Sharing Games with Non-Gamers or: How I Stopped Worrying and Got Drunk

It’s the new year, and I feel excited about video games. I am excited about the mountain of games I acquired as presents and with gift cards, as well as games coming out later this year. For as much as I love good games, I am sad over how many of my friends and family just don’t enjoy them the way I do. Whether they lack interest or skill, it’s always difficult to share this part of my life with them. That’s why I’m trying to think of new ways for me to try and share my gaming experience with them.

There are of course the games that are fun to play with a group despite the challenges of the game. Games like New Super Mario Bros. U, Call of Duty, and Tekken Tag Tournament 2 are great because, due to their tendency toward bullshit difficulty spikes, the whole group enjoys the accomplishments of even two players finally beating a level. Plus, the shared suffering leads to lively conversation. Other games which have narrative arcs which tend to appeal to those outside of the medium are always fun to pass and play, even if some people are terrible. These games include Alice: Madness Returns, Batman: Arkham Asylum, and Resident Evil 5, and they tend to be just as fun to watch as to play if you are already invested in the subject matter. Hell, some games are such a spectacle that it’s fun to pass and play without any narrative context. Call of Duty and Halo attract droves of casual players who only play in groups. Any of these are fine, but I feel my repertoire lacks a certain “universally appealing” punch. So imagine my delight and excitement as I realize a way to better involve more people in the same games I already love.

Dark Souls 2: What to Worry About

A short time has passed since the announcement of Dark Souls 2 at the VGAs, and the community has been busy digesting all of the information we’ve gotten so far. There have been some strong reactions, particularly regarding the potential changes. In fact, EpicNameBro has already posted several videos digging into what we know so far. Most of these reactions center around the reality that Hidetaka Miyazaki, the creator and director the entirety of the Souls series thus far, will not be directing Dark Souls 2.

Instead, Dark Souls 2 will be directed by Tomohiro Shibuya and Yui Tanimura. Although Miyazaki is devoting the majority of his attention to another project, he is still supervising Dark Souls 2’s development. As supervisor, Miyazaki has said that he is making it a point to protect the core aspects of the series. In contrast, however, Shibuya said that he is much more direct and open than Miyazaki, and that this is sure to be apparent in the finished product.

 

So, am I worried? Hell yeah, I’m worried, but I’m not scared. Dark Souls is precious to me. I have no problem saying that it is my favorite game of all time. In fact, Dark Souls has been an important point of reference and enjoyable experience for me as I have struggled with PTSD for the past year. My experience with Dark Souls is more meaningful to me than any other gaming experience I’ve had. Naturally, I am extremely excited for Dark Souls 2. I want my experience with it to be nostalgic and cathartic, but I still want it to be new and surprising. Of course I’ll worry about Dark Souls 2 as I anxiously await its arrival with my seemingly paradoxical desires, but I feel secure despite all of the reasons there are to worry so far. Dark Souls 2’s new direction will be more a result of its new directors, who are new to the Souls series, than anything else. Second to that is the extra staff they have working on the game, who are also new to the series. Given these factors, what have I got to feel secure in?

Greatness in Games

What makes a great game? It certainly takes a degree of technical excellence. Although the graphics and sound have to be of a high enough quality to be appealing, what is truly important is a cohesive aesthetic. A great game needs to be absent of game-breaking bugs, too. However, there are two things that really separate certain game from others: is the game enjoyable, and is the game meaningful? These are two very different things, so let us give them both a close look.

Oh, My Pop Culture Jesus: Fate vs. Free Will

I have noticed something when watching television or movies and reading books or comics: we humans seem never to know if we would rather believe in free will or fate. If I had to pick I would say that we are more inclined to approve of free will, but fate still seems to be a hard and fast concept that we cling to, and it shows up in much of our pop culture.

It seems to mean that any time the concept of fate is really introduced into a story the author tends to quickly subvert fate with free will. Take, for example, Harry Potter. In book five when Harry learns that a prophecy predicted he would be the only one that could defeat Voldemort he was upset, until Dumbledore pointed out that after everything Voldemort put him through Harry would want to kill him anyway, regardless of what any prophecy says. Furthermore, Dumbledore stresses that Voldemort had had to choose between Harry and Neville (as the boy to potentially kill him) and if Voldemort had ignored the prophecy, then Voldemort’s choice would have ensured that the prophecy would never have come to pass. And finally, in book seven, Harry has to freely choose to sacrifice himself or else Harry might not have survived his encounter with Voldemort. Despite the strong sense of fate, the books make it clear that the characters’ choices, their free will, are what’s important and not some higher cosmic power.

In the TV show Heroes, a painter has the power to see the future and his prophecy tends to be accurate. However, the prophecies also tend to change. Isaac, the prophetic painter, predicts something vague enough that can be interpreted in numerous ways. The tag line in season one of Heroes for a while was “Save the Cheerleader, Save the World.” Isaac constantly draws pictures of serial killer Sylar killing Claire, an immortal cheerleader. Isaac’s pictures show a blonde cheerleader with her head sawed off. However, another character, Peter, saves Claire. So doesn’t Isaac’s prediction hold true? Kind of. Sylar mistakes another blonde cheerleader for Claire, so it could be argued that Isaac’s prediction holds true. However, the characters also have often traveled into the future where they see horrible dystopian-like realities, that are later stopped and changed, no matter what Isaac has predicted. In Heroes, the characters act like your fate is inevitable, unless it’s really bad and they decide to change it. The writers couldn’t seem to decide whether to follow fate or free will.

There are many other examples of course (Supernatural, Oedipus, Brave, Thor, Beowulf, Star Wars, Saiyuki, Doctor Who, Into the Woods, Dark Souls), but this theme of fate versus free will is something that consistently comes up in our pop culture. I think it’s because on some level humanity likes fate. We like the idea that God or some other higher power has a plan in which we play a part, maybe even a starring role. However, we find the notion of being bound to a fate, especially one we may not like, distasteful. We like have autonomy, but we also like the idea of being destined for something great or important.

What do you think? Are our lives governed by some kind of fate, free will, or is it a bit of both?

Tune in next week and get some religion.

Dark Souls: A Game You Should Care About

The time has come for me to talk about Dark Souls. It has been on the market for consoles for months, but the PC version only just dropped. Also, it became my new favorite game ever after several hours of play-time back in late April. Dark Souls is an action role-playing game developed by From Software as the spiritual successor to Demon’s Souls, 2009 Game of the Year. I believe Dark Souls is, more than just another great game, a significant and special game which all gaming fans should appreciate even if they don’t play it. It is aptly described as a massively multiplayer, online, single-player game. It is so challenging that its website is preparetodie.com, yet many fans impose progressively more constricting restrictions on themselves to make it harder. Although its Wikipedia page calls the plot minimalistic, Dark Souls features a highly complex and deeply developed plot which continues to generate spirited discussion. It’s a dark fantasy RPG that often feels like survival horror, yet it’s not trendy (maybe that one won’t make sense to anybody else, but I’m so sick of the topical dark fantasy and crappy survival horror that’s been everywhere recently). Because it is easy to describe it in such contradictory and complicated ways, what may be most surprising about Dark Souls is how simple and approachable it really is.