This week’s Escapist is talking about constructive criticism. Yahtzee himself chimed in on criticism on one point:
Criticism is a powerful force for good. Nothing ever improves without coming to terms with its flaws. Without critics telling us what’s stupid and what isn’t, we’d all be wearing boulders for hats and drinking down hot ebola soup for tea. – Zero Punctuation: Overlord 2
I could make all sort of analogies for criticism. There’s the bonsai tree example, the fat on a steak visual, the sanding of a bat to remove its splinters for a nice clean hit; I could go on. But suffice it to say that the best criticism is one that sees what a work is going for and points out the flaws so that the crux of the work can be improved while things that don’t work can be discarded.
Declaring something to be absolute crap is a great way to appear critical and level up on the Internet, so that’s what some critics will go for. This should not, however, deter the creative mind from letting criticism getting in the way of creating something. Even if said criticism is coming from that selfsame mind.
Even if you’re not looking at your art as a means of income, and it’s just something you do for fun, critics shouldn’t deter you from trying to create something if you’ve the mind to try it. However, some criticism is meant to be constructive, while other criticism becomes destructive very quickly. There’s a world of difference between “This sketch needs work,” and “Your art is horrible and will never improve.”
It comes down to a difference in mentality. Some people want to cultivate dreams in this world, to help bring a new vision to life. This requires a lot of effort, though, more than some people are willing to put into a creative endeavor, and it can be a scary thing. Like the man said, there will always be mediocrity out there, people who can’t deal with the extra percentage of effort some put into what makes them passionate. That, I feel, is where a lot of destructive criticism comes from. But I could be wrong.
Anyway, you can’t be afraid to put your work out there. Good criticism will help your work get better, and bad criticism can pretty much be ignored. Just like there is such a thing as good & bad writing or good & bad film-making, there’s good & bad criticism.
Let’s face it. Fiction is a planned endeavor. The best works are ones that are plotted out from first act to last, from beginning to end. They have structure, flow and purpose. Some even have a message to deliver along with a story to tell.
But when that message is tied to an anvil dropped on the audience, or the story is delivered with gaudy wrapping paper surrounding a poorly-constructed product, the whole thing suffers. You can have all of the CGI in the world in your film but if there’s no coherence to the narrative or depth to the characters, all you have is a bunch of CGI. People can get that by logging into World of Warcraft. Or Grand Theft Auto. Or Second Life.
I’m going to use a key example in all of this. Since this weekend turned out to be something of a success in terms of experimentation, even if it kept me from doing things like going outside or spending time with loved ones or smelling like a human being instead of a pile of rage and shattered dreams, let’s use Star Wars Episode 2: Attack of the Lame TitleTalentless HackFanboys Clones.
Contrivance is Bad Writing
Plain and simple. If you write a scene that’s intended to be heartfelt, or romantic, or tragic there’s a very basic rule you need to follow. Show, don’t tell. If you can show characters being in love, or caring about one another, the audience will understand what’s going on without having to be told, and what’s more, there’s a much greater chance they’ll actually care about what’s happening. Or, you could just have your characters sitting around talking about how they feel.
There’s a right and a wrong way to show people’s emotions, too. Is it really that hard to weave emotional undercurrents into plot-salient actions and dialog? You don’t need to draw out a scene of two young people frolicking in a field with lilting, string-heavy music playing at fortissimo to show they’re so in love. You might as well be sitting in the wings with a bullhorn shouting, “THESE TWO ARE IN LOVE AND YOU SHOULD EMPATHIZE WITH THEM BECAUSE THEY’RE IN LOVE BECAUSE THEY SAY THEY ARE.”
“You can’t just have your characters announce how they feel! THAT MAKES ME FEEL ANGRY!”
Me too, Beelzebot. Me too.
Contrivance Defies Logic
Let me toss a hypothetical your way. Say you have a plot in which you need to deal with an idea you presented in a previous work. You also have a fan favorite character whose origins you want to explore. How do you work both of them into the same work at the same time?
