flourishes of programming, sometimes by creating riddles which require Latin Vulgate dictionaries and thoughtful deduction, pokes fun at MMOs in general. 

The combat is made interesting by a mix-n-match system. It's one of the first times I've enjoyed being the mage sort of character.

The fun of designing your own weird combat is, tragically or wonderfully (I'm really not sure), mostly a creative fun. Some of the animations get ridiculous to the point of pure comic gold, as one swirling pistol attack which should probably involve a half-empty bottle of vodka. It's just not gripping. 

The cutscenes have their share of charming moments. I get the sense the writers had carte blanche to be the best possible kind of weird. 

Hitting the paywalls in TSW isn't fun, but I didn't until about 20 hours in. Their in-game store is super basic, and not very usable. Almost like the wacky quest writers also got to label their DLC so as to make it nigh-impossible to buy anything. 

Their store is also restrictive. You can't gift DLC (like, wtf? You guys don't like money?).

Like most MMOs, once the content runs dry, what's left appears to be grindy endgame for gears (destructive and unreasonable, much?). That made a sad panda, since in so many other parts of the MMO oeuvre they'd found innovative solutions. For most sane human beings, this is going to be an awesome treat of content (actual content!), on most logins. For anyone with a history of problematic use, I don't recommend playing alone. I'm conflicted myself since the questing phase was so delightful and easy to take-or-leave. It's worth seeing, but only if you can do it strictly with friends. 

That said, right now I'm staring off the edge of a gear precipice. I look, and wonder if I've finally learned not to jump. 

Humble Paleontology

Yeah, yeah. A few months later I crawl back here, to drop a few unceremonious words.

PAX was fun. One gentleman took this picture with his Google Glass.

Apparently there was also Much Video. That particularly unimpressed look is probably me telling him to, like, kindly quit with the ninjalike lifecapture.

Then I got to wear his specs. He activated this easter egg whereby I could turn 360, and everywhere around me were the developers for Glass. Here's one brusquely-grabbed shot to illustrate, courtesy google images.

The point was that I felt like I was right there, and all it took was a tiny screen next to one eye. If they ever release this, it's going to multiply everything we've been saying about games by 100x. Maybe that's exaggerating. It's also probably untrue, in that Google Glass will add altogether new elements to those conversations.

I also spoke at PAX, for the first time. Once with the delightful, brilliant Anna DiNoto, on how to keep play in balance with everything else in life. And then again, with James Portnow, about how games are art, and why that matters. I loved both, but have to admit that the art one felt a lot more powerful and impassioned (probably a fair comparison when the other is a finely tuned one on "balance"). There were also roughly 10 times as many people at the art talk (many there to catch James, before he rode off into the pixelated sunset). Still, on day three, I saw the line building up and said aloud,

"We're gonna need a bigger latte."

When the talks were said and done, it was good to see the friends I mostly only catch up with at things like PAX and GDC. They're good folk.


So, only one more thing to announce. A few weeks ago I wrapped up the first draft of a book I've been plugging away at. It mixes my collected games research from the last decade or so, with all the weird stories I have from growing up around games. I think it could make for a good context to help non-gamers get what we're doing, but more I wrote it for the miscreants I've played with all these years. One in particular, a guy who's been my friend for years, who we all call Squatch.

And maybe also myself. It feels good to have a chunk of words that I'm happier with than anything else I've done.

While it's good to have something to show for all that work, the finding-agents and selling-books phase has never been my favorite thing. But then again, I like what I've done. I think that should help. It's exciting.

Teamwork 101: Or How I Escaped Bronze in the League of Legends

For those that read this blog for game studies, psych research, or because (apparently) there's a page that's a top google hit for "sweet ass pictures," sorry! Today I'm just posting a quick guide that I wrote after getting out of the time-out corner in the League of Legends: Bronze Division.

Since it's at the bottom, you often deal with the worst kind of gamerly element: trolls, misogynists, racists, the employed. You can win, in despite of all that, with a mix of compromise and communication.

