I Don't Think We Understand the Word "Victim"

So the whole deal with Microsoft, Killer Instinct, and E3 happened a week ago. A week in Internet time may as well been ten years prior, but I've been collecting my thoughts about this a little and I am a slow, slow person. I think it's worth taking a moment to see the fallout of something like this, not just to look at what Microsoft does in response (spoiler: it was not good), but also what people around me tend to think or how they act.

For those of you not wholly familiar: last week at the E3 conference, Microsoft trotted out some games and peripherals to dazzle convention attendees with. Among them was a new Killer Instinct title - a new edition of a fighting game largely known for crappy model interaction, inconsistent control, and exceptionally dull theme/flavor. It's like the love child of Mortal Kombat and Shaq Fu. People liked it a bit, though, because, well... c-c-c-c-ombo breaker? I really don't know, honestly. I think the first flag on the play here is that someone, somewhere in Microsoft's vast machine thought, "You know what people want? Killer Instinct!" and then someone else said, "Yes. I approve," and no one said as well, "I am so glad it's still the 90s!" Because if that last part was true, I'd understand.

Anyway, I digress. If you want to see the video again (or for the first time) here you go.

So, what's interesting here is really split into two things. You have the comment at about 0:37 that is the heart of the issue in this particular exhibition. But what I think is a little more telling is how the whole thing was framed, casual misogyny aside: the producer comes out well dressed and full of swagger and bravado to come beat up the frumpy Community Manager nerd. So let's break this down a little bit. 

There's been a lot said in the past few years about what being a "real geek" is. It has, predictably, been thrown in the faces of women, primarily - the typical "fake nerd" assertion is leveled against an attractive woman who dares to look attractive in some fashion (and/or is cosplaying in some costume). She's told, repeatedly, that she's only in it for the easy male attention. It's usually not couched in terms as civil as that, though - it's usually "attention whore" and "dressing like a slut" and so on. There seems to be a great, impenetrable mass within the gaming community that simply looks at a woman in the territory and thinks she has to be an outsider by default. E3 reporters who are female shared a great many stories about how they were treated there. 

On top of that, too, we have a general disdain for the "bro gamer". The typical guy we imagine on the other end of the CoD or Battlefield map - some guy in his khakis, a sideways visor, various necklaces or bracelets found in whatever same place Johnny Depp seems to get the damn things, chugging Mountain Dew and talking about how things are "sick, brah. Sick." Driving through a map of GT4, they may inquire: Bro, do you even shift? They're not real gamers either. 

But, hilariously, which one are we far, far less likely to harass in person? At E3 or any similar convention? The women. We immediately assume they don't belong, having to pass any number of tests before we let it go (if we do at all), and the sad reality is that a great many folks would rather be the bro gamer. Especially in the fighting game communities (or generally any competitive community where there are "stars"), the people we see time and again tend to be cut from the same cloth over and over - the bro gamer shadow, effectively. They want to be like our friend the KI producer - sauntering on to stage, flipping out super badass one liners over and over, and totally sticking it to those nerds. This is not to say those groups are populated with 100% people like that - for every popped collar match, you see one fight between two dudes just sitting in a hotel chair just playing the game in a tournament fight, not acting like this. 

So there's part of the problem. We tend to think we're badass when we're scorning other people or acting like the Alpha in the room - this isn't something unique to or inflated by gaming. The gaming community just seems to have an easier time finding outlets where this is accepted. 

Coming back to the KI thing, I was not really surprised by the response people had to the comments, trying to dismiss the problem was there at all. It ranged from the predictably vulgar, like this comment from the video above - "So wait...the fucking Feminazi's overreacted over THIS? Good lord...those goddamn sexist manhaters need to stop complaining about everything."

... to the strangely accepting line of - "That's just playful banter and is how the FGC is, it's not 'sexist' or derogatory, and shouldn't be taken seriously at all."

