Small Update, Large Rant

So a quick update on the Miskatonic University project, I ran into a bit of a wall in designing the second floor of the University. I knew that I wanted to add a library and some science labs but trying to figure out how to lay it out and how the layout would affect the third story's floor plan was giving me some issues. So taking a suggestion from my girlfriend I created a mock up of the University in, of all places, The Sims 3 and was able to work quickly and try a few different floor plans out until I found one I liked. While this probably wasn't the approach that is the most typical in a situation like this it did allow me to design quickly and see results of ideas rapidly it seemed to work well. So hopefully I'll have more of the University laid out tonight with some more screen shots as things start to fall into place.

If you're just here for design insights, now is probably a good place to stop reading. While the following will be regarding the gaming industry and gaming culture it does not pertain to design.

Look, I know you're safe and secure behind your screen and your anonymity and that's fine, that's one of the wonders of the internet, it gives everyone a voice. But too many male gamers and males in general use their anonymity for saying disgusting things towards women that they either may know or just pick at random because they can. When did having a screen and the internet between you and the person that you're talking to on the other end of it give you an excuse to act like a misogynistic asshat? I'd say you're a grown man and that you should know better but clearly by your actions you're not and you don't. So let me spell this out for you, treat people like they’re person and not a piece of meat. Just because you have the security blanket of the internet around you doesn't give you a reason or excuse to act like some frat house drunk jackass. My parent taught me to respect human beings as human beings no matter their race, gender, sexual preference or what breakfast cereal they eat in the mornings.

The gaming community is especially bad about this, along with treating women terribly; the bigoted speech that comes through on games is insane. There's a reason I don't play a lot of FPS's online and when I do I have the voice chat muted or when I play an MMO I create custom chat channels that usually avoid the public channels. It’s because not only do I not want to hear the torrent of hate speech that comes out of most of the chat but it’s also because it makes me uncomfortable. I don't fall into any of the categories that should be offended by this speech, I'm a straight white male, but the fact that the words that I would never in my life even think to say are thrown around so easily and freely makes me no longer want to associate myself with a game where that kind of speech is rampant.

I'm not here to point fingers at a cause of this, it could be societal, it could be bad parenting, it could be just a screwed up individual, but the fact remains that nowhere is it acceptable. The gaming industry in the past has, and in some cases still does, employ "booth babes" women who have no problem with guys drooling over them. But as we move away from the idea that games are for children and towards being a multi-billion dollar industry that wants to take itself as seriously as the film industry, it is time to move away from childish things. It is time to let your game sell itself and not need some skimpily clad woman to stand by your game to get attention for what you've been doing. If you need that sort of marketing it seems to me that maybe it’s time to go back and rework your game until it can sell itself.

Cyberpunk - Editorial

The video game industry has had a love affair with cyberpunk cultures even as far back as the 1988 release of the Neuromancer video game that was loosely based on William Gibson's book by the same name. While the cyberpunk genre is one of my absolute favorite genres for media, to me there seems to be something missing from the video game incarnations of the genre.

The latest cyberpunk blockbuster to come out, Deus Ex, was a great game and I loved every moment I spent in it. The game's aesthetics and the augmentations that translated into game mechanics worked beautifully. However, like most other cyberpunk games, one issue prevented me from feeling immersed in the environment; everything was just too neat and tidy.

One of the most important aspects of the cyberpunk genre and even subculture is taking risks and making things messy. In Deus Ex you were surrounded by these beautiful gleaming cities, and there was a bit of political unrest in the story, but you never saw the uglier, dirtier, or grittier side of the city first hand. Even the back alleys and sewers were open and tidy. Cyberpunk touches not only on the beauty of what humans can become when given the ability to be anything but also what reaches man would go to to unlock that freedom, the failed experiments, the drug use and the wires running to a hacked together prosthetic.

So many "heroes" in cyberpunk fiction are really anti-heroes, they're terrible role models. They smoke and drink and use narcotics but we embrace them because they are flawed, and the same goes for the settings. Chiba City from Gibson's Neuromancer wasn't a clean and glimmering tower of progress; it was a drenched and rainy slum where those who'd lost everything tried to scrape something back together.

I feel that if we as an industry are going to embrace this genre, we need to realize all of the facets of it and not just put a glossy paint on a modern setting. There are some fantastic stories to be told in a world where almost anything is possible and screw-ups can affect humanity as a whole. The shine and sparkle have their place, but so do the grit and the moral gray areas. The self-serving protagonist may be a hard pill to swallow at first, but the story of his/her change makes them more human, and we are able to better connect with them as they develop over the course of their tale.