First of all, why? Why is it necessary for one to have anything to do with the other? If you want to show that character X is a badass, fine. If you want to explain how cloning works, fair enough. But having every single fucking clone patterned on the same person who has the family name of a fan favorite character but about as much development as a patio umbrella and less depth than a teaspoon raises more questions than are likely to be held in the writer’s brain at any given moment.
You know, questions like: Why did they pick this jagoff to be the prime clone?
Why is he trying to assassinate some one in the Republic and fighting Jedi when his clones are going to be used to support both the Republic and the Jedi? Did he just not know? Did nobody tell him what his clones were for? Did he not think to ask?
Did anybody bother to think about this shit, let alone write it?
I paid ten bucks to watch THIS?
Contrivance Destroys Enjoyment
We enjoy stories. We like to read them, listen to them, watch them. We like to envision the action, let the characters grow, anticipate what happens next.
The problem with prequels in general and Lucas’ six hours of wanking onto a green screen in particular is that there’s really only one way for things to resolve. You need to get characters and situations into a certain configuration so the already established works make some sort of sense. Unless you’re going far, far into the past of your own universe – thank God for Knights of the Old Republic – if you don’t do things right you will outright ruin any enjoyment of said previous works.
I can’t think of a better example of this than Star Wars. Every time you see Darth Vader, every time you hear James Earl Jones rumble out his orders and declare the ‘promotion’ of another officer, you see and hear the whiny little psychopath pictured above. It’d be different if Anakin had been characterized as somewhat insecure but nonetheless good-hearted, concerned about the scope of his power and wanting nothing more than a happy, peaceful life.
But no, we got a self-centered, power-hungry, whining, disrespectful asshole.
He had to be with someone so he could have kids, so he’s set up with someone who could have been every bit as inspiring to women now as Princess Leia was back in A New Hope and Empire Strikes Back. You know, a confident, intelligent, competent and brave young woman who isn’t afraid to get her hands dirty but still knows how to look good and deal with people.
But no, we got a vacuous, empty, shallow, entirely underdeveloped plot convenience.
She has to leave the scene before the end of the last prequel, since Luke and Leia get separated for their safety by Obi-Wan and Bail Organa. How can we get this to happen? Does she make some kind of brave but stupid decision to make one last effort to reach the man she loves who is now lost in his own desire for justice that has been subverted and perverted by the Dark Side of the Force?
No. Just have her drop dead of a broken fucking heart. They might as well have said the midi-chlorians did it.
Mister Lucas? With all due respect for the pioneering you did in science fiction and special effects back when I was a little boy…
I know what you’re thinking. “Oh, crap! He’s finally snapped! He’s going to get himself a white hoodie and start jumping on random people so he can stab them in the neck with a #2 pencil to to make sure people get the irony!” First of all, no. Neither Altaiir nor Ezio jumped on ‘random’ people and I certainly wouldn’t, either. Secondly, I’m talking more about the seminal line in the titular Assassin’s Creed than I am their way of dealing with problems. The line in question: Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
I was set on this course of thinking by one Henry Rollins. I saw on the Tube of You that he’d given some thoughts on Jesus. This bit’s sort of brief, but focus on what he says at about the 1:45 mark:
Rollins’ awesomeness aside, he makes a very good point that’s helping me get back into the groove of working on Citizen, a boost that I needed after thisweekend’sexperiment. Basically, it boils down to not listening to what other people might have to say about trying to do something creative or interesting with my life.
According to some, to make it as a writer, you have to pander to a certain demographic. Success in the modern literary world, according to sales figures, means main characters who are little more than blank slates onto which young & impressionable readers can project themselves, shallow stock supporting characters that do little more than fuel the ego of the protagonist (and by extension the author and/or reader) and presenting the whole project in an easily marketable way that can generate enough hype to overwhelm any criticism of the work itself. If sales trends are to be believed, this is the truth of the fiction market.