(More after the break)

---

How Games are Art: A Very Slightly Extended Version

Note: This version includes a few minor selections from Dutton's book, as well as higher-res images. The version I plan to cross-post to Gamasutra, a bit later, I want to keep at or close to 100 words. I say only very slightly extended, because this topic is insanely huge. 

In 2009, aesthetician Denis Dutton wrote The Art Instinct. There, aiming for something inclusive and objective, he outlined twelve cross-cultural criteria for art. I like Dutton for his mix of accessibility and intellect, so use his criteria as a starting line in the search for a language of the aesthetic experience.

1. Direct Pleasure

“The art object – narrative story, crafted artifact, or visual and aural performance – is valued as a source of immediate experiential pleasure in itself, and not essentially for its utility in producing something else that is either useful or pleasurable.”

2. Skill & Virtuosity

“The admiration of skill is not just intellectual; skill exercised by writers, carvers, dancers, potters, composers, painters, pianists, singers, etc. can cause jaws to drop, hair to stand up on the back of the neck, and eyes to flood with tears.”

Some creators:

Levine
Blow
Anthropy
Chung

3. Style
 
“Style provides a stable, predictable, “normal” background…”

“…against which artists may create elements of novelty and expressive surprise.”

4. Novelty & Creativity

“The unpredictability of creative art, its newness, plays against the predictability of conventional style or formal type (sonata, novel, tragedy, and so forth).”

5. Criticism
 
“Professional criticism, including academic scholarship applied to the arts where it is evaluative, is a performance itself and subject to evaluation by its larger audience; critics routinely criticize each other.”

Some critics: 

Bissell
McGonigal
Hernandez
Ebert
Bogost

6. Representation

“…a realistic painting of the folds in a red satin dress, a detailed model of a steam engine, or the tiny plates, silverware, goblets, and lattice-crust cherry pie on the dinner table of a doll’s house. But we can also enjoy representation for two other reasons: we can take pleasure in how well a representation is accomplished, and we can take pleasure in the object or scene represented…”

7. Special Focus

“A gold-curtained stage, a plinth in a museum, spotlights, ornate picture frames, illuminated showcases, book jackets and typography, ceremonial aspects of public concerts and plays, an audience’s expensive clothes, the performer’s black tie, the presence of the czar in his royal box, even the high price of tickets…”

8. Expressive Individuality

9. Emotional Saturation
“…emotions provoked or incited by the represented content of art…”

Or, “…the work’s emotional contour, its emotional perspective…”

10. Intellectual Challenge

“…working through a complex plot, putting evidence together to recognize a problem or solution before a character in a story recognizes it, balancing and combining formal and illustrative elements in a complicated painting, and following the transformations of an opening melody recapitulated at the end of a piece of music.”

11. Art Traditions & Institutions

“Art objects and performances, as much in small-scale oral cultures as in literate civilization, are created and to a degree given significance by their place in the history and traditions of their art.”

12. Imaginative Experience

“Finally, and perhaps the most important of all characteristics on this list, objects of art essentially provide an imaginative experience for both producers…”

“…and audiences.”

That’s how some games are already art, and how others might get better.

Languages of Experience

Note: I'm about to cross-post this at gamasutra. I'd thought about using this blog for a version with a lot more cheeky personal rambling. Still might, I did enjoy the bit about how I make games while double-fisting tequila and redbull. For now, I'm going to keep the two posts the same.

This GDC I had the pleasure of watching two well-known game designers nearly stand up shouting, as they violently agreed over minute distinctions between “fun” and “engagement.” Say what you will about Cart Life (they did) but anything that gets us that excited about a whole medium is working.

I don't want to give a precise summary of last month's game theory writing, by Dan Cook, Robert Yang, Mattie Brice, and Raph Koster, or the spark lit by Leigh Alexander,  the flights of Anna Anthropy, and the veritable army of posts, comments, and prognostications which colored the exchanges. Read it, if you want a sense of how we’re juggling the want for useful discourse, with the want to relish artistic freedom, to violently resist assimilation.