That's the middle part of the same comment, btw. That guy was just shotgunning whatever reasons he could come up with to dismiss the idea something was wrong. 

Because it was E3, the situation was also a little touchy, because several people noted that the whole thing was probably scripted. The CM got beat down pretty hard to begin with, but won the second match after she noted in the first one it was unfair the Producer had a fighting stick. Product placement to the extreme, plus the somewhat wooden, rhythmic way this dialogue was delivered makes it seem like this is likely. But that's not really a good thing, because (combined with the viewpoints above), there's only two logical scenarios, here: 

1) Microsoft scripted that whole exchange, and is woefully ignorant of the message they sent. Trash talking is one thing, but "Just let it happen, it'll be over soon," is something else entirely. Look, I'll be blunt: I make horrific and tasteless jokes from time to time. But when I do so, it's in a context where I know the people I'm speaking to will understand these are only jokes. I don't do this and shake my fist at the damn oversensitive PC police or whatever. It's because I'm a fucking adult and realize that not everyone finds the same things funny, and in a similar vein to that - not everyone has had the same life experiences and thus might find different things offensive. I can accept that if I had said that in an open group full of people I don't know, someone might have said, "Dude, not cool," and I would have rolled with it. Apologized, even. It's not for me to say if I you do or do not have the right to be offended, because I don't know you. But, of course, that's not what happened. 

2) If not scripted, then the other conclusion is that our friendly Producer felt empowered to make an off the cuff comment like that in front of thousands of people. Not because he is a horrible, rape-loving human being, but because he figured it's fine, comments like this get tossed out all the time. Look, I know we're getting a little fatigued of the phrase "rape culture", but if there's a moment that helps define it, here it is - when someone makes a joke that is unequivocally about rape*, and someone else says, "rape isn't funny," suddenly we have the person who made the joke trying to play the victim. Do we understand what the word "victim" means? You are not the victim if you said something callous - and the whole point of comments like these are to shit-talk your opponent - and someone gets upset. This is what rape culture is: the slow, steady propagation over time that comments like this need to be let go because stating your problem is "whining". Taking voices away from people who have a problem. That's the crux of it. 

Now, of course, the ad absurdum argument here is, "Well, sure. I guess all the feminazis want to convince us that since he said that, everyone will think rape is ok!" Which, of course, once this particular straw man is established, ends rational discussion. The point is not just "rape is ok", it's belittling the feelings and worries of people who don't think like you. While talk like this doesn't lead to good people suddenly becoming an one-man pack of raping Mongols, it does teach women (or those who care about this issue at all) to keep their mouths shut or endure mocking and scorn. Where does that lead? Down a slow, but inevitable decline to the conclusion that it is their fault. That no one wants to hear it. That if they weren't so whiny, things would be fine. Which, of course, leads to people tolerating being the victim more and more by degrees. 

The hilarious part is that you'll have people on one hand yell, "Oh god just stop whining!" and then out of the other, "If you women would stick up for yourselves, you wouldn't be such victims!" And they don't understand what this means to women, they're just trying to stand up for their perceived right to say or do whatever they want without being asked to adjust their behavior for the audience. And that's the critical failure - it's not about what's happening to you. It's about what's happening to them. 

(*ps: This comment was unequivocally a rape joke. It was a joke about being raped, though not literally. You cannot be a reasonable human being and say otherwise, sorry.)

They Want Cash And Credit

So I'm going to bitch a little bit here, from a place of extreme privilege. Before I do that, I'll just say that I am both aware of and agree with Louis CK's rant a little while ago (the Russian is free, you're welcome) about how people like to complain about shit that is, in the end, still a damned miracle. So I get it, what I'm about to talk about crosses into that some, but I think from a rightfully irritated place.