But remember, nothing is true.
Further, you don’t want to get too complicated, some might say. Don’t get to involved in your characters. Don’t stop to develop them. Don’t build a world that people can believe in. It’s just window-dressing, a green screen, and shouldn’t have any depth to it. Let readers project what they want into it just as they do the personality-deprived protagonist, and by the way, why are you trying to make that into a human being? You can’t spend time doing this stuff and expect to finish what you’re writing, let alone be successful with it, they’d cry. That’s not allowed!
And yet, everything is permitted.
You see what I’m doing here? I don’t have any intention of giving up. I won’t water down what I’m doing just to make it more palatable to the masses unused to the taste of something more complicated than gruel and wallpaper paste. I won’t compromise the visions that keep me up at night in order to make my work trendy. I don’t care what the teeming masses think is true, or what those in the world of business or sales or marketing think an individual is or is not allowed to do. Just because some people gave up on their dreams long ago doesn’t mean I have to do the same.
Nothing is true. Everything is permitted.
It might seem a bit odd to take a line from a video game franchise this seriously, but when I stopped to think about what I’m trying to do, what I need to push myself to finish, I found myself ruminating on why it’s important, and not just to me. I’m certainly not expecting anything I write to change the world or sell a bazillion copies or even help me get away from the environment of the corporate day job. I know that it’d take months or even years after finishing just one novel for it to finally see print, and even then I’d be lucky to sell a dozen copies to friends and family.
This is an interesting position for me to be in. It seems that last week’s review of Avatar had some people wondering what movie I’d actually seen, since I didn’t instantly fall in love with Pandora, nor did I gas myself into oblivion to be reincarnated as a Na’vi.
…Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but still, a few folks at the Escapist thought I was mistaken in drawing a comparison between James Cameron’s latest money machine and a little film from last year called District 9. They further didn’t seem to get why I considered District 9 a better film, since it too is a sci-fi action drama with a message and a unique alien race never before seen by humans. I was going to fire up District 9 on the Netflix Instant Queue because I couldn’t think of a better way to spend an evening than streaming a film this good directly into my eye sockets, but someone very astute pointed out I’d already reviewedDistrict 9 and while I haven’t given it the ICFN treatment, I’d just be repeating myself for the most part.
But you know what we haven’t had in a while? A cage match.
So let’s toss these two into the mix together and see which emerges victorious. I will attempt to remain as objective as possible for the benefit of all you Avatar fans out there.
I was raised playing games like Chess, Battleship, Squad Leader, Risk and War of the Ring. I still love playing tabletop strategy games with my dad. It keeps my mind sharp, it’s quality time with a parent, and a great opportunity to talk smack at someone I deeply love and respect. Especially when a Xanatos Gambit of mine pays off and he’s left staring at the board uttering curses out of earshot of my mother.
Competition among peers is a good thing. Iron sharpening iron, pushing oneself to become better at a chosen passion, blah blah achievement blah blah brotherhood blee. It’s true for video games as much as it is for those played among people with whom you share eye contact and can harass while they get up to grab a fresh beer. I used to love player versus player online as much as I do at the card table. But as time went on, I found myself slowly becoming more and more dissatisfied with PvP in general and online PvP in particular, to the point that nowadays the only competitive game-playing I do is with my dad on the rare occasion we get to sit down together. Most of my video-game playing has become something I do just with myself, which could be descriptions of many of my daily activities, some of which I won’t mention here for family-friendly reasons.
What happened? How did I fall out of love with PvP? When did I become such a despicable care bear?
There’s only one way to find out.
The College Days
“The exam can wait. These CTs and their damn tripmines are going DOWN.”
There was a time when my evenings in college were spent studyingbeing responsiblewriting letters to my mom sitting in the dark playing Counter-Strike. For hours on end I’d mince into the maps, pick out my favorite weapons from whichever side I’d chosen, and proceed to rampage from one place to another trying to edge out a win. It was especially fun when more than one of us in the apartment were playing on the same game, because shouted obscenities from the other room would make me grin. And when I saw the big shape of a flatmate coming around the corner at me, I knew I was in trouble, but I was still laughing about it even as I took my licks.