But even when we’re being loud, I’m struck by how much we’re agreeing in different languages. Raph Koster has been cheering on crazy, new shit for over a decade. Anna Anthropy says that everyone should be making personal, cool shit. Their outlooks don't seem all that different, on the face. The arguments signal to me that procedural literacy – the shit that we can only learn by interacting with game systems – has already begun to create new and robust experiences for which we lack words. Excepting the work of a few genius-level writers working on games – among which I’d count Patricia Hernandez, Cara Ellison, and Ian Bogost – we fall over ourselves trying to describe the power of the medium. And there's a really good reason that we'll keep falling over, and violently agreeing:

Games can do anything.

In games, we can recreate any experience within or without the human experience. And there are dozens of vetted, objective vocabularies for the human experience. I’m interested in outlining five: for cultural criticism, human engagement, human manipulation, spatiality, and aesthetics. We can and do use these languages to break down literature, poetry, cinema, sculpture, a range of mediums which includes games. But in games we go beyond reading or watching an experience. We live it. We can't help but live it. Procedurality means we need to get involved, it’s the major ordinance of games. Books say, know me. Television says, gaze at me. Games say, touch me.
   
Gamers will sometimes grasp behaviorism, positive psychology, art, and design implicitly and inseparably, because they've touched them, walked through them. With a few gorgeous exceptions –most of which I’ve ruthlessly pillaged, and some of which are listed below – older academic languages aren’t so holistic. Games are. Games are systems designed to be experienced. We have a lot of great work right now on how they function as systems, and similarly rich work on the craft of design. Where we’re lagging is in understanding the experience. If we can live games, then we can understand them through the languages used to analyze life.

Over the next few weeks, I want to talk about these languages in turn. Each could lend both precision and depth to conversations about why and how games matter.

1)    The Language of Cultural Critique Challenge

As a note: if I do lay out parts of a language on cultural criticism, it would be strictly academic. As a completely privileged white man, rarely do I encounter oppression that’s openly institutionalized. While I can lay out some theoretical work on othering, gender, cultures of abuse, and certain structures of oppression, my goal is to assemble a language, not solve anyone’s problems. If you’re reading this and think you can make a language which genuinely cares to help creators assess and elevate their challenges to existing social ills, maybe even generate new forms of empathy, then what are you waiting for? If there are objective vocabularies that you already use, then I really want to hear about them.

2)    The Language of Human Engagement

Some of the scholars adding to the language of human engagement do come from the games industry. “Fun” is the sweet spot, for commercial consultants and the media industry both. You see clear paths to fun in the work of folks like Rigby and Ryan, Nicole Lazzaro, and Raph. In psychology we can (and many do) pull from the standard folks like Cziksentmihaly and Maslow. It's also interesting to get into the deeper happiness research, with folks like George Vaillant, Frankl, and the parts of Maslow that don't involve pyramids. It's there you can start to plumb for the difference between pedestrian human happiness, and a depth of fulfillment.

3)    The Language of Human Manipulation

This language could clarify the line between engagement and manipulation for creators and the general populace both, by covering work in radical behaviorism, neuropsychology, motivational psychology, as well as their present applications within gaming. For a very non-confrontational instance, in what Dr. Nick Yee has called the Proteus Effect, embodiment alone can change behavior. Further, he's found that morphing an individual's face onto that of a political candidate caused significant increases in whether a respondent would vote for that candidate. With this possibility that media might (perhaps forcibly) change behavior, an understanding of human manipulation is growing increasingly vital for civic life, to say nothing of the subtlety of aesthetic expression.

4)    The Language of Spatiality

Architecture has long been asserted to shape behavior, for instance in Jeremy Bentham's Big Brother-style prison, the Panopticon. As with then, contemporary CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) puts a major focus on architecture for deterring criminals. Though some vocabulary can be inferred from crime prevention projects, academics such as Don Norman hold out hope that we can free the conversation to be used in the pursuit of human fulfillment. Games-savvy academics have been working with government agencies to apply what we know. Spatiality is also a great place to point out deep links between these languages – for instance – between space and art, space and happiness, even the role of space in manipulation and oppression. Ultimately, these languages are meant to work in tandem, and expand past just five.