I got a Galaxy S4 yesterday, and it is objectively an amazing piece of technology. It is much lighter and thinner than my previous smartphones (though a bit taller and wider, lacking a keyboard), and I was really sad to give up the physical keyboard. But progress marches ever forward, and at least I can still buy cars with manual transmission, so I will take my victories where I can find them. The S4 is an extremely anticipated phone (I'd say "was", but I'm certain everyone who is anticipating it has not yet gotten it) due to the amount of processing and entertainment power packed into the little sumbitch. It is, effectively, a small tablet at this point. The screen dominates the front in a way few other phones ever have been so dominated - most phones obviously surrender most of their frontal real estate to the screen, but this thing leaves room for very, very little else like borders or physical frontal buttons.

Honestly, I don't even use these things as a phone much anymore. I think I burned something to the tune of 60 talk minutes last month, and that was about average. I have an office phone for most of my work needs, and none of my friends seem willing to vocalize into their little Facebook/Camera/Text machine. I think my experience is not that unique, either - boards and communities are littered with posts about people focusing on the networking and accessory use of these phones. What does the car dock do? How easy is it to connect to Bluetooth machines? How much battery does the 4G radio burn? How crisp is the screen resolution? How quickly can it fire up and play games? And so on. Despite cell phone call audio quality not noticeably improving for the last five years, no one seems to really care.

So when a phone that people were getting all panty-soaked over fails in a few interesting ways along these lines, I wonder wtf is up. Rightly so, I think. I had a Droid 4, and a Droid before that. Before that, a Blackberry (one of the ones older than the Droid, I don't recall the model number). The Blackberry was my first real smartphone. So there's a little history for you to frame these things. What I felt was really neat about the Droid was an experience that most iPhone users took for granted but was very slow to evolve among the Android OS phones - integration. There were very few custom-built cases or holders or docks or whatever for particular Android phones. The Droid itself had these, of course, as they were the flagship phone of Droid and Motorola at the time. The Droid 2 and 3 and 4 all followed a similar pattern.

What these phones had going for them that I would later find was relatively unique was a focus on integration - the SmartActions in the Moto Android overlay allowed you to fire off a bunch of auto-commands based on certain conditions, making things feel seamless. Putting the phone into the car dock made it automatically recognize it was there. Turning on the Bluetooth just had it automatically try to connect to whatever paired device it had saved. All of these things can be reproduced, in some way, by various third party apps that I am having to monkey together, but by this point, it should be effectively standard. Why do I have to tell the S4 to connect to my car's bluetooth when I turn the BT on and it's the only possible connection? Why won't the crappy third-party car dock (the one I had to get because there's not one for the S4 specifically) trigger the car dock mode when it's not getting power through a car charger? What's with all these stupid green/black buttons on my drop down menu and why can't I get rid of the useless pieces of crap? Where is my damned on-off toggle for wifi? OH THERE IT IS, BURIED IN SOME CRAP. 

Why doesn't the home screen have landscape mode, ffs. When a goddamned new phone or app does not have a landscape mode for the home screen, that, to me, is just shorthand for lazy crap.

What do I get in exchange for this poor attention to details that should be standard at this point? Well, there's Air Gestures, which is a neat gimmick but more of a marketing point than an actual useful feature. You wave your hand vaguely over the phone to make stuff stop or go. Answer the phone? Wave this way. Move a page, wave that way. You have to wave over the phone, so it's only barely more convenient than just reaching and hitting the button. Or, if you're reading something, guess what - the S4 is not a TV! You probably have the thing in front of your face anyway, so it's likely better to just move stuff normally, otherwise you look like you're batting at invisible flies. The flies are here! Air Gestures will train people for a year or so (before moving on to their next phone) to constantly make airy, dismissive gestures in front of them to make things go away. Samsung is aiding and abetting douchebag behavior.

There are other uses for Air Gestures, to be sure. But, like most weird, niche movement recognition interfaces, I'd wager 99% of the population using these things has no use for them.