Even before that, in a more innocent time, the tight-knit community of the BBS is was really turned me on to online multi-player. Trade Wars taught me never to be logged out for too long if I could help it, because sooner or later somebody was going to blow up my hard-earned ship to try and get to the creamy commodity center inside. This feeling was invoked lately in my trial of Alien Assault Traders, where I spent an evening gawking at my screen because when I wasn’t looking, somebody blew up my damn planet. More accurately, they scoured my base from orbit (with me inside) and set up their own. Revenge shall be mine…
Anyway, that’s how I got my start with this sort of thing, back when the games and I were a bit more innocent, I suppose.
How Halo Changed Things
NerdyShirts actually makes teabagging look kinda cute.
At first, Halo seemed like a great thing. Either playing co-op with a friend split-screen or on a private server run by a co-worker, I was reminded of those heady days at Bloosmburg. There was friendly competition, the occasional jibe when being at the business end of a killing spree, the whole bit. Then, one day, I tried out the online random game-joining multi-player.
Now, maybe this is my fault for not researching or joining any clans. Maybe I didn’t get enough practice switching between the two weapons Master Chief can carry at any one time. Maybe I was spoiled by single-player campaigns where attacks that actually got past the Spartan’s armor just caused me to duck behind something solid until my health regenerated, because AI baddies never seemed savvy enough to flush me out with a grenade. But it seemed that whenever I signed into a random Halo MP game, I’d be at it for all of two minutes before I’d be clubbed, teabagged and verbally taunted by someone who sounded like a rat on helium squeaking at me from the bottom of a well about how I’d been ‘pwned’.
As trendy as it might be to hate on Halo these days, I think this was what turned me off to most PvP, at least when it came to shooters. There are folks out there who play this game professionally. It’s their job to improve their skills, find the best perches to drop grenades on someone, master the art of vehicular homicide (with Warthogs in the game of course) and make their teabagging appear to have all the grace and poise of an ice dancing routine (not a big stretch). More power to them, I say. If I could make a living playing video games all day, you can bet your teabag I’d do it in a heartbeat. And again, maybe this is due to joining random games instead of finding a clan or something, but I’d try not to be mean about it. I mean, laughing a bit at a particularly nasty kill is one thing, especially when you can laugh at your own when your buddy gets his revenge. Being the butt of homophobic rape jokes for hours on end is quite another. It just gets really old really fast.
Where’s the incentive to play in order to improve my skills if all the other players are just going to tell me how much I suck? And if they’re already at that level of skill, how much further along will they be when I finally get to said level?
Maybe I’m just a soft, mewling big girl’s blouse of a gamer for saying this, but all of the fun of an experience is drained away when I spend half of my time watching a respawn timer count down while watching a teenager defile my corpse and listening to his brand of humor spew into my ear without any recourse on my part other than trying to best him (an effort which almost always fails) or ragequitting.
WoW’s Ubiquitous Grind Machine
Considering what an RP nerd I am, it’s no surprise that I almost always played World of Warcraft on RP servers. Even there, you can find PvP. Given that role-playing is a largely social undertaking, and it’s best done with a group of like-minded individuals, it follows that some of one’s friends from the community would share an interest in PvP. However, since WoW is an MMORPG, any undertaking in it outside of purely social interaction means one thing, and one thing only.
Grinding.
Now, when I say ‘grinding’, I don’t mean killing thousands of rats over and over again, though that certainly is the case when it comes to building experience. In the case of PvP, at least in World of Warcraft, grinding means going into battlegrounds repeatedly, trying to build up badges and reputation to purchase better equipment, and ascending to the point where you and a handful of trusted friends – between one and four – can enter the arena and leave the battlegrounds behind. But once you get into the arena, you must again climb a ladder of points and reputation to ensure that your opponents do not outstrip you in terms of equipment.