5)    The Language of Aesthetic Experience

Objective languages for aesthetic experience could jump the debate of whether games are art, focusing instead on how games fulfill established aspects of art. For one instance, if you compared games to Denis Dutton's twelve-item, cross-cultural aesthetic vocabulary, it becomes fairly clear how our medium has already fulfilled every established role of art. Dutton pulls on folks like Aristotle, Plato, Kant, and Hume. McLuhan, Warhol, John Cage, and Walter Benjamin also have a great deal to offer. It is also possible, once assessing their theories, to map ways in which games add wholly unprecedented vistas to the aesthetic experience.

Other fields and works are ripe with languages for experience. Critical theory, social psychology, education.

Languages for experience don't just hold potential for informing games. If games help us to compile, and then refine our languages for experience: for engagement, space, manipulation, aesthetics, oppression, and beyond, the literate naturally take those and use them to better discuss life. Notation once helped music to be understood, to expand and flourish. Once we can see firsthand how game spaces inspire and fulfill, once we understand and hardy ourselves to commonplace manipulation, and when more people can objectively critique art, humans refine our ability to make powerful, positive changes in all of our spaces. Online and off.

I’d really enjoy hearing feedback on this outlook, the meta idea, but maps for these languages aren’t the kind of thing that can be plopped and done. No matter how perennial the idea behind a word, language is a living thing. If any of it sounds relevant to your interests, then leave a little love!

At the GDC

I cross-posted this as my first gamasutra blog. I'm not sure how their process functions, so for now I thought I'd set it here as well. This GDC was at times intense and serendipitous: I survived a 15 hour drive on no sleep, and was invited into locked basements for traditional Chinese folk music. It was in equal parts meditative, almost boring. I walked alone through a lot of San Francisco, spent time in a couple of cathedrals, and was singled out by the one-legged maybe-a-monk.

Fun week, though. Hope you enjoy. 

“This GDC is really weird,” says Jesse.

“Why?” Asks Soraya.

“Because every year everyone seems to know what's happening. Like, maybe one year it's the PS3. Or another year it's motion controls. This GDC, nobody knows what the fuck is going on.”

Adam Sessler is chatting animatedly with a group of random developers, outside the Hotel St. Regis. He's wearing a very stylish hat. I idly wonder what he's been up to, since G4 got bought out. Another part of our group is having a very serious conversation, maybe on business development, while we wait to hit the food courts hidden under the Westfield Mall-thing. Jesse is teaching Soraya a game that he, a former Disney Imagineer, developed while he and his daughter had been waiting in long lines. I mention that their faces look a lot like people playing Johann Sebastian Joust. Jesse looks over, with a very suspect grin.

“Oh man! Have you played Wushu Turtle?”

“Err, no?” I say.

He reaches into a pocket. “Guess who has turtles?”

–

I fucking love the Indie Games Festival.

Dys4ia. Year Walk. Thrity Flights of Loving. FTL. Terry Cavanaugh. Brendon Chung. A dozen badass people I've never met, all of them just sitting around, showing off magic.

I fucking love it.

Walking away from that part of the show floor, I just randomly saw the very last game developer for which I could anticipate nerding out. Raph Koster was wearing an old, grey hoodie and dad jeans.

“Hi Raph Koster,” I say. “You are amazing.”

“Well thanks!” He says, “Who are you?”

The name on my badge has been blocked by a highlighter-colored Hello Kitty.

“Right,” I say, handing him a Hello Kitty business card. “You linked a thesis I once wrote. That was way cool.”

He's peering at the back of the business card. “Oh right. I'd have known that, if I had just been able to see your name.”