And you do get the Smart Whatever Thing. The thing that reads if your eyes are on the screen. You can train the thing to stop playing a video if you look away. You can make it follow your eyes and scroll text when you read down. I have to hit 20 buttons to make my phone connect to my car now, when it used to be as easy as setting it in the dock, but at least now Chrome knows what part of that Christina Hendricks photo I'm looking at.

But then, I'm sure it always knew.

I guess my irritation is that it feels a little weird when you take it all together. Are you targeting this phone at the superuser? Then it's missing a lot of features that are pretty much standard now. Are you targeting the phone at casual users? Then it's got way too much shit on it. Half of these apps are just "Hey I Don't Know How to Organize Photos and My Social Media Is Super Hard, Samsung, Do It For Me Thanks" variants of whatever shape and size.

It's still a great phone, as they go. The fact I can boot it up in under 15 seconds, hit a few buttons, and stream an exceptionally clear re-run of 30 Rock is amazing. When you think of how complex the process of delivering that is, it is literally amazing. But the phone is not billed as "A fucking miracle pressed into a small case, you better fucking love it," it's the "most anticipated phone of the year" and "a symbol of cutting edge technology and convenience." I mean, if I got a car that didn't come with power locks or windows, I'd be a little confused but I'd understand that shit is not technically standard. But if I was sitting in a $60,000 Porsche and had to ask how to roll the windows down, it's a whole other deal.

What Samsung has done is sold me on a Porsche that has manual windows, but instead of that, I get a customized apple-corer in the dashboard. For all the apples their marketing folks think I probably eat.

This One Was Inevitable

So I'm just going to rant a little bit.

Given the concentration of money and privileged, generationally insulated folks in this area, I have (no joke) been quietly trying very hard not to get irritated at some of the shit I am seeing. I am already tired from travel and working while trying to see this city, going nonstop. So I know that part of it is just my relatively short temper at the moment. But god damnit people, listen to your fucking selves for just five minutes.

Kim and I were at some cutesy little corner Italian sidewalk cafe tonight, and I could not get past the nexus of entitlement and self-absorption I sat in the middle of. On one side of us was a table of thirty-something folks who had two Italian guys (or at least Italian speakers) with them. They were certain every word that came out of their mouth was just glazed in the well-won wisdom of world travel and deep experience. Except they were saying retarded, unfunny and unoriginal shit with a smugness and gravity that the actual content simply did not have. But, of course, they were worldly people who had such lengthy opinions about anything, and of course they really knew about wine and food. They were condescendingly patient with the woman they had with them, as well as the waitress.

I don't mind that the waitress had to deal with their shit, more on that in a minute.

To the other side, about ten minutes after we sat down, a trio of privileged little yuppie kids sat down, loudly proclaiming that everything is (literally) just the best ever!!! or oh god that is the worst. Louis CK has a good riff on people devaluing the shit out of expressive words, where people slowly and boringly describe something mundane as "sooo hilarious". This was in the similar vein, except this little ginger chick was super fucking animated about everything - with her tone, anyway. Everything is the most whatever. The most, man!  The sneering tanned kid tried to trump her from time to time, and the token gay guy would just add in the occasional shriek and/or "omg yes, yes, yes I KNOW" or just a series of  "MmmHMMMM, yes, I knooooowww," shit that is simply the stock filler line of any Bravo reality show.

I cannot stand people like this. Listening to the vapid, useless shit these kids talked about in their prescribed catalog fashions while they tried really hard to be the most interesting and dramatic person at the table - nay, the whole city block within earshot - just made me frown pretty deeply. These are people who look at the little airy, cardboard people on the CW or in "fashion lifestyle" bullshit publications and dive in headfirst into thinking that is life. They don't have an identity, they're renting it until a newer one comes out in a season or two.