There’s also the chance that entering the arena will reveal that you’ve been “doing it wrong” for quite a while. Battlegrounds tend to be more forgiving in terms of people not knowing how best to play their class. Arenas, on the other hand, have a much narrower margin for error, and every loss is a costly one. While one’s arena partners tend to be more forgiving, provided you’re not jumping into a random one, there’s still the matter of the gap between you and the shiny new pair of shoes you need to increase your resilience rating widening because you got snared and blasted into oblivion when you really should have known better. It’s less immediately enraging than getting teabagged by an adolescent, but more disheartening because you’re getting teabagged by the system.
It was a feeling, a salty sweaty taste in my mouth, that I couldn’t shake. I tried Warhammer Online, Aion, Star Trek Online, and in each case, I felt I was staring down a long dark corridor of PvP grinding with no end in sight and the server’s hungry grues waiting to devour my free time, my hard-earned cash and my will to live.
Yes, yes, I know, boo hoo, stupid whiny care bear, let’s move on.
The Across-The-Table Factor
Some things are just better with beer ale.
I think part of the problem I ran into was the inability to see the people with whom I was playing. I don’t know a lot of the people I meet online personally. Folks in a WoW guild I can kind of get to know but I’m still never sure how they’ll behave under pressure in a competitive situation, or how they’ll react to me when I inevitably mess up. It’s even worse jumping into random online shooter game sessions.
It’s a shame, too, because some of the best experiences I’ve had playing with others have been in competitive situations. Games of Munchkin, Chrononauts, Puerto Rico and the other aforementioned board games quickly become tirades of “I can’t believe you did that!” speeches framed with raucous laughter. Even something like poker or blackjack can have this esprit de corps, this feeling of competition among peers. It’s something that I’ve found lacking in a lot of PvP experiences.
There’s Hope. I Think.
“Hmm… looks like he’s going to try this multi-player malarkey again.”
I think really have been doing something wrong. My enjoyment, or more pointedly the lack thereof, in a lot of these situations really comes down to me not finding a good group of people with whom to play. I haven’t been thinking about getting into situations where I’m in a game with people I know who’ll have my back when things go rotten. At least, I wasn’t. But I’ve refocused my thoughts on this from “what’s wrong with other people” to “what am I doing wrong?” The answer, as far as I can tell, is not being discriminatory in whom I spend time with in a multiplayer/PvP environment. It’s why I’m looking to get an Alien Assault Traders server going on this domain. And judging by the number of hits I got the last time I discussed Trade Wars, I think some of the people who’d join it would be people I know. Having my base scoured from the surface of a planet I created will be a lot less difficult to swallow when I can call, Tweet or otherwise directly harangue the friend in question with promises of revenge worthy of Shatner in Wrath of Khan.
The same could be said for Team Fortress 2. In a game where teamwork and supporting one another is emphasized so heavily, joining a random game and trying to depend on a stranger seems counter-intuitive. Most of people I know who play do so on the PC, meaning I’d be unable to join them since my copy of the Orange Box is for a console. Still, Steam has sales from time to time and if I can snag the game during one, I’m sure I can find people I know well enough from the Escapist or another walk of life whom I can trust to keep too many Spies from stabbing me while I’m trying to line up a shot on a particularly troublesome Heavy.
In spite of some negative reviews regarding it, I’ve been asked by a friend to try out Borderlands. Provided I can hang with said friend on a regular basis during the game, it might not be so bad. I’m trepidatious given my previous experience, but I figure it’s worth a shot if I’m playing with people I know.
Finally, I’m sure I’ll be playing an MMORPG again at some point. But I’m not going to be playing one by myself. I’m returning to my stance of finding one my wife and I can agree upon and I’m sticking to it. Because if there’s anybody on this planet from whom I should be able to endure some smack talk, it’d be my blushing bride.