And then we proceed to talk about durians, for a moment, before we go our separate ways. I never mention that Star Wars Galaxies – a game for which Raph was the creative lead – taught me how to take chances. That it showed me, first-hand, that I could strive to do big things.

–

“Could you please lower your voices?” Croaks the hunched, white-haired lady behind us.

I'm pretty sure I'm the only one who hears her, but am loving this conversation about “fun” and “engagement” too much to stop either of the two tired men. James wants more than fun. He was just given a 20-year-old roleplay guidebook for holocaust internment camps. Nick wants better fun. He just came from an IGF awards ceremony that glossed over beautiful, innovative designs. Over the past ten minutes, their volume grew to block out near every other sound in the crowded Westfield food court.

“Gameplay can be boring, and still be meaningful.” Says James. “It can be hard, or tedious. Wrapping tedium in gameplay sends a message. Right?”

“No. Boring gameplay is just bad gameplay. We're past that. Other mediums know how to make tedium fun. It's why I keep coming back to Fight Club. Fifteen seconds and we know Tyler Durden's job is boring. Fifteen fucking seconds and we still give the gameplay award to Cart Life. Profound respect to that game, right. Did it deserve to win narrative? Yes. Did it have beautiful art? Yes. But gameplay? I mean--”

“EXCUSE ME... SIR.” Says the old lady, for the fifth time. “Lower your tone!”

Nick turns around, and puts a hand over his chest. “Oh my gosh, I am so, so sorry.”

James says, “We need to do this more often. I love it when we violently agree.”

“Absolutely.”

“Wow. I don't get it.” Says a younger game designer. “Why get so worked up if you both agree?”

“Because these kinds of tiny distinctions will fundamentally alter how this medium develops.”

–

“Is he good people?” Asks the Conference Associate honcho. He gives me the Buddy Christ double-thumbs-up, paired with a questioning look.

I return the pose.

He grins, “Good enough for me.”

And so I chat with a few random CAs before we move to Johann Sebastian Joust. The conference has wound down for the day, and here's a group of about 200 men and women in red shirts. A few of them pass along the Joust batons, and face off. Between the smiles and the game faces, you can tell they've each seen hundreds of game worlds. Some have even made a few. For a week, here in San Francisco, they get to be around old friends. There's a weeklong League of Legends CA tourney. There's a dragon's hoarde of board games. They're masters of Witch Hunter / Vampire Hunter / Mafia.

They are, for a week, family.

At a lunch, later in the week, I met Lincoln the CA. He could be in his late 40's, with a shaved head and a graying handlebar moustache. He lives just down the street from the Moscone Center, where he's volunteered as a CA for twelve years. It'd be thirteen, if not for a year where he was sick (though he still got out to say hi to a few people). A love of D&D brought him to his first GDC. He'd quit a bank job for a chance to work around games. He teased me for the Hello Kitty over my nametag.

“Clearly you've never been a CA.”

“Hey, you guys can scan over the top of it. You have the technology. I did move it once, though, to make that easier for a CA.”

“You could, you know, move it again.”

His wry grin is infectious. But he allowed me to simply grin back, and keep the Hello Kitty positioned just the way I liked it. I really hope I see him again next year.

–

Data doesn't lie. Especially not the data from EEDAR.

In 2012, the top 50 games in North America spent 350m in marketing, and that marketing war is expanding.

53% of gaming magazine covers are for shooters.

WoW makes 500m a year in subscriptions. WoT makes 350m a year in profit. CoD made a 1.6b.

Good games with good marketing make around seven times as much as the good games with bad marketing (emphasis on the around - I'm grossly paraphrasing a beautifully arranged dataset).

To the Moon moved a couple hundred thousand copies.

Limbo did okay. Minecraft made money. Dear Esther moved me. Botanicula made me cry. Flotilla and Star Wars Galaxies spoke to me on profound levels.

I've never played a Call of Duty game for more than a couple hours. If I've even played one; I get it confused with all the other big budget games trying desperately to look exactly like it and tackle its market share.