Hilariously - and I do mean hilarious in this context - a party bus full of drunken women passed the intersection, and one of them rolled down a window to scream "I LOOOOVEE ROCK AND ROLL". The girl of this trio that had spawned whole from the forehead of a Vodka commercial rolled her eyes and sighed out, "Vapid whores." Yes, absolutely. Vapid whores. How dare they interrupt her super fascinating dissertation on exactly why the Great Gatsby is the best ever or how this vintage Atari is the coolest thing ever. Why are these things the most X ever? Let me go ahead and truncate this for you, you trifecta of tittering twats - they are the best and coolest because someone just told you it was the new shit. Great Gatsby? It's a book, I guess, right? Some movie just came out, but it's a movie about old things and classy-looking shit, thus you are deep and classy cuz you like it. And Atari? Well, that's a nerd thing, and we all know how cool it is to like the nerd things now (it makes you part of a secret club!!!!).

I don't know these folks, but what kills me the most is that their view of everything was so simple, so superficial, and so quickly formed. They'll grow up with their parents money, never really understanding how the problems of the world happen. Poverty? Well, obviously that's either just a string of bad luck or due to people being lazy and not wanting to work. The idea that there are generational systems and biases in place across race, gender, location, and existing income is just one or twenty levels of play too deep for these guys.

Or, possibly worse, something terrible might happen to them. That's another facet of the overall tragedy. These folks were 20-something, way past the age where most people absorb new information and change their views or their behavior without catastrophic change. Something terrible will have to happen to them for them to examine how the world - and their corner of it - works. That's where we are as a society, we have to punish people into becoming better at a certain point.

It's, like, the worst. Ever. 

My Private Life is an Inside Joke

You can just smell the seething white guilt.

So. I'm in Portland. There's a million places I might have been this week, but Portland was not the top of the list of places I thought I would visit this year if you had asked me at the start of it. Or really, ever. The town doesn't offend me in some great or minor way, I simply never gave it much thought. However, since I needed to bring some counselors to training (who eventually couldn't come), I found myself registered for a week-long training whoohah in the Rose City. Or the place where the dream of the 90s is still alive. Or whatever else is going on. I have to say, I'm glad I'm here, because I might have elsewise lived my whole life without ever coming, and I would have missed out.

But enough balanced introspection, let's make fun of hipsters and West Coast liberals. 

Pretty much as soon as we (Kim and I) landed, I was struck with how open and airy everything is. And I am not strictly speaking of buildings and various constructs across the city. Portland is physically very appealing to me - there are trees smashed into everything, and pedestrian/bike traffic is encouraged everywhere. But the cross messages of everyone both proclaiming how welcoming/open they are at the same time trying to pin down exactly what it is they like/value/accept is hilarious. There are so many shades of "accept me! value me! envy me!" that it kills me. It really is like some sort of extended caricature of hipster-ism. 

There, that's out of the way. It's true, by the way, every bit of the above. I'm not trying to do the thing where an observer points out the obvious issues and then tries to turn everything on its head by appreciating it anyway unabashedly (and to stir fake controversy). I just wanted to point that out but not dwell on it because, fortunately, I've managed to enjoy it all as a tourist. On Sunday, we checked in at the Waterfront and walked a bit along the park on the river. 

During a stop at a bistro (edit: sorry, GASTROPUB) having some local wine and locally-sourced farm fed herp herp herp food, a woman bikes past on a vintage fixed gear bike. In a wide brim white hat. And white sundress. And comically large sunglasses. With her little doggie riding in a custom made basket. And she wasn't so much pedaling as posing with her head tilted away, trying hard to look whimsical and carefree as she nearly ran into five or six people, one at a time, because she wasn't looking where she was going.

I will forever know this woman, in my heart, as the Spirit of Portland. Pretty, intentionally too quirky, basically alright and harmless, trying a little too hard... but in the end, probably pretty friendly and someone you'd wanna have around for a drink or interesting chat. 

The beer here has been, so far, overstated. Portland was said to be the Beervana of the Northwest by several sources, and all I can think is that perhaps I am not running into the right microbrews. Maybe I need to find the micro-micro-brews, you know... the ones you haven't heard of? I dunno. The beer here hasn't been bad, just disappointing after all the hype. To be fair, it was a lot of hype, so it's unlikely any place can live up to that mess. I have some pictures I'll put up later about the breweries I visited, but so far I haven't found anything I'd try to get back home. 