–

It's been a long time since the title “gamer” held any meaningful association in my mind. When the industry was small, maybe. But for years now, calling yourself a gamer has been tantamount to calling yourself a TV watcher. There are differences between Sponge Bob, Fox News, Survivor, and the surgery channel. With tens of thousands of new games coming out yearly, and 60% of the USA playing games “to pass the time,” the distinctions matter.

The people making games are still a community. I left this GDC thinking of them as an extended family.

But I still haven't figured out where I fit. Riding shotgun back to San Jose, in the dark, I'm a little disappointed by that. After all the truly strange, nearly mystical happenings, my place in the gaming cosmos hadn't revealed itself in any blinding burst of light.

So I mention that outloud.

“What is it you want?” Asks another writer. “Money? Power? I mean, be honest with yourself.”

“Yeah,” I say. “I really don't know. Somehow I thought it'd just, be clear.”

I ask the driver, who reasonably says that he doesn't really know me. But he eventually adds, “Think of your life as a wheel with nine spokes. They could be anything. Money, love, anything. But think about how big each spoke is right now, and decide where you want them to be in five years time.”

I write that down, while we try to decide whether it's the Caterpillar or the Cheshire Cat that asks Alice which direction she'll go.

The first writer says, “In five years, what sort of effect do you want to have?”

So I tell him. And it's personal. And when I'm done, I realize that I'm crying. Something I haven't really done since finishing a very neat indie game. I don't think anyone in the car notices.

Later, I go to draw out the spokes of my life, and I realize something. Maybe that the whole exercise is a paradox. Wheels need balanced spokes, if they're going to roll. There's something that I want, in five years. Something that I'd sacrifice for. But if I'm going to get there, nine other spokes need to exist. They need to be in place, but they need to be strong enough not to shred at the first rock in the road.

The games industry has a lot of component parts, each represented by people. New wheels and new spokes and new technologies will surely come. But maybe – just maybe – now's one of those times where we balance what we have. Maybe it's time to use the wheel to get somewhere.

The Comicon Buddy System

My second visit to the Emerald City Comicon was much, much better than the first. It was all about the people.

There were a few good people the first time around. I was lucky to run into an amazingly talented nerd rock singer / highschool friend. Saw a friend or two from a Tacoma comic shop. Then a couple friends with perfectly sculpted costumes. The kind of movie-set-quality Lobster Johnson and Harley Quinn that you can't buy (this year they were the Monarch/Dr. Girlfriend showing up in a bunch of the ECCC slideshows I failed to farm for filler photos).

Via Seattle Weekly's excellent ECCC 2013 slideshow

But they all had this one thing in common: they'd followed the buddy system. They'd either driven in with someone, or sometimes buddied up with fellow geeks once they'd arrived. They knew, and I really didn't. Without a buddy, I was done with the show almost right after I'd parked.

This time, Squatch was my buddy. He'd only ever been to the TriCities' RadCon, a gathering roughly 1/32nd the size. He'd read comics his whole life, and folks like Mike Mignola and Fiona Staples – both in attendance – had inspired and kindled his love of art. We almost walked right by Mike, the creator of Hellboy, before Squatch noticed the name scrawled above a middle-aged bald man. There was a modest line, so we talked while it wound down. People would drop in, and drop stacks of a few, to sometimes a few dozen, comics they'd wanted signed. Squatch had left his at home, not wanting to “be a dick.” But while we talked, people in the line sometimes nerded out. To that, Mignola had 10% apprehension and 90% delight. Others unzipped special comics holders, then deposited neat stacks in front of him. To that clinical accuracy, he responded with efficient signing. Sometimes he'd ask the gaping fans, “Where should I sign this?”

After the line petered out, Squatch walked up. He couldn't say anything. Mike looked up, now registering something like 80% exhaustion, 20% apprehension. Squatch finally pointed at Mignola's originals, held in a portfolio case not unlike the one holding Squatch's unfinished comic, back in the car. Squatch asked, “Mind if I look through these?”

Mike nodded.

Originals, mostly from Hellboy in Hell, ranged in price from a few hundred to a few thousand dollars. Mike now looked slightly engaged, as Squatch's face lit up on flipping through pages. Still, the two said nothing. Another fan nuzzled up beside us, and bluntly held something out towards Mike. He pointed, could you sign this here? Mike did so, without speaking. He held out an identical book and said, “Could you make this out to Sally and Frank?” Again, it was signed without words, and the fan vanished without any audible thanks.

Squatch was making sounds of appreciation. As he flipped through originals, I could see the same kind of rough marker work that Squatch used. Mignola's influences on my friend were obvious. Big haphazard strokes, and characters with bulk.

Squatch looked up, fairly mindblown, and flipped Mignola's book to the start. There's a solid beat as they stare at one another. Mike blinks.

“Thanks,” I say.

“Thanks,” says Mike.

“Um, thank you,” says Squatch.

There's another moment of silence, like Squatch might say more. Might talk about how influential Mignola's use of lines and color had been to a teenage Squatch. Might have let the man know that his work had a serious, sincere impact. But while that second drags on to two Mike nods, returning to an earlier tired look. I know that Squatch, who up till recently worked at Subway, had just very nearly ponied up for one of the pricier originals.

Squatch had a similar experience with Fiona Staples, the artist for Saga. Though he's got eight longboxes and a closet full of lovingly-jacketed comics, the eight issues out for Saga are among his favorites. Since he didn't bring them, out of austere avoidance of anything obnoxious, he buys one of the prints featuring Lying Cat and The Will. He finds a twenty in his wallet.

The best Saga cosplay at the Con:

Izabel the dismembered spectral babysitter 

He mumbles something about her making a cool comic.

Her handler – a haggard, ferret-faced man with greasy hair – snatches the cash.

“Thanks,” she says, looking apprehensive at the force of that transaction. But she smiles. “Do you want it personalized at all? What's your name?”

“Uh, Jared. But you don't really have to.”

“Well, here,” she says. I can make out her signature, and his name.

I don't remember any other words passing back or forth. We seem to awkwardly drift from the table.

Squatch is, for those who've never experienced the phenomenon, experiencing a full-blown Nerdgasm. We're walking out to his car, in order to safely deposit his newly signed treasure, and he barely says a word.

–

At about 6:30 or 7pm, we found a table by the Convention Center's two-story escalator, and gave politically correct, thoughtful appraisals of the show's costumes. Our gender-conscious friend Kim had even joined us, graciously overlooking the show's various wardrobe malfunctions, and lauding the imagination and drive of everyone in costume.

“Jesus Christ, look at that He-Man! That fucker is hot! If you two are allowed to talk about cottage cheese legs and cleavage, then I get to marry that man. I am going to marry the fuck out of him, and tear off that little banana hammock, and we are going to have a lot of hot little babies.”

Comics Alliance has a good photo of

the He-Man in question.

A guy in a I work at NASA shirt, who up till recently seemed ready to stab me, finally stalks off. We see a catwoman with an enormous, abnormally-pert chest.

“Not real at all,” says Kim. “At the very least a serious pushup.”

“So what?” Asks Squatch. “If it does justice to the costume, I mean --”

“So there's no way she's bought that just for the con.”

“We actually saw them earlier,” I say. “Funny story.”

“Oh!” Says Squatch. “Right!”

“So this little kid is tugging at his dad's pant leg, saying 'Daddy I really want to gooo. I'm tiiired.'”

“And he says, eyes firmly drowning in that Catwoman cleavage, 'Hold up just one second, Daddy's gotta take a couple pictures.'”

The female Tony Stark we've dubbed, “Toni Stark” comes up the escalator. Her only departure from street clothes is a bright blue light under a white camisole. Someone chimes in, “eyes off the light, Pal.”

We're all cackling, enjoying jokes at the expense of others, when the comedian Brian Posehn walks by. Lately he's been writing a run of Deadpool, one that Squatch has followed religiously.