Class itself has been both hilarious and terrible, as these training sessions tend to be. They're usually full of people who are far, far too interested in properly representing oneself as a srs bsnss counselor and avenger of the people in both conversation and discussing intent, but few people seem to have any real grasp of what counseling and program execution is actually about. It's more important to rant about those damn banks and how horribly unfair X and Y is rather than actually talk about how to fix it, how to serve clients, or how to make an effective program. 

In short, whenever I feel like I am too wrapped up in anger and worry if I am competent/skilled enough for my job, I always find strong reaffirmation in these classes. While I learn relatively little, that bit of motivation is usually pretty helpful. Though the sad and depressing realization that these folks represent the majority of the counseling community is deeply depressing for a little while after. 

So far, I've avoided spending too much money on the little specialty boutique whoosit shops, which I'm happy with. You know the shops - the ones that seem to base their business model not on actual solvency, but asking themselves the question, "Hey, if someone walked into my shop, would they think 'oh wow look at all the needlessly complex and expensive variations on this relatively simple product that really doesn't actually need multiple iterations!'?"

Cuz these places are every damn where. It seems less important to have a good business, but instead a business that people can say "omg that's so clever!" when referring to the material at hand. Of course, living in Austin, this is a phenomenon I am deeply familiar with, but the number of these sorts of stores is staggering. 

On a sour note, it just feels like you have somewhat creative and interesting people no longer interested in being actually clever and advancing art or improving the world. They just walk to talk to each other and compliment each other on how fresh and hip their vapid, shallow idea is and then discard it to move on to the next vapid and shallow cutesy trend to set. These folks, I think, decided to introduce the term "taste maker" because "trend-setter" was too disturbingly accurate in painting just how shallow and useless their efforts were. These are the folks who think blogging and tweeting is a real job that makes them super interesting, I guess. 

...I say on my blog. I guess I exempt myself because I feel like I contribute.

Anyway, I'll wrap this one up before it gets too bitter. Portland is, despite my mini-rants, actually A++, would visit again, and I've got three more days here so far. The layout of the city, the public transportation, the shops, the region, the architecture, everything. My main complaint is the people, but I think genetics are kicking in and I will hate everyone eventually anyway while still trying to cheer them on and love everyone so.. yeah. Not Portland's fault, there. 

More brews and $300 vintage tie reports later. 

Sold my tortured youth, piss and vinegar
I'm still angry with no reason to be
At the architect who imagines
For the every man, blessed sisyphus
Slipping steadily into madness, now that's the only place to be free

"He's getting dance lessons."

Dinner.

We went to one of the Alamo events last night, something I had never done before - the Drink Tank. It was at the Alamo on Slaughter Lane, which I hadn't been to before, and was showcasing Japanese whiskies from Suntory as part of a presentation and showing of Lost in Translation. Sometimes I think I could be a whisky snob, but other times I think I just like the culture and backstories of distilleries and methods of creation and history. In any case, the Suntory stuff was pretty good. I had their Yamazaki before - it was something Kim picked out for Daniel and I when he was visiting - and they didn't have any of that tonight. Instead, as above, we had two whiskies and one plumb liqueur. 

Sadly, the plum liqueur is literally something you can't get in the states. Apparently, there's no real market for it here, and it's relatively rare. The other two were pretty solid, though - the Hakushu 12 year was strong, reminding me of a Glenfiddich 12 I like a lot. The Hibiki was a lot smoother and light, which was nice because I don't like blended whiskies that much usually. 

The movie itself was somewhat interesting. I've always had a weird irritation/fascination with Japanese culture. I think we go way overboard with people thinking it's somehow superior or just so goddamned mysterious and deep in ways dumb westerners just can't understand. It's really interesting, though, just how different it is, and I think there's something to appreciating that. 