“Brian Posehn!” I say. “Time to go.”

Squatch stays seated. So I grab him, pull him up, and Kim follows. A huge crowd piles up around the escalator going down, and we're a good ways behind the man. While we wait, I ask a lethally thin pre-teen in excessive facepaint, “Hey, what are the candy corn horns from?”

“Homestuck!” He half shrieks, looking ready either to weep, or to leap at me in uncontrolled rage. It's the most terrified I've been in months, and I'm glad when we're finally get on the escalator going down.

“Dude, I'm not going to say anything to him. I don't want to bother the guy.”

“You love his writing. You have a lot of respect for him.”

“Can't do it, dude. Not if he's as tired as us. What would I even say?”

“Just tell him what you just said. You respect his work.”

Squatch grimaces, and walks over to him while Kim and I stand aside. We both grin at each other. I tell her that the most he's said to any of his heroes here, until now. Squatch walks over to me with his phone.

“Here, just hit the picture button.”

I hit the wrong button, so he has to break from posing with Brian to fix the phone. They're both tired, and their faces momentarily show it, but Squatch hands the phone back to me. Brian, a huge guy, makes a tough pose. Squatch gives a gleeful smile. I snap a couple pictures.

–

The next day, we spend mostly lost, and wandering. The current artist for The Walking Dead is listed in one place in the ECCC program, but word of mouth puts him across the expo floor, or even at the Image Booth. It was our third time orbiting in the rough location listed on the program, but it was still good. Plenty of crap to make fun of, the occasional, lovingly made costume, or lovingly-made art. But after failing to find this one artist, again, Squatch was just wandering. Since he was shambling into a madly overpopulated part of the convention, one we'd wandered easily half a dozen times already, I diverted us down an emptier lane in Artist's Alley.

We came up next to a booth we'd visited already, for Eric Powell.

Powell's Goon is, for me personally, a profound and inspiring comic. The voice is utterly unique. One of his books in the series, Chinatown, dealt with love and loss in a language I'd needed. It was one of those books you serendipitously pick up at a time when you really need it. I'd later find out that Powell had fought to present Chinatown  in its intended format and style – and had won. It rarely happens in comics; hearing about it made me so, so happy. I'd already picked up a bookmark for The Goon, the last time we were here, but Powell hadn't been there. There was one new face sitting, sketching.

Some promotional art for Chinatown.

“Are you the guy?” Asks Squatch.

“Nope,” he said. Then grinned. “Yeah, it's me.”

“Wow, cool,” said Jared.

He was about to say more words to a favorite creator than he had all weekend.

Jared shared that he'd just been comparing Powell favorably to Rob Liefeld. That while Liefeld's art hadn't changed much, since he'd been a 16-year-old rising star in comics art (something Liefeld himself humorously admits), Powell's had evolved, matured, and then evolved again.

Powell, whose eyes were energetic and friendly, but most of all present, at first grinned.

The tattooed blonde woman sitting next to him gave a good-natured laugh, but threw in that Liefeld had always been an exceptionally nice guy.

Powell chimed in, complimented Liefeld, then started up a conversation with Squatch on making comics. I got the distinct impression that Squatch and Powell – for lack of better analogy – were both tuned to the same frequency. In one trade paperback for The Goon, Powell had outlined his progression from early days in pencils, and then pens. At the time, a few years ago, Squatch hadn't yet read The Goon. But having seen both, Powell's earlier work had reminded me a lot of what Squatch was doing. It was one of the early hooks – that I could get the same kinds of slightly strange stories I might from my friend – if only my friend could have more time away from his job as a Sandwich Artist.

While they talked about Liefeld's technique, technique in general, and The Goon, I was doing the very thing I'd mocked Squatch for all weekend. Face to face with a creator I admired, I said next to nothing. I just, you know, listened. And looked over Squatch's shoulder as he flipped through originals.

Good weekend.

Remember to use the buddy system.