Anyway, not a big post. Just wanted to dust this off and get more into the habit of posting. A lot of stuff I should be writing down.

Rag and Bone

It's ten days past my birthday, which is significant, and I'll get to that in a moment. But, this is a birthday post, so I'll talk about my birthday a bit. I'm 33, now. I think that becoming an adult is one of those things where few people actually feel like they are one, but at some point you look back and realize you have at least landed in their territory. Kind of like how you never really notice yourself tanning, or when the day was where your hair grows so long that you can part it, it just kinda happened along the way. I don't feel very adult, still, but I realized this month that I am deep in enemy territory.

I am looking at my Jeep and wondering if it's smart to trade it in for something more reliable and less gas expensive. This is not a thing I came to wonder on my own, but rather was forced on me by the Jeep itself. Given my way, I'd just have this Jeep forever, or until it rattles apart. But, things are getting more expensive, gas is going up, and my effective salary went down (taxes yay). So when faced with the choice of wtf to do, the car comes up.

In addition to that, I had to visit the doctor on the 7th, with my birthday being on the 8th. The diagnosis was that a minor internal infection had spiraled out of control mostly due to the poor attention I give myself. Again, something I would have happily continued doing if I was not forced to consider alternatives. Instructions: ten days of no alcohol due to the antibiotics, but DOUBLY so due to the dehydration. So no coffee either. And probably best to avoid anything sugary when drinking. For awhile. So that meant I got to go through my birthday sober - an interesting experience. Something I'd recommend everyone try at least once, but probably no more than that.

Pic I saved from my 30th

A lot of folks came by the house for my birthday, which was technically a two day affair. The party was Friday night, on the actual day, Folks came over and we shared the party with Claire, who had recently turned 30. This particular major milestone was stained by the loss of one of her dogs, sadly, so I don't think she was in much of a celebratory mood even a week later. I think back to my own 30th birthday, and that was one of the first things I had done with Claire and how it was really great to have so many friends out just having a good time. I don't suppose you should wait for certain special occasions  though, to make memories like that. But, it's just better that way (or easier) sometimes. So to lose an opportunity like that sucks. It's something you don't get back every again - it is permanently written that a particular milestone passed that way. No do-overs.

So with all that in mind, it was good to see several folks I hadn't seen in awhile then. We're not all best friends or even really close anymore, but it's fine. Not all your friends can be people you can trust to hide the bodies. It's good to have people you just know and like well enough. The world doesn't have to be a roster of people who only fit on a roster of "perfect human being, through and through," or "enemy of all things right and noble".

The next day was a full day marathon of all three Lord of the Rings extended versions. Ben, Nikki, Stephen, Tony, and Brenna came over. Ben, Brenna, and Tony couldn't stay all day, but the rest of us muddled through.

I don't know why I don't write about Stephen more. Maybe I'm afraid I'll jinx it. I should put it down somewhere so I don't forget, I guess. That's the point of these things. Stephen was there, things were good. Two days, and the Sunday after, I think. It's hard to remember as the whole weekend was a bit of a blur. It really feels like the birthday stretched out over three days. Maybe it did. Maybe this is the big one that I thought 30 would be. The whole "adult birthday".

I was sober. This is not a good omen. But I was aware of everything, kind of like adults are purported to be. I knew what was happening, and I wasn't trying to just pretend shit was ok and everything would work itself out - the car, the house, personal stuff, work. I was perfectly aware where it all was, and I was okay with it. The things that are good, I'm happy for. The stuff that needs work, I can work on. The stuff that has to go is making itself very obvious. And that's alright, too.

Guild Wars 2: Parallel Play, Not Multi-Player

I've been meaning to put some thoughts down about Guild Wars 2 for some time, and I wasn't too sure how to frame it to begin with. I liked GW2 when I bought it, even though I had my misgivings. I never played the first Guild Wars, and when previews/press started coming out for the second one, I wasn't really engrossed. This isn't to say I thought the game was crap or anything, I just didn't find myself interested with what I was seeing. I had previously played WoW, SW:TOR, City of Heroes, and even the old SW: Galaxies as well as other MMOs for short stints. Seeing GW2 just made me think it was another fantasy MMO with not much going on that was new or intriguing. But as someone who played WoW for so many years, I was in absolutely no position to judge folks for playing the same ol' thing over and over.

After it was released, some local friends picked it up. Watching some of them play and talk about it, I decided to go for it. Not because their tremendous salesmanship had turned my head, but because I frankly missed playing some sort of multiplayer game with them. My friends in Austin, for the most part, all have a shared interest in vidja games, so the fact we weren't doing this as a community just kinda... bugged me. Can't really explain it. So anyway, the game looked interesting enough and would let me do something online with the folks, so I picked it up.

From the get go, something about the game bothered me. The combat was interesting and a bit of a change from typical MMOs (but not so radically different that it required learning from Step 1), and the class system was interesting. I picked up a Mesmer with the idea of playing an Engineer and probably a Guardian in turn. I didn't do a whole lot of actual group play to begin with, but the game more than compensated for that - most people who are vaguely familiar with MMOs and GW2 have probably heard the comments about the geniusly simple "world group" system. There's no "tagging" mobs, and players can all sort've complete the same quests together even if they're not grouped. Add in that quests are handed to you when you move into the area the quests should be done in (and require no "turn in") plus the world events that people would flock to, and it came out pretty well. Taking out the competition of tagging mobs or fighting over quest kills or racing to resource nodes turned what is typically an adversarial experience on an open server into something else. Everyone had this feeling that the players were all in it together, and there was nothing to fight over. MMO socialism, really, if socialism involved a total lack of mundane concerns.

After awhile, though, the cracks began to appear. The great strength of this system began to bother me and I was more able to figure out what it was. Unlike other MMOs, which relied on what people call "the holy trinity" or the tank/healer/dps roles, GW2 had these features as noted above plus a specific effort to avoid splitting players into these roles. Additionally, so that players didn't feel like they HAD to bring certain classes or builds, most buffs and debuffs were widely available to any given class and were low-impact. Instead of a buff that made a HUGE difference in your damage output, there was one that was just noticeable but not critical. Players could combo their abilities together for neat effects, but these effects were either similarly low-power or relatively infrequent to pull off (or both).

The reality came to the fore, for me - in a great effort not to force people to group together or punish people for not grouping, Guild Wars 2 barely rewarded people who did. Groups were only slightly greater than the sum of their parts. In PvP, of course, group tactics and planning were king, but that had little to do with the actual mechanics and more to do with the players themselves choosing what/where/how to do things. In PvE, dungeons and group challenges always seemed to hinge on fights that were slow and repetitive and presented challenges that were just full of large numbers rather than real challenge so that players had to group up for them so they could overcome the large numbers through their own large numbers.

This is not to say that there were no such challenges or interplay to be had. Group events, raids, group PvP and all of that stuff is definitely there. It's just that the difference between playing in actual coordination with people and playing solo nearby them is not vast.

I couldn't really figure out these things and define how they bothered me until I was talking about Magic: The Gathering with a friend and I remembered my high school Chemistry teacher once remarking that she thought the whole game just looked like "parallel play" to her, not actual interplay. She didn't understand the game that well, of course, and as someone who valued logic lessons in all their forms she revised her opinion once she understood it better. But the point she made stuck with me - from the outset, MTG looked like two people on opposite sides of the table just fiddling with their own stuff. And that's how GW2 really boiled down to me - lots of players just playing their own game together, but not with each other. Just around each other.

It's a good game, don't get me wrong. And I'm not one to say that people shouldn't or can't enjoy something. But I think a definite lesson GW2 teaches is that it's entirely possible to go too far in the other direction.